The Commodore

“What’s that yellow flag for?”

“Smallpox. Seven cases on board, and two dead. First case a week ago.”

“Smallpox, by God!” muttered Bush. A frightful mental picture came up before his mind’s eye, of what smallpox would do, let loose in his precious Nonsuch, with 900 men crammed into her restricted space.

“Why are you sailing without convoy?”

“None available at Memel. The rendezvous for the trade’s off Langeland on the twenty-fourth. We’re beating up for the Belt now.”

“What’s the news?” Hornblower had waited patiently during all these interminable sentences before asking that question.

“The Russian embargo still holds, but we’re sailing under licence.”

“Sweden?”

“God knows, sir. Some say they’ve tightened up their embargo there.”

A curious muffled howl came from below decks in the Maggie Jones at that moment, just audible in the Nonsuch.

“What’s that noise?” asked Hornblower.

“One of the smallpox cases, sir. Delirious. They say the Tsar’s meeting Bernadotte next week fur a conference somewhere in Finland.”

“Any sign of war between France and Russia?”

“None that I could see in Memel.”

That delirious patient must be very violent for his shrieks to reach Hornblower’s ears at this distance against the wind. Hornblower heard them again. Was it possible for one man to make all that noise? It sounded more like a muffled chorus to Hornblower. Hornblower felt a sudden wave of suspicion surging up within him. The white-trousered figure on the Maggie Jones’s poop was altogether too glib, too professional in his talk. A naval officer might possibly discuss the chances of war in the Baltic as coldly as this man was doing, but a merchant captain would put more feeling in his words. And more than one man was making that noise in her forecastle. The captain could easily have offered his information about the Tsar’s meeting with Bernadotte as a red herring to distract Hornblower’s attention from the cries below deck. Something was wrong.

“Captain Bush,” said Hornblower, “send a boat with a boarding-party over to that ship.”

“Sir!” protested Bush, wildly. “Sir—she has smallpox on board—sir! Aye aye, sir.”

Bush’s protests died an uneasy death at the look on Hornblower’s face. Bush told himself that Hornblower knew as well as he did the frightful possibilities of the introduction of smallpox into Nonsuch, Hornblower knew the chances he was taking. And one more look at Hornblower’s face told Bush that the decision had not been an easy one.

Hornblower put the trumpet to his lips again.

“I’m sending a boat to you,” he shouted. It was hard at twenty yards’ distance to detect any change in the ma

“As you wish, sir. I have warned you of smallpox. Could you send a surgeon and medicines?”

That was exactly what he should have said. But all the same, there was that suspicious pause before answering, as if the man had been taken by surprise and had searched round in his mind for the best reply to make. Bush was standing by, with misery in his face, hoping that Hornblower would countermand his order, but Hornblower made no sign. Under the orders of the boatswain the whaler rose to the pull of the tackles, was swayed outboard, and dropped into the sea. A midshipman and a boat’s crew dropped down into her, sulkily. They would have gone cheerfully to board an armed enemy, but the thought of a loathsome disease unma

“Push off,” ordered the officer of the watch, after a last glance at Hornblower. The whaler danced over the waves towards the Maggie Jones, and then Hornblower saw the captain dash his speaking-trumpet to the deck and look round wildly as though for some means of escape.

“Stay hove-to, or I’ll sink you,” roared Hornblower, and with a gesture of despair the captain stood still, drooping in defeat.

The whaler hooked on to the Maggie Jones’s main-chains and the midshipman led his party on to the decks with a rush. There was no sign of any opposition offered, but as the seamen ran aft there was the sudden pop of a pistol, and Hornblower saw the midshipman bending over the writhing, white-trousered body of the captain. He found himself taking an oath that he would break that midshipman, court martial him, ruin him, and have him begging his bread in the gutter if he had wantonly killed the captain. Hornblower’s hunger and thirst for news for facts, for information, was so intense that the thought of the captain escaping him by death roused him to ferocious bitterness.

“Why the devil didn’t I go myself?” he demanded of no one in particular. “Captain Bush, I’ll be obliged if you’ll have my barge called away.”

“But the smallpox, sir—”

“Smallpox be damned. And there’s none on board that ship.”

The midshipman’s voice came across the water to them.

“Nonsuch ahoy! She’s a prize. Taken yesterday by a French privateer.”

“Who’s that captain I was speaking to?” demanded Hornblower.

“A renegade Englishman, sir. He shot himself as we came on board.”

“Is he dead?”

“Not yet, sir.”

“Mr. Hurst,” said Bush, “send the surgeon over. I’ll give him one minute to get his gear together. I want that renegade’s life saved so that we can see how he looks at a yard-arm.”

“Send him in my barge,” said Hornblower, and then, through the speaking-trumpet. “Send the prisoners and the ship’s officers over to me.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

“And now I’ll get some clothes on, by God,” said Hornblower; he had only just realized that he had been standing naked on the quarter-deck for an hour or more—if he had obeyed his first impulse and gone over in his barge he would have boarded the Maggie Jones without a stitch on.

The captain and the two mates were ushered down into Hornblower’s cabin, where he and Bush questioned them eagerly, the chart of the Baltic spread out before him.

“We heard that renegade tell you the truth, sir,” said the captain. “We were ten days out from Memel, bound for the Belt, when he pounced on us yesterday—big ship-rigged privateer, ten guns a side, flush-decked. Name Blanchefleur, whatever way you say it. What the Frogs call a corvette. French colours. They put a prize crew on board under that renegade—Clarke’s his name, sir—an’ I think we were headed for Kiel when you caught us. They shut us up in the lazarette. God, how we yelled, hoping you’d hear us.”

“We heard you,” said Bush.

“How were things at Memel when you left?” demanded Hornblower.

The captain’s face wrinkled; if he had been French he would have shrugged his shoulders.

“The same as ever. Russian ports are still closed to us, but they’ll give anyone a licence to trade who asks for it. It’s the same with the Swedes on the other side.”

“What about war between Bonaparte and Russia?”

This time the tangle of doubt really made the captain shrug.

“Everyone’s talking about it, but nothing definite yet. Soldiers everywhere. If Boney really fights ‘em he’ll find ‘em as ready as Russians ever are.”

“Do you think he will?”

“I wish you’d tell me, sir. I don’t know. But it was true what Clarke told you, sir. The Tsar and Bernadotte are meeting soon. Perhaps you can guess what that means. It means nothing to a plain man like me, sir. There have been so many of these meetings and conferences and congresses.”

So there it was; Sweden and Russia were still in the equivocal position of being nominal enemies of England and nominal allies of Bonaparte, pretending to make war, pretending to be at peace, half belligerent, half neutral, in the strange ma