“My sailor acted hastily,” said Hornblower, “but I think you will admit, Colonel, that he was in part justified. He will tender a profound apology, and then, perhaps, you will issue strict orders against smoking near the powder.”
“Very well,” said Claros.
Hornblower turned to Gray.
“Say to the officer ‘God save our gracious king, señor.’ Say it humbly.”
Gray looked startled.
“Go on, man,” said Hornblower testily. “Do what I say.”
“God save our gracious king, señor,” said Gray, in a tone that was at least unnatural, if not humble.
’The man wishes to express to you his profound regret for his rudeness,” explained Hornblower to the officer, and Claros nodded approvingly, spat out a couple of brief orders, and turned away. The crisis was over, and no feelings hurt on either side. The sailors were grinning and cheerful, while the Catalans looked proudly down upon the lighthearted barbarians.
Chapter XVIII
Captain Hornblower checked his horse on the top of the last of the hitherto interminable rocky undulations. The August sun was blazing overhead, and innumerable flies plagued him and his horse and his companions. At his side rode Claros, behind them Longley and Brown sat uneasily their rawboned Rosinantes along with the three Spanish staff officers. Far back along the path was a solid block of scarlet. Major Laird had his marines formed up as an advance guard, while here and there on the grey-green hills scarlet dots showed where he had posted pickets as a precaution against surprise. Farther back still could be seen a caterpillar of men, naked to the waist, labouring at their task of improving the path for the guns, and beyond that a sort of multiple caterpillar with a black dot at the end showed where the first gun had reached. In five hours it had travelled little more than three miles. Hornblower, looking up at the sun, saw that he had an hour and a half left in which to keep his appointment—in which to haul his guns over a mile of rock and over a mile of the plain which lay below him. He felt a twinge of conscience at the thought that he would probably be a little late with the first of the guns, and he certainly would not be able to open fire against the walls before five or six o’clock in the evening.
There below him, a mile away but seemingly much nearer in the clear air, lay the town of Rosas. Hornblower could recognise all the features of the place which his map indicated. To the right was the citadel—from his elevated position Hornblower could see the pentagonal outline of its grey ramparts, with the blue sea behind. In the centre was the town itself, a single long street lying close to the shore, with a line of earthworks guarding it on the landward side. To the left was the high tower of Fort Trinidad on the other flank. The weakest point was undoubtedly the centre, but it would be of little use assailing that, as the citadel and the Trinidad could hold out independently. The best course would be to take the bull by the horns and breach and storm the citadel by an attack delivered from close by the water’s edge. The town could not be held if the citadel fell, although the Trinidad might cause further trouble.
Hornblower had allowed his thoughts to run away with him. He had been so busy planning the reduction of Rosas that he had not even noticed the general peacefulness of the scene. The tricoloured flags flapped idly from the flagstaffs in the citadel and the Trinidad, and they were the most warlike things in sight. There was no sign on the bare plain of any besieging army. Meanwhile it could only be a question of hours before the garrison discovered how near to them lay a valuable convoy, and how weak was the force guarding it.
“Where is the army of Catalonia?” Hornblower demanded angrily, of Claros. He received a deprecatory shrug of the shoulders.
“I do not know, Captain.”
To Hornblower it meant that his precious convoy, and his far more precious landing party, were strung out over three miles of country within easy reach of any column which the governor of Rosas might send out.
“You told me Colonel Rovira was marching on Rosas last night!”
“He seems to have been delayed.”
“The messenger—the one you said you would send at dawn—has he returned?”
Claros, by a raising of his eyebrows and a jerk of the head, passed this question on to the chief of staff.
“He did not go,” said this officer.
“What?” said Hornblower in English. He had to fight down his bewilderment and struggle with his dazed senses in order to speak Spanish again. “Why not?”
“It would have put the officer to unnecessary trouble,” said the chief of staff. “If Colonel Rovira comes, he comes. If he cannot, no message of ours will bring him.”
Hornblower pointed over to the right. In a fold of the hills a line of some fifty picketed horses and a few groups of seated men indicated the position of the squadron of cavalry which had been watching the town since yesterday.
“Why did they not report that Colonel Rovira had not arrived?” he demanded.
“The officer commanding had my orders to report when he did arrive,” answered Claros.
He was showing no signs of indignation at the barely concealed contempt in Hornblower’s expression, but Hornblower kept his rage in hand for a little longer in his endeavour to keep the enterprise alive.
“We are in a very considerable danger here,” he said.
Claros shrugged his shoulders again at the Englishman’s timidity.
“My men are used to the mountains. If the garrison comes out to attack us we can get away by goat paths over there,” he answered, pointing away to the precipitous sides of the mesa in the distance. “They will never dare to follow us there, and if they did they would never catch us.”
“But my guns? My men?”
“In war there is always danger,” said Claros loftily.
Hornblower’s answer was to turn to Longley.
“Ride back at once,” he said to the boy. “Halt the guns. Halt the convoy. Halt every man on the path. Nothing is to move a yard farther without orders from me.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
Longley wheeled his horse round and clattered off; the boy had somewhere learned to ride well before coming to sea. Claros and his staff, Hornblower and Brown, all watched him go, and then turned back to face each other. The Spaniards could guess what were the orders that had been given him.
“Not a gun or a man of mine will stir,” said Hornblower, “until I see Colonel Rovira’s army on the plain there. Will you be good enough to send a message to him now?”
Claros tugged at his long moustache and then gave the order to his staff; his junior officers argued sulkily with each other before one of them took the note written by the chief of staff and set off with it. Clearly no one relished the prospect of a ride of perhaps twenty miles under a hot sun in search of Rovira’s column.
“It is nearly the hour for dinner,” said Claros. “Will you have my men’s food served out to them, Captain?”
Hornblower’s jaw dropped at that. He had thought nothing more could surprise him, and he was proved wrong. Claros’ tobacco-brown face gave no indication that he thought there was anything other than what was strictly ordinary in his assumption that his thousand men were to feed on the stores laboriously landed from the squadron. It was on the tip of Hornblower’s tongue to refuse pointblank, but he stopped to consider. He guessed that if they were not fed, Claros’ men would simply melt away in search of food, and there was still a faint chance that Rovira might arrive and the siege be taken in hand. For the sake of that chance, it was as well to make this concession and make the most of the few hours granted them before their presence should be discovered.
“I will give orders for it,” he said, and the dignified colonel’s expression showed no change at either demanding or receiving favours from the Englishman with whom he had just been on the verge of quarrelling.