Hornblower and the Widow McCool h-2 Read online

  “Look’ee here,” said Cornwallis again. “There’s to be no speechifying when he’s strung up.”

  “No, sir?” said Hornblower.

  “A quarter of the hands in this ship are Irish,” went on Cornwallis. “I’d as lief have a light taken into the magazine as to have McCool make a speech to ‘em.”

  “I understand, sir,” said Hornblower.

  But there was a ghastly routine about executions. From time immemorial the condemned man had been allowed to address his last words to the onlookers.

  “String him up,” said Cornwallis, “and that’ll show ‘em what to expect if they run off. But once let him open his mouth — That fellow has the gift of the gab, and we’ll have this crew unsettled for the next six months.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “So see to it, young sir. Fill him full o’ rum, maybe. But let him speak at your peril.”

  “Aye, aye, sir.”

  Payne followed Hornblower out of the cabin when he was dismissed.

  “You might stuff his mouth with oakum,” he suggested. “With his hands tied he could not get it out.”

  “Yes,” said Hornblower, his blood running cold.

  “I’ve found a priest for him,” went on Payne, “but he’s Irish too. We can’t rely on him to tell McCool to keep his mouth shut.”

  “Yes,” said Hornblower.

  “McCool’s devilish cunning. No doubt he’d throw everything overboard before they capture him.”

  “What was he intending to do?” asked Hornblower.

  “Land in Ireland and stir up fresh trouble. Lucky we caught him. Lucky for that matter, we could charge him with desertion and make a quick business of it.”

  “Yes,” said Hornblower.

  “Don’t rely on making him drunk,” said Payne, “although that was Billy Blue’s advice. Drunk or sober, these Irishmen can always talk. I’ve given you the best hint.”

  “Yes,” said Hornblower, concealing a shudder.

  He went back into the condemned cell like a man condemned himself. McCool was sitting on the straw mattress Hornblower had had sent in, and the two ship’s corporals still had him under their observation.

  “Here comes Jack Ketch,” said McCool with a smile that almost escaped appearing forced.

  Hornblower plunged into the matter in hand; he could see no tactful way of approach.

  “Tomorrow—” he said.

  “Yes, tomorrow?”

  “Tomorrow you are to make no speeches,” he said.

  “None? No farewell to my countrymen?”

  “No.”

  “You are robbing a condemned man of his last privilege.”

  “I have my orders,” said Hornblower.

  “And you propose to enforce them?”

  “Yes.”

  “May I ask how?”

  “I can stop your mouth with tow,” said Hornblower brutally.

  McCool looked at the pale, strained face. “You do not appear to me to be the ideal executioner,” said McCool, and then a new idea seemed to strike him. “Supposing I were to save you that trouble?”

  “How?”

  “I could give you my parole to say nothing.”

  Hornblower tried to conceal his doubts as to whether he could trust a fanatic about to die.

  “Oh, you wouldn’t have to trust my bare word,” said McCool bitterly. “We can strike a bargain, if you will. You need not carry out your half unless I have already carried out mine.”

  “A bargain?”

  “Yes. Allow me to write to my widow. Promise me to send her the letter and my sea chest here — you can see it is of sentimental value — and I, on my side, promise to say no word from the time of leaving this place here until — until—” Even McCool faltered at that point. “Is that explicit enough?”

  “Well—” said Hornblower.

  “You can read the letter,” added McCool. “You saw that other gentleman search my chest. Even though you send these things to Dublin, you can be sure that they contain nothing of what you would call treason.”

  “I’ll read the letter before I agree,” said Hornblower.

  It seemed a way out of a horrible situation. There would be small trouble about finding a coaster destined for Dublin; for a few shillings he could send letter and chest there.

  “I’ll send you in pen and ink and paper,” said Hornblower.

  It was time to make the other hideous preparations. To have a whip rove at the portside fore yardarm, and to see that the line ran easily through the block. To weight the line and mark a ring with chalk on the gangway where the end rested. To see that the noose ran smooth. To arrange with Buckland for ten men to be detailed to pull when the time came. Hornblower went through it all like a man in a nightmare.

  Back in the condemned cell, McCool was pale and wakeful, but he could still force a smile.

  “You can see that I had trouble wooing the muse,” he said.

  At his feet lay a couple of sheets of paper, and Hornblower, glancing at them, could see that they were covered with what looked like attempts at writing poetry. The erasures and alterations were numerous.

  “But here is my fair copy,” said McCool, handing over another sheet.

  ’My darling wife,’ the letter began. ‘It is hard to find words to say farewell to my very dearest—’

  It was not easy for Hornblower to force himself to read that letter. It was as if he had to peer through a mist to make out the words. But they were only the words of a man writing to his beloved, whom he would never see again. That at least was plain. He compelled himself to read through the affectionate sentences. At the end it said: ‘I append a poor poem by which in the years to come you may remember me, my dearest love. And now goodbye, until we shall be together in heaven. Your husband, faithful unto death, Barry Ignatius McCool.’

  Then came the poem.

  ’Ye heavenly powers! Stand by me when I die!

  The bee ascends before my rolling eye.

  Life still goes on within the heartless town.

  Dark forces claim my soul. So strike ‘em down.

  The sea will rise, the sea will fall. So turn

  Full circle. Turn again. And then will burn

  The lambent flames while hell will lift its head.

  So pray for me while I am numbered with the dead.’

  Hornblower read through the turgid lines and puzzled over their obscure imagery. But he wondered if he would be able to write a single line that would make sense if he knew he was going to die in a few hours.

  “The superscription is on the other side,” said McCool, and Hornblower turned the sheet over. The letter was addressed to the Widow McCool, in some street in Dublin. “Will you accept my word now?” asked McCool.

  “Yes,” said Hornblower.

  The horrible thing was done in the grey hours of the morning.

  “Hands to witness punishment.”

  The pipes twittered and the hands assembled in the waist, facing forward. The marines stood in lines across the deck. There were masses and masses of white faces, which Hornblower saw when he brought McCool up from below. There was a murmur when McCool appeared. Around the ship lay boats from all the rest of the fleet, filled with men — men sent to witness the punishment, but ready also to storm the ship should the crew stir. The chalk ring on the gangway, and McCool standing in it. The signal gun; the rush of feet as the ten hands heaved away on the line. And McCool died, as he had promised, without saying a word.

  The body hung at the yardarm, and as the ship rolled in the swell that came round Berry Head, so the body swung and dangled, doomed to hang there until nightfall, while Hornblower, sick and pale, began to seek out a coaster which planned to call at Dublin from Brixham, so that he could fulfill his half of the bargain. But he could not fulfil it immediately; nor did the dead body hang there for its allotted time. The wind was backing northerly and was showing signs of moderating. A westerly gale would keep the French fleet shut up in Brest; a northerly one might we
ll bring them out, and the Channel fleet must hurry to its post again. Signals flew from the flagships.

  “Hands to the capstan!” bellowed the bosun’s mates in twentyfour ships. “Hands make sail!”

  With doublereefed topsails set, the ships of the Channel fleet formed up and began their long slant downChannel. In the Renown it had been, “Mr. Hornblower, see that that is disposed of.” While the hands laboured at the capstan the corpse was lowered from the yardarm and sewn into a weighted bit of sailcloth. Clear of Berry Head it was cast overside without ceremony or prayer. McCool had died a felon’s death and must be given a felon’s burial. And, closehauled, the big ships clawed their way back to their posts amid the rocks and currents of the Brittany coast. And on board the Renown there was one unhappy lieutenant, at least, plagued by dreadful memories.

  In the tiny cabin which he shared with Smith there was something that kept Hornblower continually reminded of that morning: the mahogany chest with the name ‘B. I. McCool’ in high relief on the lid. And in Hornblower’s letter case lay that last letter and the rambling, delirious poem. Hornblower could send neither on to the widow until the Renown should return again to an English harbour, and he was irked that he had not yet fulfilled his half of the bargain. The sight of the chest under his cot jarred on his nerves; its presence in their little cabin irritated Smith.

  Hornblower could not rid his memory of McCool; nor, beating about in a ship of the line on the dreary work of blockade, was there anything to distract him from his obsession. Spring was approaching and the weather was moderating. So that when he opened his leather case and found that letter staring at him again, he felt undiminished that revulsion of spirit. He turned the sheet over; in the half dark of the little cabin he could hardly read the gentle words of farewell. He knew that strange poem almost by heart, and he peered at it again, sacrilege though it seemed to try to analyse the thoughts of the brave and frightened man who had written it during his final agony of spirit. ‘The bee ascends before my rolling eye.’ What could possibly be the feeling that inspired that strange imagery? ‘Turn full circle. Turn again.’ Why should the heavenly powers do that?

  A startling thought suddenly began to wake to life in Hornblower’s mind. The letter, with its tender phrasing, had been written without correction or erasure. But this poem; Hornblower remembered the discarded sheets covered with scribbling. It had been written with care and attention. A madman, a man distraught with trouble, might produce a meaningless poem with such prolonged effort, but then he would not have written that letter. Perhaps—

  Hornblower sat up straight instead of lounging back on his cot. ‘So strike ‘em down.’ There was no apparent reason why McCool should have written ‘’em’ instead of ‘them’. Hornblower mouthed the words. To say ‘them’ did not mar either euphony or rhythm. There might be a code. But then why the chest? Why had McCool asked for the chest to be forwarded with its uninteresting contents of clothing? There were two portraits of children; they could easily have been made into a package. The chest with its solid slabs of mahogany and its raised name was a handsome piece of furniture, but it was all very puzzling.

  With the letter still in his hand, he got down from the cot and dragged out the chest. B. I. McCool. Barry Ignatius McCool. Payne had gone carefully through the contents of the chest. Hornblower unlocked it and glanced inside again; he could see nothing meriting particular attention, and he closed the lid again and turned the key. B. I. McCool. A secret compartment! In a fever, Hornblower opened the chest again, flung out the contents and examined sides and bottom. It called for only the briefest examination to assure him that there was no room there for anything other than a microscopic secret compartment. The lid was thick and heavy, but he could see nothing suspicious about it. He closed it again and fiddled with the raised letters, without result.

  He had actually decided to replace the contents when a fresh thought occurred to him. ‘The bee ascends!’ Feverishly Hornblower took hold of the ‘B’ on the lid. He pushed it, tried to turn it. ‘The bee ascends!’ He put thumb and finger into the two hollows in the loops of the ‘B’, took a firm grip and pulled upward. He was about to give up when the letter yielded a little, rising up out of the lid half an inch. Hornblower opened the box again, and could see nothing different. Fool that he was! ‘Before my rolling eye.’ Thumb and forefinger on the ‘I’. First this way, then that way — and it turned!

  Still no apparent further result. Hornblower looked at the poem again. ‘Life still goes on within the heartless town.’ He could make nothing of that. ‘Dark forces claim my soul.’ No. Of course! ‘Strike ‘em down.’ That ‘’em’. Hornblower put his hand on the ‘M’ of ‘McCool’ and pressed vigorously. It sank down into the lid. ‘The sea will rise, the sea will fall.’ Under firm pressure the first ‘C’ slid upward, the second ‘ C’ slid downward. ‘Turn full circle. Turn again.’ Round went one ‘O’, and then round went the other in the opposite direction. There was only the ‘L’ now. Hornblower glanced at the poem. ‘Hell will lift its head.’ He guessed it at once; he took hold of the top of the ‘L’ and pulled; the letter rose out of the lid as though hinged along the bottom, and at the same moment there was a loud decisive click inside the lid. Nothing else was apparent, and Hornblower gingerly took hold of the lid and lifted it. Only half of it came up; the lower half stayed where it was, and in the oblong hollow between there lay a mass of papers, neatly packaged.

  The first package was a surprise. Hornblower, peeping into it, saw that it was a great wad of fivepound notes — a very large sum of money. A second package was similar. Ample money here to finance the opening moves of a new rebellion. The first thing he saw inside the next package was a list of names, with brief explanations written beside each. Hornblower did not have to read very far before he knew that this package contained the information necessary to start the rebellion. In the last package was a draft proclamation ready for printing. ‘Irishmen!’ it began.

  Hornblower took his seat on the cot again and tried to think, swaying with the motion of the ship. There was money that would make him rich for life. There was information which, if given to the government, would clutter every gallows in Ireland. Struck by a sudden thought, he put everything back into the chest and closed the lid.

  For the moment it was a pleasant distraction, saving him from serious thought, to study the ingenious mechanism of the secret lock. Unless each operation was gone through in turn, nothing happened. The ‘I’ would not turn unless the ‘B’ was first pulled out, and it was most improbable that a casual investigator would pull at that ‘B’ with the necessary force. It was most unlikely that anyone without a clue would ever discover how to open the lid, and the joint in the wood was marvellously well concealed. It occurred to Hornblower that when he should announce his discovery matters would go badly with Payne, who had been charged with searching McCool’s effects. Payne would be the laughingstock of the fleet, a man both damned and condemned.

  Hornblower thrust the chest back under the cot and, secure now against any unexpected entrance by Smith, went on to try to think about his discovery. That letter of McCool’s had told the truth. ‘Faithful unto death.’ McCool’s last thought had been for the cause in which he died. If the wind in Tor Bay had stayed westerly another few hours, that chest might have made its way to Dublin. On the other hand, now there would be commendation for him, praise, official notice — all very necessary to a junior lieutenant with no interests behind him to gain him his promotion to captain. And the hangman would have more work to do in Ireland. Hornblower remembered how McCool had died, and felt fresh nausea at the thought. Ireland was quiet now. And the victories of St Vincent and the Nile and Camperdown had put an end to the imminent danger which England had gone through. England could afford to be merciful. He could afford to be merciful. And the money?

  Later on, when Hornblower thought about this incident in his past life, he cynically decided that he resisted temptation because bank notes are tricky things
, numbered and easy to trace, and the ones in the chest might even have been forgeries manufactured by the French government. But Hornblower misinterpreted his own motives, possibly in selfdefence, because they were so vague and so muddled that he was ashamed of them. He wanted to forget about McCool. He wanted to think of the whole incident as closed.

  There were many hours to come of pacing the deck before he reached his decision, and there were several sleepless nights. But Hornblower made up his mind in the end, and made his preparations thoughtfully, and when the time came he acted with decision. It was a quiet evening when he had the first watch; darkness had closed in on the Bay of Biscay, and the Renown, under easy sail, was loitering along over the black water with her consorts just in sight. Smith was at cards with the purser and the surgeon in the gun room. A word from Hornblower sent the two stupidest men of the watch down below to his cabin to carry up the sea chest, which he had laboriously covered with canvas in preparation for this night. It was heavy, for buried among the clothing inside were two twentyfourpound shot. They left it in the scuppers at Hornblower’s order. And then, when at four bells it was time for the Renown to tack, he was able, with one tremendous heave, to throw the thing overboard. The splash went unnoticed as the Renown tacked.

  There was still that letter. It lay in Hornblower’s writing case to trouble him when he saw it. Those tender sentences, that affectionate farewell; it seemed a shame that McCool’s widow should not have the privilege of seeing them and treasuring them. But — but — When the Renown lay in the Hamoaze, completing for the West Indies, Hornblower found himself sitting at dinner next to Payne. It took a little while to work the conversation around in the right direction.

  “By the way,” said Hornblower with elaborate casualness, “did McCool leave a widow?”

  “A widow? No. Before he left Paris he was involved in a notorious scandal with La Gitanita, the dancer. But no widow.”