“Your pardon, ma’am,” he said, and he turned away from her and walked forward to bawl orders at the men engaged in swaying an eighteen pounder up from the launch.
Lady Barbara shook her head at his back.
“Bless the man!” she said to herself, softly. “He was almost human for a while.”
Lady Barbara was fast acquiring, in her forced loneliness, the habit of talking to herself like the sole inhabitant of a desert island. She checked herself as soon as she found herself doing so, and went below and rated Hebe soundly for some minor sin of omission in the unpacking of her wardrobe.
Chapter XXI
The rumour had gone round the crew that the Lydia was at last homeward bound. The men had fought and worked, first on the one side and then on the other, without understanding the trend of high politics which had decided whom they should fight and for whom they should work. That Spaniards should be first enemies, and then friends, and then almost hostile neutrals, had hardly caused one of them a single thought. They had been content to obey orders unthinkingly; but now, it seemed certain, so solidly based was the rumour, that the Lydia was on her way home. To the scatter-brained crew it seemed as if England was just over the horizon. They gave no thought to the five thousand stormy miles of sea that lay before them. Their heads were full of England. The pressed men thought of their wives; the volunteers thought of the women of the ports and of the joys of paying off. The sun of their rapture was not even overcast by any cloud of doubt as to the chances of their being turned over to another ship and sent off half round the world again before ever they could set foot on English soil.
They had flung themselves with a will into the labour of warping out of the bay, and not one of them looked back with regret to the refuge which alone had made their homeward voyage possible. They had chattered and played antics like a crew of monkeys when they dashed aloft to set sail, and the watch below had danced and set to partners through the warm evening while the Lydia bowled along with a favourable breeze over the blue Pacific. Then during the night the wind died away with its usual tropical freakishness, from a good breeze to a faint air, and from a faint air to a slow succession of fluky puffs which set the sails slatting and the rigging creaking and kept the watch continually at work at the braces trimming the sails.
Hornblower awoke in his cot in the cool hour before dawn. It was still too dark to see the tell-tale compass in the deck over his head, but he could guess from the long roll of the ship and the intermittent noises overhead that calm weather had overtaken them. It was almost time for him to start his morning walk on the quarterdeck, and he rested, blissfully free of all feeling of responsibility, until Polwheal came in to get out his clothes. He was putting on his trousers when a hail from the masthead lookout came echoing down through the scuttle.
“Sail ho! Broad on the larboard beam. It’s that there lugger again, sir.”
That feeling of freedom from worry vanished on the instant. Twice had that ill-omened lugger been seen in this very Gulf of Panama, and twice she had been the bearer of bad news. Hornblower wondered, with a twinge of superstition, what this third encounter would bring forth. He snatched his coat from Polwheal’s hands and put it on as he dashed up the companionway.
The lugger was there, sure enough, lying becalmed some two miles away; there were half a dozen glasses trained on her — apparently Hornblower’s officers shared his superstition.
“There’s something about that craft’s rig which gives me the horrors,” grumbled Gerard.
“She’s just a plain Spanish guarda-costa,” said Crystal. “I’ve seen ‘em in dozens. I remember off Havana —”
“Who hasn’t seen ‘em?” snapped Gerard. “I was saying — hullo! There’s a boat putting off.”
He glanced round and saw his captain appearing on the deck.
“Lugger’s sending a boat, sir.”
Hornblower did his best to make his expression one of sturdy indifference. He told himself that commanding, as he did, the fastest and most powerful ship on the Pacific coast, he need fear nothing. He was equipped and ready to sail half round the world, to fight any ship up to fifty guns. The sight of the lugger ought to cause him no uneasiness, but it did.
For long minutes they watched the boat come bobbing towards them over the swell. At first it was only a black speck showing occasionally on the crests Then the flash of the oar blades could be seen, as they reflected the rays of the nearly level sun, and then the oars themselves, as the boat grew like some great black water beetle creeping over the surface, and at last she was within hail, and a few minutes after for the third time the young Spanish officer in his brilliant uniform mounted to the Lydia’s deck and received Hornblower’s bow.
He made no attempt to conceal his curiosity, nor the admiration which blended with it. He saw that the jury mizzen mast had disappeared and had been replaced by a new spar as trim and as efficient as any set up in a navy yard; he saw that the shot holes had been expertly patched; he noticed that the pumps were no longer at work — that in fact during the sixteen days since he last saw her the ship had been entirely refitted, and, to his certain knowledge, without any aid from the shore and in no harbour save perhaps for some deserted inlet.
“It surprises me to see you here again, sir,” he said.
“To me,” said Hornblower, with perfect courtesy, “it is a pleasure as well as a surprise.”
“To me also it is a pleasure,” said the Spaniard quickly, “but I had thought you were far on your way home by now.”
“I am on my way home,” said Hornblower, determined to give no cause for offence if possible, “but as you see, sir, I have not progressed far as yet. However, I have effected, as perhaps you may notice, the repairs that were necessary, and now nothing will delay me from proceeding to England with the utmost despatch — unless, sir, there is some new development which makes it advisable, for the sake of die common cause of our two countries, for me to remain longer in these waters.”
Hornblower said these last words anxiously, and he was already devising in his mind excuses to free himself from the consequences of this offer if it were accepted. But thie Spaniard’s reply reassured him.
“Thank you, sir,” he said, “but there is no need for me to take advantage of your kindness. His Most Catholic Majesty’s dominions are well able to guard themselves. I am sure that His Britannic Majesty will be glad to see such a fine frigate returning to forward his cause.”
The two captains bowed to each other profoundly at this exchange of compliments before the Spaniard resumed his speech.
“I was thinking, sir,” he went on, “that perhaps if you would do me the great honour of visiting my ship for a moment, taking advantage of this prevailing calm, I should be able to show Your Excellency something which would be of interest and which would demonstrate our ability to continue without your kind assistance.’
“What is it?” asked Hornblower, suspiciously.
The Spaniard smiled.
“It would give me pleasure if I could show it to you as a surprise. Please, sir, would you not oblige me?”
Hornblower looked automatically round the horizon. He studied the Spaniard’s face. The Spaniard was no fool; and only a fool could meditate treachery when almost within range of a frigate which could sink his ship in a single broadside. And mad though most Spaniards were, they were not mad enough to offer violence to a British captain. Besides, he was pleased with the thought of how his officers would receive his announcement that he was going on board the lugger.