“You got those tops’l yards across, I see, Mr. Jones.”
“Yes, sir. I sent the hands to dinner when you didn’t come back, sir. I thought—”
“They’ll have five minutes to finish their dinners. No longer. Mr. Jones, if you were in command of two boats sent to capture a hostile vessel at anchor in this fog, how would you set about it? What orders would you give?”
“Well, sir, I’d—I’d—”
Mr. Jones was not a man of quickness of thought or rapid adaptability to a new situation. He hummed and he hawed. But there were very few officers in the Navy who had not been on at least one cuttingout and boarding operation. He knew well enough what he should do, and it slowly became apparent.
“Very well, Mr. Jones. You will now hoist out the long boat and the launch. You will man them and see that the boats’ crews are fully armed. You will proceed North by East half East—fix that in your mind, Mr. Jones, North by East half East—from this ship for a quarter of a mile. There you find a West India brig the Amelia Jane. She has just been recaptured from a French prize crew, and my coxswain is on board with two men. From her you will take a new departure. There’s a French privateer, the Vengeance. She’s a Dunkirk trawler disguised as a Ramsgate trawler. She is probably heavily manned—at least fifty of a crew left—and she is anchored approximately three cables’ lengths approximately northwest of the Amelia Jane. You will capture her, by surprise if possible. Mr. Still will be in command of the second boat. I will listen while you give him his instructions. That will save repetition. Mr. Still!”
The despatch that Hornblower wrote that evening and entrusted to the Amelia Jane for delivery to the Admiralty was couched in the usual Navy phraseology.
Sir
I have the honour to report to you for the information of Their Lordships that this day while anchored in dense fog in the Downs I became aware that it seemed likely that some disturbance was taking place near at hand. On investigating I had the good fortune to recapture the brig Amelia Jane, homeward bound from Barbados, which was in possession of a French prize crew. From information gained from the prisoners I was able to send my first lieutenant, Mr. Jones, with the boats of H.M. ship under my command, to attack the French private ship of war Vengeance of Dunkirk. She was handsomely carried by Mr. Jones and his officers; and men including Mr. Still, second lieutenant, Messrs. Horrocks and Smiley, and His Serene Highness the Prince of SeitzBunau, midshipmen, after a brief action in which our loss was two men slightly wounded while the French Captain, Monsieur Ducos, met with a severe wound while trying to rally his crew. The Vengeance proved to be a French trawler masquerading as an English fishing boat. Including the prize crew she carried a crew of seventyone officers and men, and she was armed with one fourpounder carronade concealed under her net.
I have the honour to remain,
Your obed’t servant,
Before sealing it Hornblower read through this report with a lopsided smile on his face. He wondered if anyone would ever read between the lines of that bald narrative, how much anyone would guess, how much anyone would deduce. The fog, the cold, the wet; the revolting scene on the deck of the Amelia Jane; the interplay of emotion; could anyone ever guess at all the truth? And there was no doubt that his gig’s crew was already spreading round the ship horrible reports about his lust for blood. There was some kind of sardonic satisfaction to be derived from that, too. A knock at the door. Could he never be undisturbed?
“Come in,” he called.
It was Jones. His glance took in the quill in Hornblower’s fingers, and the inkwell and papers on the table before him.
“Your pardon, sir,” he said. “I hope I don’t come too late.”
“What is it?” asked Hornblower; he had little sympathy for Jones and his undetermined manners.
“If you are going to send a report to the Admiralty, sir—and I suppose you are, sir—”
“Yes, of course I am.”
“I don’t know if you’re going to mention my name, sir—I don’t want to ask if you are, sir—I don’t want to presume—”
If Jones was soliciting a special mention of himself in the Admiralty letter he would get none at all.
“What is it you’re saying to me, Mr. Jones?”
“It’s only that my name’s a common one, sir. John Jones, sir. There are twelve John Jones’s in the lieutenants’ list, sir. I didn’t know if you knew, sir, but I am John Jones the Ninth. That’s how I’m known at the Admiralty, sir. If you didn’t say that, perhaps—”
“Very well, Mr. Jones. I understand. You can rely on me to see that justice is done.”
“Thank you, sir.”
With Jones out of the way Hornblower sighed a little, looked at his report, and drew a fresh sheet towards him. There was no chance of inserting “the Ninth” legibly after the mention of Jones’s name. The only thing to do was to take a fresh sheet and write it all over again. An odd occupation for a bloodthirsty tyrant.
Chapter IX
Hornblower watched with a keen eye his crew at work as they took in sail while Atropos came gliding into Gibraltar Bay. He could call them welldrilled now. The long beat down the Channel, the battles with the Biscay gales, had made a correlated team of there. There was no confusion and only the minimum number of orders. The men came hurrying off the yards; he saw two figures swing themselves on to the main backstays and come sliding down all the way from the masthead, disdaining to use the shrouds and ratlines. They reached the deck simultaneously and stood grinning at each other for a moment—clearly they had been engaged in a race. One was Smiley, the midshipman of the maintop. The other—His Serene Highness the Prince of SeitzBunau. That boy had improved beyond all expectation. If ever he should sit on his throne again in his princely German capital he would have strange memories to recall.
But this was not the time for a captain to let his attention wander.
“Let go, Mr. Jones! “ he hailed, and the anchor fell, dragging the grumbling hawser out through the hawsehole; Hornblower watched while Atropos took up on her cable and then rode to her anchor. She was in her assigned berth; Hornblower looked up at the towering Rock and over at the Spanish shore. Nothing seemed to have changed since the last time—so many years ago—that he had come sailing into Gibraltar Bay. The sun was shining down on him, and it was good to feel this Mediterranean sun again, even though there was little warmth in it during this bleak winter weather.
“Call away my gig, if you please, Mr. Jones.”
Hornblower ran below to gird on his sword and to take the better of his two cocked hats out of its tin case so as to make himself as presentable as possible when he went ashore to pay his official calls. There was a very decided thrill in the thought that soon he would be reading the orders that would carry him forward into the next phase of his adventures—adventures possibly; more probably the mere dreariness of beating about on eternal blockade duty outside a French port.
Yet in Collingwood’s orders to him, when he came to read them, there was a paragraph which left him wondering what his fate was to be.
You will take into your ship Mr. William McCullum, of the Honourable East India Company’s Service, together with his native assistants, and you will give them passage when, in obedience to the first paragraph of these orders, you come to join me.