Mr Midshipman Hornblower by C. S. Forester

“Wait, men, wait,” said Hornblower.

The lugger was coming alongside when Hornblower suddenly realized, with a hot flood of blood under his skin, that he himself was unarmed. He had told his men to take pistols and cutlasses: he had advised Tabling to arm himself, and yet he had clean forgotten about his own need for weapons. Bu it was too late now to try to remedy that. Someone in the lugger hailed in Spanish, and Hornblower spread his hands in a show of incomprehension. Now they were alongside.

“Come on, men!” shouted Hornblower.

He ran across the superstructure and with a gulp he flung himself across the gap at the officer in the shrouds. He gulped again as he went through the air; he fell with all his weight or the unfortunate man, clasped him round the shoulders, and fell with him to the deck. There were shouts and yells behind him as the Caroline spewed up her crew into the lugger. A rush of feet, a clatter and a clash. Hornblower got to his feet empty-handed. Maxwell was just striking down a man with his cutlass. Tapling was heading a rush forward into the bows, waving a cutlass and yelling like a madman. Then it was all over; the astonished Spaniards were unable to lift a hand in their own defence.

So it came about that on the twenty-second day of her quarantine the Caroline came into Gibraltar Bay with a captured guarda-costa lugger under her lee. A thick barn-yard stench trailed with her, too, but at least, when Hornblower went on board the Indefatigable to make his report, he had a suitable reply ready for Mr Midshipman Bracegirdle.

“Hullo, Noah, how are Shem and Ham?” asked Mr Bracegirdle.

“Shem and Ham have taken a prize,” said Hornblower. “I regret that Mr Bracegirdle can’t say the same.”

But the Chief Commissary of the squadron, when Hornblower reported to him, had a comment to which even Hornblower was unable to make a reply.

“Do you mean to tell me, Mr Hornblower,” said the Chief Commissary, “that you allowed your men to eat fresh beef? A bullock a day for your eighteen men? There must have been plenty of ship’s provisions on board. That was wanton extravagance, Mr Hornblower, I’m surprised at you.”

CHAPTER TEN — THE DUCHESS AND THE DEVIL

Acting-Lieutenant Hornblower was bringing the sloop Le Rêve, prize of H.M.S. Indefatigable, to anchor in Gibraltar Bay. He was nervous; if anyone had asked him if he thought that all the telescopes in the Mediterranean Fleet were trained upon him he would have laughed at the fantastic suggestion, but he felt as if they were. Nobody ever gauged more cautiously the strength of the gentle following breeze, or estimated more anxiously the distances between the big anchored ships of the line, or calculated more carefully the space Le Rêve would need to swing at her anchor. Jackson, his petty officer, was standing forward awaiting the order to take in the jib, and he acted quickly at Hornblower’s hail.

“Helm-a-lee,” said Hornblower next, and Le Rêve rounded into the wind. “Brail up!”

Le Rêve crept forward, her momentum diminishing as the wind took her way off her.

“Let go!”

The cable growled a protest as the anchor took it out through the hawsehole — that welcome splash of the anchor, telling of the journey’s end. Hornblower watched carefully while Le Rêve took up on her cable, and then relaxed a little. He had brought the prize safely in. The commodore — Captain Sir Edward Pellew of H.M.S. Indefatigable — had clearly not yet returned, so that it was Hornblower’s duty to report to the port admiral.

“Get the boat hoisted out,” he ordered, and then, remembering his humanitarian duty, “and you can let the prisoners up on deck.”

They had been battened down below for the last forty-eight hours, because the fear of a recapture was the nightmare of every prizemaster. But here in the Bay with the Mediterranean fleet all round that danger was at an end. Two hands at the oars of the gig sent her skimming over the water, and in ten minutes Hornblower was reporting his arrival to the admiral.

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