“We are going back to watch Brest again.” The melodramatic pause. “Loire or no Loire.”
Chapter 7
Hornblower was seated in the cramped chart-room eating his dinner. This salt beef must have come from the new cask, for there was an entirely different tang about it, not unpleasant. Presumably it had been pickled at some other victualling yard, with a different quality of salt. He dipped the tip of his knife into the mustard pot; that mustard was borrowed — begged — from the wardroom, and he felt guilty about it. The wardroom stores must be running short by now — but on the other hand he himself had sailed with no mustard at all, thanks to the distractions of getting married while commissioning his ship.
“Come in!” he growled in response to a knock.
It was Cummings, one of the ‘young gentlemen’, First Class Volunteers, King’s Letter Boys, with whom the ship was plagued in place of experienced midshipmen, thanks again to the haste with which she had been commissioned.
“Mr Poole sent me, sir. There’s a new ship joining the Inshore Squadron.”
“Very well. I’ll come.”
It was a lovely summer day. A few cumulus clouds supplied relief to the blue sky. Hotspur was hardly rocking at all as she lay hove-to, her mizzen topsail to the mast, for she was so far up in the approaches to Brest that the moderate easterly wind had little opportunity, since leaving the land, to raise a lop on the water. Hornblower swept his eye round as he emerged on the quarter-deck, landward at first, naturally. They lay right in the mouth of the Goulet, with a view straight up into the Outer Roads. On one side, was the Capuchins, on the other the Petit Minou, with Hotspur carefully stationed — as in the days of peace but for a more forceful reason — so that she was just out of cannon-shot of the batteries on those two points. Up the Goulet lay the reefs of the Little Girls, with their outlier, Pollux Reef, and beyond the Little Girls, in the outer roadstead, lay the French navy at anchor, forced to tolerate this constant invigilation because of the superior might of the Channel Fleet waiting outside, just over the horizon.
Hornblower naturally turned his gaze in that direction next. The main body was out of sight, so as to conceal its strength; even Hornblower did not know its present numbers correctly — some twelve ships of the line or so. But well in sight, only three miles out to sea, lay the Inshore Squadron, burly two-deckers lying placidly hove-to, ready at any minute to support Hotspur and the two frigates, Doris and Naiad, should the French decide to come out and drive off these insolent sentries. There had been three of these ships of the line; now, as Hornblower looked, a fourth was creeping in close-hauled to join them. Automatically Hornblower looked over again at the Petit Minou. As he expected, the semaphore arms of the telegraph on the cliffs at the point there were swinging jerkily, from vertical to horizontal and back again. The watchers there were signalling to the French fleet the news of the arrival of this fourth ship to join the inshore squadron; even the smallest activity was noted and reported, so that in clear weather the French admiral was informed within minutes. It was an intolerable nuisance — it helped to smooth the path of the coasters perennially trying to sneak into Brest through the passage of the Raz. Some action should be taken about that semaphore station.
Bush was rating Foreman, whom he was patiently — impatiently — training to be the signal officer of the Hotspur.
“Can’t you get that number yet?” he demanded.
Foreman was training his telescope; he had not acquired the trick of keeping the other eye open, yet idle. In any case it was not easy to read the flags, with the wind blowing almost directly from one ship to the other.
“Seventy-nine, sir,” said Foreman at length.
“You’ve read it right for once,” marvelled Bush. “Now let’s see what you do next.”
Foreman snapped his fingers as he recalled his duties, and hastened to the signal book on the binnacle. The telescope slipped with a crash to the deck from under his arm as he tried to turn the pages, but he picked it up and managed to find the reference. He turned back to Bush, but a jerk of Bush’s thumb diverted him to Hornblower.
“Tonnant, sir,” he said.
“Now, Mr Foreman, you know better than that. Make your report in proper form and as fully as you can.”
“Tonnant, sir. Eighty-four guns. Captain Pellew.” Hornblower’s stony face and steady silence spurred Foreman into remembering the rest of what he should say. “Joining the Inshore Squadron.”
“Thank you, Mr Foreman,” said Hornblower with the utmost formality, but Bush was already addressing Foreman again, his voice pitched as loudly as if Foreman were on the forecastle instead of three yards away.
“Mr Foreman! The Tonnant‘s signalling! Hurry up, now.”
Foreman scuttled back and raised his telescope.
“That’s our number!” he said.
“So I saw five minutes ago. Read the signal.”
Foreman peered through the telescope, referring to the book, and checked his reference before looking up at the raging Bush.
“‘Send boat’,” it says, sir.
“Of course it does. You ought to know all routine signals by heart, Mr Foreman. You’ve had long enough. Sir, Tonnant signals us to send a boat.”
“Thank you, Mr Bush. Acknowledge, and clear away the quarter boat.”
“Aye aye, sir. Acknowledge!” A second later Bush was blaring again. “Not that halliard, you careless — you careless young gentleman. Tonnant can’t see the signal through the mizzen tops’l. Send it up to the main tops’l yardarm.”
Bush looked over at Hornblower and spread his hands in resignation. Partly he was indicating that he was resigned to this duty of training ignorant young subordinates, but partly the dumb show conveyed some of the feelings aroused by having, in view of Hornblower’s known preferences, to call Foreman a ‘young gentleman’ instead of using some much more forcible expression. Then he turned away to supervise Cummings as he hoisted out the quarter boat. There was everything to be said in favour of these young men being harassed and bullied as they went about their duties, although Hornblower did not subscribe to the popular notion that young men were actually the better for harassment and bullying. They would learn their duties all the quicker; and one of these days Foreman might easily find himself having to read and transmit signals amid the smoke and confusion and slaughter of a fleet action, while Cummings might be launching and manning a boat in desperate haste for a cutting out expedition.
Hornblower remembered his unfinished dinner.
“Call me when the boat returns, if you please, Mr Bush.”
This was the last of the blackcurrant jam; Hornblower, ruefully contemplating the sinking level in the final pot, admitted to himself that compulsorily he had actually acquired a taste for blackcurrant. The butter was all gone, the eggs used up, after forty days at sea. For the next seventy-one days, until the ship’s provisions were all consumed he was likely to be living on seaman’s fare, unrelieved salt beef and pork, dried peas, biscuits. Cheese twice a week and suet pudding on Sundays.
At any rate there was time for a nap before the boat returned. He could go to sleep peacefully — a precaution in case the exigencies of the service disturbed his night — thanks to the naval might of Britain, although five miles away there were twenty thousand enemies any one of whom would kill him on sight.