The Commodore

“Hardly more than half-way up the Captains’ list, and yet they are giving you this command. You will be an admiral in petto.”

She could have said nothing that could calm Hornblower more effectively. He grinned to himself at Barbara’s mistake. She was trying to say that he would be an admiral on a small scale, in miniature, en petit as it would be phrased in French. But en petit meant nothing like in petto, all the same. In petto was Italian for ‘in the breast’; when the Pope appointed a cardinal in petto it meant that he intended to keep the appointment to himself for a time without making it public. It tickled Hornblower hugely to hear Barbara guilty of a solecism of that sort. And it made her human again in his eyes, of the same clay as his own. He warmed to her afresh, with tenderness and affection supplementing passion and love.

The coach came to a stop with a lurch and a squeaking of brakes, and the door opened. Hornblower jumped out and handed Barbara down before looking round him. It was blowing half a gale, west-by-north, undoubtedly. This morning it had been a strong breeze, southwesterly, so that it was both veering and strengthening. A little more northing in the wind and they would be weather-bound in the Downs until it backed again. The loss of an hour might mean the loss of days. Sky and sea were grey, and there were whitecaps a-plenty. The East India convoy was visible at anchor some way out—as far as they were concerned the wind had only to veer a trifle for them to up-anchor and start down-Channel. There was other shipping to the northward, and presumably the Nonsuch and the flotilla were there, but without a glass it was too far to tell ship from ship. The wind whipped round his ears and forced him to hold his hat on tightly. Across the cobbled street was the jetty with a dozen Deal luggers riding to it.

Brown stood waiting for orders while the coachman and footman were hauling the baggage out of the boot.

“I’ll have a hoveller take me out to the ship, Brown,” said Hornblower. “Make a bargain for me.”

He could have had a signal sent from the castle to the Nonsuch for a boat, but that would consume precious time. Barbara was standing beside him, holding on to her hat; the wind flapped her skirt round her like a flag. Her eyes were grey this morning—if sea and sky had been blue her eyes would have been blue too. And she was making herself smile at him.

“If you are going out to the ship in a lugger, dear,” she said, “I could come too. The lugger could bring me back.”

“You will be wet and cold,” said Hornblower. “Close-hauled and with this wind it will be a rough passage.”

“Do you think I mind?” said Barbara, and the thought of leaving her tore at his heartstrings again.

Brown was back again already, and with him a couple of Deal boatmen, handkerchiefs bound round their heads and ear-rings in their ears; their faces, burned by the wind and pickled by the salt, a solid brown like wood. They laid hold of Hornblower’s sea-chests and began to carry them as if they were feathers towards the jetty; in nineteen years of war innumerable officers had had their chests carried down to Deal jetty. Brown followed them, and Hornblower and Lady Barbara brought up the rear, Hornblower clutching tenaciously the leather portfolio containing his ‘most secret’ orders.

“Morning, Captain,” The captain of the lugger knuckled his forehead to Hornblower. “Morning, Your Ladyship. All the breeze anyone wants to-day. Still, you’ll be able to weather the Goodwins, Captain, even with those unweatherly bombs of yours. Wind’s fair for the Skaw once you’re dear of the Downs.”

So that was military secrecy in this England; this Deal hoveller knew just what force he had and whither he was bound—and to-morrow, as likely as not, he would have a rendezvous in mid-Channel with a French chasse- maree, exchanging tobacco for brandy and news for news. In three days Bonaparte in Paris would know that Hornblower had sailed for the Baltic with a ship of the line and a flotilla.

“Easy with them cases!” roared the lugger captain suddenly. “Them bottles ain’t made o’ iron!”

They were lowering down into the lugger the rest of his baggage from the jetty; the additional cabin stores which Barbara had ordered for him and whose quality she had checked so carefully, a case of wine, a case of provisions, and the parcel of books which was her special present to him.

“Won’t you take a seat in the cabin, Your Ladyship?” asked the lugger captain with queer untutored politeness. “’Twill be a wet run out to Nonsuch.”

Barbara caught Hornblower’s eye and refused politely; Hornblower knew those stuffy, smelly cabins of old.

“A tarpauling for Your Ladyship, then.”

The tarpaulin was fastened round Barbara’s shoulders, and hung round her to the deck like a candle extinguisher. The wind was still pulling at her hat, and she put up her hand and with a single gesture snatched it from her head and drew it inside the tarpaulin. The brisk wind blew her hair instantly into streamers, and she laughed, and with a shake of her head set her whole mane flying in the wind. Her cheeks flushed and her eyes sparkled, just as Hornblower could remember her in the old days when they rounded the Horn in Lydia. Hornblower wanted to kiss her.

“Cast off, there! Hands to the halliard!” roared the captain, coming aft and casually holding the tiller against his hip. The hands strained at the tackle, and the mainsail rose foot by foot; the lugger made a sternboard away from the jetty.

“Lively with that sheet now, Ge-arge!”

The captain hauled the tiller over, and the lugger checked herself, spun on her keel, and dashed forward, as handy as a horse in the hands of a skilful rider. As she came out from the lee of the jetty the wind took hold of her and laid her over, but the captain put down the tiller and Ge-arge hauled aft on the sheet until the sail was like a board, and the lugger, close-hauled—dramatically so to anyone unfamiliar with her type—plunged forward into the teeth of the gale, with the spray flying aft from her port bow in sheets. Even in the sheltered Downs there was enough of a sea running to make the lugger lively enough as she met it, pitch following roll as each wave passed under her from port bow to starboard quarter.

Hornblower suddenly realized that this was the moment when he should be seasick. He could not remember the start of any previous voyage when he had not been sick, and the motion of this lively little lugger should find him out if anything would. It was interesting that nothing of the sort was happening; Hornblower noticed with deep amazement that the horizon forward showed up above the boat’s bow, and then disappeared as the lugger stood up on her stern, without his feeling any qualm at all. It was not so surprising that he had retained his sea-legs; after twenty years at sea it was not easy to lose them, and he stood swaying easily with the boat’s quick motion; he only lost his sea-legs when he was really dizzy with seasickness, and that dread plague showed no sign of appearing. At the start of previous voyages he had always been worn out with the fatigues of fitting out and commissioning, of course short of sleep and worn down with anxieties and worries and ready to be sick even without going to sea. As Commodore he had had none of these worries; the Admiralty and the Foreign Office and the Treasury had heaped orders and advice upon him, but orders and responsibility were not nearly as harassing as the petty worries of finding a crew and dealing with dockyard authorities. He was perfectly at ease.

Barbara was having to hold on tightly, and now that she looked up at him she was obviously not quite as comfortable inside as she might be; she was filled with doubts if with nothing else. Hornblower felt both amusement and pride; it was pleasant to be newly at sea and yet not sick, and it was more pleasant still to be doing something better than Barbara, who was so good at everything. He was on the point of teasing her, of vaunting his own immunity, when common sense and his tenderness for his wife saved him from such an incredible blunder. She would hate him if he did anything of the sort—he could remember with enormous clarity how much he hated the whole world when he was being seasick. He did his best for her.

“You’re fortunate not to be sick, my dear,” he said. “This motion is lively, but then you always had a good stomach.”

She looked at him, with the wind whipping her tousled hair; she looked a trifle dubious, but Hornblower’s words had heartened her. He made a very considerable sacrifice for her, one she would never know about.

“I envy you, dear,” he said. “I’m feeling the gravest doubts about myself, as I always do at the beginning of a voyage. But you are your usual happy self.”

Surely no man could give a better proof of his love for his wife than that he should not only conceal his feeling of superiority, but that he should even for her sake pretend to be seasick when he was not. Barbara was all concern at once.