“Begging your pardon, Captain, but Boney can,” interposed the old man, dryly.
“You trust Bonaparte’s word?” said Hornblower, rallying desperately before this unexpected counter-attack. “He’d like to have this ship, no doubt. But you and your gang? Bonaparte won’t encourage mutiny — his power rests too much on his own army. He’ll hand you back for us to make an example of you.”
It was a wild shot in the dark, and it missed its bull’s-eye by an unmeasurable distance. Sweet stuck his pistol back into his belt and produced three letters from his pocket, waving them tauntingly in front of Hornblower.
“Here’s a letter from the Military Governor of Harbour-Grace,” he said. “That only promises us welcome. And here’s a letter from the Prefect of the Department of the Inferior Seine. That promises us provisions and water should we need them. And here’s a letter from Paris, sent down to us by post. It promises us immunity from arrest, civil rights in France, and a pension for every man from the age of sixty. That is signed ‘Marie Louise, Empress, Queen, and Regent’. Boney won’t go back on his wife’s word, sir.”
“You’ve been in communication with the shore?” gasped Hornblower. It was quite impossible for him to make any pretence at composure.
“We have,” said the old man. “And if you had the chance before you, Captain, of being flogged round the fleet, you would have done the same.”
It was hopeless to continue the present discussion. At least at the moment, the mutineers were unassailable. The only terms to which they would listen would be their own. There was no sign of doubt or dissension on board. But maybe if they were allowed more time to think about it, maybe if they had a few hours in which to consider the fact that Hornblower himself was on their trail, doubt might creep in. A party might form determined to save their necks by recapturing the ship; they might get at the liquor — Hornblower was completely puzzled by the fact that a mutinous British crew was not all roaring drunk — something might happen. But he must make a fighting retreat, not ignominiously crawl overside with his tail between his legs.
“So you are traitors as well as mutineers?” he blared. “I might have expected it. I might have guessed what kind of curs you are. I won’t foul my lungs by breathing the same air as you.”
He turned to the side and hailed for his boat.
“We’re the kind of curs,” said the old man, “who will let you go when we could clap you down below in the orlop with Chadwick. We could give you a taste of the cat, Commodore Sir Horatio Hornblower. How would you like that, sir? Remember, tomorrow, that the flesh is still on your ribs because we spared you. Good morning to you, Captain.”
There was sting and venom in those last words; they called up pictures in Hornblower’s imagination that made his flesh creep. He did not feel in the least dignified as he wriggled under the boarding-netting.
The Flame still rode peacefully to the wind as the boat danced back over the waves. Hornblower gazed from the Flame to the Porta Coeli, the two sister-ships, identical in appearance save for the white cross-shaped patch on the Flame‘s foretopsail. It was ironical that not even a trained eye could see any difference in appearance between the brig that was loyal to the King and the brig that was in open rebellion against him. The thought increased his bitterness; he had failed, utterly and completely, in his first attempt to win over the mutineers. He did not think there was the least possibility of their abating their terms; he would have to choose between agreeing to them, between promising the mutineers a free pardon and driving them into the hands of Bonaparte. In either case he would have failed in his mission; the merest least experienced midshipman in the Navy could have done as much. There was still some time to spare, for there was still little chance of news of the mutiny leaking out, but unless time brought dissension among the mutineers — and he saw no chance of that — it would be merely wasted time as far as he could see.
The boat was now half-way between the two brigs; with those two vessels under his command he could wage a lively war against the Normandy coast; he felt in his bones that he could set the whole Seine estuary in an uproar. His bitterness surged up stronger still, and then abruptly checked itself. An idea had come to him, and with the idea all the well-known old symptoms, the dryness in his throat, the tingling in his legs, the accelerated heartbeat. He swept his glance back and forth between the two brigs, excitement welling up inside him; calculations of wind and tide and daylight already formulating themselves, unsummoned, in his mind.
“Pull harder you men,” he said to the boat’s crew, and they obeyed him, but the gig could not possibly travel fast enough to satisfy him in his new mood.
Brown was looking at him sidelong, wondering what plan was evoking itself in his captain’s brain; Brown himself — as well aware of the circumstances as Hornblower was — could see no possible way out of the situation. All he knew was that his captain looked back over his shoulder time and time again at the mutinous brig.
“Oars!” growled Brown to the boat’s crew, as the officer of the watch gave the signal to the boat to come alongside; the bowman hooked onto the chains, and Hornblower went up the brig’s side with a clumsy impetuosity that he could not restrain. Freeman was waiting for him on the quarterdeck, and Hornblower’s hand was still at his hat when be gave his first order.
“Will you pass the word for the sailmaker, Mr. Freeman? And I shall want his mates, and every hand who can use a needle and palm.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
Orders were orders, even when they dealt with such extraneous matters as making sails while negotiating with a mutinous crew. Hornblower stared over at the Flame, still lying hove-to out of gunshot. The mutineers held a strong, an unassailable position, one which no frontal attack could break, and whose flanks were impregnable. It would be a very roundabout route that could turn such a position; maybe he had thought of one. There were some odd circumstances in his favour, fortunate coincidences. It was his business to seize upon those, exploit them to the utmost. He would have to take reckless chances, but he would do everything in his power to reduce the chances against him. The lucky man is he who knows how much to leave to chance.
A stoop-shouldered seaman was awaiting his attention, Freeman at his side.
“Swenson, sailmaker’s mate, sir.”
“Thank you, Mr. Freeman. You see that patched fore-tops’l? Swenson, look at it well through this glass.”
The Swedish sailmaker took the telescope in his gnarled hands and levelled it to his eye.
“Mr. Freeman, I want Porta Coeli to have a foretops’l just like that, so that no eye can see any difference between the two. Can that be done?”
Freeman looked at Swenson.
“Aye aye, sir, I can do that,” said Swenson, glancing from Freeman to Hornblower and back again. “There’s a bolt o’ white duck canvas, an’ with the old foretops’l — I can do it, sir.”
“I want it finished and ready to bend by four bells in the afternoon watch. Start work on it now.”
A little group had formed behind Swenson, those members of the crew whom inquiry had ascertained to have sailmaking experience. There were broad grins on some of their faces; Hornblower seemed to be conscious of a little wave of excitement and anticipation spreading through the crew like a ripple over a pond set up by the stone dropped into it in the form of Hornblower’s unusual request. No one could see clearly as yet what was in Hornblower’s mind, but they knew that he intended some devilment. The knowledge was a better tonic to discipline and the happiness of the ship than any ordinary ship’s routine.