The Happy Return

“Fire!”

A thousand musket balls were vomited from the carronades straight into the packed crowd. There was a moment of silence, and then the pandemonium of shouts and cheers was replaced by a thin chorus of screams and cries—the blast of musket balls had swept the Natividad’s forecastle clear from side to side.

For a space the two ships clung together in this position; the Lydia still had a dozen guns that would bear, and these pounded away with their muzzles almost touching the Natividad’s bow. Then wind and sea parted them again, the Lydia to leeward now, drifting away from the rolling hulk; in the English ship every gun was in action, while from the Natividad came not a gun, not even a musket shot.

Hornblower fought off his weariness again.

“Cease firing,” he shouted to Gerard on the main deck, and the guns fell silent.

Hornblower stared through the darkness at the vague mass of the Natividad, wallowing in the waves.

“Surrender!” he shouted.

“Never!” came the reply—Crespo’s voice, he could have sworn to it, thin and high pitched. It added two or three words of obscene insult.

Hornblower could afford to smile at that, even through his weariness. He had fought his battle and won it.

“You have done all that brave men could do,” he shouted.

“Not all, yet, Captain,” wailed the voice in the darkness.

Then something caught Hornblower’s eyes—a wavering glow of red about the Natividad’s vague bows.

“Crespo, you fool!” he shouted. “Your ship’s on fire! Surrender, while you can.”

“Never!”

The Lydia’s guns, hard against the Natividad’s side, had flung their flaming wads in amongst the splintered timbers. The tinder-dry wood of the old ship had taken fire from them, and the fire was spreading fast. It was brighter already than when Hornblower had noticed it; the ship would be a mass of flames soon. Hornblower’s first duty was to his own ship—when the fire should reach the powder charges on the Natividad’s decks, or when it should attain the magazine, the ship would become a volcano of flaming fragments, imperilling the Lydia.

“We must haul off from her, Mr. Bush,” said Hornblower, speaking formally to conceal the tremor in his voice. “Man the braces, there.”

The Lydia swung away, close hauled, clawing her way up to windward of the flaming wreck. Bush and Hornblower gazed back at her. There were bright flames now to be seen, spouting from the shattered bows—the red glow was reflected in the heaving sea around her. And then, as they looked, they saw the flames vanish abruptly, like an extinguished candle. There was nothing to be seen at all, nothing save darkness and the faint glimmer of the wave crests. The sea had swallowed the Natividad before the flames could destroy her.

“Sunk, by God!” exclaimed Bush, leaning out over the rail.

Hornblower still seemed to hear that last wailing “Never!” during the seconds of silence that followed. Yet he was perhaps the first of all his ship’s company to recover from the shock. He put his ship about and ran down to the scene of the Natividad’s sinking. He sent off Hooker and the cutter to search for survivors—the cutter was the only boat left, for gig and jolly boat had been shattered by the Natividad’s fire, and the planks of the launch were floating five miles away. They picked up a few men—two were hauled out of the water by men in the Lydia’s chains, and the cutter found half a dozen swimmers; that was all. The Lydia’s crew tried to be kind to them, as they stood on her deck in the lantern light with the water streaming from their ragged clothes and their lank black hair, but they were sullen and silent; there was even one who struggled for a moment, as if to continue the battle which the Natividad had fought so desperately.

“Never mind, we’ll make topmen of them yet,” said Hornblower, trying to speak lightly.

Fatigue had reached such a pitch now that he was speaking as if out of a dream, as if all these solid surroundings of his, the ship, her guns and masts and sails, Bush’s burly figure, were unreal and ghostlike, and only his weariness and the ache inside his skull were existing things. He heard his voice as though he were speaking from a yard away.

“Aye aye, sir,” said the boatswain.

Anything was grist that came to the Royal Navy’s mill—Harrison was prepared to make seamen out of the strangest human material; he had done so all his life, for that matter.

“What course shall I set, sir?” asked Bush, as Hornblower turned back to the quarterdeck.

“Course?” said Hornblower, vaguely. “Course?”

It was terribly hard to realise that the battle was over, the Natividad sunk, that there was no enemy afloat within thousands of miles of sea. It was hard to realise that the Lydia was in acute danger, too; that the pumps, clanking away monotonously, were not quite able to keep the leaks under, that the Lydia still had a sail stretched under her bottom, and stood in the acutest need of a complete refit.

Hornblower came by degrees to realise that now he had to start a new chapter in the history of the Lydia, to make fresh plans. And there was a long line of people waiting for immediate orders, too—Bush, here, and the boatswain and the carpenter and the gu

He must report his success at Panama as soon as he could; that was obvious to him now. Perhaps he could refit there, although he saw small chance of it in that inhospitable roadstead, especially with yellow fever in the town. So he must carry the shattered Lydia to Panama. He laid off a course for Cape Mala, by a supreme effort compelled his mind to realise that he had a fair wind, and came up again with his orders to find that the mass of people who were clamouring for his attention had miraculously vanished. Bush had chased them all away, although he never discovered it. He gave the course to Bush, and then Polwheal materialised himself at his elbow, with boat cloak and hammock chair. Hornblower had no protest left in him. He allowed himself to be wrapped in the cloak, and he fell half fainting into the chair. It was twenty-one hours since he had last sat down. Polwheal had brought food, too, but he merely ignored that. He wanted no food! all he wanted was rest.

Then for a second he was wide awake again. He had remembered Lady Barbara, battened down below with the wounded in the dark and stifling bowels of the ship. But he relaxed at once. The blasted woman could look after herself—she was quite capable of doing so. Nothing mattered now. His head sank on his breast again. The next thing to disturb him was the sound of his own snores, and that did not disturb him long. He slept and he snored through all the din which the crew made in their endeavour to get the Lydia ship-shape again.