“What brig’s that?” shouted Pellew through his megaphone.
“Marie Galante of Bordeaux,” translated the officer beside Pellew as the French captain made reply. “Twenty‑four days out from New Orleans with rice.”
“Rice!” said Pellew. “That’ll sell for a pretty penny when we get her home. Two hundred tons, I should say. Twelve of a crew at most. She’ll need a prize‑crew of four, a midshipman’s command.”
He looked round him as though for inspiration before giving his next order.
“Mr Hornblower!”
“Sir!”
“Take four men of the cutter’s crew and board that brig. Mr Soames will give you our position. Take her into any English port you can make, and report there for orders.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
Hornblower was at his station at the starboard quarterdeck carronades — which was perhaps how he had caught Pellew’s eye — his dirk at his side and a pistol in his belt. It was a moment for fast thinking, for anyone could see Pellew’s impatience. With the Indefatigable cleared for action, his sea chest would be part of the surgeon’s operating table down below, so that there was no chance of getting anything out of it. He would have to leave just as he was. The cutter was even now clawing up to a position on the Indefatigable’s quarter, so he ran to the ship’s side and hailed her, trying to make his voice sound as big and as manly as he could, and at the word of the lieutenant in command she turned her bows in towards the frigate.
“Here’s our latitude and longitude, Mr Hornblower,” said Soames, the master, handing a scrap of paper to him.
“Thank you,” said Hornblower, shoving it into his pocket.
He scrambled awkwardly into the mizzen‑chains and looked down into the cutter. Ship and boat were pitching together, almost bows on to the sea, and the distance between them looked appallingly great; the bearded seaman standing in the bows could only just reach up to the chains with his long boat‑hook. Hornblower hesitated for a long second; he knew he was ungainly and awkward — book learning was of no use when it came to jumping into a boat — but he had to make the leap, for Pellew was fuming behind him and the eyes of the boat’s crew and of the whole ship’s company were on him. Better to jump and hurt himself, better to jump and make an exhibition of himself, than to delay the ship. Waiting was certain failure, while he still had a choice if he jumped. Perhaps at a word from Pellew the Indefatigable’s helmsman allowed the ship’s head to fall off from the sea a little. A somewhat diagonal wave lifted the Indefatigable’s stern and then passed on, so that the cutter’s bows rose as the ship’s stern sank a trifle. Hornblower braced himself and leaped. His feet reached the gunwale and he tottered there for one indescribable second. A seaman grabbed the breast of his jacket and he fell forward rather than backward. Not even the stout arm of the seaman, fully extended, could hold him up, and he pitched headforemost, legs in the air, upon the hands on the second thwart. He cannoned onto their bodies, knocking the breath out of his own against their muscular shoulders, and finally struggled into an upright position.
“I’m sorry,” he gasped to the men who had broken his fall.
“Never you mind, sir,” said the nearest one, a real tarry sailor, tattooed and pigtailed. “You’re only a featherweight.”
The lieutenant in command was looking at him from the sternsheets.
“Would you go to the brig, please, sir?” he asked, and the lieutenant bawled an order and the cutter swung round as Hornblower made his way aft.
It was a pleasant surprise not to be received with the broad grins of tolerantly concealed amusement. Boarding a small boat from a big frigate in even a moderate sea was no easy matter; probably every man on board had arrived headfirst at some time or other, and it was not in the tradition of the service, as understood in the Indefatigable, to laugh at a man who did his best without shirking.
“Are you taking charge of the brig?” asked the lieutenant.