“Gladly, sir. See to it, Jack.”

The other officer, presumably the mate, walked aft to take muskets and swords from the unresisting Frenchmen.

“They came out of the fog and laid me alongside before I was aware, almost, sir,” went on the captain. “A King’s ship took my four best hands when we was off the Start, or I’d have made a better account of them. I only got one crack at them as it was.”

“It was that crack that brought me here,” said Hornblower shortly. “Where did they come from?”

“Now that’s just what I was asking myself,” said the captain. “Not from France in that boat, they couldn’t have come.”

They turned their gaze inquiringly upon the dejected group of Frenchmen. It was a question of considerable importance. The Frenchmen must have come from a ship, and that ship must be anchored somewhere amid the crowded vessels in the Downs. And at that rate she must be disguised as a British vessel or a neutral, coming in with the others before the wind dropped and the fog closed down. There had been plenty of similar incidents during the war. It was an easy way to snap up a prize. But it meant that somewhere close at hand there was a wolf in sheep’s clothing, a disguised French privateer, probably crammed with men—she might have made more than one prize. In the bustle and confusion that would ensue when a breeze should get up, with everyone anxious to up anchor and away, she could count on being able to make her escape along with her prizes.

“When the fog closed down,” said the captain, “the nearest vessel to us was a Ramsgate trawler. She anchored at the same time as we did. I doubt if it could be her.”

It was a matter of so much importance that Hornblower could not keep still. He turned and paced the deck for a space, his mind working rapidly. Yet his mind was not completely made up when he turned back and gave his first order in execution of the vague plan. He did not know if he would have the resolution to go through with it.

“Leadbitter,” he said to the coxswain.

“Sir!”

“Tie those men’s hands behind them.”

“Sir?”

“You heard what I said.”

To bind prisoners was almost a violation of the laws of war. When Leadbitter approached to carry out his orders the Frenchmen showed evident resentment. A buzz of voices arose.

“You can’t do this, sir,” said their spokesman. “We have—”

“Shut your mouth,” snapped Hornblower.

Even having to give that order put him in a bad temper, and his bad temper was made worse by his doubts about himself. Now that the Frenchmen were disarmed they could offer no resistance in face of the drawn pistols of the British sailors. With loud protests they had to submit, as Leadbitter went from man to man tying their wrists behind their backs. Hornblower was hating himself for the part he had to play, even while his calculating mind told him that he had a fair chance of success. He had to pose as a bloodthirsty man, delighting in the taking of human life, without mercy in his soul, gratified by the sight of the death struggles of a fellowhuman. Such men did exist, he knew. There were gloomy tyrants in the King’s service. In the past ten years of war at sea there had been some outrages, a few, on both sides. These Frenchmen did not know him for what he really was, nor did the West India crew. Nor for that matter his own men. Their acquaintance had been so short that they had no reason to believe him not to have homicidal tendencies, so that their behaviour would not weaken the impression he wished to convey. He turned to one of his men.

“Run aloft,” he said. “Reeve a whip through the block at the main yardarm.”

That portended a hanging. The man looked at him with a momentary unbelief, but the scowl on Hornblower’s face sent him scurrying up the ratlines. Then Hornblower strode to where the wretched Frenchmen were standing bound; their glance shifted from the man at the yardarm to Hornblower’s grim face, and their anxious chattering died away.

“You are pirates,” said Hornblower, speaking slowly and distinctly. “I am going to hang you.”

In case the Englishspeaking Frenchman’s vocabulary did not include the word “hang” he pointed significantly to the man at the yardarm. They could all understand that. They remained silent for a second or two, and then several of them began to speak at once in torrential French which Hornblower could not well follow, and then the leader, having pulled himself together, began his protest in English.

“We are not pirates,” he said.

“I think you are,” said Hornblower.

“We are privateersmen,” said the Frenchman.

“Pirates,” said Hornblower.

The talk among the Frenchmen rose to a fresh height; Hornblower’s French was good enough for him to make out that the leader was translating his curt words to his companions, and they were urging him to explain more fully their position.

“I assure you, sir,” said the wretched man, striving to be eloquent in a strange language, “we are privateersmen and not pirates.”

Hornblower regarded him with a stony countenance, and without answering turned away to give further orders.

“Leadbitter,” he said, “I’ll have a hangman’s noose on the end of that line.”

Then he turned back to the Frenchmen.

“Who do you say you are then?” he asked. He tried to utter the words as indifferently as he could.

“We are from the privateer Vengeance of Dunkirk, sir. I am Jacques Lebon, prizemaster.”

Privateers usually went to sea with several extra officers, who could be put into prizes to navigate them back to a French port without impairing the fighting efficiency of the privateer, which could continue her cruise. These officers were usually selected for their ability to speak English and for the knowledge of English seagoing ways, and they bore the title of “prizemaster.” Hornblower turned back to observe the noose now dangling significantly from the yardarm, and then addressed the prizemaster.

“You have no papers,” he said.

He forced his lips into a sneer as he spoke; to the wretched men studying every line in his face his expression appeared quite unnatural, as indeed it was. And Hornblower was gambling a little when he said what he did. If the prizemaster had been able to produce any papers the whole line of attack would have to be altered; but it was not much of a gamble. Hornblower was certain when he spoke that if Lebon had had papers in his pocket he would have already mentioned them, asking someone to dive into his pocket for them. That would be the first reaction of any Frenchman whose identity had been put in question.

“No,” said Lebon, crestfallen. It was hardly likely that he would have, when engaged on an ordinary operation of war.

“Then you hang,” said Hornblower. “All of you. One by one.”

The laugh he forced himself to produce sounded positively inhuman, horrible. Anyone hearing it would be justified in thinking that he was inspired by the anticipated pleasure of watching the death struggles of a dozen men. The whitehaired captain of the Amelia Jane could not bear the prospect, and came forward to enter into the discussion.

“Sir,” he said. “What are you going to do?”

“I am going to attend to my own business, sir,” said Hornblower, striving to throw into his voice all the harshness he had ever heard employed by all the insolent officers he had met during his service. “May I ask you to be kind enough to do the same?”

“But you can’t be meaning to hang the poor devils,” went on the captain.

“But that is what I do mean.”

“But not in my ship, sir—not now—not without trial.”

“In your ship, sir, which you allowed to be captured. And now. Pirates taken redhanded can be hanged instantly, as you know, sir. And that is what I shall do.”

It was a stroke of good fortune that the captain should have entered into the discussion. His appearance of sick dismay and the tone of his protests were convincingly genuine—they would never have been so if he had been admitted previously to a planned scheme. Hornblower’s attitude towards him was brutal, but it was for the good of the cause.