Mr. Midshipman Hornblower

'It's growing dark,' said the captain, glancing round the sky. 'Rocks. The men are tired.'

'We had better not go back,' said Hornblower.

'No.'

'Then we must get out to sea.'

Years of duty on blockade, of beating about off a lee shore, had ingrained into Hornblower the necessity for seeking searoom.

'Yes,' said the captain, and he added something which Hornblower, thanks to the wind and his unfamiliarity with the language, was unable to catch. The captain roared the expression again, and accompanied his words with a vivid bit of pantomime with the one hand he could spare from the steering oar.

'A sea anchor,' decided Hornblower to himself. 'Quite right.'

He looked back at the vanishing shore, and gauged the direction of the wind. It seemed to be backing a little southerly, the coast here trended away from them. They could ride to a sea anchor through the hours of darkness and run no risk of being cast ashore as long as these conditions persisted.

'Good,' said Hornblower aloud.

He imitated the other's bit of pantomime and the captain gave him a glance of approval. At a bellow from him the two men forward took in their oars and set to work at constructing a sea anchor — merely a pair of oars attached to a long painter paid out over the bows. With this gale blowing the pressure of the wind on the boat set up enough drag on the float to keep their bows to the sea. Hornblower watched as the sea anchor began to take hold of the water.

'Good,' he said again.

'Good,' said the captain, taking in his steering oar.

Hornblower realized only now that he had been long exposed to a winter gale while wet to the skin. He was numb with cold, and he was shivering uncontrollably. At his feet one of the three survivors of the wreck was lying helpless; the other two had succeeded in baling out most of the water and as a result of their exertions were conscious and alert. The men who had been rowing sat drooping with weariness on their thwarts. The Galician captain was already down in the bottom of the boat lifting the helpless man in his arms. It was a common impulse of them all to huddle down into the bottom of the boat, beneath the thwarts, away from that shrieking wind.

So the night came down on them. Hornblower found himself welcoming the contact of other human bodies; he felt an arm round him and he put his arm round someone else. Around them a little water still surged about on the floorboards; above them the wind still shrieked and howled. The boat stood first on her head and then on her tail as the waves passed under them, and at the moment of climbing each crest she gave a shuddering jerk as she snubbed herself to the sea anchor. Every few seconds a new spat of spray whirled into the boat upon their shrinking bodies; it did not seem long before the accumulation of spray in the bottom of the boat made it necessary for them to disentangle themselves, and set about, groping in the darkness, the task of baling the water out again. Then they could huddle down again under the thwarts.

It was when they pulled themselves together for the third baling that in the middle of his nightmare of cold and exhaustion Hornblower was conscious that the body across which his arm lay was u

'The English frigate,' he said.

She must have made nearly the same amount of leeway hove-to as the boat did riding to her sea anchor.

'Signal to her,' said Hornblower, and no one raised any objections.

The only white object available was Hornblower's shirt, and he took it off, shuddering in the cold, and they tied it to an oar and raised the oar in the maststep. The captain saw Hornblower putting on his dripping coat over his bare ribs and in a single movement peeled off his thick blue jersey and offered it to him.

'Thank you, no,' protested Hornblower, but the captain insisted; with a wide grin he pointed to the stiffened corpse lying in the sternsheets and a

The argument was interrupted by a further cry from one of the fishermen. The frigate was coming to the wind; with treble-reefed fore and maintopsails she was heading for them under the impulse of the lessening gale. Hornblower saw her ru

'I go last,' said Hornblower when they turned to him. 'I am a King's officer.'

'Good Lor' lumme,' said the seamen.

'Send the body up, too,' said Hornblower. 'It can be given decent burial.'

The stiff corpse was grotesque as it swayed through the air. The Galician captain tried to dispute with Hornblower the honour of going last, but Hornblower would not be argued with. Then finally the seamen helped him put his legs into the breeches, and secured him with a line round his waist. Up he soared, swaying dizzily with the roll of the ship; then they drew him in to the deck, lowering and shortening, until half a dozen strong arms took his weight and laid him gently on the deck.

'There you are, my hearty, safe and sound,' said a bearded seaman.

'I am a King's officer,' said Hornblower. 'Where's the officer of the watch?'

Wearing marvellous dry clothing, Hornblower found himself soon drinking hot rum-and-water in the cabin of Captain George Crome, of His Majesty's frigate Syrtis. Crome was a thin pale man with a depressed expression, but Hornblower knew of him as a first-rate officer.

'These Galicians make good seamen,' said Crome. 'I can't press them. But perhaps a few will volunteer sooner than go to a prison hulk.'

'Sir,' said Hornblower, and hesitated. It is ill for a junior lieutenant to argue with a post captain.

'Well?'

'Those men came to sea to save life. They are not liable to capture.'

Crome's cold grey eyes became actively frosty — Hornblower was right about it being ill for a junior lieutenant to argue with a post captain.

'Are you telling me my duty, sir?' he asked.

'Good heavens no, sir,' said Hornblower hastily. 'It's a long time since I read the Admiralty Instructions and I expect my memory's at fault.'

'Admiralty Instructions, eh?' said Crome, in a slightly different tone of voice.

'I expect I'm wrong, sir,' said Hornblower, 'but I seem to remember the same instruction applied to the other two — the survivors.'

Even a post captain could only contravene Admiralty Instructions at his peril.

'I'll consider it,' said Crome.