“Your seamanship in that affair with the privateers, sir, was so admirable that I find it hard to refuse you anything,” said Osborn, pacifically. The Sutherland’s boats were alongside the last of the convoy now.
“That is very good of you, sir,” said Hornblower, bowing. “Allow me, then, to escort you into your gig. I will recall my boats. Since they will have taken volunteers first, we can rely upon it that they will have all the willing ones on board, and I shall return the unwilling ones. Thank you, Captain Osborn. Thank you.”
He saw Captain Osborn over the side and walked back to the quarterdeck. Rayner was eyeing him with amazement on account of his sudden volte-face, which gave him pleasure, for Rayner would be still more amazed soon. The cutter and launch, both of them as full of men as they could be, were running down now to rejoin, passing Osborn’s gig as it was making its slow course to windward. Through his glass Hornblower could see Osborn wave his arm as he sat in his gig; presumably he was shouting something to the boats as they went by. Bush and Gerard very properly paid him no attention. In two minutes they were alongside, and the men came pouring on deck, a hundred and twenty men laden with their small possessions, escorted by thirty of the Sutherland’s hands. They were made welcome by the rest of the crew all with broad grins. It was a peculiarity of the British pressed sailor that he was always glad to see other men pressed—in the same way, thought Hornblower, as the fox who lost his brush wanted all the other foxes to lose theirs.
Bush and Gerard had certainly secured a fine body of men; Hornblower looked them over as they stood in apathy, or bewilderment, or sullen rage, upon the Sutherland’s main deck. At no warning they had been snatched from the comfort of an Indiaman, with regular pay, ample food, and easy discipline, into the hardships of the King’s service, where the pay was problematic, the food bad, and where their backs were liable to be flogged to the bones at a simple order from their new captain. Even a sailor before the mast could look forward with pleasure to his visit to India, with all its possibilities; but these men were destined instead now to two years of monotony only varied by danger, where disease and the cannon balls of the enemy lay in wait for them.
“I’ll have those boats hoisted in, Mr. Rayner,” said Hornblower.
Rayner’s eyelids flickered for a second—he had heard Hornblower’s promise to Captain Osborn, and he knew that more than a hundred of the new arrivals would refuse to volunteer. The boats would only have to be hoisted out again to take them back. But if Hornblower’s wooden expression indicated anything at all, it was that he meant what he said.
“Aye aye, sir,” said Rayner.
Bush was approaching now, paper in hand, having agreed his figures regarding the recruits with Gerard.
“A hundred and twenty, total, sir, as you ordered,” said Bush. “One cooper’s mate—he was a volunteer, one hundred and nine able seamen—two of ‘em volunteered; six quarter gunners; four landsmen, all volunteers.”
“Excellent, Mr. Bush, Read ‘em in. Mr. Rayner, square away as soon as those boats are inboard. Mr. Vincent! Signal to the convoy. ‘All-men-have-volunteered. Thank you. Good-bye.’ You’ll have to spell out ‘volunteered’ but it’s worth it.”
Hornblower’s high spirits had lured him into saying an unecessary sentence. But when he took himself to task for it he could readily excuse himself. He had a hundred and twenty new hands, nearly all of them able seamen—the Sutherland had nearly her full complement now. More than that, he had guarded himself against the wrath to come. When the inevitable chiding letter arrived from the Admiralty he would be able to write back and say that he had taken the men with the East India Company’s Commodore’s permission; with any good fortune he could keep the ball rolling for another six months. That would give him a year altogether in which to convince the new hands that they had volunteered—by that time some of them at least might be sufficiently enamoured of their new life to swear to that; enough of them to befog the issue, and to afford to an Admiralty, prepared of necessity to look with indulgence on breaches of the pressing regulations, a loophole of excuse not to prosecute him too hard.
“Lord Mornington replying, sir,” said Vincent. “’Do not understand the signal. Await boat’!”
“Signal ‘Good-bye’ again,” said Hornblower.
Down on the maindeck Bush had hardly finished reading through the Articles of War to the new hands—the necessary formality to make them servants of the King, submissive to the hangman and the cat.
Chapter IX
The Sutherland had reached her rendezvous off Palamos Point, apparently the first of the squadron, for there was no sign as yet of the flagship or of the Caligula. As she beat slowly up under easy sail against the gentle south-easterly wind Gerard was taking advantage of this period of idleness to exercise the crew at the guns. Bush had too long had his way in drilling the crew aloft; it was time for practice with the big guns, as Hornblower had agreed. Under the scorching sun of a Mediterranean midsummer the men, naked to the waist, had sweated rivers running the guns out and in again, training round with handspikes, each man of the crew learning the knack of the flexible rammer—all the mechanical drill which every man at the guns had to learn until he could be trusted to run up, fire, clean, and reload, and to go on doing so for hour after hour, in thick powder smoke and with death all round him. Drill first, marksmanship a long way second, but all the same it was policy to allow the men to fire off the guns a few times—they found compensation in that for the arduous toil at the guns.
A thousand yards to port the quarter boat was bobbing over the glittering sea. There was a splash, and then they could see the black dot of the cask she had thrown overboard before pulling hastily out of the line of fire.
“No. 1 gun!” bellowed Gerard. “Take your aim! Cock your locks! Fire—stop your vents!”
The foremost eighteen-pounder roared out briefly while a dozen glasses looked for the splash.
“Over and to the right!” announced Gerard. “No. 2 gun!”
The maindeck eighteen-pounders, the lower deck twenty-four-pounders, spoke each in turn. Even with experienced gun layers itwould have been too much to expect to hit a cask at such a long range in thirty-seven shots; the cask still bobbed unharmed. Every gun of the port battery tried again, and still the cask survived.
“We’ll shorten the range. Mr. Bush, have the helm put up and run the ship past the cask at a cable’s length away. Now, Mr. Gerard.”
Two hundred yards was a short enough range even for carronades; the forecastle and quarterdeck carronades’ crews stood to their weapons as the Sutherland ran down to the cask. The guns went off nearly simultaneously as they bore, the ship trembling to the concussions, while the thick smoke eddied upwards round the naked men. The water boiled all round the cask, as half a ton of iron tore it up in fountains, and in the midst of the splashes the cask suddenly leaped clear of the water, dissolving into its constituent staves as it did so. All the guns’ crews cheered while Hornblower’s silver whistle split the din as a signal to cease fire, and the men clapped each other on the shoulder exultantly. They were heartily pleased with themselves. As Hornblower knew, the fun of knocking a cask to pieces was full compensation for two hours’ hard work at gun drill.
The quarter boat dropped another cask; the starboard side battery prepared to bombard it, while Hornblower stood blinking gratefully in the sunshine on the quarterdeck, feeling glad to be alive. He had as full a crew as any captain could hope for, and more trained top-men than he could ever have dared to expect. So far everyone was healthy; his landsmen were fast becoming seamen, and he would train them into gunners even quicker than that. This blessed midsummer sunshine, hot and dry, suited his health admirably. He had left off fretting over Lady Barbara, thanks to the intense pleasure which it gave him to see his crew settling down into a single efficient unit He was glad to be alive, with high spirits bubbling up within him.