Hard luck, he said.
It might be worse, said Hornblower.
Chapter III
RenownThe ship was a thing of exquisite beauty in an exquisite setting, and her bluff bows and her rows of guns added something else to the picture. She was a magnificent fighting machine, the mistress of the waves over which she was sailing in solitary grandeur. Her very solitude told the story; with the fleets of her enemies cooped up in port, blockaded by vigilant squadrons eager to come to grips with them, the Renown could sail the seas in utter confidence that she had nothing to fear. No furtive blockaderunner could equal her in strength; nowhere at sea was there a hostile squadron which could face her in battle. She could flout the hostile coasts; with the enemy blockaded and helpless she could bring her ponderous might to bear in a blow struck wherever she might choose. At this moment she was heading to strike such a blow, perhaps, despatched across the ocean at the word of the Lords of the Admiralty.
And drawn up in ranks on her maindeck was the ships company, the men whose endless task it was to keep this fabric at the highest efficiency, to repair the constant inroads made upon her material by sea and weather and the mere passage of time. The snowwhite decks, the bright paintwork, the exact and orderly arrangement of the lines and ropes and spars severe proofs of the diligence of their work; and when the time some for the Renown to deliver the ultimate argument regarding the sovereignty of the seas, it would be they who would man the gunsthe Renown might be a magnificent fighting machine, but she was so only by virtue of the frail
humans who handled her. They, like the Renown herself, were only cogs in the greater machine which was the Royal Navy, and most of them, caught up in the time-honoured routine and discipline of the service, were content to be cogs, to wash decks and set up rigging, to point guns or to charge with cutlasses over hostile bulwarks, with little thought as to whether the ships bows were headed north or south, whether it was Frenchman or Spaniard or Dutchman who received their charge. Today only the captain knew the mission upon which the Lords of the Admiraltypresumably in consultation with the Cabinethad despatched the Renown . There had been the vague knowledge that she was headed for the West Indies, but whereabouts in that area, and what she was intended to do there was known only to one man in the seven hundred and forty on the Renown s decks.
Every possible man was drawn up on this Sunday morning on the maindeck, not merely the two watches, but every idler who had no place in the watchesthe holders, who did their work so far below decks that for some of them it was literally true that they did not see the sun from one weeks end to another, the cooper and his mates, the armourer and his mates, sailmaker and cook and stewards, all in their best clothes with the officers with their cocked hats and swords beside their divisions. Only the officer of the watch and his assistant warrant officer, the quartermasters at the wheel and the dozen hands necessary for lookouts and to handle the ship in a very sudden emergency were not included in the ranks that were drawn up in the waist at rigid attention, the lines swaying easily and simultaneously with the motion of the ship.
It was Sunday morning, and every hat was off, every head was bare as the ships company listened to the words of the captain. But it was no church service; these bareheaded men were not worshipping their Maker. That could happen on three Sundays in every month, but on those Sundays there would not be quite such a strict inquisition throughout the ship to compel the attendance of every handand a tolerant Admiralty had lately decreed that Catholics and Jews and even Dissenters might be excused from attending church services. This was the fourth Sunday, when the worship of God was set aside in favour of a ceremonial more strict, more solemn, calling for the same clean shirts and bared heads, but not for the downcast eyes of the men in the ranks. Instead every man was looking to his front as he held his hat before him with the wind ruffling his hair; he was listening to laws as allembracing as the Ten Commandments, to a code as rigid as Leviticus, because on the fourth Sunday of every month it was the captains duty to read the Articles of War aloud to the ships company, so that not even the illiterates could plead ignorance of them; a religious captain might squeeze in a brief church service as well, but the Articles of War had to be read.
The captain turned a page.
Nineteenth Article, he read. If any person in or belonging to the fleet shall make or endeavour to make any mutinous assembly upon any offence whatsoever, every person offending therein, and being convicted by the sentence of the courtmartial, shall suffer death.
Bush, standing by his division, heard these words as he had heard them scores of times before. He had, in fact, heard them so often that he usually listened to them with inattention; the words of the previous eighteen Articles had flowed past him practically without his hearing them. But he heard this Nineteenth Article distinctly; it was possible that the captain read it with special emphasis, and in addition Bush raising his eyes in the blessed sunshine, caught sight of Hornblower, the officer of the watch, standing at the quarterdeck rail listening as well. And there was that word death. It struck Bushs ear with special emphasis, as emphatic and as final as the sound of a stone dropped into a well, which was strange, for the other articles which the captain had read had used the word freelydeath for holding back from danger, death for sleeping while on duty.