'I suppose you have come,' said the whiskered man at the head of the table, 'to thrust yourself among your betters. Another soft-headed ignoramus come to be a nuisance to those who have to try to teach you your duties. Look at him'—the speaker with a gesture demanded the attention of everyone at the table—'look at him, I say! The King's latest bad bargain. How old are you?'
'S-seventeen, sir,' stuttered Hornblower.
'Seventeen!' the disgust in the speaker's voice was only too evident. 'You must start at twelve if you ever wish to be a seaman. Seventeen! Do you know the difference between a head and a halliard?'
That drew a laugh from the group, and the quality of the laugh was just noticeable to Hornblower's whirling brain, so that he guessed that whether he said 'yes' or 'no' he would be equally exposed to ridicule. He groped for a neutral reply.
'That's the first thing I'll look up in Norie's Seamanship,' he said.
The ship lurched again at that moment, and he clung on to the table.
'Gentlemen,' he began pathetically, wondering how to say what he had in mind.
'My God!' exclaimed somebody at the table. 'He's seasick!'
'Seasick in Spithead!' said somebody else, in a tone in which amazement had as much place as disgust.
But Hornblower ceased to care; he was not really conscious of what was going on round him for some time after that. The nervous excitement of the last few days was as much to blame, perhaps, as the journey in the shore boat and the erratic behaviour of the Justinian at her anchors, but it meant for him that he was labelled at once as the midshipman who was seasick in Spithead, and it was only natural that the label added to the natural misery of the loneliness and homesickness which oppressed him during those days when that part of the Channel Fleet which had not succeeded in completing its crews lay at anchor in the lee of the Isle of Wight. An hour in the hammock into which the messman hoisted him enabled him to recover sufficiently to be able to report himself to the first lieutenant; after a few days on board he was able to find his way round the ship without (as happened at first) losing his sense of direction below decks, so that he did not know whether he was facing forward or aft. During that period his brother officers ceased to have faces which were mere blurs and came to take on personalities; he came painfully to learn the stations allotted him when the ship was at quarters, when he was on watch, and when hands were summoned for setting or taking in sail. He even came to have an acute enough understanding of his new life to realize that it could have been worse — that destiny might have put him on board a ship ordered immediately to sea instead of one lying at anchor. But it was a poor enough compensation; he was a lonely and unhappy boy. Shyness alone would long have delayed his making friends, but as it happened the midshipmen's berth in the Justinian was occupied by men all a good deal older than he; elderly master's mates recruited from the merchant service, and midshipmen in their twenties who through lack of patronage or inability to pass the necessary examination had never succeeded in gaining for themselves commissions as lieutenants. They were inclined, after the first moments of amused interest, to ignore him, and he was glad of it, delighted to shrink into his shell and attract no notice to himself.
For the Justinian was not a happy ship during those gloomy January days. Captain Keene — it was when he came aboard that Hornblower first saw the pomp and ceremony that surrounds the captain of a ship of the line — was a sick man, of a melancholy disposition. He had not the fame which enabled some captains to fill their ships with enthusiastic volunteers, and he was devoid of the personality which might have made enthusiasts out of the sullen pressed men whom the press gangs were bringing in from day to day to complete the ship's complement. His officers saw little of him, and did not love what they saw. Hornblower, summoned to his cabin for his first interview, was not impressed — a middle-aged man at a table covered with papers, with the hollow and yellow cheeks of prolonged illness.
'Mr Hornblower,' he said formally, 'I am glad to have this opportunity of welcoming you on board my ship.'
'Yes, sir,' said Hornblower — that seemed more appropriate to the occasion than 'Aye aye, sir', and a junior midshipman seemed to be expected to say one or the other on all occasions.
'You are — let me see — seventeen?' Captain Keene picked up the paper which apparently covered Hornblower's brief official career.
'Yes, sir.'
'July 4th, 1776,' mused Keene, reading Hornblower's date of birth to himself. 'Five years to the day before I was posted as captain. I had been six years as lieutenant before you were born.'
'Yes, sir,' agreed Hornblower — it did not seem the occasion for any further comment.
'A doctor's son — you should have chosen a lord for your father if you wanted to make a career for yourself.'
'Yes, sir.'
'How far did your education go?'
'I was a Grecian at school, sir.'
'So you can construe Xenophon as well as Cicero?'
'Yes, sir. But not very well, sir.'
'Better if you knew something about sines and cosines. Better if you could foresee a squall in time to get t'gallants in. We have no use for ablative absolutes in the Navy.'
'Yes, sir,' said Hornblower.
He had only just learned what a topgallant was, but he could have told his captain that his mathematical studies were far advanced. He refrained nevertheless; his instincts combined with his recent experiences urged him not to volunteer unsolicited information.
'Well, obey orders, learn your duties, and no harm can come to you. That will do.'
'Thank you, sir,' said Hornblower, retiring.
But the captain's last words to him seemed to be contradicted immediately. Harm began to come to Hornblower from that day forth, despite his obedience to orders and diligent study of his duties, and it stemmed from the arrival in the midshipmen's berth of John Simpson as senior warrant officer. Hornblower was sitting at mess with his colleagues when he first saw him — a brawny good-looking man in his thirties, who came in and stood looking at them just as Hornblower had stood a few days before.
'Hullo!' said somebody, not very cordially.
'Cleveland, my bold friend,' said the newcomer, 'come out from that seat. I am going to resume my place at the head of the table.'
'But—'
'Come out, I said,' snapped Simpson.
Cleveland moved along with some show of reluctance, and Simpson took his place, and glowered round the table in reply to the curious glances with which everyone regarded him.
'Yes, my sweet brother officers,' he said, 'I am back in the bosom of the family. And I am not surprised that nobody is pleased. You will all be less pleased by the time I am done with you, I may add.'
'But your commission—?' asked somebody, greatly daring.
'My commission?' Simpson leaned forward and tapped the table, staring down the inquisitive people on either side of it. 'I'll answer that question this once, and the man who asks it again will wish he had never been born. A board of turnip-headed captains has refused me my commission. It decided that my mathematical knowledge was insufficient to make me a reliable navigator. And so Acting-Lieutenant Simpson is once again Mr Midshipman Simpson, at your service. At your service. And may the Lord have mercy on your souls.'
It did not seem, as the days went by, that the Lord had any mercy at all, for with Simpson's return life in the midshipmen's berth ceased to be one of passive unhappiness and became one of active misery. Simpson had apparently always been an ingenious tyrant, but now, embittered and humiliated by his failure to pass his examination for his commission, he was a worse tyrant, and his ingenuity had multiplied itself. He may have been weak in mathematics, but he was diabolically clever at making other people's lives a burden to them. As senior officer in the mess he had wide official powers; as a man with a blistering tongue and a morbid sense of mischief he would have been powerful anyway, even if the Justinian had possessed an alert and masterful first lieutenant to keep him in check while Mr Clay was neither. Twice midshipmen rebelled against Simpson's arbitrary authority, and each time Simpson thrashed the rebel, pounding him into insensibility with his huge fists, for Simpson would have made a successful prizefighter. Each time Simpson was left unmarked; each time his opponent's blackened eyes and swollen lips called down the penalty of mast heading and extra duty from the indignant first lieutenant. The mess seethed with impotent rage. Even the toadies and lickspittles among the midshipmen — and naturally there were several — hated the tyrant.