The Happy Return

“I was only doing my duty, ma’am,” he said, “in pointing out the dangers to which you might be exposed. For myself there would be nothing that would give me greater pleasure than your presence on board my ship.”

Lady Barbara went down in a curtsy far deeper than her first, and at this moment Gray came up and touched his cap.

“Your baggage is all on board, ma’am,” he said.

They had hove the stuff up with a whip from the main yardarm, and now it littered the gangway—leather cases, ironbound wooden boxes, dome-topped trunks.

“Thank you, sir.” Lady Barbara brought out a flat leather purse from her pocket, and took from it a gold coin. “Would you be so kind as to give this to the boat’s crew?”

“Lord love you, ma’am, you don’t need to give those Dago niggers gold. Silver’s all they deserve.”

“Give them this, then, and thank you for your kindness.”

Gray hurried off, and Hornblower heard him bargaining in English with a boat’s crew who knew no tongue but Spanish. The threat of having a cold shot hove down into the boat compelled it at length to shove off still spattering expostulation. A new little wave of irritation rose in Hornblower’s mind. He disliked seeing his warrant officers ru

“There will be no room in your cabin for a tenth of that baggage, ma’am,” he snapped.

Lady Barbara nodded gravely.

“I have dwelt in a cabin before this, sir. That sea chest there holds everything I shall need on board. The rest can be put where you will—until we reach England.”

Hornblower almost stamped on the deck with rage. He was unused to a woman who could display practical common-sense like this. It was infuriating that he could find no way of discomposing her—and then he saw her smiling, guessed that she was smiling at the evident struggle on his face, and blushed hotly again. He turned on his heel and led the way below without a word.

Lady Barbara looked round the captain’s cabin with a whimsical smile, but she made no comment, not even when she surveyed the grim discomfort of the after-cabin.

“A frigate has few of the luxuries of an Indiaman you see, ma’am,” said Hornblower, bitterly. He was bitter because his poverty at the time when he commissioned the Lydia had allowed him to purchase none of the minor comforts which many frigate-captains could afford.

“I was just thinking when you spoke,” said Lady Barbara, gently, “that it was scandalous that a King’s officer should be treated worse than a fat John Company man. But I have only one thing to ask for which I do not see.”

“And that is, ma’am—?”

“A key for the lock on the cabin door.”

“I will have the armourer make you a key, ma’am. But there will be a sentry at this door night and day.”

The implications which Hornblower read into this request of Lady Barbara’s angered him again. She was slandering both him and his ship.

“Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?” said Lady Barbara. “It is not on my account, Captain, that I need a key. It is Hebe here whom I have to lock in unless she is directly under eye. She can no more keep from the men than a moth from a candle.”

The little negress gri

“Where will she sleep, then?” asked Hornblower, disconcerted once more.

“On the floor of my cabin. And mark my words, Hebe, the first time I find you not there during the night I’ll lace you so that you will have to sleep on your face.”

Hebe still gri

“Very good,” he said. “Polwheal, take my things into Mr. Bush’s cabin. Give Mr. Bush my apologies and tell him he will have to berth in the wardroom. See that Lady Barbara has all that she wants, and ask Mr. Gray with my compliments to attend to putting the baggage in my storeroom. You will forgive me, Lady Barbara, but I am already late in paying my call upon the Viceroy.”

Chapter X

The captain of the Lydia came on board again to the accompaniment of the usual twitterings of the pipes and the presenting of arms by the marine guard. He walked very carefully, for good news just arrived from Europe had made the Viceroy pressingly hospitable while the notification of the first case of yellow fever in Panama had made him apprehensive so that Hornblower had been compelled to drink one glass of wine too much. A naturally abstemious man, he hated the feeling of not being quite master of himself.

As always, he looked sharply round the deck as soon as his feet were on it. Lady Barbara was sitting in a hammock chair on the quarterdeck—someone must have had that chair made for her during the day; and someone had rigged for her a scrap of awning in the mizzen rigging so that she sat in the shade with Hebe crouching at her feet. She looked cool and comfortable, and smiled readily at him as he approached, but he looked away from her. He would not speak to her until his head was clearer.

“Call all hands to weigh anchor and make sail,” he said to Bush. “We leave at once.”

He went below, checked himself with a gesture of a

He cursed the woman as he stripped off his clothes, all wet with sweat. Then a new trouble came into his mind. He had to leave Polwheal to keep watch while he had his shower bath under the pump lest she should surprise him there naked. He would have to issue orders to the crew so as to make sure that her fastidious eyes would not be offended by the state of undress which they habitually affected in the tropics. He combed his hair and cursed its curliness as drawing additional attention to the way his hair was receding from his forehead.

Then he hurried on deck; he was glad that the need for looking after the ship saved him from meeting Lady Barbara’s eyes and seeing her reaction to his shabby clothes. He felt her gaze upon him, all the same, as he stood with his back to her attending to the business of getting under weigh. Half of one watch were at the capstan with all their weight upon the bars, their bare feet seeking holds on the smooth deck while Harrison bellowed encouragement and threats, and stimulated the laggards with cuts from his cane. Sullivan the mad fiddler, the two Marine fifers and the two drummers were playing some lively tune—to Hornblower one tune was much the same as another—on the forecastle.

The cable came steadily in, the ship’s boys with their nippers following it to the hatch-coamings and scuttling back immediately to take a fresh hold on cable and messenger. But the measured clank-clank of the capstan grew slower and slower and then came to a dead stop.

“Heave, you bastards! Heave!” bellowed Harrison. “Here, you fo’c’sle men, bear a hand! Now, heave!”

There were twenty more men thrusting at the bars now. Their added strength brought one more solemn clank from the capstan.