Claros, by a raising of his eyebrows and a jerk of the head, passed this question on to the chief of staff.
“He did not go,” said this officer.
“What?” said Hornblower in English. He had to fight down his bewilderment and struggle with his dazed senses in order to speak Spanish again. “Why not?”
“It would have put the officer to unnecessary trouble,” said the chief of staff. “If Colonel Rovira comes, he comes. If he cannot, no message of ours will bring him.”
Hornblower pointed over to the right. In a fold of the hills a line of some fifty picketed horses and a few groups of seated men indicated the position of the squadron of cavalry which had been watching the town since yesterday.
“Why did they not report that Colonel Rovira had not arrived?” he demanded.
“The officer commanding had my orders to report when he did arrive,” answered Claros.
He was showing no signs of indignation at the barely concealed contempt in Hornblower’s expression, but Hornblower kept his rage in hand for a little longer in his endeavour to keep the enterprise alive.
“We are in a very considerable danger here,” he said.
Claros shrugged his shoulders again at the Englishman’s timidity.
“My men are used to the mountains. If the garrison comes out to attack us we can get away by goat paths over there,” he answered, pointing away to the precipitous sides of the mesa in the distance. “They will never dare to follow us there, and if they did they would never catch us.”
“But my guns? My men?”
“In war there is always danger,” said Claros loftily.
Hornblower’s answer was to turn to Longley.
“Ride back at once,” he said to the boy. “Halt the guns. Halt the convoy. Halt every man on the path. Nothing is to move a yard farther without orders from me.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
Longley wheeled his horse round and clattered off; the boy had somewhere learned to ride well before coming to sea. Claros and his staff, Hornblower and Brown, all watched him go, and then turned back to face each other. The Spaniards could guess what were the orders that had been given him.
“Not a gun or a man of mine will stir,” said Hornblower, “until I see Colonel Rovira’s army on the plain there. Will you be good enough to send a message to him now?”
Claros tugged at his long moustache and then gave the order to his staff; his junior officers argued sulkily with each other before one of them took the note written by the chief of staff and set off with it. Clearly no one relished the prospect of a ride of perhaps twenty miles under a hot sun in search of Rovira’s column.
“It is nearly the hour for dinner,” said Claros. “Will you have my men’s food served out to them, Captain?”
Hornblower’s jaw dropped at that. He had thought nothing more could surprise him, and he was proved wrong. Claros’ tobacco-brown face gave no indication that he thought there was anything other than what was strictly ordinary in his assumption that his thousand men were to feed on the stores laboriously landed from the squadron. It was on the tip of Hornblower’s tongue to refuse pointblank, but he stopped to consider. He guessed that if they were not fed, Claros’ men would simply melt away in search of food, and there was still a faint chance that Rovira might arrive and the siege be taken in hand. For the sake of that chance, it was as well to make this concession and make the most of the few hours granted them before their presence should be discovered.
“I will give orders for it,” he said, and the dignified colonel’s expression showed no change at either demanding or receiving favours from the Englishman with whom he had just been on the verge of quarrelling.
Soon sailors and Catalans were all of them eating heartily. Even the squadron of cavalry smelt food from afar, like vultures, and rode hastily back to job in the feast, leaving only an unhappy half dozen to continue the watch over Rosas. Claros and his staff seated themselves in a group ministered to by orderlies. And as was to be expected, comida was followed by siesta—after a vast meal every Spaniard stretched himself in the shade which the shrub afforded, and snored, flat on his back, with a Peninsula disregard for the flies which buzzed over his open mouth.
Hornblower neither ate nor slept. He dismounted and gave his horse over into Brown’s charge, and then hobbled up and down on his hill top looking down at Rosas, with his heart full of bitterness. He had written carefully to the admiral to explain the reason of his halt—carefully, because he did not want to belong to the type of officer who sees difficulties at every turn—and the answer had simply enraged him. Was it not possible, Leighton had asked in his reply, to attempt something against the fortress with the fifteen hundred men he had in hand? Where was Colonel Rovira? The tone of that question indicated that Hornblower was somehow at fault regarding Rovira’s non-arrival. Captain Hornblower must remember the need to work in the closest and most cordial co-operation with England’s allies. The squadron could not possibly continue to supply Rovira’s force with food for long; Hornblower must tactfully call Colonel Rovira’s attention to the need of drawing upon his own sources of supplies. It was highly important that the arrival of the British squadron should be signalised by a great success, but on no account was any operation to be undertaken which might imperil the safety of the landing party. Leighton’s letter was a completely futile piece of writing, having regard for the present facts, but a Court of Inquiry who knew nothing of them would consider it eminently sane and sensible.
“Begging your pardon, sir,” said Brown, suddenly. “The Froggies down there is on the move.”
Startled, Hornblower looked down at Rosas. There were three serpents issuing out of the fortress—three long narrow columns of troops creeping out on to the plain, one each from the citadel, the village, and the Trinidad. A hoarse shout from the Spanish cavalry picket proclaimed that they had seen the same phenomenon; the little party left their post and rode headlong back to the scattered Spanish army. Hornblower went on staring for two more minutes; the columns showed no sign of ending, but wound on interminably out of the fortifications. Two were heading towards him, while the one from the citadel was taking a different route, off to his right, with the dear intention of cutting off the Spanish retreat to the mainland. Hornblower’s eye caught the flash of musket barrels in the sunlight; still the columns were winding out—there must be a thousand men at least in each. The Spanish information which had estimated the garrison’s strength at two thousand as a maximum must be as faulty as all the rest.
Claros came clattering up with his staff to gaze out over the plain. He paused only for an instant to take in the significance of what he saw—every man with him pointed simultaneously to the outflanking column—and then he wheeled about and spurred back again. As he wheeled his eyes met Hornblower’s; they were expressionless as ever, but Hornblower knew what he intended. If he abandoned the convoy and marched his men with all haste for the mesa, he could just get away in time, and he was set upon it. Hornblower knew in that instant that there was not the least use appealing to him to cover the retreat of the convoy, even if the Catalans were steady enough to fight a rearguard action against greatly superior numbers.
The safety of the landing party was dependent solely on its own exertions, and there was not a moment to be lost Hornblower scrambled on to his horse—the heads of the French columns were well out on to the plain now, and some would be soon ascending the steep escarpment of the plateau—and dashed back after Claros. Then, as he neared the place where Major Laird had his marines already drawn up into line, he checked the pace of his weary horse to a sober trot. It would never do to display too much haste or anxiety. That would only unsteady the men.