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“Come on, Fatty!”
The cook’s mate did not even look to see where to put his feet, and he was coming down two ratlines at a time. Horrocks reached the crosstrees and leaped for the deck stay. Down he came, sliding at a speed that must burn his hands. Cook’s mate and midshipman reached the deck together, but Horrocks had farther to run to reach his place with his division than did the cook’s mate. There was a final yell as both of them staggered gasping to their places, but the cook’s mate was first by a full yard, and every eye was turned towards Hornblower.
“Port watch wins!” he a
The port watch cheered again, but the starboard watch—Hornblower was observing them closely—was not humiliated. He could guess that there were plenty of men among them who were not too displeased at the thought of tomorrow exhibiting their talents to an audience and who were already pla
“Attention! Mr. Horrocks! Mr. Smiley! Dismiss your teams.”
Aft, beside the wardroom door, as Hornblower was returning to his cabin, there was an unusual figure, walking with slow steps under the supervision of the doctor.
“This is a pleasure, Mr. McCullum,” said Hornblower. “It’s good to see you out of your bed.”
“The incision has entirely healed, sir,” said Eisenbeiss, proudly. “Not only are the sutures removed, but I have judged it safe to remove the bristle from the wound, as the drainage was complete.”
“Excellent!” said Hornblower. “Then that arm will come out of its sling soon?”
“Within a few days. The broken ribs seem to have knitted well.”
“Still a bit stiff round here,” said McCullum, feeling his right armpit with his left hand. He was displaying none of his usual ill temper; but a convalescent, making his first attempt to walk, and with his wound under discussion, could feel so much in the centre of the picture as to be well disposed towards humanity.
“Well it might be,” said Hornblower. “A pistol bullet at twelve paces is not a welcome visitor. We thought we had lost you. At Malta they thought that bullet was in your lungs.”
“It would have been easier,” said Eisenbeiss, “if he had not been so muscular. The bullet could not be felt in that mass of muscle.”
McCullum fished from his left trouser pocket a small object which he handed to Hornblower.
“D’you see that?” asked McCullum. It was the bullet which Eisenbeiss had extracted, flattened and irregular. Hornblower had seen it before, but this was not the moment to say so. He marvelled over it in suitable terms, much to McCullum’s gratification.
“I think,” said Hornblower, “that this occasion should be observed with a fitting ceremony. I shall invite the wardroom to dine with me, and I can ask you two gentlemen first of all.”
“Honoured, I’m sure,” said McCullum, and Eisenbeiss bowed.
“Let us say tomorrow, then. We can dine in comfort before the entertainment which the starboard watch is providing.”
He retired to his cabin well pleased with himself. He had exercised his crew; he had given them something to think about; he had found a suitable occasion to entertain his officers socially; his salvage expert had returned from the jaws of death and in a better temper than usual—all this, and the Speedwell’s treasure lay on the Tom Tiddler’s Ground of the sandy bottom of the Bay, with gold and silver only waiting to be picked up. His good opinion of himself even enabled him to endure the tedium of the concert given by the starboard watch that night. There were the sentimental songs which a handsome young fore-topman sang; Hornblower found their glutinous sentimentality as wearisome to his soul as the music was to his tonedeaf ear. “The Flowers on Mother’s Grave” and “The Empty Cradle”—the young seaman squeezed out every lugubrious drop from their funereal substance, and his audience, with the exception of Hornblower, revelled in it. And an elderly bos’n’s mate sang sea songs in a thunderous bass while Hornblower marvelled that a seagoing audience could tolerate the misuse of nautical terms in those songs; if his “good sail” were to “rustle” with a following wind, his officer of the watch would hear from him in good round terms, and there was, of course, the usual landsman’s confusion between the sheet and the sail, and Dibdin had never bothered to find out that a “sheer hulk” was still leading a useful existence thanks to its sheers—the term did not imply a complete hulk or anything like it. And of course the song laid stress on the statement that Tom Bowling was dead, like the foretopman’s mythical mother and baby. He had “Gone aloft” and everybody in the ship’s company, apparently, felt the better for it.
The hornpipes were more agreeable; Hornblower could admire the lightness and grace of the dancers and could manage to ignore the squeaky sweetness of the flute that accompanied them, played by the same cook’s mate whose final effort had won the race for the port watch—his services as accompanist were so necessary, apparently, that they were called for even though the port watch were officially the guests at the concert. To Hornblower the most amusing part of the evening’s entertainment, in fact, was the difference in attitude between the two watches, the starboard watch as anxious hosts and the port watch as critical guests. He could congratulate himself again at the end of the evening on a successful piece of work. He had a willing and orderly crew, and a satisfied complement of officers.
And next morning came the real triumph, no less satisfactory in that Hornblower stayed on board the ship and allowed McCullum, his arm still in a sling, to go out with launch and longboat and all the new apparatus that had been constructed for the salvage operations. Hornblower stood at the side of the ship, warmed by the newly returned sunshine, as the boats returned. McCullum pointed with his left hand to a vast heap piled between the centre thwarts of the launch, and turned and pointed to another in the longboat. Silver! The divers must have worked fast down in the depths, shovelling the coins with their hands into the lowered buckets.
The boats came alongside and a working party prepared to hoist the mass of silver on board. A sudden sharp order by McCullum halted the three Ceylonese divers as they were about to make their way forward to their own particular lair. They looked at him a little sheepishly as he gave a further order in their strange tongue, and he repeated it. Then slowly they began to take off their clothes; Hornblower had seen them stripping themselves so often before in the days—they seemed weeks ago—when the salvage operations had begun. The voluminous cotton garments came off one by one.
“I’ll lay a bet,” said McCullum, “they’ve got fifty pounds between them.”
One of the garments gave out a mysterious chink as it was laid on the deck, despite the care of the owner.
“Master at arms!” said Hornblower, “search those clothes!”
With a gri
“They never make a dive,” said McCullum, “without trying this on.”
Hornblower could only wonder how a naked man climbing from the sea into a boat could possibly manage to convey silver coins into his clothing unobserved, but anything was possible to human ingenuity.
“That would have made them rich for life if they could have taken it back to Jaffra,” said McCullum. Reverting to the foreign speech he dismissed the divers, who picked up their clothes again and vanished, while McCullum turned back to Hornblower. “It might be quicker to weigh this than to count it. If we get it all up there’ll be four tons altogether.”
Silver by the ton! The sailmaker stitched sacks out of new canvas to hold it, and just as in the lost Speedwell, the lower lazarette was cleared to store it. And Hornblower found there was a profound truth in the story of Midas, who received the gift of the Golden Touch not so very far from where Atropos swung at anchor. Just as Midas lost his happiness at a moment when the world must have deemed him the happiest man on earth, so Hornblower lost his happiness at this moment of success. For as the silver was piled in the lazarette so he came to worry about the coins. He was in no doubt about the ingenuity and persistence and skill of the seamen under his orders; nor was he in doubt about the criminal pasts of many of them, the sweepings of Newgate Gaol. Tales i