“The wind is fair for Bordeaux,” he said, gesticulating with clenched fists. “We could be there by to-morrow. Why do we go north?”
“We go to England,” said Hornblower.
“But — but — it will take us a week! A week even if the wind stays fair. This boat — it is too crowded. We cannot endure a storm. It is madness.”
Hornblower had guessed at the moment the captain stood up what he was going to say, and he hardly bothered to translate the expostulations to himself. He was too tired and too seasick to enter into an argument in a foreign language. He ignored the captain. Not for anything on earth would he turn the boat’s head towards France. His naval career had only just begun, and even if it were to be blighted on account of the loss of the Marie Galante he had no intention of rotting for years in a French prison.
“Sir!” said the French captain.
The mate who shared the captain’s thwart was protesting too, and now they turned to their crew behind them and told them what was going on. An angry movement stirred the crowd.
“Sir!” said the captain again. “I insist that you head towards Bordeaux.”
He showed signs of advancing upon them; one of the crew behind him began to pull the boat-hook clear, and it would be a dangerous weapon. Hornblower pulled one of the pistols from his belt and pointed it at the captain, who, with the muzzle four feet from his breast, fell back before the gesture. Without taking his eyes off him Hornblower took a second pistol with his left hand.
“Take this, Matthews,” he said.
“Aye aye, sir,” said Matthews, obeying; and then, after a respectful pause, “Beggin’ your pardon, sir, but hadn’t you better cock your pistol, sir?”
“Yes,” said Hornblower, exasperated at his own forgetfulness.
He drew the hammer back with a click, and the menacing sound made more acute still the French captain’s sense of his own danger, with a cocked and loaded pistol pointed at his stomach in a heaving boat. He waved his hands desperately.
“Please,” he said, “point it some other way, sir.”
He drew farther back, huddling against the men behind him.
“Hey, avast there, you,” shouted Matthews loudly — a French sailor was trying to let go the halliard unobserved.
“Shoot any man who looks dangerous, Matthews,” said Hornblower.
He was so intent on enforcing his will upon these men, so desperately anxious to retain his liberty, that his face was contracted into a beast-like scowl. No one looking at him could doubt his determination for a moment. He would allow no human life to come between him and his decisions. There was still a third pistol in his belt, and the Frenchmen could guess that if they tried a rush a quarter of them at least would meet their deaths before they overpowered the Englishmen, and the French captain knew he would be the first to die. His expressive hands, waving out from his sides — he could not take his eyes from the pistol — told his men to make no further resistance. Their murmurings died away, and the captain began to plead.
“Five years I was in an English prison during the last war,” he said. “Let us reach an agreement. Let us go to France. When we reach the shore — anywhere you choose, sir — we will land and you can continue on your journey. Or we can all land, and I will use all my influence to have you and your men sent back to England under cartel, without exchange or ransom. I swear I will.”
“No,” said Hornblower.
England was far easier to reach from here than from the French Biscay coast; as for the other suggestion, Hornblower knew enough about the new government washed up by the revolution in France to be sure that they would never part with prisoners on the representation of a merchant captain. And trained seamen were scarce in France, it was his duty to keep these dozen from returning.
“No,” he said again, in reply to the captain’s fresh protests.
“Shall I clout ‘im on the jaw, sir?” asked Hunter, at Hornblower’s side.
“No,” said Hornblower again; but the Frenchman saw the gesture and guessed at the meaning of the words, and subsided into sullen silence.
But he was roused again at the sight of Hornblower’s pistol on his knee, still pointed at him. A sleepy finger might press that trigger.
“Sir,” he said, “put that pistol away, I beg of you. It is dangerous.”
Hornblower’s eye was cold and unsympathetic.
“Put it away, please. I will do nothing to interfere with your command of this boat. I promise you that.”
“Do you swear it?”
“I swear it.”
“And these others?”
The captain looked round at his crew with voluble explanations, and grudgingly they agreed.
“They swear it too.”
“Very well, then.”
Hornblower started to replace the pistol in his belt, and remembered to put it on half-cock in time to save himself from shooting himself in the stomach. Everyone in the boat relaxed into apathy. The boat was rising and swooping rhythmically now, a far more comfortable motion than when it had jerked to a sea-anchor, and Hornblower’s stomach lost some of its resentment. He had been two nights without sleep. His head lowered on his chest, and then he leaned sideways against Hunter, and slept peacefully, while the boat, with the wind nearly abeam, headed steadily for England. What woke him late in the day was when Matthews, cramped and weary, was compelled to surrender the tiller to Arson, and after that they kept watch and watch, a hand at the sheet and a hand at the tiller and the others trying to rest. Hornblower took his turn at the sheet, but he would not trust himself with the tiller, especially when night fell; he knew he had not the knack of keeping the boat on her course by the feel of the wind on his cheek and the tiller in his hand.
It was not until long after breakfast the next day — almost noon in fact — that they sighted the sail. It was a Frenchman who saw it first, and his excited cry roused them all. There were three square topsails coming up over the horizon on their weather bow, nearing them so rapidly on a converging course that each time the boat rose on a wave a considerably greater area of canvas was visible.
“What do you think she is, Matthews?” asked Hornblower, while the boat buzzed with the Frenchmen’s excitement.
“I can’t tell, sir, but I don’t like the looks of her,” said Matthews doubtfully. “She ought to have her t’gallants set in this breeze — and her courses too, an’ she hasn’t. An’ I don’t like the cut of her jib, sir. She — she might be a Frenchie to me, sir.”
Any ship travelling for peaceful purposes would naturally have all possible sail set. This ship had not. Hence she was engaged in some belligerent design, but there were more chances that she was British than that she was French, even in here in the Bay. Hornblower took a long look at her; a smallish vessel, although ship-rigged. Flush-decked, with a look of speed about her — her hull was visible at intervals now, with a line of gunports.
“She looks French all over to me, sir,” said Hunter. “Privateer, seemly.”
“Stand by to jibe,” said Hornblower.
They brought the boat round before the wind, heading directly away from the ship. But in war as in the jungle, to fly is to invite pursuit and attack. The ship set courses and topgallants and came tearing down upon them, passed them at half a cable’s length and then hove-to, having cut off their escape. The ship’s rail was lined with a curious crowd — a large crew for a vessel that size. A hail came across the water to the boat, and the words were French. The English seamen subsided into curses, while the French captain cheerfully stood up and replied, and the French crew brought the boat alongside the ship.