“Ha‑h’m,” said Hornblower again, suppressing just in time the cry of delight which nearly escaped him involuntarily after the mention of cigars — it was three months since he had last smoked one. Virginia pigtail twist was what his men used, but that, of course, would be unobtainable on this coast. However, he had often seen British sailors chewing and enjoying the half-cured native leaf.
“Send as many cigars as will be convenient to you,” he said, lightly. “For the rest, it is of no importance what you send.”
Hernandez bowed.
“Thank you, señor. The coffee, the vegetables, and the eggs will of course be easy to supply. But with regard to the bread —”
“Well?”
Hernandez was obviously nervous about what he was going to say nest.
“Your excellency will forgive me, but in this country we have only maize. There is a little wheat grown in the tierra templeda, but it rests still in the hands of the unenlightened. Would maize flour suffice?”
Hernandez’ face was working with anxiety as he gazed at Hornblower. It was only then that Hornblower realised than Hernandez was in terror of his life, and that el Supremo’s lighthearted endorsement of the requisitions he had made was far more potent than any stamped and sealed order addressed to a Spanish official.
“This is very serious,” said Hornblower sternly. “My English sailors are unaccustomed to maize flour.”
“I know that,” said Hernandez, his interlocked fingers working galvanically. “But I assure your excellency that I can only obtain wheat flour for them by fighting for it, and I know that el Supremo would not like me to fight at present. El Supremo will be angry.”
Hornblower remembered the abject fright with which Hernandez had regarded el Supremo the night before. The man was in terror lest he should be denounced as having failed to execute his orders. And then, suddenly, Hornblower remembered something he had unaccountably forgotten to ask for — something more important, if possible, than tobacco or fruit, and certainly far more important than the difference between maize flour and wheat.
“Very well,” he said. “I will agree to use maize flour. But in consequence of this deficiency there is something else I must ask for.”
“Certainly, Captain. I will supply whatever you ask. You have only to name it.”
“I want drink for my men,” said Hornblower. “Is there wine to be had here? Ardent spirits?”
“There is a little wine, your excellency. Only a little. The people on this coast drink an ardent spirit with which you are perhaps not acquainted. It is good when of good quality. It is distilled from the waste of the sugar mills, from the treacle, your excellency.”
“Rum, by God!” exclaimed Hornblower.
“Yes, señor, rum. Would that be of any use to your excellency?”
“I shall accept it in lieu of anything better,” said Hornblower sternly.
His heart was leaping with joy. It would appear like a miracle to his officers that he should conjure rum and tobacco from this volcano-riddled coast.
“Thank you, Captain. And shall we begin to slaughter the cattle now?”
That was the question on which Hornblower had been postponing a decision ever since he had heard about the arrival of the cattle on the beach. Hornblower looked up at the lookout at the masthead. He tested the strength of the wind. He gazed out to sea before he took the plunge.
“Very well,” he said at length. “We will start now.”
The sea breeze was not nearly as strong as yesterday, and the weaker the breeze the less chance there was of the Natividad coming in to interrupt the Lydia’s revictualling. And as events turned out the Lydia completed the work undisturbed. For two days the boats plied back and forth between the beach and the ship. They came back piled high with bloody joints of meat; the sand of the shore ran red with the blood of the slaughtered animals, while the half‑tame vultures gorged themselves into a coma in the piled offal. On board the ship the purser and his crew toiled like slaves in the roasting heat, cramming the brine barrels with the meat and tugging them into position in the storerooms. The cooper and his mates worked for two days with hardly a break, making and repairing casks. Sacks of flour, ankers of rum, bales of tobacco — the hands at the tackles sweated as they swayed these up from the boats. The Lydia was gorging herself full.
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