“El Supremo has been kept waiting,” he said. “Please come this way as quickly as you can.”
He almost ran before them down a corridor to a door studded with brass. On this he knocked loudly, waited a moment, knocked again, and then threw open the door, bending himself double as he did so. Hornblower, at Hernandez’ gesture, strode into the room, Hernandez behind him, and the major‑domo closed the door. It was a long room, lime‑washed to a glittering white, whose ceiling was supported by thick wooden beams, painted and carved. Towards the farther end, solitary in the bleak bareness of the room, stood a treble dais, and in a canopied chair on the dais sat the man Hornblower had been sent half round the world to see.
He did not seem very impressive or dignified; a small swarthy man, restless and fidgety, with piercing black eyes and lank black hair beginning to turn grey. From his appearance one might have guessed at only a small admixture of Indian blood in his European ancestry, and he was dressed in European fashion, in a red coat laced with gold, a white stock, and white breeches and stockings; there were gold buckles on his shoes. Hernandez cringed before him.
“You have been a long time,” snapped Alvarado. “Eleven men have been flogged during your absence.”
“Supremo,” sighed Hernandez — his teeth were chattering with fright — “the captain came instantly on hearing your summons.”
Alvarado turned his piercing eyes upon Hornblower, who bowed stiffly. His mind was playing with the suspicion that the eleven men who had been flogged had suffered, unaccountably, because of the length of time it took to ride a horse from the beach to the house.
“Captain Horatio Hornblower, of His Britannic Majesty’s frigate Lydia, at your service, sir,” he said.
“You have brought me arms and powder?”
“They are in the ship.”
“That is well. You will make arrangements with General Hernandez here for landing them.”
Hornblower thought of his frigate’s almost empty storerooms; and he had three hundred and eighty men to feed. Moreover, as with every ship’s captain, he was already feeling irritation at dependence on the shore. He would be restless and uncomfortable until the Lydia was fully charged again with food and water and wood and every other necessary, sufficient to take her back round the Horn at least as far as the West Indies or St Helena, if not home.
“I can hand nothing over, sir, until my ship’s needs are satisfied,” he said. He heard Hernandez drawing his breath sharply at this sacrilegious temporising in the face of orders from el Supremo. The latter’s eyebrows came together; for a moment it seemed likely that he would attempt to impose his imperious will upon the captain, but immediately afterwards his expression cleared as he realised the folly of quarrelling with his new ally.
“Certainly,” he said. “Please make known to General Hernandez what you require, and he will supply you.”
Hornblower had had dealing with officers of the Spanish services, and knew what they could accomplish in the way of fair promises not carried out, and procrastination and shiftiness and doubledealing. He guessed that Spanish American rebel officers would be proportionately less trustworthy. He decided to make known his wants now, so that there might be a fair chance of seeing a part at least of his demands satisfied in the near full.
“My watercasks must be refilled tomorrow,” he said.
Hernandez nodded.
“There is a spring close to where we landed. If you wish, I will have men to help you.”
“Thank you, but that will not be necessary. My ship’s crew will attend to it. Besides water I need —”
Hornblower’s mind began to total up all the multifarious wants of a frigate seven months at sea.
“Yes, señor?”
“I shall need two hundred bullocks. Two hundred and fifty if they are thin and small. Five hundred pigs. One hundred quintals of salt. Forty tons of ship’s bread, and if biscuit is unobtainable I shall need the equivalent amount of flour, with ovens and fuel provided to bake it. The juice of forty thousand lemons, oranges or limes — I can supply the casks to contain it. Ten tons of sugar. Five tons of tobacco. A ton of coffee. You grow potatoes on this coast, do you not? Then twenty tons of potatoes will suffice.”