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“Pass the word for the captain’s coxswain,” he said to the midshipman of the watch. He heard the cry echo down the main deck, and in two minutes Brown was scurrying towards him along the gangway, halting breathless for orders.
“Can you swim, Brown?”
“Swim, sir? Yes, sir.”
Hornblower looked at Brown’s burly shoulders and thick neck. There was a mat of black hair visible through the opening of his shirt.
“How many of the barge’s crew can swim!”
Brown looked first one way and then the other before he made the confession which he knew would excite contempt. Yet he dared not lie, not to Hornblower.
“I du
Hornblower refraining from the obvious rejoinder was more scathing than Hornblower saying “You ought to know.”
“I want a crew for the barge,” said Hornblower. “Everyone a good swimmer, and everyone a volunteer. It’s for a dangerous service, and, mark you, Brown, they must be true volunteers—none of your pressgang ways.”
“Aye aye, sir,” said Brown, and after a moment’s hesitation. “Everyone’ll volunteer, sir. It’ll be hard to pick ‘em. Are you going, sir?”
“Yes. A cutlass for every man. And a packet of combustibles for every man.”
“Com-combustibles, sir?”
“Yes. Flint and steel. A couple of port-fires, oily rags, and a bit of slowmatch, in a watertight packet for each man. Go to the sail-maker and get oilskin for them. And a lanyard each to carry it if we swim.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
“And give Mr. Bush my compliments. Ask him to step this way, and then get your crew ready.”
Bush came rolling aft, his face alight with excitement; and before he had reached the quarterdeck the ship was abuzz with rumours—the wildest tales about what the captain had decided to do next were circulating among the crew, who had spent the morning with one eye on their duties and the other on the coast of France.
“Mr. Bush,” said Hornblower. “I am going ashore to burn that coaster over there.”
“Aye aye, sir. Are you going in person, sir?”
“Yes,” snapped Hornblower. He could not explain to Bush that he was constitutionally unable to send men away on a task for which volunteers were necessary and not go himself. He eyed Bush defiantly, and Bush eyed him back, opened his mouth to protest, thought better of it, and changed what he was going to say. “Longboat and launch, sir?”
“No. They’d take the ground half a mile from the shore.” That was obvious; four successive lines of foam showed where the feeble waves were breaking, far out from the water’s edge. “I’m taking my barge and a volunteer crew.”
Still Hornblower, by his expression, dared Bush to make any protest at all, but this time Bush actually ventured to make one.
“Yes, sir. Can’t I go, sir?”
“No.”
There was no chance of further dispute in the face of that blank negative. Bush had the queer feeling—he had known it before—as he looked at Hornblower’s haughty expression that he was a father dealing with a high-spirited son; he loved his captain as he would have loved a son if ever he had had one.
“And mark this, too, Bush. No rescue parties. If we’re lost, we’re lost. You understand? Shall I give you that in writing?”
“No need, sir. I understand.”
Bush said the words sadly. When it came to the supreme test of practice, Hornblower, however much he respected Bush’s qualities and abilities, had no opinion whatever of his first lieutenant’s capacity to make original plans. The thought of Bush blundering about on the mainland of France throwing away valuable lives in a hopeless attempt to rescue his captain frightened him.
“Right. Heave the ship to, Mr. Bush. We’ll be back in half an hour if all goes well. Stand off and wait for us.”
The barge pulled eight oars; as Hornblower gave the word he had high hopes that her launching had passed unobserved from the shore. Bush’s morning sail drill must have accustomed the French to seemingly purposeless manoeuvres by the Sutherland; her brief backing of her topsails might be u
They had passed the first line of breakers without taking ground—breakers they could hardly be called, so sluggish was the sea—and darted in towards the golden beach. A moment later the boat baulked as she slid over the sand, moved on a few yards, and grounded once more.
“Over with you, men,” said Hornblower.
He threw his legs over the side and dropped thigh deep into the water. The crew were as quick as he, and seizing the gunwales, they ran the lightened boat up until the water was no higher than their ankles. Hornblower’s first instinct was to allow excitement to carry him away and head a wild rush inland, but he checked himself.
“Cutlasses?” he asked, sternly. “Fire packets?” Ru
“Come along, men,” he said, and broke into a dog trot. The old man shouted something as the seamen tramped the vines; they laughed like children at hearing French spoken for the first time in their lives. To most of them this was their first sight of a vineyard, too—Hornblower could hear them chattering behind him in amazement at the orderly rows of seemingly worthless stumps, and the tiny bunches of immature grapes.
They crossed the vineyard; a sharp drop on the further side brought them on to a rough towpath along the canal. Here the lagoon was no more than two hundred yards wide, and the navigable cha
“Quiet, you fools,” growled Hornblower. He unbuckled his sword belt and stripped off his coat.
At the sound of the men’s shouting the crew of the coaster came tumbling forward. There were three men, and a moment later they were joined by two sturdy women, looking at them from under their hands. It was one of the women, quicker witted, who guessed what the group of men stripping on the bank implied. Hornblower, tearing off his breeches, heard one of them give a shriek and saw her ru