The Happy Return

Chapter XVIII

What awoke Hornblower was the sun, which lifted itself over the horizon and shone straight into his eyes. He stirred and blinked, and for a space he tried, like a child, to shield his eyes with his hands and return to sleep. He did not know where he was, and for that time he did not care. Then he began to remember the events of yesterday, and he ceased trying to sleep and instead tried to wake up. Oddly, at first he remembered the details of the fighting and could not recall the sinking of the Natividad. When that recollection shot into his brain he was fully awake.

He rose from his chair, stretching himself painfully, for all his joints ached with the fatigues of yesterday. Bush was standing by the wheel, his face grey and lined and strangely old in the hard light Hornblower nodded to him and received his salute in return; Bush was wearing his cocked hat over the dirty white bandage round his forehead. Hornblower would have spoken to him, but all his attention was caught up immediately in looking round the ship. There was a good breeze blowing which must have backed round during the night, for the Lydia could only just hold her course close hauled. She was under all plain sail; Hornblower’s rapid inspection revealed to him i

It was only then, after weather and course and sail set had been noted, that Hornblower’s sailor’s eye came down to the decks. From forward came the monotonous clangour of the pumps; the clear white water which was gushing from them was the surest indication that the ship was making so much water that it could only just be kept in check. On the lee side gangway was a long, long row of corpses, each in its hammock. Hornblower flinched when he saw the length of the row, and it called for all his will to count them. There were twenty-four dead men along the gangway; and fourteen had been buried yesterday. Some of these dead might be—probably were—the mortally wounded of yesterday, but thirty-eight dead seemed certainly to indicate at least seventy wounded down below. Rather more than one-third of the Lydia’s company were casualties, then. He wondered who they were, wondered whose distorted faces were concealed beneath those hammocks.

The dead on deck outnumbered the living. Bush seemed to have sent below every man save for a dozen men to hand and steer, which was sensible of him, seeing that every one must be worn out with yesterday’s toil while one man out of every seven on board would have to be employed at the pumps until the shot holes could be got at and plugged. The rest of the crew, at first glance, were all asleep, sprawled on the main deck under the gangways. Hardly anyone had had the strength to sling a hammock (if their hammocks had survived the battle); all the rest lay as they had dropped, lying tangled here and there, heads pillowed on each other or on more unsympathetic objects like ring bolts and the hind axletrees of the guns.

There were still evident many signs of yesterday’s battle, quite apart from the sheeted corpses and the dark stains, not thoroughly swabbed, which disfigured the white planking. The decks were furrowed and grooved in all directions, with jagged splinters still standing up here and there. There were shot holes in the ship’s sides with canvas roughly stretched over them. The port sills were stained black with powder; on one of them an eighteen-pounder shot stood out, half buried in the tough oak. But on the other hand an immense amount of work had been done, from laying out the dead to securing the guns and frapping the breechings. Apart from the weariness of her crew, the Lydia was ready to fight another battle at two minutes’ notice.

Hornblower felt a prick of shame that so much should have been done while he slept lazily in his hammock chair. He forced himself to feel no illwill on that account. Although to praise Bush’s work was to admit his own deficiencies he felt that he must be generous.

“Very good indeed, Mr. Bush,” he said, walking over to him; yet his natural shyness combined with his feeling of shame to make his speech stilted. “I am both astonished and pleased at the work you have accomplished.”

“Today is Sunday, sir,” said Bush, simply.

So it was. Sunday was the day of the captain’s inspection, when he went round every part of the ship examining everything, to see that the first lieutenant was doing his duty in keeping the ship efficient. On Sunday the ship had to be swept and garnished, all the falls of rope flemished down, the hands fallen in by divisions in their best clothes, divine service held, the Articles of War read—Sunday was the day when the professional ability of every first lieutenant in His Brita

Hornblower could not fight down a smile at this ingenious explanation.

“Sunday or no Sunday,” he said, “you have done magnificently, Mr. Bush.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“And I shall remember to say so in my report to the Admiralty.”

“I know you’ll do that, sir.”

Bush’s weary face was illuminated by a gleam of pleasure. A successful single ship action was usually rewarded by promotion to Commander of the first lieutenant, and for a man like Bush, with no family and no co

“They may make much of this in England, when eventually they hear about it,” said Hornblower.

“I’m certain of it, sir. It isn’t every day of the week that a frigate sinks a ship of the line.”

It was stretching a point to call the Natividad that—sixty years ago when she was built she may have been considered just fit to lie in the line, but times had changed since then. But it was a very notable feat that the Lydia had accomplished, all the same. It was only now that Hornblower began to appreciate how notable it was, and his spirit rose in proportion. There was another criterion which the British public was prone to apply in estimating the merit of a naval action, and the Board of Admiralty itself not infrequently used the same standard.

“What’s the butcher’s bill?” demanded Hornblower, brutally, voicing the thoughts of both of them—brutally because otherwise he might be thought guilty of sentiment.

“Thirty-eight killed, sir,” said Bush, taking a dirty scrap of paper from his pocket. “Seventy-five wounded. Four missing. The missing are Harper, Dawson, North, and Chump the negro, sir—they were lost when the launch was sunk. Clay was killed in the first day’s action—”

Hornblower nodded; he remembered Clay’s headless body sprawled on the quarterdeck.

“—and John Summers, master’s mate, Henry Vincent and James Clifton, boatswain’s mates, killed yesterday, and Donald Scott Galbraith, third lieutenant, Lieutenant Samuel Simmonds of the Marines, Midshipman Howard Savage and four other warrant officers wounded.”

“Galbraith?” said Hornblower. That piece of news prevented him from begi

“Badly, sir. Both legs smashed below the knees.”

Galbraith had met the fate which Hornblower had dreaded for himself. The shock recalled Hornblower to his duty.