A Ship of the Line

Normally it might be harmful to discipline to rate a subordinate officer in front of the men, but in the case of the master-at-arms Hornblower knew that little damage was being done. The men would come to hate the master-at-arms any way sooner or later—his privileges of rank and pay were given him so that he might be a whipping boy for the crew’s discontent. Hornblower could drop the rasp in his voice and address the hands directly, now.

“A man who does his duty as best he can,” he said, kindly, “has nothing to fear in this ship, and everything to hope for. Now I want to see how smart you can look in your new clothes, and with the dirt of the place you have come from washed off you. Dismiss.”

He had won over some of the poor fools, at least, he told himself. Some of the faces which had been sullen with despair were shining with hope now, after this experience of being treated as men and not as brutes—for the first time for months, if not the first time in their lives. He watched them off the gangway. Poor devils; in Hornblower’s opinion they had made a bad bargain in exchanging the gaol for the navy. But at least they represented thirty out of the two hundred and fifty additional human bodies which he needed to drag at ropes and to heave at capstan bars so as to take this old Sutherland out to sea.

Lieutenant Bush came hastening on to the quarterdeck, and touched his hat to his captain. The stern swarthy face with its incongruous blue eyes broke into a smile just as incongruous. It gave Hornblower a queer twinge, almost of conscience, to see the evident pleasure which Bush experienced at sight of him. It was odd to know that he was admired—it might even be said that he was loved—by this very capable sailor, this splendid disciplinarian and fearless fighter who boasted so many of the good qualities in which Horn-blower felt himself to be lacking.

“Good morning, Bush,” he said. “Have you seen the new draft?”

“No, sir. I was rowing guard for the middle watch and I’ve only just turned out. Where do they hail from, sir?”

Hornblower told him, and Bush rubbed his hands with pleasure.

“Thirty!” he said. “That’s rare. I never hoped for more than a dozen from Exeter Assizes. And Bodmin Assizes open today. Please God we get another thirty there.”

“We won’t get topmen from Bodmin Assizes,” said Hornblower, comforted beyond measure at the equanimity with which Bush regarded the introduction of gaolbirds into the Sutherland’s crew.

“No, sir. But the West India convoy’s due this week. The guards ought to nab two hundred there. We’ll get twenty if we get our rights.”

“M’m,” said Hornblower, and turned away uneasily. He was not the sort of captain—neither the distinguished kind nor the wheedling kind—who could be sure of favours from the Port Admiral. “I must look round below.”

That changed the subject effectively enough.

“The women are restless,” said Bush. “I’d better come, too, sir, if you don’t object.”

The lower gun deck offered a strange spectacle, lit vaguely by the light which came through half a dozen open gun ports. There were fifty women there. Three or four were still in their hammocks, lying on their sides looking out on the others. Some were sitting in groups on the deck, chattering loud-voiced. One or two were chaffering for food through the gun ports with the occupants of shore boats floating just outside; the netting which impeded desertion had a broad enough mesh to allow a hand to pass through. Two more, each backed by a supporting group, were quarrelling violently. They were in odd contrast—one was tall and dark, so tall as to have to crouch round-shouldered under the five foot deck beams, while the other, short, broad, and fair, was standing up boldly before her menacing advance.

“That’s what I said,” she maintained stoutly. “And I’ll say it again. I ain’t afeared o’ you, Mrs Dawson, as you call yourself.”

“A-ah,” screamed the dark one at this crowning insult. She swooped forward, and with greedy hands she seized the other by the hair, shaking her head from side to side as if she would soon shake it off. In return her face was scratched and her shins were kicked by her stout-hearted opponent. They whirled round in a flurry of petticoats, when one of the women in the hammocks screamed a warning to them.

“Stop it, you mad bitches! ‘Ere’s the cap’n.”

They fell apart, panting and tousled. Every eye was turned towards Hornblower as he walked forward in the patchy light, his head bowed under the deck above.

“The next woman fighting will be put ashore instantly,” growled Hornblower. The dark woman swept her hair from her eyes and sniffed with disdain.

“You needn’t put me ashore, Cap’n,” she said. “I’m goin’. There ain’t a farden to be had out o’ this starvation ship.”

She was apparently expressing a sentiment which was shared by a good many of the women, for the speech was followed by a little buzz of approval.

“Ain’t the men never goin’ to get their pay notes?” piped up the woman in the hammock.

“Enough o’ that,” roared Bush, suddenly. He pushed forward anxious to save his captain from the insults to which he was exposed, thanks to a government which left its men still unpaid after a month in port. “You there, what are you doing in your hammock after eight bells?”

But this attempt to assume a counter offensive met with disaster.

“I’ll come out if you like, Mr. Lieutenant,” she said, flicking off her blanket and sliding to the deck. “I parted with my gown to buy my Tom a sausage, and my petticoat’s bought him a soop o’ West Country ale. Would you have me on deck in my shift, Mr. Lieutenant?”

A titter went round the deck.

“Get back and be decent,” spluttered Bush, on fire with embarrassment.

Hornblower was laughing, too—perhaps it was because he was married that the sight of a half-naked woman alarmed him not nearly as much as it did his first lieutenant.

“Never will I be decent now,” said the woman, swinging her legs up into the hammock and composedly draping the blanket over her, “until my Tom gets his pay warrant.”

“An’ when he gets it,” sneered the fair woman. “What can he do with it without shore leave? Sell it to a bumboat shark for a quarter!”

“Fi’ pound for twenty-three months’ pay!” added another. “An me a month gone a’ready.”

“Avast there,” said Bush.

Hornblower beat a retreat, abandoning—forgetting, rather—the object of his visit of inspection below. He could not face those women when the question of pay came up again. The men had been scandalously badly treated, imprisoned in the ship within sight of land, and their wives (some of them certainly were wives, although by Admiralty regulations a simple verbal declaration of the existence of a marriage was sufficient to allow them on board) had just cause of complaint. No one, not even Bush, knew that the few guineas which had been doled out among the crew represented a large part of Hornblower’s accumulated pay—all he could spare, in fact, except for the necessary money to pay his officers’ expenses when they should start on their recruiting journeys.

His vivid imagination and absurd sensitiveness between them perhaps exaggerated part of the men’s hardships. The thought of the promiscuity of life below decks, where a man was allotted eighteen inches’ width in which to swing his hammock, while his wife was allowed eighteen inches next to him, all in a long row, husbands, wives, and single men, appalled him. So did the thought of women having to live on the revolting lower deck food. Possibly he made insufficient allowance for the hardening effect of long habit.

He emerged through the fore hatchway on to the maindeck a little unexpectedly. Thompson, one of the captains of the forecastle, was dealing with the new hands.

“P’raps we’ll make sailors of you,” he was saying, “and p’raps we won’t. Overside with a shot at your feet, more likely, before we sight Ushant And a waste o’ good shot, too. Come on wi’ that pump, there. Let’s see the colour o’ your hides, gaol-birds. When the cat gets at you we’ll see the colour o’ your backbones, too, you—”