Hornblower was about to say “More of the unenlightened, General?” when he realised the uselessness of comment. It was better to say nothing than to say anything ineffectual. He rode silently through the stink and the flies, and tried to estimate the mentality of a man who would allow rotting corpses to remain, so to speak, on his doorstep.
The path rose over a shoulder of the mountain, and for a moment Hornblower had a glimpse of the bay below, blue and silver and gold under the evening sun, with the Lydia riding to her anchor in the midst of it. Then suddenly the forest at each side changed as if by magic into cultivated land. Orange groves, and trees laden with fruit, bordered the path, and through the trees Hornblower could gain a glimpse of fields bearing crops. The sun, sinking fast to the horizon, illuminated the golden fruit, and then, as they turned a corner, shone full on a vast white building, stretching low and wide on either hand, before them.
“The house of el Supremo,” said Hernandez.
In the patio servants came and took their horses, while Hornblower stiffly dismounted and contemplated the ruin which riding had caused to his best silk stockings. The superior servants who conducted them into the house were dressed in clothes similar in their blend of rags and finery to those Hernandez wore—scarlet and gold above, bare feet and rags below. The most gorgeous of all, whose features seemed to indicate a strong dash of negro blood in his ancestry along with the Indian and the slight trace of European, came up with a worried look on his face.
“El Supremo has been kept waiting,” he said. “Please come this way as quickly as you can.”
He almost ran before them down a corridor to a door studded with brass. On this he knocked loudly, waited a moment, knocked again, and then threw open the door, bending himself double as he did so. Hornblower, at Hernandez’ gesture, strode into the room, Hernandez behind him, and the majordomo closed the door. It was a long room, limewashed to a glittering white, whose ceiling was supported by thick wooden beams, painted and carved. Towards the farther end, solitary in the bleak bareness of the room, stood a treble dais, and in a canopied chair on the dais sat the man Hornblower had been sent half round the world to see.
He did not seem very impressive or dignified; a small swarthy man, restless and fidgety, with piercing black eyes and lank black hair beginning to turn grey. From his appearance one might have guessed at only a small admixture of Indian blood in his European ancestry, and he was dressed in European fashion, in a red coat laced with gold, a white stock, and white breeches and stockings; there were gold buckles on his shoes. Hernandez cringed before him.
“You have been a long time,” snapped Alvarado. “Eleven men have been flogged during your absence.”
“Supremo,” sighed Hernandez—his teeth were chattering with fright—“the captain came instantly on hearing your summons.”
Alvarado turned his piercing eyes upon Hornblower, who bowed stiffly. His mind was playing with the suspicion that the eleven men who had been flogged had suffered, unaccountably, because of the length of time it took to ride a horse from the beach to the house.
“Captain Horatio Hornblower, of His Britannic Majesty’s frigate Lydia, at your service, sir,” he said.
“You have brought me arms and powder?”
“They are in the ship.”
“That is well. You will make arrangements with General Hernandez here for landing them.”
Hornblower thought of his frigate’s almost empty storerooms; and he had three hundred and eighty men to feed. Moreover, as with every ship’s captain, he was already feeling irritation at dependence on the shore. He would be restless and uncomfortable until the Lydia was fully charged again with food and water and wood and every other necessary, sufficient to take her back round the Horn at least as far as the West Indies or St. Helena, if not home.
“I can hand nothing over, sir, until my ship’s needs are satisfied,” he said. He heard Hernandez drawing his breath sharply at this sacrilegious temporising in the face of orders from el Supremo. The latter’s eyebrows came together; for a moment it seemed likely that he would attempt to impose his imperious will upon the captain, but immediately afterwards his expression cleared as he realised the folly of quarrelling with his new ally.
“Certainly,” he said. “Please make known to General Hernandez what you require, and he will supply you.”
Hornblower had had dealing with officers of the Spanish services, and knew what they could accomplish in the way of fair promises not carried out, and procrastination and shiftiness and doubledealing. He guessed that Spanish American rebel officers would be proportionately less trustworthy. He decided to make known his wants now, so that there might be a fair chance of seeing a part at least of his demands satisfied in the near full.
“My watercasks must be refilled tomorrow,” he said.
Hernandez nodded.
“There is a spring close to where we landed. If you wish, I will have men to help you.”
“Thank you, but that will not be necessary. My ship’s crew will attend to it. Besides water I need—”
Hornblower’s mind began to total up all the multifarious wants of a frigate seven months at sea.
“Yes, señor?”
“I shall need two hundred bullocks. Two hundred and fifty if they are thin and small. Five hundred pigs. One hundred quintals of salt. Forty tons of ship’s bread, and if biscuit is unobtainable I shall need the equivalent amount of flour, with ovens and fuel provided to bake it. The juice of forty thousand lemons, oranges or limes—I can supply the casks to contain it. Ten tons of sugar. Five tons of tobacco. A ton of coffee. You grow potatoes on this coast, do you not? Then twenty tons of potatoes will suffice.”
Hernandez’ face had grown longer and longer during this formidable recital.
“But, captain—” he ventured to protest, but Hornblower cut him short.
“Then for our current needs, while we are in harbour,” he went on, “I shall need five bullocks a day, two dozen chickens, as many eggs as you can provide, and sufficient fresh vegetables for the daily consumption of my ship’s company.”
By nature Hornblower was the mildest of men, but in any matter regarding his ship fear of being deemed a failure drove him into unexpected hardness and temerity.
“Two hundred bullocks!” said the wretched Hernandez. “Five hundred pigs?”
“That is what I said,” replied Hornblower, inexorably. “Two hundred fat bullocks.”
At this point el Suprerno intervened.
“See that the captain’s wants are satisfied,” he said, with an impatient wave of his hand. “Start now.”
Hernandez only hesitated for a further tenth of a second, and then retired. The big brass bound door closed silently behind him.
“That is the only way to deal with these people,” said el Supremo, lightly. “They are no better than beasts. Any kind of refinement is wasted upon them. Doubtless you saw on your way here various criminals suffering punishment?”
“I did.”
“My ancestors on earth,” said el Supremo, “went to much trouble in arranging elaborate punishments. They burned people to death with elaborate ceremonial. They cut out their hearts to the accompaniment of music and dances, or pressed them to death in wrappings of raw hide exposed to the sun. I find all that quite unnecessary. A simple order to have the man tied up to die of thirst is sufficient. The man dies, and there is an end of him.”
“Yes,” said Hornblower.
“They are incapable of absorbing even the simplest of conceptions. There are some who to this very day cannot understand the very obvious principle that the blood of Alvarado and Moctezuma must be divine. They still cling to their absurd Christs and Virgins.”