The Happy Return

“The house of el Supremo,” said Hernandez.

In the patio servants came and took their horses, while Hornblower stiffly dismounted and contemplated the ruin which riding had caused to his best silk stockings. The superior servants who conducted them into the house were dressed in clothes similar in their blend of rags and finery to those Hernandez wore—scarlet and gold above, bare feet and rags below. The most gorgeous of all, whose features seemed to indicate a strong dash of negro blood in his ancestry along with the Indian and the slight trace of European, came up with a worried look on his face.

“El Supremo has been kept waiting,” he said. “Please come this way as quickly as you can.”

He almost ran before them down a corridor to a door studded with brass. On this he knocked loudly, waited a moment, knocked again, and then threw open the door, bending himself double as he did so. Hornblower, at Hernandez’ gesture, strode into the room, Hernandez behind him, and the majordomo closed the door. It was a long room, limewashed to a glittering white, whose ceiling was supported by thick wooden beams, painted and carved. Towards the farther end, solitary in the bleak bareness of the room, stood a treble dais, and in a canopied chair on the dais sat the man Hornblower had been sent half round the world to see.

He did not seem very impressive or dignified; a small swarthy man, restless and fidgety, with piercing black eyes and lank black hair begi

“You have been a long time,” snapped Alvarado. “Eleven men have been flogged during your absence.”

“Supremo,” sighed Hernandez—his teeth were chattering with fright—“the captain came instantly on hearing your summons.”

Alvarado turned his piercing eyes upon Hornblower, who bowed stiffly. His mind was playing with the suspicion that the eleven men who had been flogged had suffered, unaccountably, because of the length of time it took to ride a horse from the beach to the house.

“Captain Horatio Hornblower, of His Brita

“You have brought me arms and powder?”

“They are in the ship.”

“That is well. You will make arrangements with General Hernandez here for landing them.”

Hornblower thought of his frigate’s almost empty storerooms; and he had three hundred and eighty men to feed. Moreover, as with every ship’s captain, he was already feeling irritation at dependence on the shore. He would be restless and uncomfortable until the Lydia was fully charged again with food and water and wood and every other necessary, sufficient to take her back round the Horn at least as far as the West Indies or St. Helena, if not home.

“I can hand nothing over, sir, until my ship’s needs are satisfied,” he said. He heard Hernandez drawing his breath sharply at this sacrilegious temporising in the face of orders from el Supremo. The latter’s eyebrows came together; for a moment it seemed likely that he would attempt to impose his imperious will upon the captain, but immediately afterwards his expression cleared as he realised the folly of quarrelling with his new ally.

“Certainly,” he said. “Please make known to General Hernandez what you require, and he will supply you.”

Hornblower had had dealing with officers of the Spanish services, and knew what they could accomplish in the way of fair promises not carried out, and procrastination and shiftiness and doubledealing. He guessed that Spanish American rebel officers would be proportionately less trustworthy. He decided to make known his wants now, so that there might be a fair chance of seeing a part at least of his demands satisfied in the near full.

“My watercasks must be refilled tomorrow,” he said.

Hernandez nodded.

“There is a spring close to where we landed. If you wish, I will have men to help you.”

“Thank you, but that will not be necessary. My ship’s crew will attend to it. Besides water I need—”

Hornblower’s mind began to total up all the multifarious wants of a frigate seven months at sea.

“Yes, señor?”

“I shall need two hundred bullocks. Two hundred and fifty if they are thin and small. Five hundred pigs. One hundred quintals of salt. Forty tons of ship’s bread, and if biscuit is unobtainable I shall need the equivalent amount of flour, with ovens and fuel provided to bake it. The juice of forty thousand lemons, oranges or limes—I can supply the casks to contain it. Ten tons of sugar. Five tons of tobacco. A ton of coffee. You grow potatoes on this coast, do you not? Then twenty tons of potatoes will suffice.”

Hernandez’ face had grown longer and longer during this formidable recital.

“But, captain—” he ventured to protest, but Hornblower cut him short.

“Then for our current needs, while we are in harbour,” he went on, “I shall need five bullocks a day, two dozen chickens, as many eggs as you can provide, and sufficient fresh vegetables for the daily consumption of my ship’s company.”

By nature Hornblower was the mildest of men, but in any matter regarding his ship fear of being deemed a failure drove him into unexpected hardness and temerity.

“Two hundred bullocks!” said the wretched Hernandez. “Five hundred pigs?”

“That is what I said,” replied Hornblower, inexorably. “Two hundred fat bullocks.”

At this point el Suprerno intervened.

“See that the captain’s wants are satisfied,” he said, with an impatient wave of his hand. “Start now.”

Hernandez only hesitated for a further tenth of a second, and then retired. The big brass bound door closed silently behind him.

“That is the only way to deal with these people,” said el Supremo, lightly. “They are no better than beasts. Any kind of refinement is wasted upon them. Doubtless you saw on your way here various criminals suffering punishment?”

“I did.”

“My ancestors on earth,” said el Supremo, “went to much trouble in arranging elaborate punishments. They burned people to death with elaborate ceremonial. They cut out their hearts to the accompaniment of music and dances, or pressed them to death in wrappings of raw hide exposed to the sun. I find all that quite u

“Yes,” said Hornblower.

“They are incapable of absorbing even the simplest of conceptions. There are some who to this very day ca

“Indeed?” said Hornblower.

“One of my earliest lieutenants could not shake himself free from the influence of early education. When I a

“Of course.”

Hornblower was utterly bewildered by all this. But he clung to the fact that he had to ally himself to this madman. The revictualling of the Lydia depended upon his acting in concert with him, if nothing else did—and that was a matter of the most vital primary importance.

“Your King George must have been delighted to hear that I had decided to act in concert with him,” continued el Supremo.

“He charged me with messages to you assuring you of his friendship,” said Hornblower cautiously.