The Commodore

decisive blow at Russia might free him from the menace of a powerful and doubtfully friendly nation at his back. Bonaparte had conquered so often; he had struck down every nation in Europe—except England—and it hardly seemed likely that Russia could withstand the impact of his massed forces. With Russia beaten he would have no enemies left on the mainland at all. There would only be England left to oppose him, single-handed. It was comforting that England had not taken active measures in support of Finland when Russia attacked her, all the same. That made a working alliance with Russia far more practicable now.

“Now tell me more about this Blanchefleur,” said Hornblower bending over the chart.

“She nabbed us off Rugen, sir. Sassnitz bore so’west, eight miles. You see, sir—”

Hornblower listened to the explanations with attention. A twenty-gun corvette under a good French captain was a serious menace loose in the Baltic With the trade beginning to move on the melting of the ice it would be his first duty to capture her or drive her into port and blockade her. A ship of that force would be able to put up a good fight even against one of his sloops. He hoped he could entrap her, for she would be far too fast for Nonsuch to overhaul her in a stern chase. She was sending her prizes into Kiel, for there they could dispose of the prisoners, pick up a French crew, and start the hazardous voyage round Denmark to the west—Bonaparte needed naval stores, with ships of war building in every port from Hamburg to Trieste.

“Thank you, gentlemen,” he said. “I’ll not detain you longer. Captain Bush, we’ll talk to the prisoners next.”

But there was little to learn from the seamen of the captured prize crew, even though they were brought in separately for questioning. Four of them were Frenchmen; Hornblower conducted his own examination of them, with Bush looking on admiringly. Bush had already succeeded in forgetting all the little French he had so painfully learned during his enforced sojourn in France. Two were Danes, and two were Germans; Mr. Braun was called in to interpret while they were questioned. They were all experienced seamen, and as far as Hornblower could gather they had all been driven to take service in the Blanchefleur sooner than be conscripted into Bonaparte’s navy or army. Even though they were faced with what might well be a lifetime in an English prison the Frenchmen refused any offer to serve in the British Navy, but the others accepted immediately Braun put the suggestion to them. Bush rubbed his hands at acquiring four prime seamen in this fashion to help fill his chronically undermanned ships. They had picked up a little French in the Blanchefleur, and they would soon pick up enough English in the Nonsuch or the Lotus; certainly they would under the stimulus of a rope’s end handled by an experienced petty officer.

“Take ‘em away and read ‘em in, Mr. Hurst,” said Bush, rubbing his hands again. “Now, sir, shall we take a look at that damned renegade Englishman?”

Clarke was lying on the main-deck of the Nonsuch, to which he had been hoisted from the boat by a tackle at the yardarm, and the surgeon was still bending over him. He had tried to blow out his brains, but he had only succeeded in shattering his lower jaw. There was blood on his blue coat and on his white trousers, and his whole head was swathed in bandages, and he lay tossing in agony on the canvas sheet in which he had been hoisted. Hornblower peered down at him. The features he could see, chalk white so that the tan looked like a coat of dirt, were pinched and refined and weak, a thin nose and hollow cheeks, brown eyes like a woman’s, with scant sandy eyebrows above them. What little hair Hornblower could see was scanty and sandy too. Hornblower wondered what combination of circumstances could have led him into betraying his country and taking service with Bonaparte. Hatred of imprisonment, perhaps—Hornblower had known what it was to be a prisoner, in Ferrol and Rosas and in France. Yet that over-refined face did not seem to indicate the sort of personality that would fret itself to pieces in confinement. It might have been a woman, perhaps, who had driven him or led him to this, or he might be a deserter from the Navy who had fled to escape punishment—it would be interesting to see if his back was scarred with the cat-o’-nine-tails. He might perhaps be an Irishman, one of those fanatic who in their desire to hurt England refused to see that the worst England had ever done to Ireland would be nothing compared with what Bonaparte would do to her if she were once in his power.

Whatever might be the case, he was a man of ability and quick wit. As soon as he had seen that Lotus had cut him of from escape to the mainland he had resolutely taken the only course that gave him any chance of safety. He had steered the Maggie Jones as innocently as kiss-your-hand up to Nonsuch; that suggestion of smallpox had been an ingenious one, an his conversation by speaking-trumpet had been very nearly natural.

“Is he going to live?” asked Bush of the surgeon.

“No, sir. The mandible is extensively comminuted on both sides—I mean his jaw is shattered, sir. There is some splintering of the maxilla as well, and his tongue—the whole glosso-pharyngeal region, in fact—is in rags. The haemorrhage may prove fatal—in other words the man may bleed to death, although I do not think he will, now. But I do not think anything on earth can stop mortification—gangrene, in other words, sir—which in this area will prove immediately fatal. In any event the man will die of inanition, of hunger and thirst that is to say, even if we could keep him alive for a while by injections per rectum.”

It was ghoulish to smile at the surgeon’s pomposity, to make the inevitable light speech.

“It sounds as if nothing could save him, then.”

It was a human life they were discussing.

“We must hang him, sir, before he dies,” said Bush, turning to Hornblower. “We can convene a court martial—”

“He cannot defend himself,” replied Hornblower.

Bush spread his hands in a gesticulation which for him was vastly eloquent.

“What defence has he to offer, sir? We have all the evidence we need. The prisoners have supplied it apart from the obvious facts.”

“He might be able to rebut the evidence if he could speak,” said Hornblower. It was an absurd thing to say. There could be no possible doubt of Clarke’s guilt—his attempt at suicide proved it even if nothing else did; but Hornblower knew perfectly well that he was quite incapable of hanging a man who was physically unable to make any defence.

“He’ll slip through our fingers if we wait, sir.”

“Then let him.”

“But the example to the men, sir—”

“No, no, no,” flared Hornblower. “What sort of example would it be to the men to hang a dying man—a man who would not know what was being done to him, for that matter?”

It was horrible to see the faint play of expression in Bush’s face. Bush was a kindly man, a good brother to his sisters and a good son to his mother, and yet there was that hint of the lust of cruelty, the desire for a hanging. No, that was not quite fair. What Bush lusted for was revenge—revenge on a traitor who had borne arms against their common country.

“It would teach the men not to desert, sir,” said Bush, still feebly raising arguments. Hornblower knew—he had twenty years of experience—how every British captain was plagued by desertion, and spent half his waking hours wondering first how to find men and second how to retain them.

“It might,” said Hornblower, “but I doubt it very much.”

He could not imagine any good being done, and he certainly could picture the harm, if the men were forced to witness a helpless man, one who could not even stand on his feet, being noosed about the neck and swung up to the yard-arm.

Bush still hankered for blood. Even though he had no more to say, there was still a look in his face, there were still protests trembling on his lips.

“Thank you, Captain Bush,” said Hornblower. “My mind is made up.”

Bush did not know, and might never learn, that mere revenge, objectless, retaliatory, was always stale and unprofitable.

Chapter Eight