“Then,” said the captain of the lugger. “I will bid you good-bye for the time. If I reach Panama first, I will be able to arrange a welcome for you. Perhaps you will allow my compatriots to accompany me?”
“No I won’t,” rasped Hornblower. “And you, sir, will keep under my lee until we drop anchor.”
The Spaniard shrugged and yielded. At sea one can hardly argue with a captain whose guns are run out and whose broadside could blow one’s ship out of the water, especially as all Englishmen were as mad and as domineering as el Supremo. The Spaniard had not enough intuition to enable him to guess that Hornblower still had a lurking fear that the whole business might be a ruse to inveigle the Lydia helpless under the guns of Panama.
Chapter IX
It was not a ruse at all. In the morning when the Lydia came stealing before a three knot breeze into the roadstead of Panama the only guns fired were the salutes. Boatloads of rejoicing Spaniards came out to greet her, but the rejoicing was soon turned to wailing at the news that the Natividad now flew el Supremo’s flag, that San Salvador had fallen, and that all Nicaragua was in a flame of rebellion. With cocked hat and gold-hilted sword (‘a sword of the value of fifty guineas’, the gift of the Patriotic Fund for Lieutenant Hornblower’s part in the capture of the Castilla six years ago) Hornblower had made himself ready to go ashore and call upon the Governor and the Viceroy, when the arrival of yet one more boat was announced to him.
“There is a lady on board, sir,” said Gray, one of the master’s mates, who brought the news.
“A lady?”
“Looks like an English lady, sir,” explained Gray. “She seems to want to come aboard.”
Hornblower went on deck; close alongside a large rowing boat tossed and rolled; at the six oars sat swarthy Spanish Americans, bare armed and straw hatted, while another in the bows, boat hook in hand, stood waiting, face upturned for permission to hook on to the chains. In the stem sat a negress with a flaming red handkerchief over her shoulders, and beside her sat the English lady Gray had spoken about. Even as Hornblower looked, the bowman hooked on, and the boat closed in alongside, two men fending off. Somebody caught the rope ladder, and the next moment the lady, timing the movement perfectly, swung on to it and two seconds later came on deck.
Clearly she was an Englishwoman. She wore a wide shady hat trimmed with roses, in place of the eternal mantilla, and her grey-blue silk dress was far finer than any Spanish black. Her skin was fair despite its golden tan, and her eyes were grey-blue, of just the same evasive shade as her silk dress. Her face was too long for beauty and her nose too high arched, to say nothing of her sunburn. Horn-blower saw her at that moment as one of the horsefaced mannish women whom he particularly disliked; he told himself that all his inclinations were towards clinging incompetence. Any woman who could transfer herself in that fashion from boat to ship in an open roadstead, and could ascend a rope ladder unassisted, must be too masculine for his taste. Besides, an Englishwoman must be unsexed to be in Panama without a male escort — the phrase ‘globe trotting’, with all its disparaging implications, had not yet been invented, but it expressed exactly Hornblower’s feeling about her.
Hornblower held himself aloof as the visitor looked about her. He was going to do nothing to help her. A wild squawk from overside told that the negress had not been as handy with the ladder, and directly afterwards this was confirmed by her appearance on deck wet from the waist down, water streaming from her black gown on to the deck. The lady paid no attention to the mishap to her maid; Gray was nearest to her and she turned to him.
“Please be so good, sir,” she said, “as to have my baggage brought up out of the boat.”
Gray hesitated, and looked round over his shoulder at Hornblower, stiff and unbending on the quarterdeck.