Lady Barbara could still laugh and show her white teeth in her brown face, as she made this speech, and her laugh whisked away Hornblower’s passion for a space. He was in sympathy with her — months of ship’s fare set everyone literally dreaming of fresh food — but her fine naturalness acted upon Hornblower’s state of mind like an open window on a stuffy room. It was that talk about food which staved off the crisis for a few more days — golden days, during which the Lydia kept the south-east trades on her beam and reached steadily across the south Atlantic for St Helena.
The wind did not fail her until the very evening when the lookout at the masthead, the setting of the sun in a golden glory having enabled him to gaze ahead once more, caught sight of the tip of the mountain top just as the light was fading from the sky, and his cry of “Land ho!” told Hornblower that once more he had made a perfect landfall. All day long the wind had been dying away, and with the setting of the sun it dwindled to nothing, tantalisingly, just when a few more hours of it would have carried the Lydia to the island. From the deck there was still no sign of land, and as Gerard pointed out to Lady Barbara, she would have to take its proximity on trust until the wind condescended to blow again. Her disappointment at this postponement of her promised buttered eggs was so appealing that Crystal hastened forward and stuck his open clasp-knife in the mainmast. That was a sure way of raising a wind, he said — and if by any mishap it should fail on this occasion he would set all the snip’s boys whistling in unison and chance the tempest such imprudence might summon from the deep.
It may have been the mere fact of this respite working on Hornblower’s subconscious mind which precipitated the crisis; for undoubtedly Hornblower had a lurking fear that the call at St Helena might well bring about some undesired alteration in affairs on board the Lydia. On the other hand, the thing was bound to happen, and perhaps coincidence merely allotted that evening for it. It was coincidence that Hornblower should come into the main cabin in the half light at a moment when he thought Lady Barbara was on deck, and it was coincidence that his hand should brush against her bare arm as they stood cramped between the table and the locker and he apologised for his intrusion. She was in his arms then, and they kissed, and kissed again. She put one hand behind his shoulder and touched the back of his neck, and they were giddy with passion. Then a roll of the ship forced him to let her go, and she sank down upon the locker, and she smiled at him as she sat so that he came down on his knees beside her, his head on her breast, and she stroked his curls, and they kissed again as if they would never tire. She spoke to him with the endearments which her nurse had used to her when she was a child — she had never learned yet to use endearments.
“My dear,” she whispered. “My sweet. My poppet.”
It was hard to find words that would tell him of her love for him.
“Your hands are beautiful,” she said, spreading one of them on her own palm, and playing with the long slender fingers. “I have loved them ever since Panama.”
Hornblower had always thought his hands bony and ugly, and the left one bore the ingrained powder stain he had acquired at the boarding of the Castilla. He looked at her to see if she were teasing him, and when he saw that she was not he could only kiss her again — her lips were so ready for his kisses. It was like a miracle that she should want to be kissed. Passion carried them away once more.
Hebe’s entrance made them part; at least it made Hornblower spring up, to sit bolt upright and self-conscious, while Hebe grinned at them with sly eyes. To Hornblower it was a dreadful thing for a captain to be caught toying with a woman on board his ship actually in commission. It was contrary to the Articles of War — worse, it was undignified, subversive of discipline, dangerous. Lady Barbara remained quite unruffled.