The Happy Return. C. S. Forester

A large flat ray, the size of a table top, suddenly leaped clear of the water close overside and fell flat upon the surface again with a loud smack, leaped clear again, and then vanished below, its pinky brown gleaming wet for a moment as the blue water closed over it. There were flying fish skimming the water in all directions, each leaving behind it a momentary dark furrow. Hornblower watched it all, carefree, delighted that he could allow his thoughts to wander and not feel constrained to keep them concentrated on a single subject. With a ship full of stores and a crew contented by their recent adventures he had no real care in the world. The Spanish prisoners whose lives he had saved from el Supremo were sunning themselves lazily on the forecastle.

“Sail ho!” came echoing down from the masthead.

The idlers thronged the bulwark, gazing over the hammock nettings; the seamen holystoning the deck surreptitiously worked more slowly in order to hear what was going on.

“Where away?” called Hornblower.

“On the port bow, sir. Lugger, sir, I think, an’ standing straight for us, but she’s right in the eye of the sun —”

“Yes, a lugger, sir,” squeaked midshipman Hooker from the fore top gallant masthead. “Two masted. She’s right to windward, running down to us, under all sail, sir.”

“Running down to us?” said Hornblower, mystified. He jumped up on the slide of the quarterdeck carronade nearest him, and stared into the sun and the wind under his hand, but at present there was still nothing to be seen from that low altitude.

“She’s still holding her course, sir,” squeaked Hooker.

“Mr Bush,” said Hornblower. “Back the mizzen tops’l.”

A pearling lugger from the Gulf of Panama, perhaps, and still ignorant of the presence of a British frigate in those waters; on the other hand she might be bearing a message from el Supremo — her course made that unlikely, but that might be explained. Then as the ship lifted, Hornblower saw a gleaming square of white rise for a second over the distant horizon and vanish again. As the minutes passed by the sails were more and more frequently to be seen, until at last from the deck the lugger was in plain view, nearly hull up, running goose-winged before the wind with her bow pointed straight at the Lydia.

“She’s flying Spanish colours at the main, sir,” said Bush from behind his levelled telescope. Hornblower had suspected so for some time back, but had not been able to trust his eyesight.

“She’s hauling ’em down, all the same,” he retorted, glad to be the first to notice it.

“So she is, sir,” said Bush, a little puzzled, and then — “There they go again, sir. No! What do you make of that, sir?”

“White flag over Spanish colours now,” said Hornblower. “That’ll mean a parley. No, I don’t trust ’em. Hoist the colours, Mr Bush, and send the hands to quarters. Run out the guns and send the prisoners below under guard again.”

He was not going to be caught unaware by any Spanish tricks. That lugger might be as full of men as an egg is of meat, and might spew up a host of boarders over the side of an unprepared ship. As the Lydia’s gun ports opened and she showed her teeth the lugger rounded-to just out of gunshot, and lay wallowing, hove-to.

“She’s sending a boat, sir,” said Bush.

“So I see,” snapped Hornblower.

Two oars rowed a dinghy jerkily across the dancing water, and a man came scrambling up the ladder to the gangway — so many strange figures had mounted that ladder lately. This new arrival, Hornblower saw, wore the full dress of the Spanish royal navy, his epaulette gleaming in the sun. He bowed and came forward.

“Captain Hornblower?” he asked.

“I am Captain Hornblower.”

“I have to welcome you as the new ally of Spain.”

Hornblower swallowed hard. This might be a ruse, but the moment he heard the words he felt instinctively that the man was speaking the truth. The whole happy world by which he had been encompassed up to that moment suddenly became dark with trouble. He could foresee endless worries piled upon him by some heedless action of the politicians.

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