The Happy Return

At the gangway sideboys and boatswain’s mates and marines were ready to receive el Supremo with distinguished military formality, but el Supremo astonished Hornblower as he was about to go up the ladder, with the casual words—

“The correct salute for me, Captain, is twenty-three guns.”

That was two more guns than His Majesty King George himself would receive. Hornblower stared for a moment, thought wildly of how he could refuse, and finally salved his conscience with the notion that a salute of that number of guns would be entirely meaningless. He sent a message hurriedly to Mr. Marsh ordering twenty-three guns—it was odd, the way in which the ship’s boy almost reduplicated Hornblower’s reactions, by staring, composing his features, and hurrying off comforted by the thought that it was the Captain’s re-ponsibility and not his own. And Hornblower could hardly repress a grin as he thought of Marsh’s certain astonishment, and the boiling exasperation in his voice when he reached—“If I hadn’t been a born bloody fool I shouldn’t be here. Fire twenty-three.”

El Supremo stepped on to the quarterdeck with a keen glance round him, and then, while Hornblower looked at him, the interest faded from his face and he lapsed into the condition of abstracted indifference in which Hornblower had seen him before. He seemed to listen, but he looked over the heads of Bush and Gerard and the others as Hornblower presented them. He shook his head without a word when Hornblower suggested that he might care to inspect the ship. There was a little awkward pause, which was broken by Bush addressing his captain.

“Natividad hoisting another flag to the main yardarm, sir. No it’s not, it’s—”

It was the body of a man, black against the blue sky, rising slowly, jerking and twisting as it rose. A moment later another body rose at the other end of the yard. All eyes instinctively turned towards el Supremo. He was still gazing away into the distance, his eyes focused on nothing, yet everyone knew he had seen. The English officers cast a hasty glance at their captain for guidance, and followed his lead in lapsing into an uncomfortable pose of having noticed nothing. Disciplinary measures in a ship of another nation could be no affair of theirs.

“Di

Still without a word el Supremo walked over to the companion and led the way. Down below his lack of stature was made apparent by the fact that he could walk upright. As a matter of fact, his head just brushed the deck beams above him, but the nearness of the beams did nothing to make him stoop as he walked. Hornblower became conscious of a ridiculous feeling that el Supremo would never need to stoop, that the deck beams would raise themselves as he passed rather than commit the sacrilege of bumping his head—that was how el Supremo’s quiet dignity of carriage affected him.

Polwheal and the stewards assisting him, in their best clothes, held aside the screens which still took the place of the discarded bulkheads, but at the entrance to the cabin el Supremo stopped for a moment and said the first words which had passed his lips since he came on board.

“I will dine alone here,” he said. “Let the food be brought to me.”

None of his suite saw anything in the least odd about his request—Hornblower, watching their expressions, was quite sure that their unconcern was in no way assumed. El Supremo might have been merely blowing his noise for all the surprise they envinced.

It was all a horrible nuisance, of course. Hornblower and his other guests had to dine in makeshift fashion in the gunroom mess, and his one linen tablecloth and his one set of linen napkins, and the two last bottles of his old Madeira remained in the after cabin for el Supremo’s use. Nor was the meal improved by the silence that prevailed most of the time; el Supremo’s suite were not in the least talkative, and Hornblower was the only Englishman with conversational Spanish. Bush tried twice, valiantly, to make polite speeches to his neighbours, putting a terminal ‘o’ on the ends of his English words in the hope that so they might be transmuted into Spanish, but the blank stares of the men he addressed reduced him quickly to stammering inarticulation.

Di

The men whom the launch and the cutter, plying steadily between ship and shore, brought out, were typical Central American soldiers, barefooted and ragged, swarthy and lankhaired. Each man carried a bright new musket and a bulging cartridge pouch, but these were merely what Hornblower had brought for them; most of the men carried in their hands cotton bags presumably filled with provisions—some bore melons and bunches of bananas in addition. The crew herded them on to the maindeck; they looked about them curiously and chattered volubly, but they were amenable enough, squatting in gossiping groups between the guns where the gri

When the last man was on board Hornblower looked across to the Natividad; it appeared as if her share of the expeditionary force was already embarked. Suddenly the babble on the main deck died away completely, to be succeeded by a silence surprising in its intensity. Next moment el Supremo came on the quarterdeck—it must have been his appearance from the after cabin which had quelled the noise.

“We shall sail for La Libertad, Captain,” he said.

“Yes, Supremo,” replied Hornblower. He was glad that el Supremo had made his appearance when he did; a few seconds later and the ship’s officers would have seen that their captain was awaiting his orders, and that would never have done.

“We will weigh anchor, Mr. Bush,” said Hornblower.

Chapter VIII

The voyage up the coast was completed. La Libertad had fallen, and el Supremo and his men had vanished into the tangle of volcanoes surrounding the city of the Holy Saviour. Once again in the early morning Captain Hornblower was pacing the quarterdeck of His Brita

Hornblower was gazing round him, and filling his lungs deep with air at every respiration as he walked. He noticed that he was doing this, and gri

There was just the gentlest wind abeam pushing the Lydia along at three or four knots; peeping over the horizon on the port side were the tops of the interminable volcanoes which formed the backbone of this benighted country. Perhaps after all el Supremo might accomplish his wild dream of conquering Central America; perhaps after all there might be some solid foundation in the hope that good communications might be opened across the Isthmus—by Panama if the Nicaraguan scheme proved impracticable. That would make a profound difference to the world. It would bring Van Diemen’s Land and the Moluccas into closer relation to the civilised world. It would open the Pacific to England by evading the difficulties of the journey round the Horn or by the Cape of Good Hope and India, and in that case the Pacific might see squadrons of ships of the line cruising where hardly a frigate had penetrated up to that moment. The Spanish Empire of Mexico and California might acquire a new importance.