His sleeping cabin was a tiny morsel of space bulkheaded off from his main cabin. Half the room was occupied by an eighteen pounder; the remainder was almost filled by his cot, his desk, and his chest. His steward Polwheal was putting out his razor and lather bowl on a bracket under a strip of mirror on the bulkheadthere was just room for the two of them to stand. Polwheal squeezed himself against the desk to allow his captain to enter; he said nothing, for Polwheal was a man of gratifyingly few wordsHornblower had picked him for that reason, because he had to guard against his besetting sin of garrulity even with servants.
Hornblower stripped off his wet shirt and trousers and shaved standing naked before the mirror. The face he regarded in the glass was neither handsome nor ugly, neither old nor young. There was a pair of melancholy brown eyes, a forehead sufficiently high, a nose sufficiently straight; a good mouth set with all the firmness acquired during twenty years at sea. The tousled curly brown hair was just beginning to recede and leave the forehead a little higher still, which was a source of irritation to Captain Hornblower, because he hated the thought of going bald. Noticing it, he was reminded of his other trouble and glanced down his naked body. He was slender and well muscled; quite a prepossessing figure, in fact, when he drew himself to his full six feet. But down there where his ribs ended there was no denying the presence of a rounded belly, just beginning to protrude beyond the line of his ribs of his iliac bones. Hornblower hated the thought of growing
fat with an intensity rare in his generation; he hated to think of his slender smoothskinned body being disfigured by an unsightly bulge in the middle, which was the reason why he, a naturally indolent individual who hated routine forced himself to take that regular morning walk on the quarterdeck.
When he had finished shaving he put down razor and brush for Polwheal to wash and put away, and stood while Polwheal hung a ragged serge dressing gown over his shoulders. Polwheal followed him along the deck to the headpump, removed the dressing gown, and then pumped up seawater from overside while his captain solemnly rotated under the stream. When the bath was finished Polwheal hung the dressing down again over his dripping shoulders and followed him back to the cabin. A clean linen shirtworn, but neatly mendedand white trousers were laid out on the cot. Hornblower dressed himself, and Polwheal helped him into the worn blue coat with its faded lace, and handed him his hat. All this was without a word being spoken, so well by now had Hornblower trained himself into his selfimposed system of silence. And he who hated routine had by now so fully called in routine to save himself from speech that exactly as he stepped out again on the quarterdeck eight bells rang, just as happened every single morning.
Hands to punishment, sir? asked Bush, touching his hat.
Hornblower nodded. The pipes of the boatswains mates began to twitter.
All hands to witness punishment, roared Harrison on the maindeck, and from all parts of the ship men began to pour up and toe their lines in their allotted positions.
Hornblower stood rigid by the quarterdeck rail, setting his face like stone. He was ashamed of the fact that he looked upon punishment as a beastly business, that he hated ordering it and dreaded witnessing it. The two or three thousand floggings he had witnessed in the last twenty years had not succeeded in hardening himin fact he was much softer now (as he was painfully aware) than as a seventeen year old midshipman. But there had been no avoiding the punishment of this mornings victim. He was a Welshman called Owen who could somehow never refrain from spitting on the decks. Bush, without referring to his captain, had sworn that he would have him flogged for every offence, and Hornblower had necessarily to endorse the decision and back up his officer in the name of discipline, although Hornblower had the gravest doubts as to whether a man who was fool enough not to be deterred from spitting on the decks by the fear of a flogging would benefit by receiving it.
Happily the business was got over quickly. The boatswains mates triced Owen, naked to the waist, up to the main rigging, and laid into him as the drum rolled. Owen, unlike the usual run of seamen, howled with pain as the cat of ninetails bit into his shoulders, and danced grotesquely, his bare feet flapping on the deck until at the end of his two dozen he hung from his bound wrists motionless and silent. Someone soused him with water and he was hustled below.
Hands to breakfast, Mr. Bush, snapped Hornblower; he hoped that the tan of the tropics saved him from looking as white as he felt. Flogging a half witted man was not to his taste as a before breakfast diversion and he was sick with disgust at himself at neither being strong enough to stop it nor ingenious enough to devise a way out of the dilemma Bushs decision had forced him into.