“One moment, please, Mr. Bush. You ought to know I’m busy. Yes, Mr. Carron?”
Bush was the only man in the ship who would dare to intrude at that moment, and he only if he thought the matter urgent.
“You had better leave within the hour.”
“Yes, sir. I was hoping you might sup with me this evening.”
“Duty before pleasure, although I thank you. I’ll cross the bay now and make the arrangements with the Spanish authorities. The land breeze will start to make before long, and that will take you out.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Make every preparation for weighing anchor. You know of the twenty-four hour rule?”
“Yes, sir.”
Under the rules of neutrality a ship of one contending nation could not leave a neutral harbour until one whole day after the exit of a ship of another contending nation.
“The Dons may not enforce it on the Felicite, but they’ll certainly enforce it on you if you give them the opportunity. Two-thirds of Felicite’s crew are in the taverns of Cadiz at this moment, so you must take your chance now. I’ll be here to remind the Dons about the twenty-four hour rule if she tries to follow you. I might delay her at least. The Dons don’t want to offend us while the flota’s still at sea.”
“Yes, sir. I understand. Thank you, sir.”
Carron was already rising to his feet, with Hornblower following his example.
“Call the Consul’s boat,” said Hornblower as they emerged on to the quarter-deck, Bush still had something to say, but Hornblower still ignored him.
And even when Carron had left there was still an order for Bush with which to distract him.
“I want the small bower hove in, Mr. Bush, and heave short on the best bower.”
“Aye aye, sir. If you please, sir—”
“I want this done in silence, Mr. Bush. No pipes, no orders that Felicite can hear. Station two safe men at the capstan with old canvas to muffle the capstan pawls. I don’t want a sound.”
“Aye aye, sir. But—”
“Go and attend to that yourself personally, if you please, Mr. Bush.”
No one else dare intrude on the captain as he strode the quarter-deck in the warm night. Nor was it long before the pilot came on board; Carron had certainly succeeded in hastening the slow process of the Spanish official mind. Topsails sheeted home, anchor broken out, Hotspur glided slowly down the bay again before the first gentle puffs of the nightly land breeze, with Hornblower narrowly watching the pilot. It might be a solution of the Spaniard’s problem if Hotspur were to take the ground as she went to sea, and Hornblower determined that should not happen. It was only after the pilot had left them and Hotspur was standing out to the south westward that he had a moment to spare for Bush.
“Sir! Doughty’s gone.”
“Gone?”
It was too dark on the quarter-deck for Hornblower’s face to be seen, and he tried his best to make his voice sound natural.
“Yes, sir. He must have nipped out of the stern window of your cabin, sir. Then he could have lowered himself into the water by the rudder-pintles, right under the counter where no-one could see him, and then he must have swum for it, sir.”
“I’m extremely angry about this, Mr. Bush. Somebody will smart for it.”
“Well, sir—”
“Well, Mr. Bush?”
“It seems you left him alone in the cabin when the Consul came on board, sir. That’s when he took his chance.”
“You mean it’s my fault, Mr. Bush?”
‘Well, yes, sir, if you want to put it that way.”
“M’m. Maybe you’re right, even if I do say it.” Hornblower paused, still trying to be natural. “God, that’s an infuriating thing to happen. I’m angry with myself. I can’t think how I came to be so foolish.”
“I expect you had a lot on your mind, sir.”
It was distasteful to hear Bush standing up for his captain in the face of his captain’s self-condemnation.
“There’s just no excuse for me. I’ll never forgive myself.”
“I’ll mark him as ‘R’ on the ship’s muster, sir.”
“Yes. You’d better do that.”
Cryptic initials in the ship’s muster rolls told various stories—‘D’ for ‘discharged’, ‘D D’ for ‘dead’, and ‘R’ for ‘run’—deserted.
“But there’s some good news, too, Mr. Bush. In accordance with my orders I must tell you, Mr. Bush, in case of something happening to me, but none of what I’m going to say is to leak out to the ship’s company.”
“Of course, sir.”
Treasure; prize money, doubloons and dollars. A Spanish treasure fleet. If there were anything that could take Bush’s mind off the subject of Doughty’s escape from justice it was this.
“It’ll be millions, sir!” said Bush.
“Yes. Millions.”
The seamen in the five ships would share one quarter of the prize money—the same sum as would be divided between five captains—and that would mean six hundred pounds a man. Lieutenants and masters and captains of marines would divide one eighth. Fifteen thousand pounds for Bush, at a rough estimate.
“A fortune, sir!”
Hornblower’s share would be ten of those fortunes.
“Do you remember, sir, the last time we captured a flota? Back in ‘99, I think it was, sir. Some our Jacks when they got their prize money bought gold watches an’ fried ‘em on Gosport Hard, just to show how rich they were.”
“Well, you can sleep on it, Mr. Bush, as I’m going to try to do. But remember, not a word to a soul.”
“No, sir. Of course not, sir.”
The project might still fail. The flota might evade capture and escape into Cadiz; it might have turned back; it might never have sailed. Then it would be best if the Spanish government—and the world at large—did not know that such an attempt had ever been contemplated.
These thoughts, and these figures, should have been stimulating, exciting, pleasant, but tonight, to Hornblower, they were nothing of the sort. They were Dead Sea fruit, turning to ashes in the mouth. Hornblower snapped at Bailey and dismissed him; then he sat on his cot, too low spirited even to be cheered by the swaying of the cot under his seat to tell him that Hotspur was at sea again, bound on a mission of excitement and profit. He sat with drooping head, deep in depression. He had lost his integrity, and that meant he had lost his self-respect. In his life he had made mistakes, whose memory could still make him writhe, but this time he had done far more. He had committed a breach of duty. He had connived at—he had actually contrived—the escape of a deserter, of a criminal. He had violated his sworn oath, and he had done so from mere personal reasons, out of sheer self-indulgence. Not for the good of the service, not for his country’s cause, but because he was a soft-hearted sentimentalist. He was ashamed of himself, and the shame was all the more acute when his pitiless self-analysis brought up the conviction that, if he could relive those past hours, he would do the same again.
There were no excuses. The one he had used, that the Service owed him a life after all the perils he had run, was nonsense. The mitigating circumstance that discipline would not suffer, thanks to the new exciting mission, was of no weight. He was a self-condemned traitor; worse still, he was a plausible one, who had carried through his scheme with deft neatness that marked the born conspirator. That first word he had thought of was the correct one; integrity, and he had lost it. Hornblower mourned over his lost integrity like Niobe over her dead children.
Chapter XXII
Captain Graham Moore’s orders for the disposition of the frigate squadron so as to intercept the flota were so apt that they received even Hornblower’s grudging approval. The five ships were strung out on a line north and south to the limit of visibility. With fifteen miles between ships and with the northernmost and southernmost ships looking out to their respective horizons a stretch of sea ninety miles wide could be covered. During daylight they beat or ran towards America; during the night they retraced their course towards Europe, so that if by misfortune the flota should reach the line in darkness the interval during which it could be detected would be by that much prolonged. The dawn position was to be in the longitude of Cape St. Vincent—9° west—and the sunset position was to be as far to the west of that as circumstances should indicate as desirable.