“Mr Hornblower,” he said formally, “I am glad to have this opportunity of welcoming you on board my ship.”
“Yes, sir,” said Hornblower — that seemed more appropriate to the occasion than “Aye aye, sir”, and a junior midshipman seemed to be expected to say one or the other on all occasions.
“You are — let me see — seventeen?” Captain Keene picked up the paper which apparently covered Hornblower’s brief official career.
“Yes, sir.”
“July 4th, 1776,” mused Keene, reading Hornblower’s date of birth to himself. “Five years to the day before I was posted as captain. I had been six years as lieutenant before you were born.”
“Yes, sir,” agreed Hornblower — it did not seem the occasion for any further comment.
“A doctor’s son — you should have chosen a lord for your father if you wanted to make a career for yourself.”
“Yes, sir.”
“How far did your education go?”
“I was a Grecian at school, sir.”
“So you can construe Xenophon as well as Cicero?”
“Yes, sir. But not very well, sir.”
“Better if you knew something about sines and cosines. Better if you could foresee a squall in time to get t’gallants in. We have no use for ablative absolutes in the Navy.”
“Yes, sir,” said Hornblower.
He had only just learned what a topgallant was, but he could have told his captain that his mathematical studies were far advanced. He refrained nevertheless; his instincts combined with his recent experiences urged him not to volunteer unsolicited information.
“Well, obey orders, learn your duties, and no harm can come to you. That will do.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Hornblower, retiring.
But the captain’s last words to him seemed to be contradicted immediately. Harm began to come to Hornblower from that day forth, despite his obedience to orders and diligent study of his duties, and it stemmed from the arrival in the midshipmen’s berth of John Simpson as senior warrant officer. Hornblower was sitting at mess with his colleagues when he first saw him — a brawny good‑looking man in his thirties, who came in and stood looking at them just as Hornblower had stood a few days before.
“Hullo!” said somebody, not very cordially.
“Cleveland, my bold friend,” said the newcomer, “come out from that seat. I am going to resume my place at the head of the table.”
“But —”
“Come out, I said,” snapped Simpson.
Cleveland moved along with some show of reluctance, and Simpson took his place, and glowered round the table in reply to the curious glances with which everyone regarded him.
“Yes, my sweet brother officers,” he said, “I am back in the bosom of the family. And I am not surprised that nobody is pleased. You will all be less pleased by the time I am done with you, I may add.”
“But your commission — ?” asked somebody, greatly daring.
“My commission?” Simpson leaned forward and tapped the table, staring down the inquisitive people on either side of it. “I’ll answer that question this once, and the man who asks it again will wish he had never been born. A board of turnip-headed captains has refused me my commission. It decided that my mathematical knowledge was insufficient to make me a reliable navigator. And so Acting‑Lieutenant Simpson is once again Mr Midshipman Simpson, at your service. At your service. And may the Lord have mercy on your souls.”
It did not seem, as the days went by, that the Lord had any mercy at all, for with Simpson’s return life in the midshipmen’s berth ceased to be one of passive unhappiness and became one of active misery. Simpson had apparently always been an ingenious tyrant, but now, embittered and humiliated by his failure to pass his examination for his commission, he was a worse tyrant, and his ingenuity had multiplied itself. He may have been weak in mathematics, but he was diabolically clever at making other people’s lives a burden to them. As senior officer in the mess he had wide official powers; as a man with a blistering tongue and a morbid sense of mischief he would have been powerful anyway, even if the Justinian had possessed an alert and masterful first lieutenant to keep him in check while Mr Clay was neither. Twice midshipmen rebelled against Simpson’s arbitrary authority, and each time Simpson thrashed the rebel, pounding him into insensibility with his huge fists, for Simpson would have made a successful prizefighter. Each time Simpson was left unmarked; each time his opponent’s blackened eyes and swollen lips called down the penalty of mast heading and extra duty from the indignant first lieutenant. The mess seethed with impotent rage. Even the toadies and lickspittles among the midshipmen — and naturally there were several — hated the tyrant.