“That is an quite clear to you now, doctor?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then my order is that you start making your arrangements now.”
It was a really great surprise to Hornblower when Eisenbeiss still hesitated. He was about to speak more sharply still, cutting into the feverish gestures of the big hands, when Eisenbeiss spoke again.
“Do you forget something, sir?”
“What do you think I have forgotten?” asked Hornblower, playing for time instead of flatly refusing to listen to any arguments—proof enough that he was a little shaken by Eisenbeiss’s persistence.
“Mr. McCullum and I—we are enemies,” said Eisenbeiss.
It was true that Hornblower had forgotten that. He was so engrossed with his chessboard manipulation of human pieces that he had overlooked a vital factor. But he must not admit it.
“And what of that?” he asked coldly, hoping his discomfiture was not too apparent.
“I shot him,” said Eisenbeiss. There was a vivid gesture by the big right hand that had held the pistol, which enabled Hornblower to visualize the whole duel. “What will he say if I attend him?”
“Whose was the challenge?” asked Hornblower, still playing for time.
“He challenged me,” said Eisenbeiss. “He said—he said I was no Baron, and I said he was no gentleman. ‘I will kill you for that,’ he said, and so we fought.”
Eisenbeiss had certainly said the thing that would best rouse McCullum’s fury.
“You are convinced you are a Baron?” asked Hornblower—curiosity urged him to ask the question as well as the need for time to reassemble his thoughts. The Baron drew himself up as far as the deckbeams over his head allowed.
“I know I am, sir. My patent of nobility is signed by His Serene Highness himself.”
“When did he do that?”
“As soon as—as soon as we were alone. Only His Serene Highness and I managed to cross the frontier when Bonaparte’s men entered SeitzBunau. The others all took service with the tyrant. It was not fit that His Serene Highness should be attended only by a bourgeois. Only a noble could attend him to bed or serve his food. He had to have a High Chamberlain to regulate his ceremonial, and a Secretary of State to manage his foreign affairs. So His Serene Highness ennobled me—that is why I bear the title of Baron and gave me the high offices of State.
“On your advice?”
“I was the only adviser he had left.”
This was very interesting and much as Hornblower had imagined it, but it was not the point. Hornblower was more ready now to face the real issue.
“In the duel,” he asked, “you exchanged shots?”
“His bullet went past my ear,” answered Eisenbeiss.
“Then honour is satisfied on both sides,” said Hornblower, more to himself than to the doctor.
Technically that was perfectly correct. An exchange of shots, and still more the shedding of blood, ended any affair of honour. The principals could meet again socially as if there had been no trouble between them. But to meet in the relative positions of doctor and patient might be something different. He would have to deal with that difficulty when it arose.
“You are quite right to remind me about this, doctor,” he said, with the last appearance of judicial calm that he could summon up. “I shall bear it in mind.”
Eisenbeiss looked at him a little blankly, and Hornblower put on his hard face again.
“But it makes no difference at all to my promise to you. Rest assured of that,” he continued. “My orders still stand. They—still—stand.”
It was several seconds before the reluctant answer came.
“Aye aye, sir.”
“On your way out would you please be good enough to pass the word for Mr. Turner, the new sailing master?”
“Aye aye, sir.”
That showed the subtle difference between an order and a request—but both of them had to be obeyed.
“Now, Mr. Turner,” said Hornblower when Turner arrived in the cabin, “our destination is Marmorice Bay, and we sail at dawn tomorrow. I want to know about the winds we can expect at this time of year. I want to lose no time at all in arriving there. Every hour—I may say every minute is of importance.”
Time was of importance, to make the most of a dying man’s last hours.
Chapter XI
These were the blue waters where history had been made, where the future of civilization had been decided, more than once and more than twice. Here Greek had fought against Persian, Athenian against Spartan, Crusader against Saracen, Hospitaller against Turk. The penteconters of Byzantium had furrowed the seas here, and the caracks of Pisa. Great cities had luxuriated in untold wealth. Only just over the horizon on the port beam was Rhodes, where a comparatively minor city had erected one of the seven wonders of the world, so that two thousand years later the adjective colossal was part of the vocabulary of people whose ancestors wore skins and painted themselves with woad at the time when the Rhodians were debating the nature of the Infinite. Now conditions were reversed. Here came Atropos, guided by sextant and compass, driven by the wind harnessed to her wellplanned sails, armed with her long guns and carronades—a triumph of modern invention, in short—emerging from the wealthiest corner of the world into one where misgovernment and disease, anarchy and war, had left deserts where here had been fertile fields, villages where there had been cities, and hovels where there had been palaces. But there was no time to philosophize in this profound fashion. The sands in the hour-glass beside the binnacle were running low, and the moment was approaching when course should be altered.
“Mr. Turner!”
“Sir!”
“We’ll alter course when the watch is called.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
“Doctor!”
“Sir!”
“Stand by for a change of course”
“Aye aye, sir.”
McCullum’s invalid bed was disposed athwart ships between Nos. 6 and 7 carronades on the starboard side; a simple tackle attached to the bedhead enabled the level of the bed to be adjusted with the change of course, so that the patient lay as horizontal as might be, whichever way the ship might be heeling. It was the doctor’s responsibility to attend to that.
The watch was being called.
“Very good, Mr. Turner.”
“Headsail sheets! Hands to the braces!”
Turner was an efficient seaman, despite his age. Hornblower could be sure of that by now. He stood by and watched him lay the ship close to the wind. Still came and touched his hat to Turner to take over the watch.
“We ought to raise the Seven Capes on this tack, sir,” said Turner, coming over to Hornblower.
“I fancy so,” said Hornblower.
The passage from Malta had been comfortingly rapid. They had lain becalmed for a single night to the south of Crete, but with the morning the wind had got up again from a westerly quarter. There had not been a single breath of Levanter—the equinox was still too far off for that, apparently—and every day had seen at least a hundred miles made good. And McCullum was still alive.
Hornblower walked forward to where he lay. Eisenbeiss was bending over him, his fingers on his pulse, and with the cessation of the bustle of going about the three Ceylonese divers had returned, to squat round the foot of the bed, their eyes on their master. To have those three pairs of melancholy eyes gazing at him would, Hornblower thought, have a most depressing effect, but apparently McCullum had no objection.
“All well, Mr. McCullum?” asked Hornblower.
“Not—quite as well as I would like.”
It was distressing to see how slowly and painfully the head turned on the pillow. The heavy beard that had sprouted over his face could not conceal the fact that McCullum was more hollowchecked, more feverish eyed, than yesterday. The decline had been very marked; the day they sailed McCullum had appeared hardly more than slightly wounded, and the second day he had seemed better still—he had protested against being kept in bed, but that night he had taken a turn for the worse and had sunk steadily ever since, just as the garrison surgeon and Eisenbeiss had gloomily predicted.