A Ship of the Line

Then he checked himself. He told himself very sensibly that only misery and madness lay before him if he allowed himself to think about that, and, grasping resolutely at the tail of the first train of thought which recurred to him, he began to analyse the whist he had been playing. If he had not taken that unsuccessful finesse against that lead of Elliott’s he would have saved the rubber. His play had been correct—the chances were three to two—but a gambler would not have stopped to consider that. He would have gone baldheaded for results and in this case would have achieved them. But only a gambler could risk a king being unguarded. He prided himself on the precision and science of his play. Nevertheless, he was two guineas the poorer as the result of this evening, and the loss of two guineas was a devilish serious matter at present.

He wanted to buy a litter of pigs, and two dozen fowls—a couple of sheep as well, for that matter—before weighing anchor in the Sutherland. There was the wine he needed, too. Some he could buy later and more advantageously in the Mediterranean, but it would be well to have five or six dozen on board at the start. The effect on the officers and men might be bad for discipline if he were not provided with every luxury as a captain should be; and if the voyage out were long and lazy he would have to entertain his brother captains—the Admiral, too, most likely—and they would look at him askance if he offered them the ship’s fare on which he was content to live. The list of things he needed stretched longer and longer in his imagination. Port, sherry, and madeira. Apples and cigars. Raisins and cheeses. A dozen at least of shirts. Four more pairs of silk stockings if there was to be much shore-going formality, as seemed likely. A chest of tea. Pepper and cloves and allspice. Prunes and figs. Wax candles. All these things were necessary to his dignity as captain—and to his own pride, for he hated the idea of people thinking him poor.

He could spend all the next quarter’s pay on these things and still not have bought too much. Maria would feel the pinch during the next three months, but Maria, fortunately, was used to poverty and to staving off creditors. It was hard on Maria, but if ever he became an admiral he would repay her loyalty with luxury. There were books which he wanted to buy as well; not for entertainment—he had a chest of books, including Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire for bedside reading, all old friends—but to fit him for the coming campaign. In the Morning Chronicle yesterday there had been a notice of ‘An Account of the Present War in Spain’ which he would like to have, and there were half a dozen others. The more he knew about the peninsula on whose coast he was going to fight, and of the leaders of the nation he was to help, the better. But books cost money, and he did not know where to turn for money.

He rolled over again and thought of the ill-fortune which had always dogged him in the matter of prize money. The Admiralty had refused to pay out a pe

Chapter V

Captain Hornblower was walking up and down his quarterdeck amid all the last minute bustle of getting ready for sea. He was raging to himself at the length of time necessary for these final preparations although he knew quite well that every factor causing delay was susceptible to a reasonable explanation. Two-thirds of the men scurrying about the decks, urged on by the cane of Harrison the boatswain and the rope’s ends of the petty officers, were landsmen most of whom until lately had never seen the sea, let alone been in a ship. The simplest order left them merely bewildered, and they had to be led to their tasks and the ropes actually put into their hands; even then they were far more inefficient than trained seamen, because they had not learned the knack of throwing all their weight simultaneously on the rope and walking away with it. And having once set them heaving, it was hard for a petty officer to remember that a shout of ‘Avast’ or ‘Belay’ meant nothing to them. More than once the few trained seamen among them, obeying promptly, were thrown off their feet and trampled upon by the rush of landsmen still heaving away. On one occasion of this sort a water butt while being hove up by a whip to the main yardarm had simply gone away with a run again, and only the mercy of providence had saved it from going clean through the bottom of the longboat overside.

It was owing to Hornblower’s own orders that the water was so late in being brought aboard. Water left months in cask became so foul and so alive with living things that he had put off bringing it aboard until the last possible moment. Even a gain of a day or two was desirable. That twelve tons of biscuit had also been delayed was the result of the usual incompetence of the victualling yard, whose officials seemed incapable of reading or writing or figuring. The complication due to the fact that a shore boat with captain’s stores was having to be unloaded at the same time, and its precious cargo passed carefully down the after hatchway, was due to the Patriotic Fund’s delay in sending down to him the sword value one hundred guineas which he had been awarded for his fight with the Natividad. No shopkeeper or ship chandler would give credit to a captain about to sail on a new commission. The sword had only arrived yesterday, barely in time for him to pledge it with Duddingstone the chandler, and Duddingstone had only grudgingly given him credit on it, forcing him to promise faithfully to redeem it at the earliest opportunity.

“A sight too much writing on this for me,” said Duddingstone, pointing with a stubby forefinger at the wordy legend which the Patriotic Fund had had engraved, at vast expense, upon the blue steel of the blade.

Only the gold on the hilt and scabbard, and the seed pearls on the pommel, had any intrinsic value. Duddingstone, to give him his due, had been quite right in saying that it was hardly worth forty guineas’ credit at his shop, even allowing for his profit and the chance of its being redeemed. But he had kept his word and had sent off the stores at dawn next morning—one more complication in the business of preparing for sea.

Along the gangway Wood the purser was dancing with rage and anxiety.

“God damn and blast all you hamfisted yokels!” he was saying. “And you, sir, down there. Take that grin off your face and be more careful, or I’ll have you clapped under hatches to sail with us today. Easy, there, easy! Christ, rum at seven guineas an anker isn’t meant to be dropped like pig iron!”

Wood was supervising the loading of the rum. The old hands were doing their best to make sure that the clumsiness of the new ones would result in the staving of a keg or two, so as to swill from the leaks, and the gri