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Hotspur and the Inshore Squadron spend months blockading the coast of France, crippling trade and quashing French dominion over the Channel. It’s painstaking, tedious work, and the captain must attend to the frustrating task of keeping Hotspur at her place while enduring the endless waiting, the uncertainty of the French and their witless plans for naval domination, the need to be ready at all hours of the day and night for an attack.
They walk the deck together in fine weather, the January sky grey above and the ship sometimes dusted with snow. Hornblower is as ever ill-dressed for the cold; Bush knows just how tight his budget runs with all the myriad expenses of a captain combined with the added costs of a new family. Bush doesn’t devote much time to the class system, he simply thinks it monstrously unfair that there are captains out there who made their way as the sons of peers and wouldn’t know a mainsail from a mizzen and yet have the coffers to coat their gigs in gold leaf, while on the other hand his captain is the finest of men and must wear gloves poorly knitted for him by his dowdy wife.
“They must be hungering for the sea by now,” remarks Bush one morning as the two of them stand by the taffrail looking out over the coast. “Not that the French are any kind of sailors born, nor scarcely made.”
“I believe there are some who might dispute that,” replies Hornblower, apparently in good humour today. “Nelson, for one. But I agree – they have been too silent for too long. It does not bode well.” He rests his hands on the rail. They’re long, sensitive hands, the hands of an artist, not a sailor. Hornblower has been a captain long enough that the callouses of manual labour have faded, and Bush enjoys watching the fluidity of his fingers at such times as he exercises them – when dealing at whist, or writing letters. They are one of very few beautiful things in the Hotspur. Ships of war are purpose-built and have no room for subtlety, nor yet loveliness.
“They cannot believe we will tire first. Boney must have some plan – more fire ships, perhaps, or help from the Spaniards.”
“If once their ships could leave port, they might hold a chance of victory.”
Bush turns towards the captain. “Do you truly think so, sir?”
Hornblower’s face is very white in the cold air, his eyes the colour of gleaming chestnuts. The captain’s mind is sharp as a steel trap but he’s never had a seaman’s constitution and Bush can see the constant anxiety of the blockade wearing on him. “Perhaps not here and now, but were they to regroup elsewhere and make a concerted push, then yes. They are a dangerous enemy, Mr Bush. One I think we sometimes downplay, to our peril.”
“That may be, sir,” says Bush politely. “I wish for your sake, if nothing else, that we might see some action – or at least some variety.”
Hornblower glances at him, surprised. “I didn’t know you took me for a fire-eater,” he says.
“Nor do I, sir. But ‘tis no easy thing keeping the Hotspur at her station; she has the handling of a young mare, all soft mouth and skittish heels. Compared to some of the fat three-deckers who scarce shift at all with the wind, keeping her in hand is straining. And months at the same task is weary-making.” Or at least is for a captain with a mind that rots with stagnation, are words he cannot speak. Bush is an old hand and well-suited to the navy; her equal diet of boredom, hard work and waiting are little hardship to him.
“Nonsense,” says Hornblower briskly, chaffing his hands. “We shall have an hour at the guns, and then see the midshipmen practice their signals – that will be quite enough activity for any man.”
“As you say, sir,” agrees Bush softly, but in his heart of hearts he wishes for some change, some challenge to soften the captain’s clawed face.
But when the tension breaks, it is in the worst way possible.
***
They’ve been under observation from the shore for as long as they’ve been here, haunting the coastline with the hunger of the dead ships whose tales the men frighten the powder monkeys with. Their party destroyed the semaphore some time ago but still from time to time they espy the glint of a glass, sharp eyes trained on the Inshore Squadron. Their number and mettle are known to the Frogs. And Hotspur, swift and sure, is the weakest of the ships forming the blockade.
The French come on a moonless night under the cover of thick darkness. Not with frigates or ships of the line, but with a small number of cutters filled to the rigging with men and arms. They come for Hotspur, to murder her crew and make way for the French fleet.
The night is black as the Earl of Hell’s riding boots, the night sky starless and the ship’s few lights only throwing a feeble glow. The boats aren’t spotted until they’re less than a cable from Hotspur, too close to beat to quarters. Bush is woken from a dreamless sleep by some seaman shouting below decks that the Frogs have come. He’s awake instantly, dropping out of his hammock into his shoes and throwing his coat on; he sleeps in his trousers on cold winter nights. On the deck he has a cutlass thrust into his hands by Matthews just as the first of the Frogs scrambles over the port side.
The deck is in chaos, half-naked men flooding up from below decks to repel boarders, many of the marines missing their coats or shirts and scrambling to load their rifles. Bush takes one look at the mess of shouting men, drunk with fear and bloodlust, and knows that he’s much too late to form an organized defense of the ship. He has two thoughts: They must fire a rocket to alert the fleet; he must find the captain.
Matthews is still beside him, his arms now empty of weapons except for the stout cudgel he holds. Bush grabs him by the shoulder and shouts over the screams and clanging of swords. “Find the rockets; send up a flare,” he orders, and sees the man nod grimly and slip away below decks.
Bush then turns and makes his way towards the quarterdeck, from which the captain’s cabin is accessed.
He slips past several throngs of men fighting, cuffing one Frog in the face and seeing him reel away, kicking another behind the knee so that a sailor with a bloody chest can bury a cutlass in his gut. He pushes past all of this and scrambles up the stairs to the quarterdeck which is calmer, most of the fighting still on the main deck and in the rigging at the sloop’s sides.
On the quarterdeck he finds the two men at the wheel protected by a small guard of marines – someone, at least, kept their head – and Prowse the master with an enormous knife and a pistol shoved in his belt glowering down at the sea of men on the deck.
“Where is the captain?” bellows Bush, as one of the marines takes a shot at a man coming up the stairs behind him. Prowse’s eyes flicker to the attacker for a moment before meeting his.
“Dealing with his orders and the signals book,” replies the master. Bush nods; for the Hotspur to fall to the French would be a disaster, for her signal book and secret papers to be taken would be an unmitigated blunder atop a disaster.
Bush is just taking a breath, secure in the knowledge that for at least one moment more the captain is safe, when he hears a shot echoing from the cabin behind him. He and Prowse turn together but he is the faster. “Block the door – no one enters behind me,” he orders, and barrels into the captain’s quarters.
Hornblower is backing away from the open windows at the sloop’s stern, his pistol in hand. A stream of French sailors is swarming in through the open window. The first is already in the room with his pistol out; before Bush can move he fires, and the captain falls.
Bush has known the madness of battle before, the red mist that descends when the world is nothing but blood and steel and gun smoke. But the fury that floods through him now is like a bonfire compared to the match of his previous anger. He draws his cutlass – heavy, sharp but unwieldly – and charges forward to stand between the Frogs and his captain. His mind is awash with rage, searing, boiling, hot as the bubbling tar they patch the hull with and just as black. He screams as he slices at the French sailors, cutting down one, and another, and another. He doesn’t feel the swipes of their swords, doesn’t feel the clash of their blows against his weapon or the cuts that slip past his guard. He feels only their hot blood on his face and hands, and knows only mad fury.
Bush is too lost in his bloodlust to count the men he cuts down. He is too lost even to hear the low boom of cannon from beyond the cabin, or the splash of lead in the water. He comes back to himself only when there are no more men to fight, when the room is suddenly empty and cold, the windows broken in the frigid January night, and the floor and walls are splattered with gore.
The door to the cabin flies open and he turns, the point of his cutlass wavering suddenly, his arm tired, but pointed none-the-less at the entrance to the cabin.
Prowse the master waddles in and stops, eyes wide as he stares around him. His eyes rise from the floorboards to the point of Bush’s blade and, in that moment, the last of the bloodlust fades and leaves him cold and empty.
“What is it?” he croaks, voice hoarse.
“Naiad has come, sir, and Pallas behind her. They’re firing bow chasers and the French are retreating. The ship is saved.”
Bush lets out a shuddering breath and drops the cutlass; it clatters heavily to the floor. For a moment he feels fear – the first real fear he has felt this night – and it is strong. Stronger than any he has felt before, stronger than he would have believed possible.
Bush forces himself to look down to where the captain is sitting, propped up against the cabin’s bulkhead.
Hornblower’s eyes are open but shadowed, his breathing laboured. His hand is pressed to his shoulder, the white flesh bloody.
“Fetch the surgeon,” orders Bush, and kneels stiffly beside Hornblower as Prowse scuttles out, his body suddenly rigid as though rusted over. “Sir? Captain Hornblower?”
Hornblower looks up at him, his brown eyes dark. His skin is very pale, his pulse fluttering in the ashen hollow of his throat. He’s wearing only his shirt, the ties half undone, and it’s soaked with crimson. “See to the ship,” he orders, his words catching in his throat.
“Aye sir, of course. But I’ll see you taken care of as well.” He reaches out and, heart sore as a wound in his own chest, uncovers the captain’s bloody shoulder. He can see the dark hole the bullet caused, just under his collarbone. And, when he gently pulls the captain forward, can see the open wound where it left his body. Bush sighs. No bullet means less chance of gangrene, of blood poisoning or rotten flesh. And it means no surgery, which given the relative ineffectiveness of Linney, their surgeon, is all to the good. “This looks not so poor, sir,” he says with all the cheerfulness he can muster.
“That’s not how it feels,” replies Hornblower, but Bush thinks he can detect just a hint of a joke there.
There’s a bustling noise behind them and Styles comes in with Linney. The sailor is wet with sweat and blood, his colour high. He looks around the room and curses under his breath, his pock-marked cheeks puffed out like a rat’s with distaste.
Bush for the first time since the madness of battle faded looks around and sees what so shocked the sailor, and Prowse before him.
Lying strewn on the deck of the cabin are six dead men, their bodies rent with gashes, their blood pooled beneath them and soaking into the smooth timbers.
“Doctor – the captain. Styles, have these bodies hauled out of here.”
Linney is already bending over the captain, examining the wound. “I shall need an assistant,” he says.
“Styles,” says Bush, catching the man just as he’s hurrying out to have the corpses taken care of. “Deal with it.”
***
Righting a ship after an impromptu and bloody action is one of the most straining tasks for a captain – or, in this case, the ship’s sole lieutenant. The ship is usually a mess of cut sheets and rigging, the deck perhaps blasted to splinters, and bodies and injured men everywhere. And, of course, there are often few men left fully capable of doing the physically demanding work of making the ship ready for whatever is called for in the shortest amount of time possible.
With the deck a mess but no longer untamed chaos, Bush sets about restoring order. He has the dead Frenchmen thrown over the side while the fallen Hotspurs are lined up out of the way towards the bow of the ship. He sets sailors to re-rove sliced sheets and patch torn sails, and has others clear away debris on the deck and wash the copious amounts of blood off the deck. The surgeon’s mates, assisted by crew drafted to their detail by Bush, move the wounded men down into the orlop out of the way to receive such care as can be provided by buckets of hot tar, an old saw and dusty bandages.
He has a table and chair brought out to him on the deck and, by the light of an old hurricane lantern, sets about making the lists of dead and injured that will be required soon for the captain’s report. He drafts a simple report for the captain either to submit or draw from, depending on his condition, and appends a fuller version in his own name – the work of assembling these reports causes him more effort than the whole of the rest of the work to put the ship to rights.
He’s aware as he moves that his body is a mess of aches and burning pains, but he doesn’t have time now to deal with bodily needs. The ship comes first, then the captain, then the men. Bush himself is so low on the list of things needing to be dealt with that he puts himself out of his own mind.
***
Hours later comes the dawn, and with it two pieces of news. First, that the captain is resting comfortably and Linney has great hopes for his recovery, and second that the admiral wants reports sent to him immediately.
Bush revises his list of the dead and wounded with the latest news from the orlap, and sends the documents in to the captain to either review or simply pass on, depending on his state. Matthews is with him now, acting as nurse with the surgeon and his mates still attending to the wounded below deck.
Despite the fact of their victory in the face of a tide of French soldiers, in the sweetness of their success and continued existence, the ship is uncommonly silent as the men work like dogs to bring her back to fighting readiness. Everyone knows the captain lies in his bed, badly wounded, and everyone knows that Linney is a blunderer. The mood of the ship is low; Bush can feel it himself, the worry and the despair. But all he can do is keep the men working, and hope that the exertion of their labours will abate their gloom.
As the day passes and Bush calls and dismisses watches and the Hotspur slowly pulls herself together once more into fighting fitness, he becomes aware that the world is growing distant, cold. He seems to watch the work of the men through a glass, his mind feeling adrift like a buoy far above its anchor. There’s a dull sound in his ears separating him from the voices of the crew and the sound of the ship, enshrouding him like a veil. As the men come to him for instructions he finds it more and more difficult to turn his attention to their questions.
See to the ship. The captain’s last orders, and the utter necessity of his role. The Hotspur’s midshipmen are still too green to take command of the ship as she is, and Prowse is a flat-bottomed old sod without inspiration or insight into what needs doing. Bush is the sole lieutenant; with the captain gone the weight of command falls squarely on his shoulders. He will not disappoint Hornblower.
The hours pass, the world growing darker around him. He feels heavy, weighted down. His thoughts are dragging, his hearing muffled and sight dim.
Down on the deck someone hails him; Bush forces himself forward to the stairs. He makes it down one, two steps, then trips and falls.
Someone catches him, strong arms holding him, a voice in his ears. He tries to look up – in his dimming vision he sees curling hair and a pocked face. Hands are picking at his jacket, his body cold, solid as stone and just as insensible.
Darkness falls.
***
He’s woken a few times, just sips of wakefulness accompanied by a forceful hand putting a glass to his lips and forcing down water – strangely fresh and invigorating. He slips back each time into the deep sea of sleep, its depths all darkness and crushing weight.
The first time he wakes fully it’s to the sound of his name. He blinks awake and knows immediately by the feel of the ship that they’re hove to, the whistling winds outside slipping past their bare masts. His eyes adjust to the faint light – he’s in his quarters, a small space sectioned off by canvas walls equipped with a hammock and his sea chest. And, sitting atop it, the captain.
Bush pulls himself upright and is shocked by the sudden flare of pain along his sides, and the stiffness of his body. The captain reaches out immediately to him, laying a thin hand on his arm. “Easy, William. Just lie back a minute.”
He certainly isn’t about to lie around in his bed while the captain is here, but sitting fully upright feels precarious; he settles for pulling himself higher in his hammock. “Sir – you – how is it with you?”
“Not too poorly. The doctor has allowed me a brief airing, as you see. I suspect I shall be confined to quarters for the most part for a few days, though.” Beneath his white shirt and woollen coat Bush can see a stiff white bandage peeking out.
“Thank god for that – your good health I mean,” stammers Bush. Hornblower smiles, just a little.
“I rather think I have you to thank for that. I’m afraid my memories are a little muddled, but I am very aware that without you I would have been either killed or disgraced.”
Bush flushes. “Please sir – don’t. I only did my duty. I need no praise, only to know that you are well.”
“I am – or I will be, at least. And you, William, you will be also. Styles was quite shocked at the blood he discovered beneath your coat, although I believe not all of it was your own. You really ought to have seen to yourself.”
“There was the ship to see to, sir.” He says it with the simple understanding that Hornblower will know exactly why he did as he did, and indeed he sees a quiet acceptance in the captain’s eye. “Who is in command now?”
“Admiral Pellew sent the first lieutenant out of Brunswick to step in until you are back on your feet.”
Bush nods. “Craddock, is it?”
“Yes. But he has little enough to do – you managed the hardest work. The admiral also sent his own surgeon, and it was he who pieced you back together. By the by I sent your reports forward unaltered; I believe you may look to see your name in the Gazette,” adds the captain with a twinkle in his eye.
“I – thank’ee sir. That was a kindness; I’m certain you would have put it all down far better.”
“I’m certain I would not have,” replies Hornblower. He shifts and his face tightens. Bush straightens, more successfully this time.
“You ought to be back abed, sir. Please.”
“Looking after me as ever, William. I do wish I could do something for you – for your bravery, and your loyalty.”
Bush wets his lips, his mouth suddenly dry. “You’re my captain, sir. I mean to say – I’ve had many captains, and suppose I may have many more. But the one I would give my all to, my life and my body and anything else you might ask of me, that’s you sir.”
Hornblower’s fingers tighten, just briefly, over his arm. He can’t tell the thoughts that slip through the man’s mind, dark and incalculable as it is. But after a moment Hornblower speaks, his voice low. “All I ask is that you stay. Here, in this ship. With me.”
“Aye, sir.”
Hornblower shuffles slowly to his feet, careful of his balance on the shifting deck. “Take the time you need,” he says. “Craddock can handle the ship as long as needed.”
They both know it’s not true – or rather that neither of them could stand to leave Hotspur in another man’s hands a moment longer than necessary. All the same, Bush smiles up at him. “I will if you do, sir.”
“Touché, William.”
“I may not always know your mind, sir. But I think you always know mine. You can count on me.”
Hornblower pauses with his hand on the canvas strip that forms the door to Bush’s quarters. “I always do, William. I always do.”
END