“Drink fair, Mr Hornblower,” said the captain, “we have a start of you already. A stern chase is a long chase.”
Hornblower put his glass to his lips again.
“Mr Buckland!”
“Jollity and — jollity and — jollity and — and — and — mirth,” said Buckland, managing to get the last word out at last. His face was as red as a beetroot and seemed to Bush’s heated imagination to fill the entire cabin like the setting sun; most amusing.
“You’ve come back from the admiral, Mr Hornblower,” said the captain with sudden recollection.
“Yes, sir.”
The curt reply seemed out of place in the general atmosphere of good-will; Bush was distinctly conscious of it, and of the pause which followed.
“Is all well?” asked the captain at length, apologetic about prying into someone else’s business and yet led to do so by the silence.
“Yes, sir.” Hornblower was turning his glass round and round on the table between long nervous fingers, every finger a foot long, it seemed to Bush. “He has made me commander into Retribution.”
The words were spoken quietly, but they had the impact of pistol shots in the silence of the room.
“God bless my soul!” said the captain. “Then that’s our new toast. To the new commander, and a cheer for him too!”
Bush cheered lustily and downed his brandy.
“Good old Hornblower!” he said. “Good old Hornblower!”
To him it was really excellent news; he leaned over and patted Hornblower’s shoulder. He knew his face was one big smile, and he put his head on one side and his shoulder on the table so that Hornblower should get the full benefit of it.
Buckland put his glass down on the table with a sharp tap.
“Damn you!” he said. “Damn you! Damn you to Hell!”
“Easy there!” said the captain hastily. “Let’s fill the glasses. A brimmer there, Mr Buckland. Now, our country! Noble England! Queen of the waves!”
Buckland’s anger was drowned in the fresh flood of liquor, yet later in the session his sorrows overcame him and he sat at the table weeping quietly, with the tears running down his cheeks; but Bush was too happy to allow Buckland’s misery to affect him. He always remembered that afternoon as one of the most successful dinners he had ever attended. He could also remember Hornblower’s smile at the end of dinner.
“We can’t send you back to the hospital today,” said Hornblower. “You’d better sleep in your own cot tonight. Let me take you there.”
That was very agreeable. Bush put both arms round Hornblower’s shoulders and walked with dragging feet. It did not matter that his feet dragged and his legs would not function while he had this support; Hornblower was the best man in the world and Bush could announce it by singing ‘For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow’ while lurching along the alleyway. And Hornblower lowered him on to the heaving cot and grinned down at him as he clung to the edges of the cot; Bush was a little astonished that the ship should sway like this while at anchor.
Chapter XVII
That was how Hornblower came to leave the Renown. The coveted promotion was in his grasp, and he was busy enough commissioning the Retribution, making her ready for sea, and organising the scratch crew which was drafted into her. Bush saw something of him during this time, and could congratulate him soberly on the epaulette which, worn on the left shoulder, marked him as a commander, one of those gilded individuals for whom bosuns’ mates piped the side and who could look forward with confidence to eventual promotion to captain. Bush called him ‘sir’, and even when he said it for the first time the expression did not seem unnatural.
Bush had learned something during the past few weeks which his service during the years had not called to his attention. Those years had been passed at sea, among the perils of the sea, amid the ever-changing conditions of wind and weather, deep water and shoal. In the ships of the line in which he had served there had only been minutes of battle for every week at sea, and he had gradually become fixed in the idea that seamanship was the one requisite for a naval officer. To be master of the countless details of managing a wooden sailing ship; not only to be able to handle her under sail, but to be conversant with all the petty but important trifles regarding cordage and cables, pumps and salt pork, dry rot and the Articles of War; that was what was necessary. But he knew now of other qualities equally necessary: a bold and yet thoughtful initiative, moral as well as physical courage, tactful handling both of superiors and of subordinates, ingenuity and quickness of thought. A fighting navy needed to fight, and needed fighting men to lead it.
Yet even though this realization reconciled him to Hornblower’s promotion, there was irony in the fact that he was plunged back immediately into petty detail of the most undignified sort. For now he had to wage war on the insect world and not on mankind; the Spanish prisoners in the six days they had been on board had infested the ship with all the parasites they had brought with them. Fleas, lice, and bedbugs swarmed everywhere, and in the congenial environment of a wooden ship in the tropics full of men they flourished exceedingly. Heads had to be cropped and bedding baked; and in a desperate attempt to wall in the bedbugs woodwork had to be repainted — a success of a day or two flattered only to deceive, for after each interval the pests showed up again. Even the cockroaches and the rats that had always been in the ship seemed to multiply and become omnipresent.
It was perhaps an unfortunate coincidence that the height of his exasperation with this state of affairs coincided with the payment of prize money for the captures at Samaná. A hundred pounds to spend, a couple of days’ leave granted by Captain Cogshill, and Hornblower at a loose end at the same time — those two days were a lurid period, during which Hornblower and Bush contrived to spend each of them a hundred pounds in the dubious delights of Kingston. Two wild days and two wild nights, and then Bush went back on board the Renown, shaken and limp, only too glad to get out to sea and recover. And when he returned from his first cruise under Cogshill’s command Hornblower came to say goodbye.
“I’m sailing with the land breeze tomorrow morning,” he said.
“Whither bound, sir?”
“England,” said Hornblower.
Bush could not restrain a whistle at the news. There were men in the squadron who had not seen England for ten years.
“I’ll be back again,” said Hornblower. “A convoy to the Downs. Despatches for the Commissioners. Pick up the replies and a convoy out again. The usual round.”
For a sloop of war it was indeed the usual round. The Retribution with her eighteen guns and disciplined crew could fight almost any privateer afloat; with her speed and handiness she could cover a convoy more effectively than the ship of the line or even the frigates that accompanied the larger convoys to give solid protection.
“You’ll get your commission confirmed, sir,” said Bush, with a glance at Hornblower’s epaulette.
“I hope so,” said Hornblower.
Confirmation of a commission bestowed by a commander-in-chief on a foreign station was a mere formality.
“That is,” said Hornblower, “if they don’t make peace.”
“No chance of that, sir,” said Bush; and it was clear from Hornblower’s grin that he, too, thought there was no possibility of peace either, despite the hints in the two-months-old newspapers that came out from England to the effect that negotiations were possible. With Bonaparte in supreme power in France, restless, ambitious, and unscrupulous, and with none of the points settled that were in dispute between the two countries, no fighting man could believe that the negotiations could result even in an armistice, and certainly not in a permanent peace.