“New signal from Lotus, sir. ‘Chase has tacked. Chase is on the port tack, bearing east-by-north, half east’.”
Hornblower leaped to the compass; only the topsails of the Lotus were in sight from the deck as he took the bearing by eye. Whatever that sail was, he must intercept it and gather news. He looked up to see Bush hastening on deck, buttoning his coat.
“Captain Bush, I’ll trouble you to alter course two points to starboard.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
“Lotus signalling again, sir. ‘Chase is a ship. Probably British merchantman’.”
“Very good. Set all sail, Captain Bush, if you please.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
The pipes shrilled through the ship, and 400 men went pouring up the ratlines to loose the royals and set studding-sails. Hornblower raised a professional eye to watch the operation, carried out under a storm of objurgation from the officer of the watch. The still clumsy crew was driven at top speed by the warrant officers through the evolution, and it was hardly completed before there was a yell from the mast-head.
“Sail on the starboard bow!”
“Must be the ship Lotus can see, sir,” said Bush. “Mast-head there! What can you see of the sail?”
“She’s a ship, sir, close-hauled an’ coming up fast. We’re headin’ to meet her.”
“Hoist the colours, Mr. Hurst. If she was beating up for the Sound, sir, she would have tacked whether she saw Lotus or not.”
“Yes,” said Hornblower.
A shriek came from the mast-head, where one of the midshipmen of the watch, an urchin who had not yet mastered his changing voice, had run up with a glass.
“British colours, sir!”
Hornblower remembered he was still wet and naked; at least, he was still wet in those parts of him which did not offer free play for the wind to dry him. He began to dab at these inner corners with the towel he still held, only to be interrupted again.
“There she is!” said Bush; the ship’s upper sails were over the horizon, in view from the deck.
“Lay a course to pass her within hail, if you please,” said Hornblower.
“Aye aye, sir. Starboard a point, Quartermaster. Get those stuns’ls in again, Mr. Hurst.”
The ship they were approaching held her course steadily; there was nothing suspicious about her, not even the fact that she had gone about immediately on sighting Lotus.
“Timber from the South Baltic, I expect, sir,” said Bush, training his glass. “You can see the deck cargo now.”
Like most ships bound out of the Baltic her decks were piled high with timber, like barricades along the bulwarks.
“Make the merchant ships’ private signal if you please, Captain,” said Hornblower.
He watched the reply run up the ship’s halliards.
“A—T—numeral—five—seven, sir,” read Hurst through his glass. “That’s the correct reply for last winter, and she won’t have received the new code yet.”
“Signal her to heave to,” said Hornblower.
With no more delay than was to be expected of a merchant ship, inept at reading signals, and with a small crew, the ship backed her main-topsail and lay-to. The Nonsuch came hurtling down upon her.
“That’s the yellow Q she’s hoisting now, sir,” said Hurst, suddenly. “The fever flag.”
“Very good. Heave to, Captain Bush, if you please.”
“Aye aye, sir. I’ll keep to wind’ard of her, too, if you’ve no objection, sir.”
The Nonsuch laid her topsails to the mast and rounded-to, rocking in the gentle trough of the waves a pistol-shot to windward. Hornblower took his speaking-trumpet.
“What ship’s that?”
“Maggie Jones of London. Eleven days out from Memel!”
In addition to the man at the wheel there were only two figures visible on the poop-deck of the Maggie Jones; one of them, wearing white duck trousers and a blue coat, was obviously the captain. It was he who was answering by speaking-trumpet.
“What’s that yellow flag for?”
“Smallpox. Seven cases on board, and two dead. First case a week ago.”
“Smallpox, by God!” muttered Bush. A frightful mental picture came up before his mind’s eye, of what smallpox would do, let loose in his precious Nonsuch, with 900 men crammed into her restricted space.
“Why are you sailing without convoy?”
“None available at Memel. The rendezvous for the trade’s off Langeland on the twenty-fourth. We’re beating up for the Belt now.”
“What’s the news?” Hornblower had waited patiently during all these interminable sentences before asking that question.
“The Russian embargo still holds, but we’re sailing under licence.”
“Sweden?”
“God knows, sir. Some say they’ve tightened up their embargo there.”
A curious muffled howl came from below decks in the Maggie Jones at that moment, just audible in the Nonsuch.
“What’s that noise?” asked Hornblower.
“One of the smallpox cases, sir. Delirious. They say the Tsar’s meeting Bernadotte next week fur a conference somewhere in Finland.”
“Any sign of war between France and Russia?”
“None that I could see in Memel.”
That delirious patient must be very violent for his shrieks to reach Hornblower’s ears at this distance against the wind. Hornblower heard them again. Was it possible for one man to make all that noise? It sounded more like a muffled chorus to Hornblower. Hornblower felt a sudden wave of suspicion surging up within him. The white-trousered figure on the Maggie Jones’s poop was altogether too glib, too professional in his talk. A naval officer might possibly discuss the chances of war in the Baltic as coldly as this man was doing, but a merchant captain would put more feeling in his words. And more than one man was making that noise in her forecastle. The captain could easily have offered his information about the Tsar’s meeting with Bernadotte as a red herring to distract Hornblower’s attention from the cries below deck. Something was wrong.
“Captain Bush,” said Hornblower, “send a boat with a boarding-party over to that ship.”
“Sir!” protested Bush, wildly. “Sir—she has smallpox on board—sir! Aye aye, sir.”
Bush’s protests died an uneasy death at the look on Hornblower’s face. Bush told himself that Hornblower knew as well as he did the frightful possibilities of the introduction of smallpox into Nonsuch, Hornblower knew the chances he was taking. And one more look at Hornblower’s face told Bush that the decision had not been an easy one.
Hornblower put the trumpet to his lips again.
“I’m sending a boat to you,” he shouted. It was hard at twenty yards’ distance to detect any change in the manner of the man he was addressing, especially when hampered with a speaking-trumpet, but Hornblower thought he could see the captain start a little. Certainly there was a decided pause before he answered.
“As you wish, sir. I have warned you of smallpox. Could you send a surgeon and medicines?”
That was exactly what he should have said. But all the same, there was that suspicious pause before answering, as if the man had been taken by surprise and had searched round in his mind for the best reply to make. Bush was standing by, with misery in his face, hoping that Hornblower would countermand his order, but Hornblower made no sign. Under the orders of the boatswain the whaler rose to the pull of the tackles, was swayed outboard, and dropped into the sea. A midshipman and a boat’s crew dropped down into her, sulkily. They would have gone cheerfully to board an armed enemy, but the thought of a loathsome disease unmanned them.