Open Boat by Lokei

“It was like the games Hornblower had played as a lonely little boy, when he had sat in the empty pig-trough and pretended he was cast away in an open boat.”  Mr. Midshipman Hornblower 

Hornblower had never before faulted himself for a lack of imagination.  He had faults enough, to be sure, and knew himself to be shy, awkward, hideously old at seventeen to be beginning his as-yet hardly illustrious career at sea—but he had always credited himself with a decent imagination. 

Now, however, after a night of hopeless, sleepless seasickness, stuck in an open boat mid-Channel, outnumbered by his captives and barely able to retain the respect of his own meager crew, Hornblower reflected gloomily that as a child he had been most unimaginative indeed.  To be five, or seven, or even nine, and to sit on the edge of the pig’s trough with a few crumbling tea biscuits and consider himself a sailor adrift, one who was dealt a poor hand by the Fates, seemed to have been instead tempting Fate to later retribution.  His childish assurance that an English frigate would sail by the farmyard to rescue him by teatime seemed now to be biting one’s thumb at the great unknown.

Hornblower would be very glad to see an English frigate sailing by any time now.  His stomach was, despite being very decidedly emptied, still pitching in concert with the waves, and he was fairly certain his face was now the color of his dirty white shirt. 

Gloomily, he stared out over the water towards the blank horizon.  Somehow, surrounded by fences and the outbuildings of home, a younger Hornblower had never quite grasped the enormity of the ocean, even a relatively confined part of it, like the Channel.  The rivers at home were none so wide, and one could certainly see the other bank at all times, even at their widest points.  The unbroken oppressiveness of slate grey waves and blank grey skies was far heavier in an open boat than on the cramped but cheerful Indefatigable.  He would far rather risk banging his head against the sturdy beams amidships than spend another night with only the sky’s own canopy hanging low overhead.

Hornblower brought his attention back within the boat’s narrow confines and counted crew and prisoners once more.  Splintered and shaky as it had been, the pig trough was roomy compared to this overloaded wash tub with a sail.  Once more in an uncountable number of iterations of the same theme, Hornblower cursed his faulty memory, his overlooking of the cargo, the dry well, the shot hole in the hull which had doomed the Marie Gallante and his first command.  Rice dotted the backs of his eyelids every time he blinked.  Harmless, familiar white specks as common as the seeds scattered for the chickens in the yard, which now danced mockingly in front of his tired eyes whenever he let his attention stray from the necessities.

Blinking hard against another onslaught of moisture as he had in the setting sun as the captured French cargo ship sank below the waves, Hornblower turned his attention to the aforethought necessities.  Ration the food.  Allow the passing of the water bucket.  Check the compass.  Trim the sail.  Check the compass again, make notes on the chart.  Ignore the mutterings of the French as if he did not understand their mutinous murmurs, and speak heartily to his meager prize crew.   Scan the horizon.  Breathe.

Hornblower closed his eyes for a long moment, deciding to exercise his imagination in the opposite direction.  The familiar white sails of the Indy, racing over the horizon.  The look on Captain Pellew’s face to see the crew all safe—

But then again, perhaps not.  Hornblower had failed, after all, and the ship and cargo entrusted to him had been lost through his negligence.  Pellew would not be pleased to see him, and Hornblower could not blame him for it.  Too hard, then, to imagine being rescued by his own vessel.  Another English ship, perhaps?  One with a captain who would give him an equal opportunity to prove himself?

Hornblower found he could not imagine this, either.

He sighed, checked the compass once more, and thought wryly that he hoped very much the Fates had not been listening the day a certain impulsive young Hornblower had imagined leading a mutiny against a wicked captain.

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