Aye aye, sir, said Wellard, and departed.
The pipes twittered through the ship.
All hands! All hands! roared the bosuns mates. All hands fall in abaft the mainmast! All hands!
Buckland went nervously up on deck, but he acquitted himself well enough at the moment of trial. In a harsh, expressionless voice he told the assembled hands that the accident to the captain, which they all must have heard about, had rendered him incapable at present of continuing in command.
But well all go on doing our duty, said Buckland, staring down at the level plain of upturned faces.
Bush, looking with him, picked out the grey head and paunchy figure of Hobbs, the actinggunner, the captains toady and informer. Things would be different for Mr. Hobbs in futureat least as long as the captains disability endured. That was the point: as long as the captains disability endured. Bush looked down at Hobbs and wondered how much he knew, how much he guessedhow much he would swear to at a courtmartial. He tried to read the future in the fat old mans face, but his clairvoyance failed him. He could guess nothing.
When the hands were dismissed there was a moment of bustle and confusion, as the watches resumed their duties and the idlers streamed off below. It was there, in the noise and confusion of a crowd, that momentary privacy and freedom from observation could best be found. Bush intercepted Hornblower by the mizzenmast bitts and could ask the question that he had been wanting to ask for hours; the question on which so much depended.
How did it happen? asked Bush.
The bosuns mates were bellowing orders; the hands were scurrying hither and thither; all round the two of them was orderly confusion, a mass of people intent on their own business, while they stood face to face, isolated, with the beneficent sunshine streaming down on them, lighting up the set face which Hornblower turned towards his questioner.
How did what happen, Mr. Bush? said Hornblower.
How did the captain fall down the hatchway?
As soon as he had said the words Bush glanced back over his shoulder in sudden fright lest he should have been overheard. These might be hanging words. When he looked back Hornblowers face was quite expressionless.
I think he must have overbalanced, he said, evenly, looking straight into Bushs eyes; and then he went on, If you will excuse me, sir, I have some duties to attend to.
Later in the day every wardroom officer was introduced in turn to the captains cabin to see with his own eyes what sort of wreck lay there. Bush saw only a feeble invalid, lying in the halflight of the cabin, his face almost covered with bandages, the fingers of one hand moving minutely, the other hand concealed in a sling.
Hes under an opiate, explained Clive in the wardroom. I had to administer a heavy dose to enable me to try and set the fractured nose.
I expect it was spread all over his face, said Lomax brutally. It was big enough.
The fracture was very extensive and comminuted, agreed Clive.
There were screams the next morning from the captains cabin, screams of terror as well as of pain, and Clive and his mates emerged eventually sweating and
worried. Clive went instantly to report confidentially to Buckland, but everyone in the ship had heard those screams or had been told about them by men who had; the surgeons mates, questioned eagerly in the gunroom by the other warrant officers, could not maintain the monumental discretion that Clive aimed at in the wardroom. The wretched invalid was undoubtedly insane; he had fallen into a paroxysm of terror when they had attempted to examine the fractured nose, flinging himself about with a madmans strength so that, fearing damage to the other broken bones, they had had to swathe him in canvas as in a straitjacket, leaving only his left arm out. Laudanum and an extensive bleeding had reduced him to insensibility in the end, but later in the day when Bush saw him he was conscious again, a weeping, pitiful object, shrinking in fear from every face that he saw, persecuted by shadows, sobbingit was a dreadful thing to see that burly man sobbing like a childover his troubles, and trying to hide his face from a world which to his tortured mind held no friendship at all and only grim enmity.
It frequently happens, said Clive pontificallythe longer the captains illness lasted the more freely he would discuss itthat an injury, a fall, or a burn, or a fracture, will completely unbalance a mind that previously was a little unstable.
A little unstable! said Lomax. Did he turn out the marines in the middle watch to hunt for mutineers in the hold? Ask Mr. Hornblower here, ask Mr. Bush, if they thought he was a little unstable. He had Hornblower doing watch and watch, and Bush and Roberts and Buckland himself out of bed every hour day and night. He was as mad as a hatter even then.
It was extraordinary how freely tongues wagged now in the ship, now that there was no fear of reports being made to the captain.
At least we can make seamen out of the crew now, said Carberry, the master, with a satisfaction in his voice that was echoed round the wardroom. Sail drill and gun drill, tautened discipline and hard work, were pulling together a crew that had fast been disintegrating. It was what Buckland obviously delighted in, what he had been itching to do from the moment they had left the Eddystone behind, and exercising the crew helped to lift his mind out of the other troubles that beset it.