The Commodore

signalled a hit for, her; Hornblower’s inner eye was seeing mental pictures of the shells plunging from the sky in among the crew of the Blanchefleur as they laboured amid the flames to save their ship, burning, dismasted, and aground. It took only the briefest interval of time for those pictures to form, for the moment the signal was seen in Clam Mound bent to fire the mortars, and yet the fuses had not taken fire when the sound of a violent explosion checked him. Hornblower whipped his glass to his eye; an immense gust of smoke showed over the sand-dunes, and in the smoke Hornblower thought he could make out flying specks—corpses or fragments of the ship, blown into the air by the explosion. The fire, or one of Moth’s last shells, had reached Blanchefleur’s magazines.

“Signal to Clam, Mr. Mound,” said Hornblower “’What do you see of the enemy?’”

They waited for the answer.

“’Enemy—totally—destroyed’, sir,” read off the master’s mate, and the crew gave a ragged cheer.

“Very good, Mr. Mound. I think we can leave these shallows now before daylight goes. Hang out the recall, if you please, with Clam’s number and Lotus’s number.”

This watery northern sunshine was deceptive. It shone upon one but it gave one no heat at all. Hornblower shivered violently for a moment—he had been standing inactive, he told himself, upon the Harvey’s deck for some hours, and he should have worn a greatcoat. Yet that was not the real explanation of the shudder, and he knew it. The excitement and interest had died away, leaving him gloomy and deflated. It had been a brutal and cold-blooded business, destroying a ship that had no chance of firing back at him. It would read well in a report, and brother officers would tell each other of Hornblower’s new achievement, destroying a big French privateer in the teeth of the Swedes and the French amid shoals innumerable. Only he would know of this feeling of inglorious anticlimax.

Chapter Ten

Bush wiped his mouth on his table napkin with his usual fussy attention to good manners.

“What do you think the Swedes’ll say, sir?” he asked, greatly daring. The responsibility was none of his, and he knew by experience that Hornblower was likely to resent being reminded that Bush was thinking about it.

“They can say what they like,” said Hornblower, “but nothing they can say can put Blanchefleur together again.”

It was such a cordial reply compared with what Hornblower might have said that Bush wondered once more what it was which had wrought the change in Hornblower—whether his new mellowness was the consequence of success, of recognition of promotion, or of marriage. Hornblower was inwardly debating that very question at that very moment as well, oddly enough, and he was inclined to attribute it to advancing years. For a few moments he subjected himself to his usual pitiless self-analysis, almost morbidly intense. He knew he had grown blandly tolerant of the fact that his hair was thinning, and turning grey over his temples—the first time he had seen a gleam of pink scalp as he combed his hair he had been utterly revolted, but by now he had at least grown accustomed to it. Then he looked down the double row of young faces at his table, and his heart warmed to them. Without a doubt, he was growing paternal, coming to like young people in a way new to him; he suddenly became aware, for that matter, that he was growing to like people young or old, and was losing—temporarily at least, said his cautious spirit—that urgent desire to get away by himself and torture himself.

He raised his glass.

“I give you a toast, gentlemen,” he said, “to the three officers whose careful attention to duty and whose marked professional ability resulted in the destruction of a dangerous enemy.”

Bush and Montgomery and the two midshipmen raised their glasses and drank with enthusiasm, while Mound and Duncan and Freeman looked down at the tablecloth with British modesty; Mound, taken unawares, was blushing like a girl and wriggling uncomfortably in his chair.

“Aren’t you going to reply, Mr. Mound?” said Montgomery. “You’re the senior.”

“It was the Commodore,” said Mound, eyes still on the tablecloth. “It wasn’t us. He did it all.”

“That’s right,” agreed Freeman, shaking his gipsy locks.

It was time to change the subject, thought Hornblower, sensing the approach of an awkward gap in the conversation after this spell of mutual congratulation.

“A song, Mr. Freeman. We have all of us heard that you sing well. Let us hear you.”

Hornblower did not add that it was from a Junior Lord of the Admiralty that he had heard about Freeman’s singing ability, and he concealed the fact that singing meant nothing to him. Other people had this strange desire to hear music, and it was well to gratify the odd whim.

There was nothing self-conscious about Freeman when it came to singing: he simply lifted his chin, opened his mouth, and sang.

When first I looked in Chloe’s eyes
Sapphire seas and summer skies—

An odd thing this music was. Freeman was clearly performing some interesting and difficult feat; he was giving decided pleasure to these others (Hornblower stole a glance at them), but all he was doing was to squeak and to grunt in different fashions, and drag out the words in an arbitrary way—and such words. For the thousandth time in his life Hornblower gave up the struggle to imagine just what this music was which other people liked so much. He told himself, as he always did, that for him to make the attempt was like a blind man trying to imagine colour.

Chloe is my o-o-o-only love!

Freeman finished his song, and everyone pounded on the table in genuine applause.

“A very good song, and very well sung,” said Hornblower.

Montgomery was trying to catch his eye.

“Will you excuse me, sir?” he said. “I have the second dogwatch.”

That sufficed to break up the party; the three lieutenants had to return to their own ships, Bush wanted to take a look round on deck, and the two midshipmen, with a proper appreciation of the insignificance of their species, hastened to offer their thanks for their entertainment and take their departure.

That was quite the right sort of party, thought Hornblower, watching them go—good food, lively talk, and a quick ending. He stepped out into the stern gallery, stooping carefully to avoid the low cove overhead. At six o’clock in the evening it was still broad daylight; the sun had not nearly set, but was shining into the gallery from right aft, and a faint streak beneath it showed where Bornholm lay just above the horizon. The cutter, her mainsail pulled aft as flat as a board, passed close beneath him as she turned close-hauled under the stern with the three lieutenants in the sternsheets going back to their ships—the wind was northwesterly again. The young men were skylarking together until one of them caught sight of the Commodore up in the stern gallery, and then they promptly stiffened into correct attitudes. Hornblower smiled at himself for having grown fond of those boys, and he turned back into the cabin again to relieve them of the strain of being under his eye. Braun was waiting for him.

“I have read through the newspapers, sir,” he said. Lotus had intercepted a Prussian fishing-boat that afternoon, and had released her after confiscating her catch and taking these newspapers