“Who fought?” demanded Hornblower.
“The doctor and Mr. McCullum, sir.”
Well, somewhere they could pick up another doctor, and if the worst came to the worst they could manage without one at all.
“What happened?”
“Mr. McCullum was shot through the lungs, sir.”
God! That was something entirely different, something of vital importance. A bullet through the lungs meant death almost for certain, and what was he to do with McCullum dead? McCullum had been sent for all the way from India. It would take a year and a half to get someone out from there to replace him. No ordinary men with salvage experience would do—it had to be someone who knew how to use the Ceylonese divers. Hornblower wondered with sick despair whether a man had ever been so plagued as he was. He had to swallow before he could speak again.
“Where is he now?”
“Mr. McCullum, sir? He’s in the hands of the garrison surgeon in the hospital ashore.”
“He’s still alive?”
Jones spread despairing hands.
“Yes, sir. He was alive half an hour ago.”
“Where’s the doctor?”
“Down below in his berth, sir.”
“I’ll see him. No, wait. I’ll send for him when I want him.”
He wanted to think; he needed time and leisure to decide what was to be done. It was his instinct to walk the deck; that was how he could work off the high internal pressure of his emotions. It was only incidentally that the rhythmic exercise brought his thoughts into orderly sequence. And this little deck was crowded with idle officers—his cabin down below was of course quite useless. That was the moment when Jones came forward with something else to bother him.
“Mr. Turner’s come aboard, sir.”
Mr. Turner? Turner? That was the sailing master with experience of Turkish waters whom Collingwood had detailed specially to service in Atropos. He came from behind Jones as the words were said, a wizened old man with a letter in his hand, presumably the orders which had brought him on board.
“Welcome aboard, Mr. Turner,” said Hornblower, forcing himself into cordiality while wondering whether he would ever make use of Turner’s services.
“Your servant, sir,” said Turner with oldfashioned politeness.
“Mr. Jones, see that Mr. Turner’s comfortable.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
That was the only reply Jones could make, however hard of execution the order might be. But clearly Jones meditated some supplementary remark; it could be that was going to suggest putting Turner into McCullum’s quarters. Hornblower could not bear the thought of having to listen to anything of the sort while he had yet to reach a decision. It was the final irritation that roused him to the pitch of acting with the arbitrariness of a captain of the old school.
“Get below, all of you,” he snapped. “I want this deck clear.”
They looked at him as if they had not heard him aright, and he knew they had.
“Get below, if you please,” he said, and the “if you please” did nothing to soften the harshness of his request. “Master’s mate of the watch, see that this deck is kept clear, and keep out of my way yourself.”
They went below—this was an order from the captain who (according to the reports of his gig’s crew) had barely been diverted from hanging a dozen French prisoners for no other reason than a desire to see their death struggles. So he had the quarterdeck to himself, on which to stride up and down, from taffrail to mizzen mast and back again, in the fastfading twilight. He walked rapidly, turning with a jerk at each end, irritation and worry goading him on.
He had to reach a decision. The obvious thing to do was to report to Collingwood and await further orders. But how long would it be before any vessel left Malta with letters for Collingwood, and how long would it be before another returned? A month altogether, probably. No captain worth his salt would keep Atropos lying idle in Grand Harbour for a month. He could guess what Collingwood would think of a man who evaded responsibility like that. He could take Atropos and seek out Collingwood himself, but the same objections applied. And how would he appear in Collingwood’s eyes if he were to arrive off Toulon or Leghorn or wherever the chances of war might have summoned Collingwood, at the moment when he was supposed to be two thousand miles away? No. No. It would never do. At least he had reduced two apparent possibilities to impossibilities.
Then he must proceed with his orders as if nothing had happened to McCullum. That meant he must undertake the salvage operations himself, and he knew nothing about the subject. A wave of fury passed over him as his mind dwelt on the inconvenience and loss occasioned by the duel. The idiotic Eisenbeiss and the badtempered McCullum. They had no business incommoding England in her struggle with Bonaparte merely to satisfy their own ridiculous passions. He himself had borne with Eisenbeiss’s elephantine nonsense. Why could not McCullum have done the same? And in any event why could not McCullum have held his pistol straighter and killed the ridiculous doctor instead of getting killed himself? But that sort of rhetorical question did not get him any further with his own urgent problems; he must not think along those lines. Moreover, with a grinding feeling of guilt another consideration crept in. He should have been aware of bad blood between the people in his ship. He remembered the lighthearted way in which he had put on Jones’s shoulders the responsibility for accommodating McCullum in his crowded little ship. In the wardroom the doctor and McCullum had probably got on each other’s nerves; there could be no doubt about that—and presumably ashore, over wine in some tavern, the enmity had flared up and brought about the duel. He should have known about the possibility and nipped it in the bud. Hornblower scourged himself spiritually for his remissness. He experienced bitter selfcontempt at that moment. Perhaps he was unfit to be captain of one of His Majesty’s ships.
The thought brought about an even greater internal upheaval. He could not bear it. He must prove to himself that there was no truth in it, or he must break himself in the attempt. He must carry through that salvage operation by his own efforts if necessary. He must. He must.
So that was the decision. He had only to reach it for the emotion to die down within him, to leave him thinking feverishly but clearly. He must of course do everything possible to ensure success, omit nothing that could help. McCullum had indented for “leather fusehose;” that was some indication of how the salvage problem was to be approached. And McCullum was not yet dead, as far as he knew. He might—no, it was hardly possible. No one ever survived a bullet through the lungs. And yet—
“Mr. Nash!”
“Sir!” said the master’s mate of the watch, coming at the run.
“My gig. I’m going over to the hospital.”
There was still just a little light in the sky, but overside the water was black as ink, reflecting in long, irregular lines the lights that showed in Valetta. The oars ground rhythmically in the rowlocks. Hornblower restrained himself from urging the men to pull harder. They could never have rowed fast enough to satisfy the pressing need for instant action that seethed inside him.
The garrison officers were still at mess, sitting over their wine, and the mess sergeant, at Hornblower’s request, went in and fetched out the surgeon. He was a youngish man, and fortunately still sober. He stood with the candlelight on his face and listened attentively to Hornblower’s questions.
“The bullet hit him in the right armpit,” said the surgeon. “One would expect that, as he would be standing with his shoulder turned to his opponent and his arm raised. The actual wound was on the posterior margin of the armpit, towards the back, in other words, and on the level of the fifth rib.”