“You had better keep him alive,” continued Hornblower. “You had certainly better. If he dies I can try you for murder under the ordinary laws of England. Don’t look at me like that. I am speaking the truth. The common law knows nothing about duels. I can hang you, doctor.”
The doctor was a shade paler, and his big hands tried to express what his paralyzed tongue would not.
“But simply hanging you would be too good for you, doctor,” said Hornblower. “I can do more than that, and I shall. You have a fat, fleshy back. The cat would sink deeply into it. You’ve seen men flogged — you saw two flogged last week. You heard them scream. You will scream at the gratings too, doctor. That I promise you.”
“No!” said the doctor — “you can’t —”
“You address me as ‘sir’, and you do not contradict me. You heard my promise? I shall carry it out. I can, and I shall.”
In a ship detached far from superior authority there was nothing a captain might not do, and the doctor knew it. And with Hornblower’s grim face before him and those remorseless eyes staring into his the doctor could not doubt the possibility. Hornblower was trying to keep his expression set hard, and to pay no attention to the internal calculations that persisted in maintaining themselves inside him. There might be terrible trouble if the Admiralty ever heard he had flogged a warranted doctor, but then the Admiralty might never hear of an incident in the distant Levant. And there was the other doubt — with McCullum once dead, so that nothing could bring him to life, Hornblower could not really believe he would torture a human being to no practical purpose. But as long as Eisenbeiss did not guess that, it did not matter.
“That is an quite clear to you now, doctor?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then my order is that you start making your arrangements now.”
It was a really great surprise to Hornblower when Eisenbeiss still hesitated. He was about to speak more sharply still, cutting into the feverish gestures of the big hands, when Eisenbeiss spoke again.
“Do you forget something, sir?”
“What do you think I have forgotten?” asked Hornblower, playing for time instead of flatly refusing to listen to any arguments — proof enough that he was a little shaken by Eisenbeiss’s persistence.
“Mr. McCullum and I — we are enemies,” said Eisenbeiss.
It was true that Hornblower had forgotten that. He was so engrossed with his chessboard manipulation of human pieces that he had overlooked a vital factor. But he must not admit it.
“And what of that?” he asked coldly, hoping his discomfiture was not too apparent.
“I shot him,” said Eisenbeiss. There was a vivid gesture by the big right hand that had held the pistol, which enabled Hornblower to visualize the whole duel. “What will he say if I attend him?”
“Whose was the challenge?” asked Hornblower, still playing for time.
“He challenged me,” said Eisenbeiss. “He said — he said I was no Baron, and I said he was no gentleman. ‘I will kill you for that,’ he said, and so we fought.”
Eisenbeiss had certainly said the thing that would best rouse McCullum’s fury.
“You are convinced you are a Baron?” asked Hornblower — curiosity urged him to ask the question as well as the need for time to reassemble his thoughts. The Baron drew himself up as far as the deck-beams over his head allowed.
“I know I am, sir. My patent of nobility is signed by His Serene Highness himself.”
“When did he do that?”
“As soon as — as soon as we were alone. Only His Serene Highness and I managed to cross the frontier when Bonaparte’s men entered Seitz-Bunau. The others all took service with the tyrant. It was not fit that His Serene Highness should be attended only by a bourgeois. Only a noble could attend him to bed or serve his food. He had to have a High Chamberlain to regulate his ceremonial, and a Secretary of State to manage his foreign affairs. So His Serene Highness ennobled me — that is why I bear the title of Baron and gave me the high offices of State.
“On your advice?”
“I was the only adviser he had left.”
This was very interesting and much as Hornblower had imagined it, but it was not the point. Hornblower was more ready now to face the real issue.
“In the duel,” he asked, “you exchanged shots?”
“His bullet went past my ear,” answered Eisenbeiss.
“Then honour is satisfied on both sides,” said Hornblower, more to himself than to the doctor.
Technically that was perfectly correct. An exchange of shots, and still more the shedding of blood, ended any affair of honour. The principals could meet again socially as if there had been no trouble between them. But to meet in the relative positions of doctor and patient might be something different. He would have to deal with that difficulty when it arose.
“You are quite right to remind me about this, doctor,” he said, with the last appearance of judicial calm that he could summon up. “I shall bear it in mind.”
Eisenbeiss looked at him a little blankly, and Hornblower put on his hard face again.
“But it makes no difference at all to my promise to you. Rest assured of that,” he continued. “My orders still stand. They — still — stand.”
It was several seconds before the reluctant answer came.
“Aye aye, sir.”
“On your way out would you please be good enough to pass the word for Mr. Turner, the new sailing master?”
“Aye aye, sir.”
That showed the subtle difference between an order and a request — but both of them had to be obeyed.
“Now, Mr. Turner,” said Hornblower when Turner arrived in the cabin, “our destination is Marmorice Bay, and we sail at dawn tomorrow. I want to know about the winds we can expect at this time of year. I want to lose no time at all in arriving there. Every hour — I may say every minute is of importance.”
Time was of importance, to make the most of a dying man’s last hours.
Chapter XI
These were the blue waters where history had been made, where the future of civilization had been decided, more than once and more than twice. Here Greek had fought against Persian, Athenian against Spartan, Crusader against Saracen, Hospitaller against Turk. The penteconters of Byzantium had furrowed the seas here, and the caracks of Pisa. Great cities had luxuriated in untold wealth. Only just over the horizon on the port beam was Rhodes, where a comparatively minor city had erected one of the seven wonders of the world, so that two thousand years later the adjective colossal was part of the vocabulary of people whose ancestors wore skins and painted themselves with woad at the time when the Rhodians were debating the nature of the Infinite. Now conditions were reversed. Here came Atropos, guided by sextant and compass, driven by the wind harnessed to her well-planned sails, armed with her long guns and carronades — a triumph of modern invention, in short — emerging from the wealthiest corner of the world into one where misgovernment and disease, anarchy and war, had left deserts where here had been fertile fields, villages where there had been cities, and hovels where there had been palaces. But there was no time to philosophize in this profound fashion. The sands in the hour-glass beside the binnacle were running low, and the moment was approaching when course should be altered.
“Mr. Turner!”
“Sir!”
“We’ll alter course when the watch is called.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
“Doctor!”
“Sir!”
“Stand by for a change of course”
“Aye aye, sir.”
McCullum’s invalid bed was disposed athwart ships between Nos. 6 and 7 carronades on the starboard side; a simple tackle attached to the bedhead enabled the level of the bed to be adjusted with the change of course, so that the patient lay as horizontal as might be, whichever way the ship might be heeling. It was the doctor’s responsibility to attend to that.