“Tell me,” said Hornblower to the castaways, “how did you become—like this?”
It was a long story, the longer as it was interrupted while the castaways ate and drank, and while Hornblower translated the more sensational parts to Bush.
There were twentythousand of the poor devils—mainly the army which had surrendered at Baylen, but prisoners taken in a hundred other skirmishes as well—who had annoyed their Spanish captors inexpressibly while they were kept on the mainland by their continual attempts to escape. Finally the Spaniards had taken the whole twentythousand and dumped them down on the island of Cabrera, a mere rock of only a few square miles. That had been two years ago; there was no need for any Spanish garrison on the island itself—British sea power made it impossible for any French ship to attempt a rescue, and there was nothing with which to make boats except for rare driftwood. For two years these twentythousand miserable wretches had lived on the rock, scraping holes for shelter from the summer sun and winter storms.
“There are only two wells, monsieur,” said the blueeyed Frenchman, “and sometimes they run dry. But often it rains.”
Hornblower’s mathematical mind dealt with the timeproblem of supplying twentythousand men with water from two wells. Each man would be lucky if he got one drink a day, even if the wells never ran dry.
Of course there was no fuel on the island—not one of the twentythousand had seen a spark of fire for two years, and no clothing had survived two years of exposure and wear.
The Spaniards landed food for them at intervals, which was eaten raw.
“It is never enough, monsieur,” explained the Frenchman—Hornblower was acquainted with Spanish methods, and could understand—“and sometimes it does not come at all. Because of the wind, monsieur. When the wind is in the east, monsieur, we starve.”
Bush was looking at the chart and the sailing directions for the Western Mediterranean.
“That’s right, sir,” he announced. “There’s only one landing beach, and that’s on the east. It’s impracticable to land in easterly winds. It mentions the two wells and says there’s no wood.”
“They are supposed to bring food twice a week, monsieur,” said the Frenchman. “But sometimes it has been three weeks before they have been able to put it ashore.”
“Three weeks!”
“Yes, monsieur.”
“But—but—”
“Those of us who are wise have little stores hidden away in the rocks for those times, monsieur. We have to defend them, of course. And as for the others—There is usually plenty of one kind of food for them to eat, monsieur. There are not twentythousand of us by now.”
Hornblower looked out through the cabin window at the dull smudge on the horizon where, in this enlightened nineteenth century, actual cannibalism was still taking place.
“God bless us all!” said Bush, solemnly.
“There had been no food for a week when we escaped yesterday, monsieur. But easterly winds always bring driftwood, as well as famine. We found two treetrunks, Marcel and I. There were many who wanted to take the chance, monsieur. But we are strong, stronger than most on the island.”
The Frenchman looked almost with complacency down at his skinny arms.
“Yes indeed we are,” said Marcel. “Even if your ship had not seen us, we might have reached Spain alive. I suppose our Emperor has now conquered all the mainland?”
“Not yet,” replied Hornblower briefly. He was not prepared at short notice to try to explain the vast chaos which was acquiring the name of the Peninsular War.
“The Spaniards still hold Valencia,” he said. “If you had managed to get there they would only have sent you back to Cabrera.”
The Frenchmen looked at each other; they would have grown voluble again, but Hornblower checked them testily.
“Go and try to sleep,” he said, and he stamped out of the cabin.
Up on deck the air seemed purer, after the foul pictures which the Frenchmen’s stories had called up in his mind. Hornblower loathed human suffering; he walked his deck tormented by the thought of the starving Frenchmen on Cabrera. This brisk Levanter, blowing from the east, would go on blowing for another week at least, if he could read weather signs—and he thought he could. It was none of his business to worry about French prisoners of war in Spanish hands. Cabrera lay out of his course. British government stores should be conserved strictly for the use of his own ship. He would have the devil’s own time explaining to his admiral if he did anything to relieve the misery on Cabrera. No sensible man would attempt it; every sensible man would shrug his shoulders and do his best to forget about this whole beastly business of Frenchmen devouring their own dead among the rocks of Cabrera. Yet by laying the Sutherland as close to the wind as she would lie he could just fetch the island now. Any further delay would mean a long beat to windward. Hornblower crossed the deck and gave his orders, and without another word, solely by the look in his eye, he dared his lieutenants to question him as to his intentions. Then he went back to his walk, pacing up and down, up and down, trying to think out a method of how to land stores on a surfbeaten beach.
That queer mathematical ability of his was working to its utmost. Into his mind there came a whole series of ballistic formulae. Scientific gunnery was in its infancy, in its utter babyhood; it was only in the last few years that the arsenal authorities at Woolwich had begun to experiment practically in the endeavour to obtain data as to the behaviour of the weapons they turned out in such numbers. And most of their attention had been devoted to the big ships’ guns and not to the little 6pounder boat gun whose employment was contemplated by Hornblower. And besides that, he was intending to use the 6pounder in a way that had never been contemplated by the Woolwich authorities or by anyone else at all, as far as he knew. So far, nobody had thought of employing a gun to bridge a gap with a line as he was thinking of doing. If his plan did not succeed, he would have to think of another one—but he thought it was worth trying.
He broke off his train of thought to issue a whole series of orders to his puzzled subordinates. The blacksmith was given orders to forge an iron rod with a loop at the end and to wrap it with oakum and twine to fit the bore of the long boat’s 6pounder. The bos’un had to get out 100 fathoms of the finest hemp line that the ship possessed and work it into utter flexibility by straining every inch round a belayingpin and then coil it away with perfect symmetry into one of the oaken firebuckets. The cooper and his mates were set to work breaking out beef casks, half emptying them, and then heading them up securely. A puzzled bos’un’s mate was set to work with half a dozen hands linking these twenty halfempty casks into an immense chain, like beads on a string where every bead was represented by a cask containing 2hundredweight of meat connected with its fellows by 60 yards of cable. The deck of the Sutherland presented a pretty tangle to any possible observer by the time all these operations were well started. And through the gathering evening the Sutherland held her course steadily, closehauled for Cabrera.