Inevitably the conversation shifted to the sights to be seen up the Goulet, and from the general to the particular, centring on the new arrivals in the anchorage. The captain dismissed them with a gesture as unimportant.
“Arme’s en flute,” he said, casually.
En flute! That told the story. That locked into place the pieces of the puzzle. Hornblower took an unguarded gulp at his glass of rum and water and fought down the consequent cough so as to display no special interest. A ship of war with her guns taken out was like a flute when her ports were opened — she had a row of empty holes down her side.
“Not to fight,” explained the captain. “Only for stores, or troops, or what you will.”
For troops especially. Stores could best be carried in merchant ships designed for cargo, but ships of war were constructed to carry large numbers of men — their cooking arrangements and water storage facilities had been built in with that in mind. With only as many seamen on board as were necessary to work the ship there was room to spare for soldiers. Then the guns would be unnecessary, and at Brest they could be immediately employed in arming new ships. Removing the guns meant a vast increase in available deck space into which more troops could be crammed; the more there were the more strain on the cooking and watering arrangements, but on a short voyage they would not have long to suffer. A short voyage. Not the West Indies, nor Good Hope, and certainly not India. A forty-gun frigate armed en flute might have as many as a thousand soldiers packed into her. Three thousand men, plus a few hundred more in the armed escorts. The smallness of the number ruled out England — not even Bonaparte, so improvident with human life, would throw away a force that size in an invasion of England where there was at least a small army and a large militia. There was only one possible target; Ireland, where a disaffected population meant a weak militia.
“They are no danger to me, then,” said Hornblower, hoping that the interval during which he had been making these deductions had not been so long as to be obvious.
“Not even to this little ship,” agreed the Breton captain with a smile.
It called for the exertion of all Hornblower’s moral strength to continue the interview without allowing his agitation to show. He wanted to get instantly into action, but he dared not appear impatient; the Breton captain wanted another three-finger glass of rum and was unaware of any need for haste. Luckily Hornblower remembered an admonition from Doughty, who had impressed on him the desirability of buying cider as well as fish, and Hornblower introduced the new subject. Yes, agreed the captain, there was a keg of cider on board the Deux Frères, but he could not say how much was left, as they had tapped it already during the day. He would sell what was left.
Hornblower forced himself to bargain; he did not want the Breton captain to know that his recent piece of information was worth further gold. He suggested that the cider, of an unknown quantity, should be given him for nothing extra, and the captain with an avaricious gleam in his peasant’s eye, indignantly refused. For some minutes the argument proceeded while the rum sank lower in the captain’s glass.
“One franc, then,” offered Hornblower at last. “Twenty sous.”
“Twenty sous and a glass of rum,” said the captain, and Hornblower had to reconcile himself to that much further delay, but it was worth it to retain the captain’s respect and to allay the captain’s suspicions.
So that it was with his head swimming with rum — a sensation he detested — that Hornblower sat down at last to write his urgent despatch, having seen his guest down the side. No mere signal could convey all that he wanted to say, and no signal would be secret enough, either. He had to choose his words as carefully as the rum would permit, as he stated his suspicions that the French might be planning an invasion of Ireland, and as he gave his reasons for those suspicions. He was satisfied at last, and wrote ‘H. Hornblower, Commander,’ at the foot of the letter. Then he turned over the sheet and wrote the address: ‘Rear Admiral William Parker, Commanding the Inshore Squadron,’ on the other side, and folded and sealed the letter. Parker was one of the extensive Parker clan; there were and had been admirals and captains innumerable with that name, none of them specially distinguished; perhaps this letter would alter that tradition.
He sent it off — a long and arduous trip for the boat, and waited impatiently for the acknowledgement.
Sir,
Your letter of this date has been received and will be given my full attention.
Your ob’d serv’t,
Wm. Parker.
Hornblower read the few words in a flash; he had opened the letter on the quarter-deck without waiting to retire with it to his cabin, and he put it in his pocket hoping that his expression betrayed no disappointment.
“Mr Bush,” he said, “we shall have to maintain a closer watch than ever over the Goulet, particularly at night and in thick weather.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
Probably Parker needed time to digest the information, and would later produce a plan; until that time it was Hornblower’s duty to act without orders.
“I shall take the ship up to the Little Girls whenever I can do so unobserved.”
“The Little Girls? Aye aye, sir.”
It was a very sharp glance that Bush directed at him. No one in his senses — at least no one except under the strongest compulsion — would risk his ship near those navigational dangers in conditions of bad visibility. True; but the compulsions existed. Three thousand well-trained French soldiers landing in Ireland would set that distressful country in a flame from end to end, a wilder flame than had burned in 1798.
“We’ll try it tonight,” said Hornblower.
“Aye aye, sir.”
The Little Girls lay squarely in the middle of the channel of the Goulet; on either side lay a fairway a scant quarter of a mile wide, and up and down those fairways raced the tide; it would only be during the ebb that the French would be likely to come down. No, that was not strictly true, for the French could stem the flood tide with a fair wind — with this chill easterly wind blowing. The Goulet had to be watched in all conditions of bad visibility and Hotspur had to do the watching.
Chapter 16
“I beg your pardon, sir,” said Bush, lingering after delivering his afternoon report, and hesitating before taking the next step he had clearly decided upon.
“Yes, Mr Bush?”
“You know, sir, you’re not looking as well as you should.”
“Indeed?”
“You’ve been doing too much, sir. Day and night.”
“That’s a strange thing for a seaman to say, Mr Bush. And a King’s officer.”
“It’s true, all the same, sir. You haven’t had an hour’s sleep at a time for days. You’re thinner than I’ve ever known you, sir.”
“I’m afraid I’ll have to endure it, nevertheless, Mr Bush.”
“I can only say I wish you didn’t have to, sir.”
“Thank you, Mr Bush. I’m going to turn in now, as a matter of fact.”
“I’m glad of that, sir.”
“See that I’m called the moment the weather shows signs of thickening.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
“Can I trust you, Mr Bush?”
That brought a smile into what was too serious a conversation.
“You can, sir.”
“Thank you, Mr Bush.”
It was interesting after Bush’s departure to look into the speckled chipped mirror and observe his thinness, the cheeks and temples fallen in, the sharp nose and the pointed chin. But this was not the real Hornblower. The real one was inside, unaffected — as yet, at least — by privation or strain. The real Hornblower looked out at him from the hollow eyes in the mirror with a twinkle of recognition, a twinkle that brightened, not with malice, but with something akin to that — a kind of cynical amusement — at the sight of Hornblower seeking proof of the weaknesses of the flesh. But time was too precious to waste; the weary body that the real Hornblower had to drag about demanded repose. And, as regards the weaknesses of the flesh, how delightful, how comforting it was to clasp to his stomach the hot-water bottle that Doughty had put into his cot, to feel warm and relaxed despite the clamminess of the bedclothes and the searching cold that pervaded the cabin.