“British colours, sir!”
Hornblower remembered he was still wet and naked; at least, he was still wet in those parts of him which did not offer free play for the wind to dry him. He began to dab at these inner corners with the towel he still held, only to be interrupted again.
“There she is!” said Bush; the ship’s upper sails were over the horizon, in view from the deck.
“Lay a course to pass her within hail, if you please,” said Hornblower.
“Aye aye, sir. Starboard a point, Quartermaster. Get those stuns’ls in again, Mr Hurst.”
The ship they were approaching held her course steadily; there was nothing suspicious about her, not even the fact that she had gone about immediately on sighting Lotus.
“Timber from the South Baltic, I expect, sir,” said Bush, training his glass. “You can see the deck cargo now.”
Like most ships bound out of the Baltic her decks were piled high with timber, like barricades along the bulwarks.
“Make the merchant ships’ private signal if you please, Captain,” said Hornblower.
He watched the reply run up the ship’s halliards.
“A — T — numeral — five — seven, sir,” read Hurst through his glass. “That’s the correct reply for last winter, and she won’t have received the new code yet.”
“Signal her to heave to,” said Hornblower.
With no more delay than was to be expected of a merchant ship, inept at reading signals, and with a small crew, the ship backed her main-topsail and lay-to. The Nonsuch came hurtling down upon her.
“That’s the yellow Q she’s hoisting now, sir,” said Hurst, suddenly. “The fever flag.”
“Very good. Heave to, Captain Bush, if you please.”
“Aye aye, sir. I’ll keep to wind’ard of her, too, if you’ve no objection, sir.”
The Nonsuch laid her topsails to the mast and rounded-to, rocking in the gentle trough of the waves a pistol-shot to windward. Hornblower took his speaking-trumpet.
“What ship’s that?”
“Maggie Jones of London. Eleven days out from Memel!”
In addition to the man at the wheel there were only two figures visible on the poop-deck of the Maggie Jones; one of them, wearing white duck trousers and a blue coat, was obviously the captain. It was he who was answering by speaking-trumpet.
“What’s that yellow flag for?”
“Smallpox. Seven cases on board, and two dead. First case a week ago.”
“Smallpox, by God!” muttered Bush. A frightful mental picture came up before his mind’s eye, of what smallpox would do, let loose in his precious Nonsuch, with 900 men crammed into her restricted space.
“Why are you sailing without convoy?”
“None available at Memel. The rendezvous for the trade’s off Langeland on the twenty-fourth. We’re beating up for the Belt now.”
“What’s the news?” Hornblower had waited patiently during all these interminable sentences before asking that question.
“The Russian embargo still holds, but we’re sailing under licence.”
“Sweden?”
“God knows, sir. Some say they’ve tightened up their embargo there.”
A curious muffled howl came from below decks in the Maggie Jones at that moment, just audible in the Nonsuch.
“What’s that noise?” asked Hornblower.
“One of the smallpox cases, sir. Delirious. They say the Tsar’s meeting Bernadotte next week fur a conference somewhere in Finland.”
“Any sign of war between France and Russia?”
“None that I could see in Memel.”
That delirious patient must be very violent for his shrieks to reach Hornblower’s ears at this distance against the wind. Hornblower heard them again. Was it possible for one man to make all that noise? It sounded more like a muffled chorus to Hornblower. Hornblower felt a sudden wave of suspicion surging up within him. The white-trousered figure on the Maggie Jones’s poop was altogether too glib, too professional in his talk. A naval officer might possibly discuss the chances of war in the Baltic as coldly as this man was doing, but a merchant captain would put more feeling in his words. And more than one man was making that noise in her forecastle. The captain could easily have offered his information about the Tsar’s meeting with Bernadotte as a red herring to distract Hornblower’s attention from the cries below deck. Something was wrong.