The mist had entirely vanished now, and the hot sun bore with all the promise of one of those splendid spring days of central France. Hornblower shifted in his seat to make himself more comfortable. The hierarchy of this, his new command, was topheavy. A proportion of one seaman to one lieutenant and one captain was ludicrous. He would have to exercise a great deal of tact to keep them all three satisfied — to see that Brown was not made resentful by having all the work to do and yet that discipline was not endangered by a too democratic division of labour. In a fifteen foot boat it would be difficult to keep up the aloof dignity proper to a captain.
“Brown,” he said. “I’ve been very satisfied with you so far. Keep in my good books and I’ll see you’re properly rewarded when we get back to England. There’ll be a warrant for you as master’s mate if you want it.”
“Thank ‘ee, sir. Thank ‘ee very kindly. But I’m happy as I am, beggin’ your pardon, sir.”
He meant he was happy in his rating as a coxswain, but the tone of his voice implied more than that. Hornblower looked at him as he sat with his face turned up to the sun, pulling slowly at the sculls. There was a blissful smile on his face — the man was marvellously happy. He had been well-fed and well-housed for months, with plenty of women’s society, with light work and no hardship. Even now there was a long prospect ahead of him of food better than he had ever known before he entered France, of no harder work than a little gentle rowing, of no need ever to turn out on a blustering night to reef topsails. Twenty years of the lower deck in King George’s Navy, Hornblower realized, must make any man form the habit of living only in the present. To-morrow might bring a flogging, peril, sickness, death; certainly hardship and probably hunger, and all without the opportunity of lifting a finger to ward off any of these, for any lifting of a finger would make them all more certain. Twenty years of being at the mercy of the incalculable, and not merely in the major things of life but in the minor ones, must make a fatalist of any man — who survived them. For a moment Hornblower felt a little twinge of envy of Brown, who would never know the misery of helplessness, or the indignity of indecision.
The river channel here was much divided by islands each bordered by a rim of golden gravel; it was Hornblower’s business to select what appeared to be the most navigable channel — no easy task. Shallows appeared mysteriously right in the centre of what had seemed to be the main stream; over these the clear green water ran faster and faster and shallower and shallower until the bottom of the boat was grating on the pebbles. Sometimes the bank would end there with astonishing abruptness, so that one moment they were in six inches of rushing water and the next in six feet of transparent green, but more than once now they found themselves stuck fast, and Brown and Hornblower, trousers rolled to the knee, had to get out and haul the boat a hundred yards over a barely covered bank before finding water deep enough. Hornblower thanked his stars that he had decided on having the boat built flat-bottomed — a keel would have been a hampering nuisance. Then they came to a dam, like the one which had brought them disaster in the darkness during their first attempt to navigate the river. It was half natural, half artificial, roughly formed of lumps of rock piled across the river bed, and over it the river poured in fury at a few points.
“Pull over to the bank there, Brown,” snapped Hornblower as his coxswain looked to him for orders.
They ran the boat up on to the gravel just above the dam, and Hornblower stepped out and looked downstream. There was a hundred yards of turbulent water below the dam; they would have to carry everything down. It took three journeys on the part of Hornblower and Brown to carry all their stores to the point he chose for them to re-enter the river — Bush with his wooden leg could only just manage to stumble over the uneven surface unladen — and then they addressed themselves to the business of transporting the boat. It was not easy; there was a colossal difference between dragging the boat through shallows even an inch deep only and carrying her bodily. Hornblower contemplated the task glumly for some seconds before plunging at it. He stooped and got his hands underneath.
“Take the other side, Brown. Now — lift.”
Between them they could just raise it; they had hardly staggered a yard with it before all the strength was gone from Hornblower’s wrists and fingers and the boat slipped to the ground again. He avoided Brown’s eye and stooped again, exasperated.
“Lift!” he said.
It was impossible to carry the heavy boat that way. He had no sooner lifted it than he was compelled to drop it again.
“It’s no go, sir,” said Brown gently. “We’ll have to get her upon our backs, sir. That’s the only way.”
Hornblower heard the respectful murmur as if from a long distance.
“If you take the bows, beggin’ your pardon, sir, I’ll look after the stern. Here, sir, lift t’other way round. Hold it, sir, ‘till I can get aft. Right, sir. Ready. Lift!”
They had the boat up on their backs now, stooping double under the heavy load. Hornblower, straining under the lighter bows, thought of Brown carrying the much heavier stern, and he set his teeth and vowed to himself that he would not rest until Brown asked to. Within five seconds he was regretting his vow. His breath was coming with difficulty and there were stabbing pains in his chest. It grew harder and harder to take the trouble to attend to the proper placing of his feet as he stumbled over the uneven surface. Those months in the Château de Graçay had done their work in making him soft and out of condition; for the last few yards of the portage he was conscious of nothing save the overwhelming weight on his neck and shoulders and his difficulty of breathing. Then he heard Bush’s bluff voice.
“Right, sir. Let me get hold, sir.”
With the small but welcome help that Bush could afford he was able to disengage himself and lower the boat to the ground; Brown was standing over the stern gasping, and sweeping the sweat off his forehead with his forearm. Hornblower saw him open his mouth to make a remark, presumably regarding the weight of the boat, and then shut it again when he remembered that now he was under discipline again and must only speak when spoken to. And discipline, Hornblower realized, required that he himself should display no sign of weakness before his subordinates — it was bad enough that he should have had to receive advice from Brown as to how to lift the boat.
“Take hold again, Brown, and we’ll get her into the water,” he said, controlling his breathing with a vast effort.
They slid the boat in, and heaved the stores on board again. Hornblower’s head was swimming with the strain; he thought longingly of his comfortable seat in the stern, and then put the thought from him.
“I’ll take the sculls, Brown,” he said.
Brown opened and shut his mouth again, but he could not question explicit orders. The boat danced out over the water, with Hornblower at the sculls happy in the rather baseless conviction that he had demonstrated that a captain in the King’s Navy was the equal even in physical strength of any mere coxswain, however Herculean his thews.
Once or twice that day shallows caught them out in midstream which they were unable to pass without lightening the boat to a maximum extent. When Hornblower and Brown, ankle-deep in rushing water, could drag the boat no farther, Bush had to get out too, his wooden leg sinking in the sand despite its broad leather sole, and limp downstream to the edge of the shallows and wait until the others dragged the lightened boat up to him — once he had to stand holding the bag of bread and the roll of bedding before they could tug the boat over the shallows, and on that occasion they had to unstrap his wooden leg, help him in, and then tug the leg free from the sand, so deeply had it sunk. There was another portage to be made that day, fortunately not nearly such a long one as the first; altogether there was quite enough interest in the day’s journey to keep them from growing bored.