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“Come on!” yelled Hornblower—it was desperately important to make sure of the Flame before a defence could be organised.
The brigs stood higher out of the water than did the chasse-marée; this time they had to climb upward. He got his left elbow over the bulwark, and tried to swing himself up, but his sword hampered him.
“Help me, damn you!” he snarled over his shoulder, and a seaman put his shoulder under Hornblower’s stern and heaved him up with such surprising goodwill that he shot over the bulwarks and fell on his face in the scuppers on the other side, his sword slithering over the deck. He started to crawl forward towards it, but a sixth sense warned him of danger, and he flung himself down and forward inside the sweep of a cutlass, and ca
“Are you wounded, sir?” asked Brown.
“No,” he answered. Three or four dead men lay on the deck; aft a group of French soldiers with a French seaman or two among them stood by the wheel, disarmed, while two British sailors, pistol in hand, stood guard over them. A French officer, blood dripping from his right sleeve, and with tears on his cheeks—he was no more than a boy—was sitting on the deck, and Hornblower was about to address him when his attention was suddenly distracted.
“Sir! Sir!”
It was an English seaman he did not recognise, in a striped shirt of white and red, his pigtail shaking from side to side as he gesticulated with the violence of his emotion.
“Sir! I was fightin’ against the Frogs. Your men saw me. Me an’ these other lads here.”
He motioned behind him to an anxious little group of seamen who had heretofore hung back, but now came forward, some of them bursting into speech, all of them nodding their heads in agreement.
“Mutineers?” asked Hornblower. In the heat of battle he had forgotten about the mutiny.
“I’m no mutineer, sir. I did what I had to or they’d ‘a killed me. Ain’t that so, mates?”
“Stand back, there!” blared Brown; there was blood on the blade of his cutlass.
A vivid prophetic picture suddenly leaped into Hornblower’s mind’s eye—the court martial, the semicircle of judges in glittering full dress, the tormented prisoners, tongue-tied, watching, only half understanding, the proceedings which would determine their lives or deaths, and he himself giving his evidence, trying conscientiously to remember every word spoken on both sides; one word remembered might make the difference between the lash and the rope.
“Arrest those men!” he snapped. “Put them under confinement.”
“Sir! Sir!”
“None o’ that!” growled Brown.
Remorseless hands dragged the protesting men away.
“Where are the other mutineers?” demanded Hornblower.
“Down below, sir, I fancies,” said Brown. “Some o’ the Frenchies is down there, too.”
Odd how a beaten crew so often scuttled below. Hornblower honestly believed that he would rather face the fighting madness of the victors on deck than surrender ignominiously in the dark confines of the ‘tween-decks.
A loud hail from the Porta Coeli came to his ears.
“Sir Horatio!” hailed Freeman’s voice. “We’ll be all aground if we don’t get way on the ships soon. I request permission to cast off and make sail.”
“Wait!” replied Hornblower.
He looked round him; the three ships locked together, prisoners under guard here, there, and everywhere. Below decks, both in the Bo
“Get those hatches battened down, Brown!” he ordered. “Put a sentry over each. Mr. Gibbons!”
“Sir?”
“Secure your hatches. Get ready to make sail.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
“What topmen are there here? Man the halliards. Who can take the wheel? What, none of you? Mr. Gibbons! Have you a quartermaster to spare? Send one here immediately. Mr. Freeman! You can cast off and make sail. Rendezvous at the other prize.”
Another shot from those accursed gunboats crashed into the Flame’s stern below him. Thank God the wind was off shore and he could get clear of them. The Porta Coeli had set her boom-mainsail again and had got clear of the Bo
“Hoist away!” ordered Hornblower as the vessels separated. “Hard a-starboard, Quartermaster.”
A sound overside attracted his attention. Men—mutineers or Frenchmen—were scrambling out through the shot-holes and hurling themselves into the sea, swimming towards the gunboats. Hornblower saw the white hair of Nathaniel Sweet trailing on the surface of the water as he struck out, twenty feet away from him. Of all the mutineers he was the one who most certainly must not be allowed to escape. For the sake of England, for the sake of the service, he must die. The seaman acting as sentry at the after hatchway did not look as if he were a capable marksman.
“Give me your musket,” said Hornblower, snatching it.
He looked at priming and flint as he hurried back to the taffrail. He trained the weapon on the white head, and pulled the trigger. The smoke blew back into his face, obscuring his view only for a moment. The long white hair was visible for a second at the surface when he looked again, and then it sank, slowly, out of sight. Sweet was dead. Maybe there was an old widow who would bewail him, but it was better that Sweet was dead. Hornblower turned back to the business of navigating the Flame back to the rendezvous.
Chapter VIII
This fellow Lebrun was an infernal nuisance, demanding a private interview in this fashion. Hornhlower had quite enough to do as it was; the gaping shot-holes in Flame’s side had to be patched sufficiently well to enable her to recross the Cha