“But not in my ship, sir—not now—not without trial.”
“In your ship, sir, which you allowed to be captured. And now. Pirates taken redhanded can be hanged instantly, as you know, sir. And that is what I shall do.”
It was a stroke of good fortune that the captain should have entered into the discussion. His appearance of sick dismay and the tone of his protests were convincingly genuine—they would never have been so if he had been admitted previously to a planned scheme. Hornblower’s attitude towards him was brutal, but it was for the good of the cause.
“Sir,” persisted the captain, “I’m sure they’re only privateersmen—”
“Please refrain from interfering with a King’s officer in the execution of his duty. You two men, there, come here.”
The two of the crew of the gig that he indicated approached obediently. Probably they had seen hangings before, along with every kind of brutality in a brutal service. But the imminent certainty of taking personal part in a hanging obviously impressed them. There was some reluctance visible in their expressions, but the hard discipline of the service would make certain they would obey the orders of this one man, unarmed and outnumbered.
Hornblower looked along the line of faces. Momentarily he felt a horrid sickness in his stomach as it occurred to him to wonder how he would be feeling if he really was selecting a victim.
“I’ll have that one first,” he said, pointing.
The bullthroated swarthy man whom he indicated paled and shuddered; backing away he tried to shelter himself among his fellows. They were all speaking at once, jerking their arms frantically against the bonds that secured their wrists behind them.
“Sir!” said Lebon. “Please—I beg of you—I implore—”
Hornblower condescended to spare him a glance, and Lebon went on in a wild struggle against the difficulties of language and the handicap of not being free to gesticulate.
“We are privateersmen. We fight for the Empire, for France.” Now he was on his knees, his face lifted. As he could not use his hands he was actually nuzzling with his mouth against the skirts of Hornblower’s peajacket. “We surrendered. We did not fight. We caused no death.”
“Take this man away from me,” said Hornblower, withdrawing out of reach.
But Lebon on his knee followed him over the deck, nuzzling and pleading.
“Captain,” said the English captain, interceding once again. “Can’t you at least wait and land ‘em for trial? If they’re pirates it’ll be proved quick enough.”
“I want to see ‘em dangling,” said Hornblower, searching feverishly in his mind for the most impressive thing he could say.
The two English seamen, taking advantage of the volume of protest, had paused in the execution of their orders. Hornblower looked up at the noose, dangling dimly but horribly in the fog.
“I don’t believe for one single moment,” went on Hornblower, “that these men are what they say they are. Just a band of thieves, pirates. Leadbitter, put four men on that line. I’ll give the word when they are to walk away with it.”
“Sir,” said Lebon, “I assure you, word of honour, we are from the privateer Vengeance.”
“Bah!” replied Hornblower. “Where is she?”
“Over there,” said Lebon. He could not point with his hands; he pointed with his chin, over the port bow of the anchored Amelia Jane. It was not a very definite indication, but it was a considerable help, even that much.
“Did you see any vessel over there before the fog closed down, captain?” demanded Hornblower, turning to the English captain.
“Only the Ramsgate trawler,” he said, reluctantly.
“That is our ship!” said Lebon. “That is the Vengeance! She was a Dunkirk trawler—we—we made her look like that.”
So that was it. A Dunkirk trawler. Her fishholds could be crammed full of men. A slight alteration of gear, an “R” painted on her mainsail, a suitable name painted on her stern and then she could wander about the narrow seas without question, snapping up prizes almost at will.
“Where did you say she lay?” demanded Hornblower.
“There—oh!”
Lebon checked himself as he realized how much information he was giving away.
“I can hazard a good guess as to how she bears from us,” interposed the English captain, “I saw—oh!”
He broke off exactly as Lebon had done, but from surprise. He was staring at Hornblower. It was like the denouement scene in some silly farce. The lost heir was at last revealed. The idea of now accepting the admiration of his unwitting fellow players, of modestly admitting that he was not the monster of ferocity he had pretended to be, irritated Hornblower beyond all bearing. All his instincts and good taste rose against the trite and the obvious. Now that he had acquired the information he had sought he could please himself as long as he acted instantly on that information. The scowl he wished to retain rested the more easily on his features with this revulsion of feeling.
“I’d be sorry to miss a hanging,” he said, half to himself, and he allowed his eye to wander again from the dangling noose to the shrinking group of Frenchmen who were still ignorant of what had just happened. “If that thick neck were stretched a little—”
He broke off and took a brief turn up and down the deck, eyed by every man who stood on it.
“Very well,” he said, halting. “It’s against my better judgment, but I’ll wait before I hang these men. What was the approximate bearing of that trawler when she anchored, captain?”
“It was at slack water,” began the captain, making his calculations. “We were just beginning to swing. I should say—”
The captain was obviously a man of sober judgment and keen observation. Hornblower listened to what he had to say.
“Very well,” said Hornblower when he had finished. “Leadbitter, I’ll leave you on board with two men. Keep an eye on these prisoners and see they don’t retake the brig. I’m returning to the ship now. Wait here for further orders.”
He went down into his gig; the captain accompanying him to the ship’s side was clearly and gratifyingly puzzled. It was almost beyond his belief that Hornblower could be the demoniac monster that he had appeared to be, and if he were it was strange good fortune that his ferocity should have obtained, by pure chance, the information that the prisoners had just given him. Yet on the other hand it was almost beyond his belief that if Hornblower had employed a clever ruse to gain the information he should refuse to enjoy the plaudits of his audience and not to bask in their surprise and admiration. Either notion was puzzling. That was well. Let him be puzzled. Let them all be puzzled—although it seemed as if the sobered hands pulling at the oars of the gig were not at all puzzled. Unheeding of all that had been at stake they were clearly convinced that their captain had shown himself in his true colours, and was a man who would sooner see a man’s death agonies than eat his dinner. Let ‘em think so. It would do no harm. Hornblower could spare them no thought in any case, with all his attention glued upon the compass card. It would be ludicrous—it would be horribly comic—if after all this he were to miss Atropos on his way back to her, if he were to blunder about in the fog for hours looking for his own ship. The reciprocal of North by East half East was South by West half West, and he kept the gig rigidly on that course. With what still remained of the ebb tide behind them it would only be a few seconds before they ought to sight Atropos. It was a very great comfort when they did.
Mr. Jones received Hornblower at the ship’s side. A glance had told him that the gig’s crew was two men and a coxswain short. It was hard to think of any explanation of that, and Mr. Jones was bursting with curiosity. He could not help but wonder what his captain had been doing, out there in the fog. His curiosity even overcame his apprehension at the sight of the scowl which Hornblower still wore—now that he was back in his ship Hornblower was beginning to feel much more strongly the qualms that should have influenced him regarding what Their Lordships might think of his absence from his ship. He ignored Jones’s questions.