1951 Napoleonic naval short fiction, set early in Hornblower's career
as he has to take charge of the execution of a captured deserter. vtt
"Hornblower's Temptation" and "Hornblower and the Widow McCool".
Mostly it's a puzzle. The man must be kept from making a speech
to inflame the Irish sailors of the fleet, and offers a deal: send his
last letter and his sea-chest back to his widow in Dublin, and he'll
stay silent. Hornblower agrees, revolted already by the business of
execution, but weather delays the sending, and he finds himself
mulling over the very strange farewell poem that the man wrote…
Of course the new lieutenant can't be allowed to prosper in fame or
fortune—he still has to be just another near-starving captain by the
time of The Happy Return after all—so he decides not to take the
hidden money that he finds, nor to reveal the seditious papers since
it would blight the career of the man who'd searched the sea-chest
already. But this is at least plausible for someone who is disgusted
by the execution and his role in it, and wanting to put it all behind
him rather than be reminded of it for the rest of his life.
This story is most readily found in Hornblower and the Crisis.
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