He re-read, unnecessarily, the opening paragraph. There was the word ‘immediately’.
“Mr Bush! Set all plain sail. Mr Prowse! A course to weather Finisterre as quickly as possible, if you please. Mr Foreman, signal to the Commodore. ‘Hotspur to Indefatigable. Request permission to proceed’.”
Only time for one pacing of the quarter-deck, up and down, and then “‘Commodore to Hotspur. Affirmative’.”
“Thank you, Mr Foreman. Up helm, Mr Bush. Course sou’west by south.”
“Sou’west by south. Aye aye sir.”
Hotspur came round, and as every sail began to fill she gathered way rapidly.
“Course sou’west by south, sir,” said Prowse, breathlessly returning.
“Thank you, Mr Prowse.”
The wind was just abaft the beam, and Hotspur foamed along as sweating hands at the braces trimmed the yards to an angle that exactly satisfied Bush’s careful eye.
“Set the royals, Mr Bush. And we’ll have the stuns’l booms rigged out, if you please.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
Hotspur lay over to the wind, not in any spineless fashion, but in the way in which a good sword-blade bends under pressure. A squadron of ships of the line lay just down to leeward, and Hotspur tore past them, rendering passing honours as she did so. Hornblower could imagine the feelings of envy in the breasts of the hands over there at the sight of this dashing little sloop racing off towards adventure But in that case they did not allow for a year and half spent among the rocks and shoals of the Iroise.
“Set the stuns’ls, sir?” asked Bush.
“Yes, if you please, Mr Bush. Mr Young, what d’you get from the log?”
“Nine, sir. A little more, perhaps — nine an’ a quarter.”
Nine knots, and the studding sails not yet set. This was exhilarating, marvellous, after months of confinement.
“The old lady hasn’t forgotten how to run, sir,” said Bush, grinning all over his face with the same emotions; and Bush did not know yet that they were going to seek eight million dollars. Nor — and at that moment all Hornblower’s pleasure suddenly evaporated.
He fell from the heights to the depths like a man falling from the main royal yard. He had forgotten until then all about Doughty. That word ‘immediately’ in Moore’s orders had prolonged Doughty’s life. With all those captains available, and the Commander-in-Chief at hand to confirm the sentence, Doughty could have been court-martialled and condemned within the hour. He could be dead by now; certainly he would have died tomorrow morning. The captains in the Channel Fleet would be unmerciful to a mutineer.
Now he had to handle the matter himself. There was no desperate emergency; there was no question of a conspiracy to be quelled. He did not have to use his emergency powers to hang Doughty. But he could foresee a dreary future of Doughty in irons and all the ship’s company aware they had a man in their midst destined for the rope. That would unsettle everyone. And Hornblower would be more unsettled than anyone else — except perhaps Doughty. Hornblower sickened at the thought of hanging Doughty. He knew at once that he had grown fond of him. He felt an actual respect for Doughty’s devotion and attention to duty; along with his tireless attention Doughty had developed skills in making his captain comfortable comparable with those of a tarry-fingered salt making long splices.
Hornblower battled with his misery. For the thousandth time in his life he decided that the King’s service was like a vampire, as hateful as it was seductive. He could not think what to do. But first he had to know more about the business.
“Mr Bush, would you be kind enough to order the master-at-arms to bring Doughty to me in my cabin?”
“Aye aye, sir.”
The clank of iron; that was what heralded Doughty’s‘ arrival at the cabin door, with gyves upon his wrists.
“Very well, master-at-arms. You can wait outside.”
Doughty’s hard blue eyes looked straight into his.
“Well?”
“I’m sorry, sir. I’m sorry to put you out like this.”
“What the hell did you do it for?”
There had always been a current of feeling — as Hornblower had guessed — between Mayne and Doughty. Mayne had ordered Doughty to do some specially dirty work, at this moment when Doughty wished to preserve his hands clean to serve his captain’s dinner. Doughty’s protest had been the instant occasion for Mayne to wind his starter.
“I — I couldn’t take a blow, sir. I suppose I’ve been too long with gentlemen.”
Among gentlemen a blow could only be wiped out in blood; among the lower orders a blow was something to be received without even a word. Hornblower was captain of his ship, with powers almost unlimited. He could tell Mayne to shut his mouth; he could order Doughty’s irons to be struck off, and the whole incident forgotten. Forgotten? Allow the crew to think that petty officers could be struck back with impunity? Allow the crew to think that their captain had favourites?
“Damn it all!” raved Hornblower, pounding on the chartroom table.
“I could train someone to take my place, sir,” said Doughty, “before — before …”
Even Doughty could not say those words.
“No! No! No!” It was utterly impossible to have Doughty circulating about the ship with every morbid eye upon him.
“You might try Bailey, sir, the gun-room steward. He’s the best of a bad lot.”
“Yes.”
It made matters no easier to find Doughty still so co-operative. And then there was a glimmer of light, the faintest hint of a possibility of a solution less unsatisfactory than the others. They were three hundred leagues and more from Cadiz, but they had a fair wind.
“You’ll have to await your trial. Master-at-arms! Take this man away. You needn’t keep him in irons, and I’ll give orders about his exercise.”
“Good-bye, sir.”
It was horrible to see Doughty retaining the unmoved countenance so carefully cultivated as a servant, and yet to know that it concealed a dreadful anxiety. Hornblower had to forget about it, somehow. He had to come on deck with Hotspur flying along with every inch of canvas spread racing over the sea like a thoroughbred horse at last given his head after long restraint. The dark shadow might not be forgotten, but at least it could be lightened under this blue sky with the flying white clouds, and by the rainbows of spray thrown up by the bows, as they tore across the Bay of Biscay on a mission all the more exciting to the ship’s company in that they could not guess what it might be.
There was the distraction — the counter irritation — of submitting to the clumsy ministrations of Bailey, brought up from the gun-room mess. There was the satisfaction of making a neat landfall off Cape Ortegal, and flying along the Biscay coast just within sight of the harbour of Ferrol, where Hornblower had spent weary months in captivity — he tried vainly to make out the Dientes del Diablo where he had earned his freedom — and then rounding the far corner of Europe and setting a fresh course, with the wind miraculously still serving, as they plunged along, close-hauled now, to weather Cape Roca.
There was a night when the wind backed round and blew foul but gently, with Hornblower out of bed a dozen times, fuming with impatience when Hotspur had to go on the port tack and head directly out from the land, but then came the wonderful dawn with the wind coming from the south west in gentle puffs, and then from the westward in a strong breeze that just allowed studding sails to be spread as Hotspur reached southward to make a noon position with Cape Roca just out of sight to leeward.