“Aye aye, sir,” he said, quite as a matter of course.
“Get that jib in first, before it flogs itself to pieces,” said Hornblower, greatly emboldened.
“Aye aye, sir.”
“Carry on, then.”
The seaman turned to go forward, and Hornblower walked aft. He took the telescope from its becket on the poop, and swept the horizon. There were a few sails in sight; the nearest ones he could recognize as prizes, which, with all sail set that they could carry, were heading for England as fast as they could go. Far away to windward he could see the Indefatigable’s topsails as she clawed after the rest of the convoy — she had already overhauled and captured all the slower and less weatherly vessels, so that each succeeding chase would be longer. Soon he would be alone on this wide sea, three hundred miles from England. Three hundred miles — two days with a fair wind; but how long if the wind turned foul?
He replaced the telescope; the men were already hard at work forward, so he went below and looked round the neat cabins of the officers; two single ones for the captain and the mate, presumably, and a double one for the bos’un and the cook or the carpenter. He found the lazarette, identifying it by the miscellaneous stores within it; the door was swinging to and fro with a bunch of keys dangling. The French captain, faced with the loss of all he possessed, had not even troubled to lock the door again after taking out the case of wine. Hornblower locked the door and put the keys in his pocket and felt suddenly lonely — his first experience of the loneliness of the man in command at sea. He went on deck again, and at sight of him Matthews hurried aft and knuckled his forehead.
“Beg pardon, sir, but we’ll have to use the jeers to sling that yard again.”
“Very good.”
“We’ll need more hands than we have, sir. Can I put some o’ they Frenchies to work?”
“If you think you can. If any of them are sober enough.”
“I think I can, sir. Drunk or sober.”
“Very good.”
It was at this moment that Hornblower remembered with bitter self‑reproach that the priming of his pistol was probably wet, and he had not scorn enough for himself at having put his trust in a pistol without re‑priming after evolutions in a small boat. While Matthews went forward he dashed below again. There was a case of pistols which he remembered having seen in the captain’s cabin, with a powder flask and bullet bag hanging beside it. He loaded both weapons and reprimed his own, and came on deck again with three pistols in his belt just as his men appeared from the forecastle herding half a dozen Frenchmen. He posed himself in the poop, straddling with his hands behind his back, trying to adopt an air of magnificent indifference and understanding. With the jeers taking the weight of yard and sail, an hour’s hard work resulted in the yard being slung again and the sail reset.
When the work was advancing towards completion, Hornblower came to himself again to remember that in a few minutes he would have to set a course, and he dashed below again to set out the chart and the dividers and parallel rulers. From his pocket he extracted the crumpled scrap of paper with his position on it — he had thrust it in there so carelessly a little while back, at a time when the immediate problem before him was to transfer himself from the Indefatigable to the cutter. It made him unhappy to think how cavalierly he had treated that scrap of paper then; he began to feel that life in the Navy, although it seemed to move from one crisis to another, was really one continuous crisis, that even while dealing with one emergency it was necessary to be making plans to deal with the next. He bent over the chart, plowed his position, and laid off his course. It was a queer uncomfortable feeling to think that what had up to this moment been an academic exercise conducted under the reassuring supervision of Mr Soames was now something on which hinged his life and his reputation. He checked his working, decided on his course, and wrote it down on a scrap of paper for fear he should forget it.