Amazing how the panic was spreading. The Treasurer was gone; Duras' Negro slave had ridden off on his late master's donkey; the soldiers had hastened off in a single group. The waterfront was deserted now except for the dead and dying; along the waterfront, presumably, at the foot of the wall, lay the way to the open country which all desired to seek. The Englishmen were standing alone, with the bags of gold at their feet.
'Plague spreads through the air,' said Tapling. 'Even the rats die of it. We have been here for hours. We were near enough to that' he nodded at the dying Duras'to speak to him, to catch his breath. Which of us will be the first?'
'We'll see when the time comes,' said Hornblower. It was his contrary nature to be sanguine in the face of depression; besides, he did not want the men to hear what Tapling was saying.
'And there's the fleet!' said Tapling bitterly. 'This lot'he nodded at the deserted lighters, one almost full of cattle, the other almost full of grain sacks'this lot would be a Godsend. The men are on two-thirds rations.'
'Damn it, we can do something about it,' said Hornblower. 'Maxwell, put the gold back in the boat, and get that awning in.'
The officer of the watch in H.M.S. Indefatigable saw the ship's longboat returning from the town. A slight breeze had swung the frigate and the Caroline (the transport brig) to their anchors, and the longboat, instead of running alongside, came up under the Indefatigable 's stern to leeward.
'Mr Christie!' hailed Hornblower, standing up in the bows of the longboat.
The officer of the watch came aft to the taffrail.
'What is it?' he demanded, puzzled.
'I must speak to the Captain.'
'Then come on board and speak to him. What the devil?'
'Please ask the Captain if I may speak to him.'
Pellew appeared at the after-cabin window; he could hardly have helped hearing the bellowed conversation.
'Yes, Mr Hornblower?'
Hornblower told him the news.
'Keep to loo'ard, Mr Hornblower.'
'Yes, sir. But the stores'
'What about them?'
Hornblower outlined the situation and made his request.
'It's not very regular,' mused Pellew. 'Besides'
He did not want to shout aloud his thoughts that perhaps everyone in the longboat would soon be dead of plague.
'We'll be all right, sir. It's a week's rations for the squadron.' That was the point, the vital matter. Pellew had to balance the possible loss of a transport brig against the possible gain of supplies, immeasurably more important, which would enable the squadron to maintain its watch over the outlet to the Mediterranean. Looked at in that light Hornblower's suggestion had added force.
'Oh, very well, Mr Hornblower. By the time you bring the stores out I'll have the crew transferred. I appoint you to the command of the Caroline .'
'Thank you, sir.'
'Mr Tapling will continue as passenger with you.'
'Very good, sir.'
So when the crew of the longboat, toiling and sweating at the sweeps, brought the two lighters down the bay,
in the course of the wild rushes about the lighter.
And there was a distraction when a boat came out from the shore, with swarthy Moors at the oars and the Treasurer in the stern. Hornblower left Tapling to negotiate apparently the Bey at least had not been so frightened of the plague as to forget to ask for his money. All Hornblower insisted upon was that the boat should keep well to leeward, and the money was floated off to it headed up in an empty rum-puncheon. Night found not more than half the cattle in the stalls on board, with Hornblower worrying about feeding and watering them, and snatching at hints diplomatically won from those members of his crew who had had bucolic experience. But the earliest dawn saw him driving his men to work again, and deriving a momentary satisfaction from the sight of Tapling having to leap for his life to the gangway out of reach of a maddened bullock which was charging about the deck and refusing to enter a stall. And by the time the last animal was safely packed in Hornblower was faced with another problem that of dealing with what one of the men elegantly termed 'mucking out'. Fodder water mucking out; that deck-load of cattle seemed to promise enough work in itself to keep his eighteen men busy, without any thought of the needs of handling the ship.
But there were advantages about the men being kept busy, as Hornblower grimly decided; there had not been a single mention of plague since the work began. The anchorage where the Caroline lay was exposed to north-easterly winds, and it was necessary that he should take her out to sea before such a wind should blow. He mustered his men to divide them into watches; he was the only navigator, so that he had to appoint the coxswain and the under-coxswain, Jordan, as officers of the watch. Someone volunteered as cook, and Hornblower, running his eye over his assembled company, appointed Tapling as cook's mate. Tapling opened his mouth to protest, but there was that in Hornblower's expression which cut the protest short. There was no bos'n, no carpenter no surgeon either, as Hornblower pointed out to himself gloomily. But on the other hand if the need for a doctor should arise it would, he hoped, be mercifully brief.