And a court martial was only one of the ordeals that awaited him. The child must be three months old now; until this moment he had never been able to think clearly about the child — boy or girl, healthy or feeble. He was torn with anxiety for Maria — and yet, gulping at the pill of reality, he forced himself to admit that he did not want to go back to Maria. He did not want to. It had been in mad jealousy of the moment, when he heard of Lady Barbara’s marriage to Admiral Leighton, that the child had been conceived. Maria in England, Marie in France — his conscience was in a turmoil about both of them, and underlying the turmoil was an unregenerate hunger for Lady Barbara which had remained quiescent during his preoccupation but which he knew would grow into an unrelenting ache, an internal cancer, the moment his other troubles ceased, if ever they did.
Bush was still babbling away happily beside him at the tiller. Hornblower heard the words, and attached no meaning to them.
“Ha-h’m,” he said. “Quite so.”
He could find no satisfaction in the simple pleasures Bush had been in ecstasy about — the breath of the sea, the feeling of a ship’s deck underfoot — not now, not with all these bitter thoughts thronging his mind. The harshness of his tone checked Bush in the full career of his artless and unwonted chatter, and the lieutenant pulled himself up abruptly. Hornblower thought it was absurd that Bush should still cherish any affection for him after the cutting cruelty with which he sometimes used him. Bush was like a dog, thought Hornblower bitterly — too cynical for the moment to credit Bush with any perspicacity at all — like a dog, coming fawning to the hand that beat him. Hornblower despised himself as he walked forward again to the mainsheet, to a long, long, period of a solitary black hell of his own.
There was just the faintest beginning of daylight, the barest pearly softening of the sombreness of night, a greyness instead of a blackness in the haze, when Brown came aft to Hornblower.
“Beggin’ your pardon, sir, but I fancy I see the loom of something out there just now. On the port bow, sir — there, d’you see it, sir?”
Hornblower strained his eyes through the darkness. Perhaps there was a more solid nucleus to the black mist out there, a tiny something. It came and went as his eyes grew tired.
“What d’you make of it, Brown?”
“I thought it was a ship, sir, when I first saw it, but in this haze, sir —”
There was a faint chance she might be a French ship of war — it was about as likely as to find the king unguarded when leading from a suit of four to an ace. Much the most likely chance was that she was an English ship of war, and the next most likely that she was a merchantman. The safest course was to creep down upon her from the windward, because the cutter, lying nearer the wind than any square-rigged ship could do, could escape if necessary the way she came, trusting to the mist and darkness and surprise to avoid being disabled before she got out of range.
“Mr Bush, I fancy there’s a sail to leeward. Put the cutter before the wind and run down to her, if you please. Be ready to go about if I give the word. Jib-sheet, Brown.”
Hornblower’s head was clear again now, in the face of a possible emergency. He regretted the quickening of his pulse — uncertainty always had that effect. The cutter steadied upon her new course, creeping before the wind over the misty water, mainsail boom far out to port. Hornblower experienced a moment’s doubt in case Bush was sailing her by the lee, but he would not allow himself to call a warning — he knew he could trust a sailor of Bush’s ability not to risk a gibe in an emergency of this sort. He strained his eyes through the darkness; the mist was patchy, coming and going as he looked, but that was a ship without any doubt. She was under topsails alone — that made it almost certain that she was an English ship of war, one of the fleet which maintained unceasing watch over Brest. Another patch of mist obscured her again, and by the time they had run through it she was appreciably nearer, and dawn was at hand — her sails were faint grey in the growing light. Now they were close upon her.
Suddenly the stillness was rent by a hail, high-pitched, penetrating, its purity of quality almost unspoilt by the speaking trumpet — the voice which uttered it was trained in clarity in Atlantic gales.
“Cutter ahoy! What cutter’s that?”
At the sound of the English speech Hornblower relaxed. There was no need now to go about, to claw to windward, to seek shelter in the mist. But on the other hand all the unpleasantness of the future which he had been visualizing were certain now. He swallowed hard, words failing him for the moment.
“What cutter’s that?” repeated the hail, impatiently.
Unpleasant the future might be; he would fly his colours to the last, and if his career were ending, he would end it with a joke.
“His Britannic Majesty’s armed cutter Witch of Endor, Captain Horatio Hornblower. What ship’s that?”
“Triumph, Captain Sir Thomas Hardy — what did you say that cutter was?”
Hornblower grinned to himself. The officer of the watch in the strange sail had begun his reply automatically; it was only after he had stated the names of his ship and captain that it had suddenly dawned upon him that the cutter’s statement was quite incredible. The Witch of Endor had been a prize to the French for nearly a year, and Captain Horatio Hornblower had been dead six months.
Hornblower repeated what he had said before; both Bush and Brown were chuckling audibly at a joke which appealed to them forcibly indeed.
“Come under my lee, and no tricks, or I’ll sink you,” hailed the voice.
From the cutter they could hear the guns being run out in the Triumph; Hornblower could picture the bustle on board, hands being turned up, the captain being called — Sir Thomas Hardy must be Nelson’s late flag captain at Trafalgar, two years Hornblower’s senior in the captains’ list. Hornblower had known him as a lieutenant, although since then their paths had hardly crossed. Bush eased the cutter under the stern of the two-decker, and brought her to the wind under her lee. Dawn was coming up fast now, and they could see the details of the ship, as she lay hove to, rolling in the swell, and a long shuddering sigh burst from Hornblower’s breast. The sturdy beauty of the ship, the two yellow streaks along her sides, checkered with black gunports, the pendant at the main, the hands on the deck, the red coats of the marines, the boatswain’s voice roaring at dilatory seamen — all the familiar sights and sounds of the Navy in which he had grown up moved him inexpressibly at this moment, the end of his long captivity and flight.
The Triumph had launched a boat, which came dancing rapidly over to them, and a young midshipman swung himself dexterously on board, dirk at his hip, arrogant suspicion on his face, four seamen at his back with pistols and cutlasses.
“What’s all this?” demanded the midshipman. His glance swept the cutter’s deck, observing the sleepy prisoners rubbing their eyes, the wooden-legged civilian at the tiller, the bare-headed man in a King’s coat awaiting him.
“You call me ‘sir’,” barked Hornblower, as he had done to midshipmen ever since he became a lieutenant.
The midshipman eyed the gold laced coat — undoubtedly it was trimmed in the fashion of the coat of a captain of more than three years’ seniority, and the man who wore it carried himself as though he expected deference.