There were still evident many signs of yesterday’s battle, quite apart from the sheeted corpses and the dark stains, not thoroughly swabbed, which disfigured the white planking. The decks were furrowed and grooved in all directions, with jagged splinters still standing up here and there. There were shot holes in the ship’s sides with canvas roughly stretched over them. The port sills were stained black with powder; on one of them an eighteen-pounder shot stood out, half buried in the tough oak. But on the other hand an immense amount of work had been done, from laying out the dead to securing the guns and frapping the breechings. Apart from the weariness of her crew, the Lydia was ready to fight another battle at two minutes’ notice.
Hornblower felt a prick of shame that so much should have been done while he slept lazily in his hammock chair. He forced himself to feel no illwill on that account. Although to praise Bush’s work was to admit his own deficiencies he felt that he must be generous.
“Very good indeed, Mr Bush,” he said, walking over to him; yet his natural shyness combined with his feeling of shame to make his speech stilted. “I am both astonished and pleased at the work you have accomplished.”
“Today is Sunday, sir,” said Bush, simply.
So it was. Sunday was the day of the captain’s inspection, when he went round every part of the ship examining everything, to see that the first lieutenant was doing his duty in keeping the ship efficient. On Sunday the ship had to be swept and garnished, all the falls of rope flemished down, the hands fallen in by divisions in their best clothes, divine service held, the Articles of War read — Sunday was the day when the professional ability of every first lieutenant in His Britannic Majesty’s Navy was tried in the balance.
Hornblower could not fight down a smile at this ingenious explanation.
“Sunday or no Sunday,” he said, “you have done magnificently, Mr Bush.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“And I shall remember to say so in my report to the Admiralty.”
“I know you’ll do that, sir.”
Bush’s weary face was illuminated by a gleam of pleasure. A successful single ship action was usually rewarded by promotion to Commander of the first lieutenant, and for a man like Bush, with no family and no connections, it was his only hope of making that vitally important step. But a captain who was anxious to enhance his own glory could word his report so that it appeared that he had won his victory despite of, instead of by the aid of, his first lieutenant — instances were known.
“They may make much of this in England, when eventually they hear about it,” said Hornblower.
“I’m certain of it, sir. It isn’t every day of the week that a frigate sinks a ship of the line.”
It was stretching a point to call the Natividad that — sixty years ago when she was built she may have been considered just fit to lie in the line, but times had changed since then. But it was a very notable feat that the Lydia had accomplished, all the same. It was only now that Hornblower began to appreciate how notable it was, and his spirit rose in proportion. There was another criterion which the British public was prone to apply in estimating the merit of a naval action, and the Board of Admiralty itself not infrequently used the same standard.
“What’s the butcher’s bill?” demanded Hornblower, brutally, voicing the thoughts of both of them — brutally because otherwise he might be thought guilty of sentiment.
“Thirty-eight killed, sir,” said Bush, taking a dirty scrap of paper from his pocket. “Seventy-five wounded. Four missing. The missing are Harper, Dawson, North, and Chump the negro, sir — they were lost when the launch was sunk. Clay was killed in the first day’s action —”
Hornblower nodded; he remembered Clay’s headless body sprawled on the quarterdeck.
“— and John Summers, master’s mate, Henry Vincent and James Clifton, boatswain’s mates, killed yesterday, and Donald Scott Galbraith, third lieutenant, Lieutenant Samuel Simmonds of the Marines, Midshipman Howard Savage and four other warrant officers wounded.”
“Galbraith?” said Hornblower. That piece of news prevented him from beginning to wonder what would be the reward of a casualty list of a hundred and seventeen, when frigate captains had been knighted before this for a total of eighty killed and wounded.
“Badly, sir. Both legs smashed below the knees.”
Galbraith had met the fate which Hornblower had dreaded for himself. The shock recalled Hornblower to his duty.
“I shall go down and visit the wounded at once,” he said, and checked himself and looked searchingly at his first lieutenant. “What about you, Bush? You don’t look fit for duty.”
“I am perfectly fit, sir,” protested Bush. “I shall take an hour’s rest when Gerard comes up to take over the deck from me.”
“As you will, then.”
Down below decks in the orlop it was like some canto in the Inferno. It was dark; the four oil lamps whose flickering, reddish yellow glimmer wavered from the deck beams above seemed to serve only to cast shadows. The atmosphere was stifling. To the normal stenches of bilge and a ship’s stores were added the stinks of sick men crowded together, of the sooty lamps, of the bitter powder smell which had drifted in yesterday and had not yet succeeded in making its way out again. It was appallingly hot; the heat and the stink hit Hornblower in the face as he entered, and within five seconds of his entry his face was as wet as if it had been dipped in water, so hot was it and so laden was the atmosphere with moisture.
As complex as the air was the noise. There were the ordinary ship noises — the creaking and groaning of timber, the vibration of the rigging transmitted downward from the chains, the sound of the sea outside, the wash of the bilge below, and the monotonous clangour of the pumps forward intensified by the ship-timbers acting as sounding boards. But all the noises acted only as accompaniment to the din in the cockpit, where seventy-five wounded men, crammed together, were groaning and sobbing and screaming, blaspheming and vomiting. Lost souls in hell could hardly have had a more hideous environment, or be suffering more.
Hornblower found Laurie, standing aimlessly in the gloom.
“Thank God you’ve come, sir,” he said. His tone implied that he cast all responsibility, gladly, from that moment on the shoulders of his captain.
“Come round with me and make your report,” snapped Hornblower. He hated this business, and yet, although he was completely omnipotent on board, he could not turn and fly as his instincts told him to do. The work had to be done, and Hornblower knew that now Laurie had proved his incompetence he himself was the best man to deal with it. He approached the last man in the row, and drew back with a start of surprise. Lady Barbara was there; the wavering light caught her classic features as she knelt beside the wounded man. She was sponging his face and his throat as he writhed on the deck.
It was a shock to Hornblower to see her engaged thus. The day was yet to come when Florence Nightingale was to make nursing a profession in which women could engage. No man of taste could bear the thought of a woman occupied with the filthy work of a hospital. Sisters of Mercy might labour there for the good of their souls; boozy old women might attend to women in labour and occasionally take a hand at sick nursing, but to look after wounded men was entirely men’s work — the work of men who deserved nothing better, either, and who were ordered to it on account of their incapacity or their bad record like men ordered to clean out latrines. Hornblower’s stomach revolted at the sight of Lady Barbara here in contact with dirty bodies, with blood and pus and vomit.
“Don’t do that!” he said, hoarsely. “Go away from here. Go on deck.”
“I have begun this work now,” said Lady Barbara indifferently. “I am not going to leave it unfinished.”