The Commodore

“Oh,” said Essen, flinging the Englishman’s hands away so as to spread his arms again. “Bonaparte has started to retreat.”

“Has he, by God!” said Hornblower.

“What does he say, sir?” asked Bush, quite incapable of understanding Essen’s French, but Hornblower had no time for Bush, because the Governor was pouring out his news in a torrent of gutturals, drawing upon the vocabularies of half Europe for his words so that even Hornblower could hardly understand what he was saying.

“He left Moscow five days back,” roared Essen. “We beat him at Malo-Jaroslavetz. Beat him in a pitched battle, and now he’s running as hard as he can for Smolensk and Warsaw. And he won’t get there before the snows! He’ll be lucky if he gets there at all! Chichagov is marching hard to cut off his retreat at the Beresina. He’s ruined. They’re dying in thousands every night already! Nothing to eat, and winter’s here!”

Essen stamped grotesquely about the deck, more like a dancing bear than ever.

“Please, sir, please. What does he say?” asked Bush pathetically.

Hornblower translated to the best of his ability, the other quarter-deck officers eavesdropping shamelessly. As the wonderful nature of the good news dawned upon them, they began to cheer; down on the main-deck they caught the infection, and all through the ship men were cheering and tossing their hats in the air, even though they hardly knew what they were cheering about, save for the hurried words that flew from lip to lip—“Boney’s beaten!”

“We can get out of this bay before the ice comes, by God!” said Bush, snapping his fingers; it was obvious that if he had not a wooden leg he would be dancing too.

Hornblower looked across at the mainland.

“Macdonald’s shown no sign of retreating yet,” he said. “If he had the Governor would have mentioned it.”

“But don’t you think he’ll have to, sir?” Bush’s expressive face showed anxiety now instead of joy. A moment before anything delightful had been possible—escape from Riga Bay, possibly even escape from this landlocked Baltic altogether, maybe even a return to England, but now Bush was back again to the cold reality that the siege of Riga was still going on.

“He may have to retreat,” said Hornblower, “but until then we stay here, unless I receive orders to the contrary.”

Essen caught sight of their sober faces and turned on them again. He slapped Bush on the back so that he staggered with the force of the blow; he snapped his fingers under Hornblower’s nose, and pirouetted with the grace of a performing seal. It was absurd that with all this going on, with Bush asking questions regarding the future, with Essen acting like a lunatic, and with the whole ship forgetting discipline in a mad outburst of cheering, Hornblower’s brain should be planning and thinking still, with that swift clarity and that fevered rapidity which he knew by now portended some new development. Bonaparte in retreat, Bonaparte beaten, meant a tremendous revulsion of feeling throughout Europe. All the world knew that Wellington was threatening France from the south; and now the Empire was in peril from the east. It would hardly be possible for Bonaparte’s shattered army to hold on to Poland once it had begun its retreat; the next campaign would see the allies on the frontiers of Prussia and Austria, and it was likely that both Prussia and Austria would in that case be glad to change sides, The King of Prussia was practically a prisoner in French hands, but the Prussian army—the greater part of the force now besieging Riga—could act as a free agent if it wished. The desertion of the Spaniards had shown them the way, and the pamphlets which he had had printed in Riga and distributed among the besiegers by Russian pedlars would not let them forget the lesson. Bulow would be able to bear witness to the truth of his assertions—Hornblower was glad he had set him free.

“I am sending Diebitch out to beat up the besiegers’ lines with a sally,” Essen was saying. “I must see how they take this news. Would you care to accompany me, sir?”

“Of course,” said Hornblower, coming out abruptly from his dreaming. What with fatigue—he was always weary now—and rapid thinking and excitement he was still a little ‘mazy’, as they said of fuddled men in the village when he was a boy. He announced his departure to Bush.

“You’re worn out, sir,” protested Bush. “You’re no more than a shadow. Send someone else, sir. Send me. Send Duncan. You’ve done all that’s necessary, sir.”

“I haven’t yet,” said Hornblower, but he stooped so far as to risk delay by offering Essen refreshment, with the suggestion that they should drink a toast to celebrate this glorious news.

“Thank you, no,” said Essen, to Hornblower’s relief. “Diebitch will attack at dusk, and the days are short now.”

“You’ll take your barge, sir, won’t you?” persisted Bush. “Take Brown.”

Bush was like a fussy parent with a venturesome child—like a hen with one chick. He was always nervous about entrusting his precious Hornblower to these unpredictable Russians; Hornblower grinned at Bush’s solicitude.

“Anything to keep you happy,” he said.

Hornblower’s barge followed the Governor’s pulling-boat along the channel through the ice; Hornblower sat with the Governor in the stern of the Russian boat. There was a chill wind blowing, and the skies were grey.

“We shall have more snow,” said Essen, looking up at the clouds. “God help the French.”

In the absence of any sunshine there was a mortal chill in the air. Hornblower thought of the French marching over the desolate plains of Russia, and was sorry for them. And the snow came indeed, that afternoon, sweeping over river and village, making white innocuous mounds of the battered parapets and the shattered guns and the graves which were scattered through the village. It was already prematurely dark when the ever-patient Russian grenadiers lined the trenches and then sallied forth upon the enemy’s lines. They were not more than half-way across no-man’s-land before the guns began to fire upon them, stabbing the falling snow with their bright orange flashes.

“No sign of any retreat there,” was Clausewitz’s comment as he watched the fierce struggle from the gallery of the church beside Essen and Hornblower.

And if confirmation was needed the attacking party could supply it when it came drifting back in the darkness, decimated. The besiegers had met their sally with spirit; they had had patrols out in no-man’s-land, and the trenches were adequately guarded. In retaliation, the besiegers opened fire with their breaching batteries; the ground shook to the rumble of the discharges, and the black night was stabbed again by the flames of the guns. It was impossible to maintain good aim or elevation in the darkness; it was only a short time before the shots were flying wild, all over the village, so that the defenders as far back as the Dwina river had to keep low in their trenches. Shells were coming over, too, curving in high arcs from the mortar batteries which the besiegers had established in their second parallel. They fell and burst here, there, and everywhere, one every two or three minutes, in fountains of fragments and flame, save when chance guided them into deeper snow which extinguished the fuses.

“They have plenty of ammunition to waste,” grumbled Essen, shivering in his cloak.

“Perhaps they plan a counter-assault in the darkness,” said Clausewitz. “I have kept the trenches fully manned in case they try it.”

Immediately under Hornblower’s gaze there was a battery of four heavy pieces, firing regular salvoes at short intervals. He noted the four bursts of flame over and over again, so that when there was a longer interval he was surprised first by the absence of sound and then by its unexpected coming. The flashes endured their brief moment, to be succeeded again by night, but Hornblower found himself wondering what difference there had been between this salvo and the last, apart from the longer interval which had preceded it. One flash—the right-hand one—had not been as distinct as the other three, longer and yet intense. Some error in loading, perhaps. Then came the next salvo, and only three flashes; the right-hand gun had not fired. Maybe it had ‘unbushed’ itself—blown out its vent fitting, as guns sometimes did. Another long interval, and then another salvo—two sharp flashes, and one longer one. The next salvo only two guns fired, and Hornblower realized what had been going on. He plucked at Essen’s sleeve.

“They are destroying their guns over there,” he said. “They are firing some shots at us while at each salvo they fire a shot against the trunnions of one of the guns. There were four guns over there, Your Excellency. Now— see—there are only two.”

“Possibly,” admitted Essen, staring into the darkness.