Hornblower battled with his misery. For the thousandth time in his life he decided that the King’s service was like a vampire, as hateful as it was seductive. He could not think what to do. But first he had to know more about the business.
“Mr. Bush, would you be kind enough to order the master-at-arms to bring Doughty to me in my cabin?”
“Aye aye, sir.”
The clank of iron; that was what heralded Doughty’s’ arrival at the cabin door, with gyves upon his wrists.
“Very well, master-at-arms. You can wait outside.”
Doughty’s hard blue eyes looked straight into his.
“Well?”
“I’m sorry, sir. I’m sorry to put you out like this.”
“What the hell did you do it for?”
There had always been a current of feeling—as Hornblower had guessed—between Mayne and Doughty. Mayne had ordered Doughty to do some specially dirty work, at this moment when Doughty wished to preserve his hands clean to serve his captain’s dinner. Doughty’s protest had been the instant occasion for Mayne to wind his starter.
“I—I couldn’t take a blow, sir. I suppose I’ve been too long with gentlemen.”
Among gentlemen a blow could only be wiped out in blood; among the lower orders a blow was something to be received without even a word. Hornblower was captain of his ship, with powers almost unlimited. He could tell Mayne to shut his mouth; he could order Doughty’s irons to be struck off, and the whole incident forgotten. Forgotten? Allow the crew to think that petty officers could be struck back with impunity? Allow the crew to think that their captain had favourites?
“Damn it all!” raved Hornblower, pounding on the chartroom table.
“I could train someone to take my place, sir,” said Doughty, “before—before…”
Even Doughty could not say those words.
“No! No! No!” It was utterly impossible to have Doughty circulating about the ship with every morbid eye upon him.
“You might try Bailey, sir, the gun-room steward. He’s the best of a bad lot.”
“Yes.”
It made matters no easier to find Doughty still so co-operative. And then there was a glimmer of light, the faintest hint of a possibility of a solution less unsatisfactory than the others. They were three hundred leagues and more from Cadiz, but they had a fair wind.
“You’ll have to await your trial. Master-at-arms! Take this man away. You needn’t keep him in irons, and I’ll give orders about his exercise.”
“Good-bye, sir.”
It was horrible to see Doughty retaining the unmoved countenance so carefully cultivated as a servant, and yet to know that it concealed a dreadful anxiety. Hornblower had to forget about it, somehow. He had to come on deck with Hotspur flying along with every inch of canvas spread racing over the sea like a thoroughbred horse at last given his head after long restraint. The dark shadow might not be forgotten, but at least it could be lightened under this blue sky with the flying white clouds, and by the rainbows of spray thrown up by the bows, as they tore across the Bay of Biscay on a mission all the more exciting to the ship’s company in that they could not guess what it might be.
There was the distraction—the counter irritation—of submitting to the clumsy ministrations of Bailey, brought up from the gun-room mess. There was the satisfaction of making a neat landfall off Cape Ortegal, and flying along the Biscay coast just within sight of the harbour of Ferrol, where Hornblower had spent weary months in captivity—he tried vainly to make out the Dientes del Diablo where he had earned his freedom—and then rounding the far corner of Europe and setting a fresh course, with the wind miraculously still serving, as they plunged along, close-hauled now, to weather Cape Roca.
There was a night when the wind backed round and blew foul but gently, with Hornblower out of bed a dozen times, fuming with impatience when Hotspur had to go on the port tack and head directly out from the land, but then came the wonderful dawn with the wind coming from the south west in gentle puffs, and then from the westward in a strong breeze that just allowed studding sails to be spread as Hotspur reached southward to make a noon position with Cape Roca just out of sight to leeward.
That meant another broken night for Hornblower to make the vital chance of course off Cape St. Vincent so as to head, with the wind comfortably over Hotspur’s port quarter and every stitch of canvas still spread, direct for Cadiz. In the afternoon, with Hotspur still flying along at a speed often reaching eleven knots, the look-out reported a blur of land, low-lying, fine on the port bow, as the coast-wise shipping—hastily raising neutral Portuguese and Spanish colours at sight of this British ship of war—grew thicker. Ten minutes later another hail from the masthead told that the landfall was perfect, and ten minutes after that Hornblower’s telescope, trained fine on the starboard bow, could pick up the gleaming white of the city of Cadiz.
Hornblower should have been pleased at his achievement, but as ever there was no time for self-congratulation. There were the preparations to be made to ask permission of the Spanish authorities to enter the port; there was the excitement of the prospect of getting into touch with the British representative; and—now or never—there was the decision to be reached regarding his plan for Doughty. The thought of Doughty had nagged at him during these glorious days of spread canvas, coming to distract him from his day-dreams of wealth and promotion, to divert him from his plans regarding his behaviour in Cadiz. It was like the bye-plots in Shakespeare’s plays, rising continually from the depths to assume momentarily equal importance with the development of the main plot.
Yet, as Hornblower had already admitted to himself, it was now or never. He had to decide and to act at this very minute; earlier would have been premature, and later would be too late. He had risked death often enough in the King’s service; perhaps the service owed him a life in return—a threadbare justification, and he forced himself to admit to mere self-indulgence as he finally made up his mind. He shut up his telescope with the same fierce decision that he had closed with the enemy in the Goulet.
“Pass the word for my steward,” he said. No one could guess that the man who spoke such empty words was contemplating a grave dereliction from duty.
Bailey, all knees and elbows, with the figure of a youth despite his years, put his hand to his forehead in salute to his captain, within sight, and (more important) within earshot of a dozen individuals on the quarter-deck.
“I expect His Majesty’s Consul to sup with me tonight,” said Hornblower. “I want something special to offer him.”
“Well, sir—” said Bailey, which was exactly what, and all, Hornblower had expected him to say.
“Speak up, now,” rasped Hornblower.
“I don’t exactly know, sir,” said Bailey. He had suffered already from Hornblower’s irascibility—unplanned, during these last days, but lucky now.
“Damn it, man. Let’s have some ideas.”
“There’s a cut of cold beef, sir—”
“Cold beef? For His Majesty’s Consul? Nonsense.”
Hornblower took a turn up the deck in deep thought, and then wheeled back again.
“Mr. Bush! I’ll have to have Doughty released from confinement this evening. This ninny’s no use to me. See that he reports to me in my cabin the moment I have time to spare.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
“Very well, Bailey. Get below. Now, Mr. Bush, kindly clear away number one carronade starboard side for the salutes. And isn’t that the guarda costa lugger lying-to for us there?”
The sun declining towards the west bathed the white buildings of Cadiz to a romantic pink as Hotspur headed in, and as health officers and naval officers and military officers came on board to see that Cadiz was guarded against infection and violations of her neutrality. Hornblower put his Spanish to use—rusty now, as he had not spoken Spanish since the last war, and more awkward still because of his recent use of French—but despite its rustiness very helpful during the formalities, while Hotspur under topsails glided in towards the entrance to the bay, so well remembered despite the years that had passed since his last visit in the Indefatigable.