She came to his outheld arms; her eyes were wet, but the gentleness of his voice and the lightness of his tone brought a smile to her lips despite her tears.
“I thought I was the neglected one,” she whispered.
She kissed him eagerly, possessively, her hands at his shoulders, holding him to her swollen body.
“I have been thinking about my duty,” he said to her, “to the exclusion of the other things I should have thought about. Can you forgive me, dearest?”
“Forgive!” the smile and the tears were both more evident as she spoke. “Don’t say that, darling. Do what you will—I’m yours. I’m yours.”
Hornblower felt a wave of real tenderness rise within him as he kissed her again; the happiness, the whole life, of a human creature depended on his patience and his tact. His wiping off of the lather had not been very effective; there were smears of it on Maria’s face.
“Sweetness,” he said, “that makes you my very dearest possession.”
And while he kissed her he thought of Atropos riding to her anchor out there in the river, and despised himself as a hypocritical unfaithful lover. But his concealment of his impatience brought its reward, for when little Horatio began to wail again it was Maria who drew back first.
“The poor lamb!” she said, and quitted Hornblower’s arms to go and attend to him. She looked up at her husband from where she bent over the child, and smiled at him. “I must see that both of these men of mine are fed.”
There was something Hornblower had to say, but it called for tact, and he fumbled in his mind before he found the right way to say it.
“Dearest,” he said. “I do not mind if the whole world knows I have just kissed you, but I fear lest you would be ashamed.”
“Goodness!” said Maria, grasping his meaning and hurrying to the mirror to wipe off the smears of lather. Then she snatched up the baby. “I’ll see that your breakfast is ready when you come down.”
She smiled at him with so much happiness in her face, and she blew him a kiss before she left the room. Hornblower turned again to renew the lather and prepare himself for going on board. His mind was full of his ship, his wife, his child, and the child to be. The fleeting happiness of yesterday was forgotten; perhaps, not being aware that he was unhappy now, he could be deemed happy today as well, but he was not a man with a gift for happiness.
With breakfast finished at last he took boat again at the Hard to go the short distance to his ship; as he sat in the sternsheets he settled his cocked hat with its gold loop and button, and he let his cloak hang loose to reveal the epaulette on his right shoulder that marked him as a captain of less than three years’ seniority. He momentarily tapped his pocket to make sure that his orders were in it, and then sat upright in the boat with all the dignity he could muster. He could imagine what was happening in Atropos–the master’s mate of the watch catching sight of the cocked hat and the epaulette, the messenger scurrying to tell the first lieutenant, the call for sideboys and bosun’s mates, the wave of nervousness and curiosity that would pass over the ship at the news that the new captain was about to come on board. The thought of it made him smile despite his own nervousness and curiosity.
“Boat ahoy!” came the hail from the ship.
The boatman gave an inquiring glance at Hornblower, received a nod in return, and turned to hail back with a pair of lungs of leather.
“Atropos!”
That was positive assurance to the ship that this was her captain approaching.
“Lay her alongside,” said Hornblower.
Atropos sat low in the water, flush-decked; the mizzen chains were within easy reach of Hornblower where he stood. The boatman coughed decorously.
“Did you remember my fare, sir?” he asked, and Hornblower had to find coppers to pay him.
Then he went up the ship’s side, refusing, as far as his selfcontrol would allow, to let the incident fluster him. He tried to conceal his excitement as he reached the deck amid the twittering of the pipes, with his hand to his hatbrim in salute, but he was not capable of seeing with clarity the faces that awaited him there.
“John Jones, First Lieutenant,” said a voice. “Welcome aboard, sir.”
Then there were other names, other faces as vague as the names. Hornblower checked himself from swallowing in his excitement for fear lest it should be noticed. He went to some pains to speak in a tone of exactly the right pitch.
“Call the ship’s company, Mr. Jones, if you please.”
“All hands! All hands!”
The cry went through the ship while the pipes twittered and squealed again. There was a rush of feet, a bustling and a subdued murmur. Now there was a sea of faces before him in the waist, but he was still too excited to observe them in detail.
“Ship’s company assembled, sir.”
Hornblower touched his hat in reply—he had to assume that Jones had touched his hat to him, for he was not aware of it—and took out his orders and began to read.
“Orders from the Commissioners for executing the office of Lord High Admiral of Great Britain and Ireland, addressed to Captain Horatio Hornblower of His Majesty’s Navy.
“You are hereby required—”
He read them through to the end, folded them, and returned them to his pocket. Now he was legally captain of the Atropos, holding a position of which only a court martial or an Act of Parliament—or the loss of the ship—could deprive him. And from this moment his half-pay ceased and he would begin to draw the pay of a captain of a sixth-rate. Was it significant that it was from this moment the mists began to clear from before his eyes? Jones was a lanternjawed man, his close-shaven beard showing blue through his tan. Hornblower met his eyes.
“Dismiss the ship’s company, Mr. Jones.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
This might have been the moment for a speech, Hornblower knew. It was even customary to make one. But he had prepared nothing to say; and he told himself it was better to say nothing. He had it in mind that he would give a first impression of someone cold and hard and efficient and unsentimental. He turned to the waiting group of lieutenants; now he could distinguish their features, recognize that they were distinct individuals, these men whom he would have to trust and use for years in the future; but their names had escaped him completely. He had really heard nothing of them in those excited seconds after arriving on the quarterdeck.
“Thank you, gentlemen,” he said to them. “We shall know each other better soon, I do not doubt.”
There was a touching of hats and a general turning away of them all except Jones.
“There’s an Admiralty letter waiting for you, sir,” said the latter.
An Admiralty letter! Orders! The key to the future, which would reveal what was to be their fate—the words which might despatch him and the Atropos to China or Greenland or Brazil. Hornblower felt his excitement surge up again—it had hardly subsided in any case. Once more he checked himself from swallowing.
“Thank you, Mr. Jones. I’ll read it as soon as I have leisure.”
“Would you care to come below, sir?”
“Thank you.”
The captain’s quarters in the Atropos were as minute as Hornblower had expected; the smallest possible daycabin and nightcabin. They were so small that they were not bulkheaded off from one another; a curtain was supposed to be hung between them, but there was no curtain. There was nothing at all—no cot, no desk, no chair, nothing. Apparently Caldecott had made a clean sweep of all his belongings when he left the ship. There was nothing surprising about that, but it was inconvenient. The cabin was dark and stuffy, but as the ship was newly out of dry dock she had not yet acquired all the manifold smells which would impregnate her later.