“I hope we shall meet again, captain,” said Hornblower. “As of course you understand, out here at sea we are always glad to have news of what is happening on land.”
The two Bretons went over the side with their two empty buckets, leaving Bush ruefully contemplating the mess left on the deck.
“That can be swabbed up, Mr Bush,” said Hornblower. “It will be a good ending to a good day.”
Chapter 5
The cabin was quite dark when Hornblower awoke; there was not even the glimmering of light through the two stern windows. He lay curled on his side only half conscious, and then a single sharp note from the ship’s bell recalled him to the world, and he turned over on his back and stretched himself, half fretfully and half luxuriously trying to put his thoughts into order. That must be one bell in the morning watch, because one bell in the middle watch had sounded as he was getting back into bed after being roused when the ship was put about at midnight. He had had six hours of sleep, even after making allowance for that break; there were great advantages about being in command of a ship; the watch which had retired to bed at that time had been up on deck again for half an hour already.
The cot on which he lay was swaying easily and slowly. Hotspur must be under very easy sail indeed, and, as far as he could judge, with a moderate wind on the starboard beam. That was as it should be. He would soon have to get up — he turned on to his other side and went to sleep again.
“Two bells, sir,” said Grimes, entering the cabin with a lighted lamp. “Two bells, sir. Bit of haze, and Mr Prowse says he’d like to go about on the other tack.” Grimes was a weedy young seaman who affirmed that he had acted as captain’s steward in a West India packet.
“Get me my coat,” said Hornblower.
It was cold in the misty dawn, with only a greatcoat on over his nightshirt. Hornblower found Maria’s gloves in a pocket and pulled them on gratefully.
“Twelve fathoms, sir,” reported Prowse as the ship steadied on her new course with the lead going in the forechains.
“Very well.”
There was time to dress, there was time to have breakfast. There was time for — Hornblower felt a wave of temptation breaking round him. He wanted a cup of coffee. He wanted two or three cups of coffee, strong and scalding hot. Yet he had on board no more than two pounds of coffee. At seventeen shillings a pound that was all he had been able to afford to buy. The miraculous forty-five pounds had melted away which he had won at whist the night before the appearance of the King’s message regarding the fleet. There had been his seagoing clothing and his sword to get out of pawn, his cabin furniture to buy, and he had had to leave seventeen pounds with Maria for her support until she could draw his allotment of pay. So there had been little enough left over for ‘captain’s stores’. He had not bought a sheep or a pig; not a single chicken. Mrs Mason had bought six dozen eggs for him — they were packed in shavings in a tub lashed to the deck in the chart room — and six pounds of heavily salted butter. There was a loaf of sugar and some pots of jam, and then the money had run out. He had no bacon, no potted meat. He had dined yesterday on pilchards — the fact that they had been bought with secret service money was some kind of sauce for them, but pilchards were unattractive fish. And of course there was the absurd prejudice of seamen regarding fish, creatures from their own element. They hated having their eternal round of salt beef and pork interrupted by a meal of fish — allowance must be made, of course, for the fact that the cooking of fish left behind a lingering scent, hard to eradicate from utensils sketchily washed in seawater. At this very moment, in the growing dawn, one of the lambs netted down in the boat chocked in the waist emitted a lingering baa-aaa as it woke. The wardroom officers had invested in four of the creatures while the Hotspur was commissioning, and any day now they would be dining on roast lamb — Hornblower determined to get himself invited to dinner in the wardroom that day. The thought reminded him that he was hungry; but that was quite minor compared with his yearning for coffee.
“Where’s my servant?” he suddenly roared, “Grimes! Grimes!”
“Sir?”
Grimes put his head round the chart-room door.
“I’m going to dress, and I’ll want my breakfast. I’ll have coffee.”
“Coffee, sir?”
“Yes.” Hornblower bit off the ‘damn you’ he nearly added. To swear at a man who could not swear back and whose only offence lay in being unoffending was not to his taste, just as some men could not shoot foxes. “You don’t know anything about coffee?”
“No, sir.”
“Get the oak box and bring it in to me.”
Hornblower explained about coffee to Grimes while working up a lather with a quarter of a pint of fresh-water.
“Count out twenty of those beans. Put them in an open jar — get that from the cook. Then you toast ‘em over the galley fire. And be careful with ‘em. Keep shaking ‘em. They’ve got to be brown, not black. Toasted, not burnt. Understand?”
“Well, yes, sir.”
“Then you take ‘em to the surgeon, with my compliments.”
“The surgeon? Yes, sir.” Grimes, seeing Hornblower’s brows come together like thunderclouds, had the sense to suppress in the nick of time his astonishment at the entry of the surgeon’s name into this conversation.
“He has a pestle and mortar to pound his jalap with. You pound those beans in that mortar. You break ‘em up small. Small, mark you, but you don’t make dust of ‘em. Like large grain gunpowder, not mealed gunpowder. Understand?”
“Yes, sir. I suppose so, sir.”
“Next you — oh go and get that done and then report to me again.”
Grimes was clearly not a man to do things quickly. Hornblower had shaved and dressed and was pacing the quarterdeck, raging for his breakfast, before Grimes appeared again with a panful of dubious powder. Hornblower gave him brief instructions on how to make coffee with it, and Grimes listened doubtfully.
“Go and get it done. Oh, and Grimes!”
“Sir?”
“I’ll have two eggs. Fried. Can you fry eggs?”
“Er — yes, sir.”
“Fry ‘em so the yolk’s nearly hard but not quite. And get out a crock of butter and a crock off jam.”
Hornblower was throwing discretion to the winds; he was determined on a good breakfast. And those winds to which he had thrown discretion suddenly asserted themselves. With hardly a warning puff there was a sudden gust which almost took Hotspur aback, and with it, while Hotspur paid off and recovered herself, there came driving rain, an April shower, icy cold. Hornblower shook off Grimes the first time he appeared to report that breakfast was ready, and only went off with him on his second appearance, after Hotspur was steady on her course again. With the weather clearing and daylight growing there was little time he could spare.
“I’ll be on deck again in ten minutes, Mr Young,” he said.
The chart-room was a minute compartment beside his cabin — cabin, chart-room, and the captain’s pantry and head occupied the whole space of the Hotspur‘s tiny poop. Hornblower squeezed himself into the chair at the little table.
“Sir,” said Grimes. “You didn’t come when breakfast was ready.”
Here were the eggs. The rim of the whites was black; the yolks were obviously hard.
“Very well,” growled Hornblower. He could not blame Grimes for that.
“Coffee, sir?” said Grimes. With the chart-room door shut he was wedged against it hardly able to move. He poured from a jug into a cup, and Hornblower sipped. It was only just hot enough to drink, which meant that it was not hot enough, and it was muddy.
“See that it’s hotter than this another time,” said Hornblower. “And you’ll have to strain it better than this.”