Hornblower 05 - Hornblower and the Atropos (19 page)

“Please explain to His Serene Highness,” said Hornblower, “that he is coming ashore with me to dine with the Governor.”

Eisenbeiss spoke in German, and the boy gave his mechanical little bow. The use of German evoked the manners of royalty from under the new veneer of a British midshipman.

“His Serene Highness is to wear his court dress?” asked Eisenbeiss.

“No,” said Hornblower, “his uniform. And if ever I see him again with his shoes as badly brushed as those are I'll take the cane to him.”

“Sir —” said Eisenbeiss, but words failed him. The thought of the cane being applied to his Prince struck him dumb; fortunately, perhaps.

“So that I am to wear this uniform too, sir?” asked Eisenbeiss.

“I fear you have not been invited, doctor,” said Hornblower.

“But I am First Chamberlain to His Serene Highness, sir,” exploded Eisenbeiss. “This will be a visit of ceremony, and it is a fundamental law of Seitz-Bunau that I make all presentations.”

Hornblower kept his temper.

“And I represent His Britannic Majesty,” he said.

“Surely His Britannic Majesty cannot wish that his ally should not be treated with the honours due to his royal position? As Secretary of State it is my duty to make an official protest.”

“Yes,” said Hornblower. He put out his hand and bent the Prince's head forward. “You might be better employed seeing that His Serene Highness washes behind his ears.”

“Sir! Sir!” said Eisenbeiss.

“Be ready and properly dressed in half an hour, if you please, Mr. Prince.”

Dinner at the Palace ran the dreary course it might be expected to take. It was fortunate that, on being received by the Governor's aide-de-camp, Hornblower was able to shuffle on to his shoulders the burden of the difficult decision regarding the presentations — Hornblower could not guess whether His Serene Highness should be presented to His Excellency or vice versa, and he was a little amused to note Her Excellency's hurried asides when she heard the quality of her second guest; the seating arrangements for dinner needed hasty revision. So Hornblower found himself between two dull women, one of them with red hands and the other with a chronic sniff. He struggled to make polite conversation, and he was careful with his wine-glass, contriving merely to sip when the others drank deep.

The Governor drank to His Serene Highness the Prince of Seitz-Bunau, and the Prince, with the most perfect aplomb, drank to His Majesty the King of Great Britain; presumably those were the first words of English he had ever learned, long before he had learned to shout “Vast heaving” or “Come on, you no-sailors, you”. When the ladies had withdrawn Hornblower listened to His Excellency's comments about Bonaparte's threatening invasion of Southern Italy, and about the chances of preserving Sicily from his clutches; and a decent interval after returning to the drawing-room he caught the Prince's eye. The Prince smiled back at him and rose to his feet. It was odd to watch him receiving the bows of the men and the curtseys of the ladies with the assurance of ingrained habit. Tomorrow the boy would be in the gunroom mess again — Hornblower wondered whether he was able yet to stand up for his rights there and make sure he received no more than his fair share of gristle when the meat was served.

The gig whisked them across the Grand Harbour from the Governor's steps to the ship's side, and Hornblower came on to the quarter-deck with the bos'n's mates' pipes to welcome him. He was conscious even before he had taken his hand from his hat brim that there was something wrong. He looked round him at the ship illuminated by the wild sunset the Gregale had brought with it. There was no trouble with the hands, judging by their attitudes as they stood crowded forward. The three Ceylonese divers were there in their accustomed isolation by the knight-heads. But the officers grouped aft wore an apprehensive look; Hornblower's eyes moved from face to face, from Jones to Still, the two lieutenants, to Carslake, the purser, and to Silver, the master's mate of the watch. It was Jones as senior officer who came forward to report.

“If you please, sir —”

“What is it, Mr. Jones?”

“If you please, sir, there has been a duel.”

No one could ever guess what would be the next burden to be laid on a captain's shoulders. It might be an outbreak of plague, or the discovery of dry rot in the ship's timbers. And Jones's manner implied not merely that there had been a duel, but that someone had been hurt in it.

“Who fought?” demanded Hornblower.

“The doctor and Mr. McCullum, sir.”

Well, somewhere they could pick up another doctor, and if the worst came to the worst they could manage without one at all.

“What happened?”

“Mr. McCullum was shot through the lungs, sir.”

God! That was something entirely different, something of vital importance. A bullet through the lungs meant death almost for certain, and what was he to do with McCullum dead? McCullum had been sent for all the way from India. It would take a year and a half to get someone out from there to replace him. No ordinary men with salvage experience would do — it had to be someone who knew how to use the Ceylonese divers. Hornblower wondered with sick despair whether a man had ever been so plagued as he was. He had to swallow before he could speak again.

“Where is he now?”

“Mr. McCullum, sir? He's in the hands of the garrison surgeon in the hospital ashore.”

“He's still alive?”

Jones spread despairing hands.

“Yes, sir. He was alive half an hour ago.”

“Where's the doctor?”

“Down below in his berth, sir.”

“I'll see him. No, wait. I'll send for him when I want him.”

He wanted to think; he needed time and leisure to decide what was to be done. It was his instinct to walk the deck; that was how he could work off the high internal pressure of his emotions. It was only incidentally that the rhythmic exercise brought his thoughts into orderly sequence. And this little deck was crowded with idle officers — his cabin down below was of course quite useless. That was the moment when Jones came forward with something else to bother him.

“Mr. Turner's come aboard, sir.”

Mr. Turner? Turner? That was the sailing master with experience of Turkish waters whom Collingwood had detailed specially to service in Atropos. He came from behind Jones as the words were said, a wizened old man with a letter in his hand, presumably the orders which had brought him on board.

“Welcome aboard, Mr. Turner,” said Hornblower, forcing himself into cordiality while wondering whether he would ever make use of Turner's services.

“Your servant, sir,” said Turner with old-fashioned politeness.

“Mr. Jones, see that Mr. Turner's comfortable.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

That was the only reply Jones could make, however hard of execution the order might be. But clearly Jones meditated some supplementary remark; it could be that was going to suggest putting Turner into McCullum's quarters. Hornblower could not bear the thought of having to listen to anything of the sort while he had yet to reach a decision. It was the final irritation that roused him to the pitch of acting with the arbitrariness of a captain of the old school.

“Get below, all of you,” he snapped. “I want this deck clear.”

They looked at him as if they had not heard him aright, and he knew they had.

“Get below, if you please,” he said, and the “if you please” did nothing to soften the harshness of his request. “Master's mate of the watch, see that this deck is kept clear, and keep out of my way yourself.”

They went below — this was an order from the captain who (according to the reports of his gig's crew) had barely been diverted from hanging a dozen French prisoners for no other reason than a desire to see their death struggles. So he had the quarter-deck to himself, on which to stride up and down, from taffrail to mizzen mast and back again, in the fast-fading twilight. He walked rapidly, turning with a jerk at each end, irritation and worry goading him on.

He had to reach a decision. The obvious thing to do was to report to Collingwood and await further orders. But how long would it be before any vessel left Malta with letters for Collingwood, and how long would it be before another returned? A month altogether, probably. No captain worth his salt would keep Atropos lying idle in Grand Harbour for a month. He could guess what Collingwood would think of a man who evaded responsibility like that. He could take Atropos and seek out Collingwood himself, but the same objections applied. And how would he appear in Collingwood's eyes if he were to arrive off Toulon or Leghorn or wherever the chances of war might have summoned Collingwood, at the moment when he was supposed to be two thousand miles away? No. No. It would never do. At least he had reduced two apparent possibilities to impossibilities.

Then he must proceed with his orders as if nothing had happened to McCullum. That meant he must undertake the salvage operations himself, and he knew nothing about the subject. A wave of fury passed over him as his mind dwelt on the inconvenience and loss occasioned by the duel. The idiotic Eisenbeiss and the bad-tempered McCullum. They had no business incommoding England in her struggle with Bonaparte merely to satisfy their own ridiculous passions. He himself had borne with Eisenbeiss's elephantine nonsense. Why could not McCullum have done the same? And in any event why could not McCullum have held his pistol straighter and killed the ridiculous doctor instead of getting killed himself? But that sort of rhetorical question did not get him any further with his own urgent problems; he must not think along those lines. Moreover, with a grinding feeling of guilt another consideration crept in. He should have been aware of bad blood between the people in his ship. He remembered the lighthearted way in which he had put on Jones's shoulders the responsibility for accommodating McCullum in his crowded little ship. In the wardroom the doctor and McCullum had probably got on each other's nerves; there could be no doubt about that — and presumably ashore, over wine in some tavern, the enmity had flared up and brought about the duel. He should have known about the possibility and nipped it in the bud. Hornblower scourged himself spiritually for his remissness. He experienced bitter self-contempt at that moment. Perhaps he was unfit to be captain of one of His Majesty's ships.

The thought brought about an even greater internal upheaval. He could not bear it. He must prove to himself that there was no truth in it, or he must break himself in the attempt. He must carry through that salvage operation by his own efforts if necessary. He must. He must.

So that was the decision. He had only to reach it for the emotion to die down within him, to leave him thinking feverishly but clearly. He must of course do everything possible to ensure success, omit nothing that could help. McCullum had indented for “leather fuse-hose”; that was some indication of how the salvage problem was to be approached. And McCullum was not yet dead, as far as he knew. He might — no, it was hardly possible. No one ever survived a bullet through the lungs. And yet —

“Mr. Nash!”

“Sir!” said the master's mate of the watch, coming at the run.

“My gig. I'm going over to the hospital.”

There was still just a little light in the sky, but overside the water was black as ink, reflecting in long, irregular lines the lights that showed in Valetta. The oars ground rhythmically in the rowlocks. Hornblower restrained himself from urging the men to pull harder. They could never have rowed fast enough to satisfy the pressing need for instant action that seethed inside him.

The garrison officers were still at mess, sitting over their wine, and the mess sergeant, at Hornblower's request, went in and fetched out the surgeon. He was a youngish man, and fortunately still sober. He stood with the candle-light on his face and listened attentively to Hornblower's questions.

“The bullet hit him in the right armpit,” said the surgeon. “One would expect that, as he would be standing with his shoulder turned to his opponent and his arm raised. The actual wound was on the posterior margin of the armpit, towards the back, in other words, and on the level of the fifth rib.”

The heart was on the level of the fifth rib, as Hornblower knew, and the expression had an ominous sound.

“I suppose the bullet did not go right through?” he asked.

“No,” replied the surgeon. “It is very rare for a pistol bullet, if it touches bone, to go through the body, even at twelve paces. The powder charge is only one drachm. Naturally the bullet is still there, presumably within the chest cavity.”

“So he is unlikely to live?”

“Very unlikely, sir. It is a surprise he has lived so long. The haemoptysis — the spitting of blood, you understand, sir — has been extremely slight. Most chest wounds die of internal bleeding within an hour or two, but in this case the lung can hardly have been touched. There is considerable contusion under the right scapula — that is the shoulder blade — indicating that the bullet terminated its course there.”

“Close to the heart?”

“Close to the heart, sir. But it can have touched none of the great vessels there, most surprisingly, or he would have been dead within a few seconds.”

“Then why do you think he will not live?”

The doctor shook his head.

“Once an opening has been made in the chest cavity, sir, there is little chance, and with the bullet still inside the chance is negligible. It will certainly have carried fragments of clothing in with it. We may expect internal mortification, in general gathering of malignant humours, and eventual death within a few days.”

“You could not probe for the bullet?”

“Within the chest wall? My dear sir!”

“What action have you taken, then?”

“I have bound up the wound of entry to put an end to the bleeding there. I have strapped up the chest to ensure that the jagged ends of the broken ribs do no more damage to the lungs. I took two ounces of blood from the left basilar vein, and I administered an opiate.”

“An opiate? So he is not conscious now?”

“Certainly not.”

Hornblower felt hardly wiser than he had done when Jones first told him the news.