For his part, Lieutenant Horatio Hornblower of His Majesty's Frigate Indefatigable decided that it was high time he... and fell asleep. He had been living in the gutter for what must have been the better part of a month, after living in a hellhole of a French prison for the better part of two months, before escaping and somehow making his way back to jolly old England. It was long and involved, and he was sure that if he ever tried to tell the whole story to anyone he would forget some vital detail and be passed off as some half-mad lieutenant looking for sympathy and or money from whoever would listen. This was precisely why the whole story was scrawled down on a wad of parchment in the pocket of his dress coat, which was now draped over the back of a chair across the room from him.
It had all started after the fiasco at Muzillac. The Indefatigable had captured an undercrewed and overloaded French brig off the coast of Spain. Thinking to take his protégé's mind off the recent losses, Captain Pellew had given Lieutenant Hornblower the duty of taking the newly acquired 'Revolution' to Admiral Taylor's fleet around the coast of Norway. Hornblower knew that he was being 'gotten rid of' until he started behaving more like himself again, and he knew that there wasn't really a true fleet on Norway's coast, just a motley assortment of England's captured ships, but for some obscure reason which he still hadn't figured out, he decided to indulge Captain Pellew and take the ship up to join the others. It was all arranged that once the Revolution was safe, Horatio and his crew would be given passage back to England on the next supply ship.
Of course, most of the crew was chosen by Captain Pellew, but Hornblower did get a few of his choices-Mr. Kennedy was coming along as midshipman, and Styles, Matthews and Oldroyd coming along as leaders of the crew. It would take them a month and a half round trip, Pellew had surmised, and would be relatively easy. Looking back on the catastrophic voyage, Horatio could have laughed. For the first week, all he could do was berate himself for the failure at Muzillac, and more at the front of his mind, the loss of Mariette. He would go over and over it, the reason he had fallen in love with this French village girl, and never find the answer. He would lie awake at night and think, he would talk with Kennedy for hours, but he could never come up with an answer. So from that fateful night seven days into the voyage when he had woken up crying in his cabin seven nights in a row with Kennedy hovering over him after a dream of Mariette, he had vowed that he would never fall in love again, and save himself this pain a second or third time. Vaguely, he remembered the same thing happening after the death of his mother... the sleepless nights, and telling himself then to grow up and stop crying like some girl.
After that decision on his part, things seemed to go from bad to worse. While hauling the sails up the crew discovered a rather huge hole in one and had to set about repairing it, adding two more days to their voyage. Then, a French frigate, the Fleur-de-lis, out on it's maiden voyage found them and managed to demast the poor little ship. They were chased for the better part of two more days, all the while trying to fix the mainmast. Finally, the last straw was when the French boarded them, and the crew had no choice but to surrender. Horatio had his jaw clenched as soon as the Frogs got close enough to board and kept it clenched until his carefully planned takeover plan came to fruition. Then, and only then did he relax, and then only when he was totally positive that all the Frogs were taken care of. Of course, as soon as he allowed himself to relax, disaster struck. And struck well and deep. The already crippled Revolution ran afoul of a hidden iceberg less than fifteen miles off the coast of Norway, and forced the English crew and the French prisoners to abandon ship. Hornblower was crushed, even more so than he time he had lost the Marie Galante. That had been partially the idiot French captains fault, he had finally convinced himself. This blunder was all his own, and he fell into a deep depression, which only worsened when a passing ship happened to be a French frigate and not one of the English prizes. So, as the Rules of War dictated, the English crew that was taken aboard the French frigate was now the sole property of the French until 'agreeable' prison quarters could be found.
Agreeable. Hornblower had almost laughed at that. The French prison was a hellhole. The cell he and Kennedy had been thrown into was less than six feet across and eight feet long. There was barely room to move around the skinny bunks that passed as both chairs and bed, and definitely not enough room for the two's sea chests that had been thrown in with them. The first night was the worst. Kennedy had flashbacks to the Spanish prison and Hornblower was too sunk in his own misery to do anything for him but sit on the side of the bed and hold his friend's wrists so he didn't hurt himself. It was an awful night, and an awful month they spent in confinement. As soon as he could pull himself out of his dark dungeon, Hornblower set himself rather unenthusiastically to coming up with an escape plan. Because he hadn't seen another of his crew except Archie since they were captured by the French, it was with a hope and a prayer that the escape plan went into action. This turn it was Hornblower's turn to become 'ill'. Miraculously, the plan went without a hitch. The guards fell for the deception hook line and sinker, and the English crew was able to escape virtually unscathed. Granted, there were a number of bruises and scrapes but nobody left a noticeable trail of blood anywhere. Another miracle, he realized looking back on it, was the way they had found the small fisherman's sailboat not more than a half mile from the coastal prison. All eighteen men of the captured English crew had managed to squeeze aboard for the week and a half long journey back home.
The week and a half seemed like a month and a half. Two days out from France they ran into a nasty storm. Mr. Kennedy twisted his ankle and then fell forward and twisted his wrist, Styles was knocked on the head with a loose beam from the boat cabin's roof, and Smithson was pitched over a coil of rope into the deck, dislocating his shoulder. Hornblower had to split his time between trying to keep order on the deck and trying to help his three injured men as best he could. When England's shore finally came into view, nobody was more relieved than Horatio. By then Archie Kennedy had convinced himself that he was indeed well enough to manage a slow hobble along the deck and tried to cheer his exhausted friend up. Horatio refused to be cheered.
"All in all this went rather well, considering, wouldn't you say, Horatio?" Archie had asked.
"Go to the devil." he had snapped back, starting to pace along the deck.
"At least we're all still alive." Kennedy tried again.
"If we had never embarked on this fool's journey to begin with there wouldn't have been a risk." Horatio snapped as he passed Kennedy for the fifteenth time.
"We didn't have a choice."
"I did." Horatio growled through clenched teeth. "I didn't have to choose you to be on my crew."
Archie had rolled his eyes. "Is that all that's wrong? I'll be up to speed in less than a week, I assure you."
"It's not just that." Horatio had stalked away, down to the cabin.
"Horatio? Horatio!" Kennedy had called after him, hobbling his way behind his friend. Horatio had studiously ignored him, leaving the rather miffed Kennedy standing in the cabin doorway worrying. Hornblower had known just what he was thinking, and was *not* in the mood to be worried over.
The small crew had managed to put in to Spithead smoothly enough and were more than glad to leave the little boat to the harbor authorities. Matthews had fallen to his knees and kissed the English soil as Styles and Oldroyd looked on, laughing. Hornblower had pushed away from them and go to stand behind the stone railing overlooking the half-circle of the harbor. Propping his foot up on the bottom of the railing he leaned forward and looked out at the sunset, silently damning himself for everything that had happened since they had left the Indefatigable. At some point he became aware of Kennedy leaning on the railing next to him.
"I lost two ships. Two. And the mess at Muzillac. It will be a miracle if I stay in the service after they hear of it." Hornblower blurted out.
"They won't hold it against you, Horatio." Archie murmured.
"How do you know?" Horatio snapped. "Two ships, d'ye hear? *Two* ships. Three, if you count the second French ship. How do you lose three ships and ever hope to move up in the world?"
Archie put a hand on his arm. "Horatio, you're tearing yourself up over nothing."
"It's not nothing. The Marie Galante. The Revolution. The Fleur-de-lis. Muzillac. I have no promise." Hornblower hissed.
"Horatio Hornblower, bite your tongue. You're a lieutenant, for God's sake." Kennedy hissed back, getting a little perturbed by his friend's self-destructive attitude.
"A bad move on the part of the Admiralty."
"You're a hero in some circles, Horatio. You saved part of the fleet from that fire-ship."
"And failed the examination for Lieutenant."
Archie threw up his hands. "If you want to live in the past and kill yourself over your failures, so it be, Horatio. I, for one, am going to report to the naval offices and see if I can get re-assigned."
"Just don't have a fit on their floor." The caustic remark was out of Horatio's mouth before he knew what he was saying. Kennedy stopped and turned back around. When he spoke, the words were clipped short.
"Go to the devil, Lieutenant Horatio Hornblower." he spat, and then stalked off.
Hornblower dropped his head into his hands and sighed. *And now,* he thought, *I have lost three ships and my best friend.*
There was a hideous sound from the middle of the street.
Horses were neighing, wood was cracking... A man was shouting.. shouting something about sweet Jesus he didn't mean to. Hornblower turned to see a greengrocers' wagon stopped in the middle of the street, the horses cockeyed and skewed in their harnesses, and vegetables smashed in the muddy street. The people around him were looking down on the ground.
He looked down.
Midshipman Archie Kennedy lay unmoving behind the wagon.
Horatio stopped thinking and ran, coattails flapping, out into the middle of the street to bend over his friend's prone form. Kennedy's eyes were closed and he was bleeding into the muddy street from all over his body.
"A doctor!" Horatio was aware of shouting. "Somebody fetch a doctor!" He felt his friend's wrist for a pulse, drawing on what his father had taught him. It was there, thready and faint but still present, and Horatio breathed a sigh of relief. "I'm sorry, Archie, I'm sorry." he muttered. "I didn't want this to happen." A short man in black came running up and dropped his bag next to Hornblower.
"Fishman" he introduced himself. "Doctor." A quick examination seemed to satisfy him, and he sat back on his haunches and wiped his forehead. "I want to get him back to my clinic as soon as possible. Can you help me?" Horatio nodded. With both of them, they managed to carry Archie the two streets down to Dr. Fishman's clinic and settle him in one of the empty beds. Dr. Fishman shooed Horatio out, telling him he could come back tomorrow, and see how Kennedy was doing, but for now he needed to be alone with the patient. Rather dazedly, Horatio followed instructions and went back out into the street. Sitting on the curb sunk in despair, somehow he developed a plan not only to pay the doctor for his care of Archie, but also to find favor among the other naval officers before news of his disastrous voyage got back to them. Going back to the harbor, he instructed Matthews and Oldroyd to take both his and Archie's sea chests to the clinic and ask Dr. Fishman to keep them under Archie's bed. Once that was done, he brushed off his coat to the best of his ability, and with a heavy heart set off for the Long Street Gambling Rooms.
His plan failed miserably. All the naval officers who would have heard about his disaster were at sea, and whist was not a game in favor among the rooms' gamblers. For every pound he made, he lost two, and was soon completely and utterly out of money. That was when the fever started to take hold. The winter of that year, staying in the most inexpensive accommodations he could find, Hornblower started to develop a bad hacking cough and get awful headaches as many as four days a week.
From that it was a short fall to find himself thrown out of his lodging with no money to his name, sick and weak. He had lived in the gutter for the better part of two weeks before stumbling in front of the brothel and deciding he was too tired to get up again.
Of course, when Meridith had pulled him out of his face down in the muck position he was so far gone in his sickness and dream of failure at Muzillac that it was a miracle he was even able to ask after Mariette.
It had all started after the fiasco at Muzillac. The Indefatigable had captured an undercrewed and overloaded French brig off the coast of Spain. Thinking to take his protégé's mind off the recent losses, Captain Pellew had given Lieutenant Hornblower the duty of taking the newly acquired 'Revolution' to Admiral Taylor's fleet around the coast of Norway. Hornblower knew that he was being 'gotten rid of' until he started behaving more like himself again, and he knew that there wasn't really a true fleet on Norway's coast, just a motley assortment of England's captured ships, but for some obscure reason which he still hadn't figured out, he decided to indulge Captain Pellew and take the ship up to join the others. It was all arranged that once the Revolution was safe, Horatio and his crew would be given passage back to England on the next supply ship.
Of course, most of the crew was chosen by Captain Pellew, but Hornblower did get a few of his choices-Mr. Kennedy was coming along as midshipman, and Styles, Matthews and Oldroyd coming along as leaders of the crew. It would take them a month and a half round trip, Pellew had surmised, and would be relatively easy. Looking back on the catastrophic voyage, Horatio could have laughed. For the first week, all he could do was berate himself for the failure at Muzillac, and more at the front of his mind, the loss of Mariette. He would go over and over it, the reason he had fallen in love with this French village girl, and never find the answer. He would lie awake at night and think, he would talk with Kennedy for hours, but he could never come up with an answer. So from that fateful night seven days into the voyage when he had woken up crying in his cabin seven nights in a row with Kennedy hovering over him after a dream of Mariette, he had vowed that he would never fall in love again, and save himself this pain a second or third time. Vaguely, he remembered the same thing happening after the death of his mother... the sleepless nights, and telling himself then to grow up and stop crying like some girl.
After that decision on his part, things seemed to go from bad to worse. While hauling the sails up the crew discovered a rather huge hole in one and had to set about repairing it, adding two more days to their voyage. Then, a French frigate, the Fleur-de-lis, out on it's maiden voyage found them and managed to demast the poor little ship. They were chased for the better part of two more days, all the while trying to fix the mainmast. Finally, the last straw was when the French boarded them, and the crew had no choice but to surrender. Horatio had his jaw clenched as soon as the Frogs got close enough to board and kept it clenched until his carefully planned takeover plan came to fruition. Then, and only then did he relax, and then only when he was totally positive that all the Frogs were taken care of. Of course, as soon as he allowed himself to relax, disaster struck. And struck well and deep. The already crippled Revolution ran afoul of a hidden iceberg less than fifteen miles off the coast of Norway, and forced the English crew and the French prisoners to abandon ship. Hornblower was crushed, even more so than he time he had lost the Marie Galante. That had been partially the idiot French captains fault, he had finally convinced himself. This blunder was all his own, and he fell into a deep depression, which only worsened when a passing ship happened to be a French frigate and not one of the English prizes. So, as the Rules of War dictated, the English crew that was taken aboard the French frigate was now the sole property of the French until 'agreeable' prison quarters could be found.
Agreeable. Hornblower had almost laughed at that. The French prison was a hellhole. The cell he and Kennedy had been thrown into was less than six feet across and eight feet long. There was barely room to move around the skinny bunks that passed as both chairs and bed, and definitely not enough room for the two's sea chests that had been thrown in with them. The first night was the worst. Kennedy had flashbacks to the Spanish prison and Hornblower was too sunk in his own misery to do anything for him but sit on the side of the bed and hold his friend's wrists so he didn't hurt himself. It was an awful night, and an awful month they spent in confinement. As soon as he could pull himself out of his dark dungeon, Hornblower set himself rather unenthusiastically to coming up with an escape plan. Because he hadn't seen another of his crew except Archie since they were captured by the French, it was with a hope and a prayer that the escape plan went into action. This turn it was Hornblower's turn to become 'ill'. Miraculously, the plan went without a hitch. The guards fell for the deception hook line and sinker, and the English crew was able to escape virtually unscathed. Granted, there were a number of bruises and scrapes but nobody left a noticeable trail of blood anywhere. Another miracle, he realized looking back on it, was the way they had found the small fisherman's sailboat not more than a half mile from the coastal prison. All eighteen men of the captured English crew had managed to squeeze aboard for the week and a half long journey back home.
The week and a half seemed like a month and a half. Two days out from France they ran into a nasty storm. Mr. Kennedy twisted his ankle and then fell forward and twisted his wrist, Styles was knocked on the head with a loose beam from the boat cabin's roof, and Smithson was pitched over a coil of rope into the deck, dislocating his shoulder. Hornblower had to split his time between trying to keep order on the deck and trying to help his three injured men as best he could. When England's shore finally came into view, nobody was more relieved than Horatio. By then Archie Kennedy had convinced himself that he was indeed well enough to manage a slow hobble along the deck and tried to cheer his exhausted friend up. Horatio refused to be cheered.
"All in all this went rather well, considering, wouldn't you say, Horatio?" Archie had asked.
"Go to the devil." he had snapped back, starting to pace along the deck.
"At least we're all still alive." Kennedy tried again.
"If we had never embarked on this fool's journey to begin with there wouldn't have been a risk." Horatio snapped as he passed Kennedy for the fifteenth time.
"We didn't have a choice."
"I did." Horatio growled through clenched teeth. "I didn't have to choose you to be on my crew."
Archie had rolled his eyes. "Is that all that's wrong? I'll be up to speed in less than a week, I assure you."
"It's not just that." Horatio had stalked away, down to the cabin.
"Horatio? Horatio!" Kennedy had called after him, hobbling his way behind his friend. Horatio had studiously ignored him, leaving the rather miffed Kennedy standing in the cabin doorway worrying. Hornblower had known just what he was thinking, and was *not* in the mood to be worried over.
The small crew had managed to put in to Spithead smoothly enough and were more than glad to leave the little boat to the harbor authorities. Matthews had fallen to his knees and kissed the English soil as Styles and Oldroyd looked on, laughing. Hornblower had pushed away from them and go to stand behind the stone railing overlooking the half-circle of the harbor. Propping his foot up on the bottom of the railing he leaned forward and looked out at the sunset, silently damning himself for everything that had happened since they had left the Indefatigable. At some point he became aware of Kennedy leaning on the railing next to him.
"I lost two ships. Two. And the mess at Muzillac. It will be a miracle if I stay in the service after they hear of it." Hornblower blurted out.
"They won't hold it against you, Horatio." Archie murmured.
"How do you know?" Horatio snapped. "Two ships, d'ye hear? *Two* ships. Three, if you count the second French ship. How do you lose three ships and ever hope to move up in the world?"
Archie put a hand on his arm. "Horatio, you're tearing yourself up over nothing."
"It's not nothing. The Marie Galante. The Revolution. The Fleur-de-lis. Muzillac. I have no promise." Hornblower hissed.
"Horatio Hornblower, bite your tongue. You're a lieutenant, for God's sake." Kennedy hissed back, getting a little perturbed by his friend's self-destructive attitude.
"A bad move on the part of the Admiralty."
"You're a hero in some circles, Horatio. You saved part of the fleet from that fire-ship."
"And failed the examination for Lieutenant."
Archie threw up his hands. "If you want to live in the past and kill yourself over your failures, so it be, Horatio. I, for one, am going to report to the naval offices and see if I can get re-assigned."
"Just don't have a fit on their floor." The caustic remark was out of Horatio's mouth before he knew what he was saying. Kennedy stopped and turned back around. When he spoke, the words were clipped short.
"Go to the devil, Lieutenant Horatio Hornblower." he spat, and then stalked off.
Hornblower dropped his head into his hands and sighed. *And now,* he thought, *I have lost three ships and my best friend.*
There was a hideous sound from the middle of the street.
Horses were neighing, wood was cracking... A man was shouting.. shouting something about sweet Jesus he didn't mean to. Hornblower turned to see a greengrocers' wagon stopped in the middle of the street, the horses cockeyed and skewed in their harnesses, and vegetables smashed in the muddy street. The people around him were looking down on the ground.
He looked down.
Midshipman Archie Kennedy lay unmoving behind the wagon.
Horatio stopped thinking and ran, coattails flapping, out into the middle of the street to bend over his friend's prone form. Kennedy's eyes were closed and he was bleeding into the muddy street from all over his body.
"A doctor!" Horatio was aware of shouting. "Somebody fetch a doctor!" He felt his friend's wrist for a pulse, drawing on what his father had taught him. It was there, thready and faint but still present, and Horatio breathed a sigh of relief. "I'm sorry, Archie, I'm sorry." he muttered. "I didn't want this to happen." A short man in black came running up and dropped his bag next to Hornblower.
"Fishman" he introduced himself. "Doctor." A quick examination seemed to satisfy him, and he sat back on his haunches and wiped his forehead. "I want to get him back to my clinic as soon as possible. Can you help me?" Horatio nodded. With both of them, they managed to carry Archie the two streets down to Dr. Fishman's clinic and settle him in one of the empty beds. Dr. Fishman shooed Horatio out, telling him he could come back tomorrow, and see how Kennedy was doing, but for now he needed to be alone with the patient. Rather dazedly, Horatio followed instructions and went back out into the street. Sitting on the curb sunk in despair, somehow he developed a plan not only to pay the doctor for his care of Archie, but also to find favor among the other naval officers before news of his disastrous voyage got back to them. Going back to the harbor, he instructed Matthews and Oldroyd to take both his and Archie's sea chests to the clinic and ask Dr. Fishman to keep them under Archie's bed. Once that was done, he brushed off his coat to the best of his ability, and with a heavy heart set off for the Long Street Gambling Rooms.
His plan failed miserably. All the naval officers who would have heard about his disaster were at sea, and whist was not a game in favor among the rooms' gamblers. For every pound he made, he lost two, and was soon completely and utterly out of money. That was when the fever started to take hold. The winter of that year, staying in the most inexpensive accommodations he could find, Hornblower started to develop a bad hacking cough and get awful headaches as many as four days a week.
From that it was a short fall to find himself thrown out of his lodging with no money to his name, sick and weak. He had lived in the gutter for the better part of two weeks before stumbling in front of the brothel and deciding he was too tired to get up again.
Of course, when Meridith had pulled him out of his face down in the muck position he was so far gone in his sickness and dream of failure at Muzillac that it was a miracle he was even able to ask after Mariette.