International: Hornblower in the Indies

LIEUTENANT HORNBLOWER (306 pp.)—C. S. Forester—Little, Brown ($3.50).

Foul was the night, and black the situation. Four hundred desperate Spaniards, crammed captive in the hold, had rushed in dead of night upon their guards, seized bayonets, and sliced their way through British flesh to mastery of the H.M.S. Renown. The dawn lit a scarlet scene: human rubble on the decks, the scuppers running with gore, the Spaniards in command. Brave Lieut. Bush, bleeding from nine wounds, lay hidden after the melee behind a cannon's hulk. "What would England say?" he asked himself bitterly. "What...