Chapters 1 and 2 Summary

Captain Horatio Hornblower languishes in a Spanish prison, captured after the loss of his 75-gun command Sutherland. Tried by a sham French court, he has been sentenced to death in absentia and is shortly transported to Paris, with Lieutenant William Bush and his coxswain, Brown, for execution. On the trip the three men make a daring escape and are taken in by a local Count, who sympathizes with their plight. They spend the winter months preparing for a spring escape and then take to the Loire River in a fishing boat. They descend the Loire, steal a cutter and make their way to the fleet. Hornblower returns to England where he is received with public adulation and much political acclaim.

Captain Horatio Hornblower, thirty-four years old, is a prisoner of the French, held in a prison in the occupied Spanish city...