Hornblower 05 - Hornblower and the Atropos

Having climbed up through the locks, the canal boat was now winding over the pleasant Cotswold country. Hornblower was bubbling with good spirits, on his way to take up a new command, seeing new sights, travelling in an entirely new way, at a moment when the entirely unpredictable English weather had decided to stage a clear sunny day in the middle of December. This was a delightful way of travelling, despite the cold.

“Your pardon for a moment, ma'am,” said Hornblower.

Maria, with the sleeping little Horatio in her arms, gave a sigh at her husband's restlessness and shifted her knees to allow him passage, and he rose under the restricted height of the first class cabin and stepped out through the forward door into the open bow of the passage-boat. Here he could stand on his sea chest and look round him It was a queer craft, fully seventy feet long and, judging by eye as he looked aft, he would think hardly five feet in beam — the same proportions as had the crazy dugout canoes he had seen in use in the West Indies. Her draught must be less than a foot; that was clear as she tore along behind the cantering horses at a speed that must certainly be all of eight knots — nine miles an hour he told himself, hurriedly, for that was the way they measured speeds here inland.

The passage-boat was making her way from Gloucester to London along the Thames and Severn Canal; going far more smoothly than the stage coach, it was very nearly as fast and decidedly cheaper, at a penny a mile, even in the first class. He and Maria, with the child, were the only first-class passengers, and the boatman, when Hornblower had paid the fares, had cocked an eye at Maria's condition and had said that by rights they ought to pay two children's fares instead of one. Maria had snorted with disdain at such vulgarity, while the onlookers chuckled.

Standing on his sea chest, Hornblower could look over the canal banks, at the grey stone boundary walls and the grey stone farms. The rhythmic sound of the hoofs of the cantering tow horses accentuated the smoothness of the travel; the boat itself made hardly a sound as it slid along over the surface of the water — Hornblower noticed that the boatmen had the trick of lifting the bows, by a sudden acceleration, on to the crest of the bow wave raised by her passage, and retaining them there. This reduced turbulence in the canal to a minimum; it was only when he looked aft that he could see, far back, the reeds at the banks bowing and straightening again long after they had gone by. It was this trick that made the fantastic speed possible. The cantering horses maintained their nine miles an hour, being changed every half hour. There were two tow lines, attached to timber heads at bow and stern; one boatman rode as postillion on the rear horse, controlling the lead horse with shouts and the cracking of his whip. In the stern sat the other boatman, surly and with one hand missing and replaced by a hook; with the other he held the tiller and steered the boat round the curves with a skill that Hornblower admired.

A sudden ringing of the horses' hoofs on stone warned Hornblower just in time. The horses were dashing, without any slackening of pace, under a low bridge, where the tow-path, cramped between the water and the arch, gave them barely room to pass. The mounted boatman buried his face in his horse's mane to pass under; Hornblower had just time to leap down from his sea chest and seat himself as the bridge hurried over him. Hornblower heard the helmsman's loud laugh at his momentary discomfiture.

“You learn to move fast in a canal boat, Captain,” the steersman called to him from his place by the tiller. “Two dozen for the last man off the yard! None o' that here on Cotswold, Captain, but a broken head for you if you don't look lively.”

“Don't let that fellow be so rude to you, Horatio,” said Maria from the cabin. “Can't you stop him?”

“Not so easy, dear,” replied Hornblower. “It's he who's captain of this craft, and I'm only a passenger.”

“Well, if you can't stop him, come in here where he can't be rude to you.”

“Yes, my dear, in a minute.”

Hornblower chose to risk the jeers of the boatman rather than miss looking round him; this was the best opportunity he had had of watching the working of the canals which in the last thirty years had changed the economic face of England. And not far ahead was Sapperton Tunnel, the engineering marvel of the age, the greatest achievement of the new science. He certainly wanted to see that. Let the steersman laugh his head off if he wanted to. He must be an old sailor, discharged as disabled by the loss of his hand. It must be a wonderful experience for him to have a naval captain under his command.

The grey stone tower of a lock-house showed ahead, with the minute figure of the lock-keeper opening the gates. A yell from the postillion-boatman checked the speed of the horses; the boat glided on, its speed diminishing greatly as the bows slid off the bow wave. As the boat entered the lock the one-handed steersman leaped ashore with a line which he flipped dexterously round a bollard; a smart tug or two took most of the way off the boat, and the boatman, running forward, secured the line to another bollard.

“Heave us that line, Captain,” he cried, and Hornblower obediently threw up the bow line for him to secure forward. The law of the sea applied equally in inland waters — the ship first and personal dignity a long way second.

Already the lock-keeper was closing the gates behind them and the lock-keeper's wife was opening the paddles of the upper gate, the water swirling in. The lower gates closed with a crash with the mounting pressure, and the boat rose with the gurgling water. The horses were changed in a twinkling; the postillion scrambled into his saddle, and proceeded to tilt a black bottle against his lips during the remaining few seconds while the lock filled. The steersman was casting off the lines — Hornblower took the bow-line from him — and the lock-keeper's wife was thrusting at one upper gate while the lock-keeper, running up from the lower gate, thrust at the other. The postillion yelled and cracked his whip, the boat sprang forward while the helmsman leaped to his place astern, and they were off again with not a second wasted. Assuredly this canal traffic was a miracle of modernity, and it was gratifying to be on board the very fastest of the canal boats, the Queen Charlotte, that took priority over all other traffic. On her bow she carried a glittering scythe-blade as the proud symbol of her superior importance. It would sever the towline of any approaching boat which did not drop her line quickly enough to let her through. The two score of farmers' wives and wenches who sat aft in the second class with their chickens and ducks and eggs and butter were all of them travelling as much as twenty miles to market, in the confident expectation of returning the same day. Quite astonishing.

Here, as they climbed to the summit level, lock succeeded lock at frequent intervals, and at each the postillion held his black bottle to his lips, and his yells to his horses became more raucous and his whip-cracking more continuous. Hornblower obediently handed the bow-line at each lock, despite Maria's urgings to the contrary.

“My dear,” said Hornblower, “we save time if I do.”

“But it isn't right,” said Maria. “He knows you're a captain in the Navy.”

“He knows it too well,” said Hornblower with a lopsided smile. “And after all I have a command to take up.”

“As if it couldn't wait,” snorted Maria.

It was hard to make Maria understand that to a captain his command was all in all, that he wished to lose not an hour, not a minute, in his journey to assume command of his sloop of war in London River; he was yearning to see what Atropos was like, with the mingled hope and apprehension that might be expected of an Oriental bridegroom affianced to a veiled bride — that was not a simile that it would be wise to mention to Maria, though.

Now they were gliding down the summit level of the canal; the cutting was growing deeper and deeper, so that the echo of the sound of the horses' hoofs came ringing from the rocky banks. Round the shallow curve must surely be Sapperton Tunnel.

“Hold hard, Charlie!” suddenly yelled the steersman. A moment later he sprang to the after towline and tried to cast it off from the timber head, and there was wild confusion. Shouts and yells on the towpath horses whinnying, hoofs clattering. Hornblower caught a glimpse of the lead horse leaping frantically up the steep slope of the cutting — just ahead of them was the castellated but gloomy mouth of the tunnel and there was no other way for the horse to turn. The Queen Charlotte lurched hideously against the bank to the accompaniment of screams from the second-class cabin; for a moment Hornblower was sure she would capsize. She righted herself and came to a stop as the towlines slackened; the frantic struggles of the second horse, entangled in two towlines, ended as it kicked itself free. The steersman had scrambled on to the towpath and had dropped the after line over a bollard.

“A pretty kettle o' fish,” he said.

Another man had shown up, running down the bank from the top whence spare horses looked down at them, whinnying. He held the heads of the Queen Charlotte's horses, and near his feet lay Charlie, the boatman-postillion, his face a mask of blood.

“Get ye back in there!” bellowed the steersman to the women who were all scrambling out of the second-class cabin. “All's well. Get ye back! Once let them loose on the country” — he added to Hornblower — “and they'd be harder to catch than their own chickens.”

“What is it, Horatio?” asked Maria, standing at the door of the first-class cabin with the baby in her arms.

“Nothing to alarm yourself about, my dear,” said Hornblower. “Compose yourself. This is no time for agitation.”

He turned and looked at the one-handed steersman, who bent down to examine Charlie; taking a hold of the breast of his coat with his steel hook he hauled up, but Charlie's head only hung back helplessly, the blood running over his cheeks.

“Not much use out of Charlie,” said the steersman, letting him drop with a thump. As Hornblower stooped to look he could catch the reek of gin three feet from the bleeding mouth. Half stunned and half drunk — more than half of both for that matter.

“We've the tunnel to leg through,” said the steersman. “Who's up at the Tunnel House?”

“Ne'er a soul,” replied the man with the horses. "The trade all went through in the early morning.''

The steersman whistled.

“You'll have to come wi' us,” he said.

“Not I,” said the householder. “I've sixteen horses — eighteen with these two. I can't leave 'em.”

The steersman swore a couple of astonishing oaths — astonishing even to Hornblower, who had heard many in his time.

“What d'you mean by 'legging' through the tunnel?” Hornblower allied.

The steersman pointed with his hook at the black, forbidding tunnel mouth in the castellated entrance.

“No towpath through the tunnel, o' course, Captain,” he said. “So we leaves our horses here an' we legs through. We puts a pair o' 'wings' on the bows — sort o' catheads, in a way. Charlie lies on one an' I lies on the other, wi' our heads inboard an' our feet agin the tunnel wall. Then we sort o' walks, and we gets the boat along that way, and we picks up another pair o' horses at the south end.”

“I see,” said Hornblower.

“I'll souse this sot wi' a couple o' buckets o' water,” said the steersman. “Mebbe it'll bring him round.”

“Maybe,” said Hornblower.

But buckets of water made no difference to the unconscious Charlie, who was clearly concussed. The slow blood flowed again after his battered face had been washed clean. The steersman produced another couple of oaths.

“The other trade'll be coming up arter you,” said the householder.

“'Nother couple o' hours, mebbe.”

All he received in reply was a further series of oaths.

“We have to have daylight to run the Thames stauncher,” said the steersman. “Two hours? We'll only just get there by daylight if we go now.”

He looked round him, at the silent canal cut and tunnel mouths at the chattering women in the boat and the few doddering old gaffers along with them.

“Twelve hours late, we'll be,” he concluded, morosely.

A day late in taking up his command, thought Hornblower.

“Damn it,” he said, “I'll help you leg through.”

“Good on ye, sir,” said the steersman, significantly dropping the equalitarian “captain” for the “sir” he had carefully eschewed so far. “D'ye think you can?”

“Likely enough,” said Hornblower.

“Let's fit those wings,” said the steersman, with sudden decision.

They were small platforms, projecting out from either bow.

“Horatio,” asked Maria, “whatever are you doing?”

That was just what Maria would ask. Hornblower was tempted to make use of the rejoinder he had heard used once in the Renown, to the effect that he was getting milk from a male ostrich, but he checked himself.

“Just helping the boatman, dear,” he said patiently.