Hornblower and the Gallant  by Suzanna

Surely it was the coldest night of the year and though the year had barely begun, the record well might stand through December. Was there a grimmer, more desolate stretch of ocean than the North Sea in March? A more dangerous plain anywhere, more rife with enemy vessels? Hard to know whether one was meant to be the hunter or the hunted in this chill, leaden expanse of sea.

Twelve leagues or more off the coast of southern Norway, HMS Gallant made her way in heavy seas, bearing south-southwest and very much on the hunt. Enemy shipping, enemy warships, Gallant’s captain was not particular in this regard. To hit the enemy swiftly and powerfully, that was the point, until he struck, sank, or was captured and Gallant, having done her duty by her country and good King George, could sail on, searching for new prey.

The captain, only an acting captain as it happened, gave a quiet order to the helmsman and went below to his cabin. Spartan quarters but sacrosanct, and he breathed a ragged sigh as he entered. In this small space, for short periods of time, he need not trouble himself to remain unfailingly calm and confident. Nightly, daily, it was here that he confronted his doubts, wrestled his own personal demons.

As he rubbed his bleary eyes and thought about searching out some headache remedy, a soft noise made him pivot toward the port bulkhead. Turning, he could just make out a dim figure, backlit by the low lamp, head looming against the painted overhead.

"Who the devil -- ?"

"I did not mean to startle you, sir," his visitor said smoothly. Rather improbably, he gave a small bow.

"How did you get into this cabin?" asked the captain, sharpish.

The tall figure shifted, moving into the pool of light, and revealed himself as slender but well-built, bare-headed and dressed in an old-fashioned post-captain’s uniform, gold lace, buttons and all.

"I’m not sure that I know," said his companion. "I have been on board for some time, however. Long enough to know that this voyage has taken its toll on you."

The captain shook his head as if to clear it, rubbed his eyes again with thumb and forefinger. "I know every man aboard this ship by sight. I’ve never laid eyes on you before. And you haven’t told me your name."

The stranger smiled, his dark eyes glittering and his lips curving into a satisfied smile. "Hornblower’s my name, sir. Captain Horatio Hornblower of His Majesty’s Ship Sutherland."

At this, the captain’s fair eyebrows shot straight up. "Impossible!" he barked. "You’re some pixilated crewman who’s gotten himself up in fancy dress and barged in here on a bet." He shook his head again, sorrowfully. "Sorry, my lad, but I really can’t have this. I’m afraid you’ll have to spend the night in the brig."

Horatio Hornblower, indeed. If the man wanted to pass himself off as an officer, he could do a sight better than choose the name of a fictional character. Did he think his captain didn’t read novels? Sighing again, the captain turned toward the white-painted hatch.

"Steward!"

"No, no!" Hornblower said impatiently. "You’re going about this completely the wrong way."

The captain blinked. "I beg your pardon?" The man simply exuded authority. He blinked again. Was it his imagination or was this fellow who called himself Hornblower a trifle . . . insubstantial? It must be fatigue, but the longer he stared at the fellow’s absurd, outdated uniform, the more it seemed as though one could sort of peer through it and make out the rivets on the bulkhead.

And how in blazes could any member of the crew have hair long enough to tie back in a queue? Unless . . . . he reached out with a none-too-steady hand and gave the man’s pigtail a good hard yank. The interloping jackass only smiled.

Right, then. The hair in question was firmly attached to the head in question and the owner of that head did not give so much as a wince. Instead, his smile widened and grew ever so slightly smug. "Told you," he said, but Gallant’s captain only shrugged and lowered himself onto his bunk.

"Very well, I am far too tired to argue with you. Take a pew, old man, and tell me exactly what it is that you think I’m going about in completely the wrong way." He wondered if he might possibly have already fallen asleep and be in the throes of another restless dream. But the ship pitched in response to even heavier seas and he could feel her engines adjust to compensate. The hum reverberating in the hull, the thud of the rollers seemed real enough.

Hornblower turned the one chair around and sat next to the small desk fastened to the bulkhead, laying his arm comfortably upon it for support. He looked around the little cabin with unfeigned interest.

"This is a far cry from the captain’s cabin in a frigate, let alone a ship of the line," he said. "Quarters are always cramped aboard a ship of war, but this is so . . . ."

"Inelegant?" responded his weary host.

"If you say so, Captain Beckett."

"Ah, you know my name."

"Of course, sir. I have naturally learned a great deal since coming on board. Although I do have a number of questions."

Beckett made an inarticulate sound that might have been a snort. "Yes, I imagine you do. The Royal Navy must have changed, rather, since your time."

"Perhaps. And yet, England once again is fighting for its very survival against a dictator who would -- who has -- conquered most of Europe. Though one could not say that His Majesty’s Navy forms the wooden walls of England any longer. The iron walls might be more like it." The man’s expression was dead earnest. "These are dire times, are they not?" he said soberly.

"Know about that, too, do you?"

Hornblower nodded solemnly. "I’ve been reading the newspapers that some of the crew have. They are a few weeks old, I imagine. Still, I think I am beginning to get the picture. This Hitler fellow is a scourge upon mankind. Worse than Napoleon if such a thing is possible."

His guest might be a ghost or a trick of the light, but he seemed to have the gift of rational thought.

"What is the ship’s complement, if I may ask? I’ve been too busy taking stock of other matters to make a count."

"Oh, ask away, old fellow. Some eleven hundred souls, as it happens." Beckett paused and then muttered under his breath, "Eleven hundred souls looking to me to keep them safe . . . ."

"Safe!" Hornblower scoffed openly at him. "Oh, I gather you have many landsmen among your crew and few among them who are here willingly. But a captain cannot sail out to meet the enemy and expect safety for himself or his crew. I should say that the life you have chosen is one of adversity, but also of adventure . . . ."

Captain Beckett laughed at that, perhaps a little wildly.

"What is it you take me for, man? I had a childhood messing about in boats and spent ten years in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve before the war. That is the some total of my qualifications." He pointed to the wavy lines on his uniform sleeve.

"Of course, that’s all the qualification that’s needed these days," he muttered. "I’m a stockbroker by trade, if you must know. A stockbroker, I ask you. But it was all hands on deck once that madman invaded Poland."

Hornblower furrowed his brow. Ah, yes, the Kingdom of Poland. Created along about 1815, with coastline on the Baltic. Well this wasn’t getting them anywhere. He cleared his throat.

"Now look here, man. You may have been a stockbroker, but now you are a captain in His Majesty’s Navy, and you must pull yourself together and act like it."

"Act like it!" Beckett shook his head and stretched his lanky form out on the bunk, hands behind his head. If he was going ’round the twist he may as well be comfortable in the process. "I do nothing but act. I could go on the stage back in civvy street, provided I survive the war.

"There you are then. Others have had to bluff their way through leadership before you, you know. But you must not let your guard down. When you mistook me for a crewman just now and were about to send me off to the brig, you nearly apologized for it and admitted outright that you were tired as well. That will never do."

Beckett regarded him silently and raised an interrogatory eyebrow.

"A ship’s captain must never show any sign of weakness, no matter how casual or how trivial. To his officers and men he must be more like a god than a man. Even if he feels like a dog."

The captain of Gallant laughed ruefully. "You’ve hit the nail on the head there, Hornblower. Most of the time I feel like the sorriest old seadog you’ve ever set eyes on in your life."

The sorriest and the most exasperating to his interlocutor’s way of thinking. Here the man was, fighting a fearsome enemy with a vessel -- no, this ship was more like a machine than a vessel -- that would have been the envy of any of Hornblower’s own contemporaries, and all he could do was rattle on about acting and his lack of "qualifications." As if Hornblower himself had had any damned qualifications to start with.

He cleared his throat again. "Does the service still perform gunnery practice at sea?"

Beckett sat up. "Not much in wartime. Can’t afford to waste the munitions." But he had a special interest in gunnery and soon found himself describing Gallant’s main and secondary guns. He relished the expression of incredulity on Hornblower’s face as he explained about the eight above-water torpedo tubes.

"The long shells stored on deck then, the ones with . . . fins . . . "

"Yes, those are torpedoes." Hornblower was intensely curious. He leaned forward as Beckett continued and many more minutes passed before he was felt he had been thoroughly briefed on the ship’s armament. He realized with satisfaction that Beckett was fully aware of the importance of superior gunnery skills, likely the decisive factor in any naval engagement, whether it be 1814 or 1940. Mayhap the fellow was officer material after all.

Beckett got up to turn on another lamp and Hornblower’s eyes, following his actions, lit upon the framed portrait of woman tacked on the bulkhead above the desk. He twisted in his seat to take it down for a moment.

"Ah, a photograph, Very clear it is, too." The portrait seemed odd to him, being in black and white, but even the lack of color could not disguise the warmth and good humor in the lady’s face. She had smiling eyes and her fair face was framed by a mass of unruly dark hair.

"Y-yes," said Beckett dryly. Photography had no doubt advanced considerably since Hornblower’s time.

"Your wife?"

"Fiancée. Miranda."

"Ah, you are betrothed. She’s lovely."

Beckett leaned against the hatch and made a small gesture with his head to acknowledge the compliment.

"Perhaps it’s just as well," Hornblower continued, with less apparent confidence than before. "I have come to feel that naval officers should not be so quick to marry."

His host nodded, his expression rather annoyingly sympathetic. But then Beckett had read both The Happy Return and Ship of the Line. He knew full well that Hornblower’s rash marriage was not a felicitous one, that he had formed, even though married, an attachment to a woman above his station who had then married someone else.

But having read Flying Colours as well, it might be that he knew more than Hornblower himself did about his own future. Beckett scratched his head. It could be damned confusing to remember who was supposed to know what when playing host to the incarnation of a fictional character from the previous century.

"Why on earth do they do that?" Hornblower asked abruptly

"Why on earth does who do what?" said Beckett, completely mystified.

"Cut their hair." Hornblower squinted at the photograph in his hand. "Why do they butcher their hair like that? Damned unfeminine, if you ask me."

Beckett smiled to himself, for Miranda was the most feminine creature imaginable, especially when dressed in boots and corduroys to carry out her duties in the Auxiliary Land Army. "Modern times, old man. Modern times. Takes some getting used to, I can tell you."

"But what’s all this business I read in the newspapers about women serving in the Royal Navy? That surely must be some bit of wartime nonsense that’s been printed in the papers to confound the enemy."

Hornblower’s consternation was met by a hearty laugh. "Propaganda, you mean? Dear God, no, it’s as real as, as . . . ." Beckett cast about in his mind for a comparison, but in the circumstances, just left it at that.

"They’re called Wrens," he went on. "Women’s Royal Naval Service. They served in the last war, as a matter of fact, and formed up again at the outset."

"The last war?" Hornblower frowned. "I’m not sure what you mean by that."

"The 1914 -1918 war. Look, shall we just leave the history lesson for another day?" Things were getting to be far too muddled.

"If you insist. Still, we are a warlike nation, are we not? And where would men like us -- well me, at least -- be if that were not the case? But what in heaven’s name do they do in the Navy, that’s what I’d like to know. They’re not . . . . they’re not . . . .?" His voice trailed off weakly. "Are they?"

"No, no, nothing like that." Beckett suppressed a smile. "Why, all sorts of things. They’re cooks, stewards, messengers, drivers, telephonists -- anything that will free up a man to fight."

"What’s a telephonist?" Hornblower interjected at once, but Beckett ignored him.

"There are nurses, too, of course. Queen Alexandra’s Royal Naval Nursing Service. The bravest of the brave, I’ll tell you fair."

"Who’s Queen Alexandra?" asked Hornblower, his brow wrinkled once again. "Women have always acted as nurses on warships, you know." He was thinking of Lady Barbara Wellesley’s unexpected gallantry on the Lydia. The bravest of the brave, indeed.

"Nowadays," Beckett was saying, "women are working in munitions plants, driving buses -- you know what a bus is, right? -- all manner of things they’ve never done before. I do sometimes wonder what’s going to happen when the war is over, though. I can’t imagine they’ll just want to go home and stay there."

"Good God!" said Hornblower.

"I know, I know. Still, there is a war on and we’re an island nation. All hands to the pumps as it were."

Hornblower tried to picture Maria doing any of the things Beckett had mentioned in support of a war effort. He could imagine her knitting warm mittens (she could knit a fine mitten, he could not deny it) or rolling bandages, but she barely had the fortitude to leave her own home unless it was on his arm. She was another type of wren entirely -- brown, plump, comfortable and flighty.

Lady Barbara, however, was another matter altogether, and his eyes took on a far away look as he visualized her, garbed not unlike Boadicea and holding the rains of a chariot, spear held high in her other hand as she charged the enemy. He shook himself and returned his attention to Captain Beckett.

"One more question on this topic, if you don’t mind, and then I think we should go on deck." Hornblower stood, clasped his hands behind his back and began pacing the constrained route from bunk to desk and back. He cleared his throat once more.

"It’s these other photographs, the ones the crew have -- women with hardly any clothes on. Quite a number of them are of the same woman! Doesn’t it play the very devil with discipline?"

Beckett chuckled as he picked up his hat and reached for the hatch handle. "The blonde, you mean? Hair piled up, derriere to the camera, very shapely legs?"

"What’s a derriere?" asked Hornblower.

"Never mind, I’ll tell you later, if you really want to know. That’s Betty Grable. She’s a popular actress."

Hornblower nodded slowly. In his experience, actresses did not pose for pictures half-clothed, although he supposed they could not prevent such portraits being painted if the artist had a mind to do so. He gazed at Beckett with a doubtful expression.

"She’s American," said Captain Beckett.

"Ah, well, that explains it then."

* * *

Dawn was not far off, so that the sky was a slightly lighter shade of grey, making it possible to scan the horizon with some assurance. The two captains stood side by side in the conning tower, just to port of the rating performing a starboard sweep with his binoculars. The seas had subsided a bit and Gallant was still making good way.

The captain turned toward the sailor on watch. "How goes it, Hoskins?" he asked, his voice brisk and cheerful. He turned to take a mug of coffee from the steward who had just come up behind him.

Hornblower stood silently, his hair ruffled by the stiff wind and his cheeks grown ruddy, but otherwise apparently oblivious to the weather. Beckett fastened the top toggle on his duffle coat and pulled the wool scarf up to his ears.

"Too damned quiet for my taste, beggin’ your pardon, sir," the crewman answered, his gaze still locked on the expanse of ocean before him. "I’d give my eye teeth to see a Jerry periscope pokin’ up off the starboard bow just about now."

His captain laughed, his eyes crinkling at the corners. "That’s the spirit, lad. It’s what we’re here for, after all. There’s ten shillings for you if you do spot one, and that’s a promise."

"Yes, sir!" said Hoskins smartly, his freckled face split in an eager grin. Ten shillings was nearly a week’s pay.

Beckett felt a hand clap him on the shoulder.

"That’s more like it, my friend," said Hornblower. "That’s more like it."

The End

Note: The author would like to acknowledge as a resource and inspiration the moving and informative website of the Force Z Survivors, especially those materials regarding the World War II battlecruiser HMS Repulse. www.forcez-survivors.org.uk

Disclaimer: No copyright infringement intended. Characters and incidents portrayed and names used are fictitious and any resemblance to the names, character, or history of any person is coincidental and unintentional.

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