William Bush Alphabet Soup
For those of you who are ahead of me in the timezones, I'm posting this a bit early. Also, I have to work tomorrow (boo, hiss!) so I wanted to make sure the entry post got started before I have to go manage the museum all day. There are also some random unclaimed letters, so if you're feeling inspired to fill them in over the course of the day, I
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Crossposted here at my own journal. --B.N.
He learns the word even before he knows what the sea is. The Bush family is prolific enough that some of its tendrils have extended to Portsmouth, and an uncle of William's who isn't a blacksmith invariably drops it into his speech.
“Belay there!” he growls, bear-like, and out of sheer fright all the children comply. For the moment.
Many years later, and Bush the grown man and naval lieutenant has long learned the other meaning of the word - tie down, make fast. It's a word he uses or hears often in the course of his duty, managing the watch-to-watch balance of discipline, sail, tide, and wind just as his superior oversees the day-by-day mathematics that chart the movement of the ship across the globe.
Of late, however, he has tended to use the more colloquial meaning in his own thoughts. Whatever orders Hornblower was given by the Admiralty are dragging at his captain's mind like a sea-anchor. Bush is neither a fanciful nor a fearful man, but the memories of serving under another captain, many years before and under very similar conditions, dog his waking thoughts. With hardly a word now passing between them that is neither an order nor an acknowledgement of one, Bush must rely on his eyes and ears to read his captain as he can read the ship and the sea. Even then, he distrusts what he finds; he thinks more and more, these days, of the Renown and Captain Sawyer, and hopes he may be spared a second trial of that sort.
Belay that, he always responds to this line of thought. His duty under the Articles of War, not to mention his loyalty to a personal friend, dictate that he must trust his captain all the more under such adverse conditions. The best that he can do is communicate that trust, as a rope communicates force between a spar and a mast, and pray that it does not give way.
Let Gerard pass his innuendo-laden remarks about how often he's to be seen staring after Hornblower. With Surgeon Hankey gone to meet his Maker, or more likely the other fellow, someone must see to the state of their captain. And the more he looks, the more Bush feels his observation to be an agreeable way to forestall a mutiny among the officers...
...but belay that, too.
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I particularly like the line about Gerard. Poor William - always watching...
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And yes, I think Gerard was woefully under-used in your namesake novel.
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