"A Ship of the Line" - читать интересную книгу автора (Forester Cecil Scott)

Chapter XX

The situation was one likely to disturb any captain’s sleep, with four hostile ships of the line to windward needing to be kept under observation, and with calculations continually bobbing up from the subconscious to the conscious regarding the chances of the Cassandra bringing down Admiral Leighton in time to cut off the enemy. The weather conditions were unsettling, too—the wind, having worked up nearly to a gale force towards evening, diminished until midnight, increased again, and then, with the inconsequence of Mediterranean winds, began to die away steadily.

Certainly Hornblower never expected sleep. He was too excited, and his mind was too active. He lay down on his cot when the watch was changed in the evening to have a rest, and, being quite convinced that he had no chance of sleeping he naturally fell into a heavy dreamless sleep so heavy that Polwheal had to shake him by the shoulder at midnight to awaken him. He came on deck to find Bush standing by the binnacle.

“Too dark for anything to be seen, sir,” said Bush, and then, excitement and exasperation getting the better of his formality, he growled, “Black as Newgate Knocker.”

“Have you seen anything of the enemy?”

“I thought I did, sir, half an hour back, but nothing to be sure of. Wind’s dropped a lot, too.”

“Yes,” said Hornblower.

As so often was the case at sea, there was nothing to do but wait. Two screened lanterns swayed down on the maindeck, where the watch lay at their stations by the guns; the keen wind harped in the rigging, and the ship rose and plunged in the following sea with a lightness and grace no one would expect of her who had only seen her with the wind abeam. Nothing to do but to wait; if he stayed on deck he would only fidget and display his nervousness, so that he might as well go and conceal his nervousness in his screened-off cot.

“Send for me at once if you catch sight of the enemy,” he said, with elaborate carelessness, and went back again below.

He lay on his cot with his mind busy, for he knew that having slept once there was no chance whatever of sleeping again. So perfect was this conviction that sleep ambushed him once more, leaped upon him unawares, as he lay thinking about the Cassandra, sothat it only seemed two minutes later that he heard Polwheal speaking to him as if from another world.

“Mr. Gerard’s compliments, sir, an’ it’s beginnin’ to get lighter, sir.”

It called for quite an effort to rouse himself and get up from his cot; only when he was drowsily on his feet did he begin to feel pleased at having been genuinely asleep each time that Polwheal came to call him. He could picture Polwheal telling his cronies about the iron nerves of the captain, who could sleep like a child on a night when the ship was aboil with the prospect of action.

“Anything to report, Mr. Gerard?” he said, as he reached the quarterdeck.

“No, sir. I had to reef down for an hour at two bells, it blew so hard. But it’s dropping fast now, sir, and backing sou’easterly.”

“H’m,” said Hornblower.

The faintest hint of light was beginning to tinge the gloomy sky, but nothing could be seen yet more than a cable’s length away. A south-easterly wind would be nearly foul for the French on their course to Barcelona; it would be dead foul for the Pluto and Caligula.

“Thought I felt the loom o’ the land, sir, before the light came,” said Gerard.

“Yes,” said Hornblower. Their course during the night would bring them close into Cape Creux of hated memory; he picked up the slate beside the binnacle, and, calculating from the hourly readings of the log, he made their position to be some fifteen miles off the cape. If the French had held the same course during the night they would soon have Rosas Bay and comparative security under their lee—of course, if they had not, if they had evaded him in the darkness, the consequence to him did not bear thinking about.

The light was broadening fast. Eastwards the watery clouds seemed to be thinning; just above the horizon. Undoubtedly they were thinning; for a second they parted, and a speck of gold could be seen through them, just where the white-flecked sea met the sky, and a long beam of sunlight shone level over the sea.

“Land-ho!” yelled the masthead lookout, and westward they could see a bluish smudge on the horizon where the mountains of Spain loomed faintly over the curve of the world.

And Gerard glanced anxiously at his captain, took a turn or two up and down the deck, gnawed at his knuckles, and then could restrain his impatience no longer.

“Masthead, there! What do you see of the enemy?”

The pause that followed seemed ages long before the reply came.

“Northin’, sir. Northin’ in sight barrin’ the land to looard.”

Gerard renewed his anxious glance at his captain, but Hornblower, during that pause, had set his face sternly so that his expression was unmoved. Bush was coming on to the quarterdeck now; anyone could see that he was wild with anxiety. If four French ships of the line had evaded action it would mean half pay for Hornblower for life, if nothing worse. Hornblower retained his stony expression; he was proud of being able to do so.

“Put the ship about, Mr. Gerard, if you please, and lay her on the starboard tack.”

The French might perhaps have altered course in the darkness, and might now be lost in the centre of the Western Mediterranean, but Hornblower still did not think it likely. His officers had made insufficient allowance for the lubberliness of the unpractised French. If Gerard had had to reef topsails in the night they might well have had to heave to; and both Bush and Gerard were over-eager—during the night the Sutherland might have gained twenty miles on the French. By retracting his course he was confident that he would sight them again.

Confident as far as the whist-playing part of his mind was concerned, that is to say. He could not control the sick despair in his breast, nor the acceleration of his heart beats; he could only conceal them, keeping his face a mask and forcing himself to stand still instead of pacing about in his anxiety. Then he thought of an activity which would help to occupy his mind and yet not betray his nervousness.

“Pass the word for my steward,” he said.

His hands were just steady enough to permit him to shave, and a chill bath under the washdeck pump gave him new vigour. He put on clean clothes and parted his lessening hair with elaborate exactitude, for under the washdeck pump he had told himself that they would sight the French again before he had completed his toilet. It was with a sense of acute disappointment that he laid down the comb when he had no more smallest excuse to continue its use, and turned to put on his coat, with no news of the French. And then, with his foot on the companion, there came a wild yell from Midshipman Parker at the masthead.

“Sail in sight! Two—three of ‘em, sir. Four! It’s the enemy!”

Hornblower continued his progress up the companion without faltering in his step, and he hoped people noticed it. Bush was half way up the rigging with his glass, and Gerard was pacing—almost prancing—about the quarterdeck in his delight. Observing them, Hornblower was glad he had had no childish doubts about the correctness of his actions.

“Wear the ship, if you please, Mr. Bush. Lay her on the port tack.”

A talkative captain might supplement the order with a brief explanation of the necessity for keeping the ship between the French and Spain, but Hornblower bit off the explanation as it rose to his lips. No unnecessary words would escape him.

“The wind’s still working round southerly, sir,” said Gerard.

“Yes,” said Hornblower.

And it would drop a good deal, too, as the day progressed, he decided. The sun was fast breaking through the clouds, with every prospect of a warm day—a Mediterranean autumn day, with a rising barometer and only the faintest of breezes. The hammocks had been piled in the netting, and the watch not at their stations were clattering on to the deck with buckets and holystones. The routine of the navy had to be maintained, even though there was every chance that the decks they were swabbing would be running with blood before the day was over. The men were skylarking and joking—Hornblower felt a little thrill of pride as he looked at them and remembered the sullen despondent crowd with which he had sailed. Consciousness of real achievement was some compensation for the thankless service which employed him; and it helped him to forget, too, the uneasy feeling that today or tomorrow—soon, anyway—he would know again, as the whirl of battle eddied round him, the physical fear of which he was so intolerably ashamed.

As the sun climbed up the sky the wind dropped steadily, moving round even more southerly, and the mountains of Spain came nearer and nearer and grew more and more defined as their course brought them closer to the land. Hornblower held on as long as he could, bracing up his yards as the wind veered, and then finally heaving to while the French squadron crept up over the horizon. The shift in the wind had deprived them of the windward position; if they moved down to attack him he could escape northwards so that if they pursued him they would be running towards the Pluto and Caligula, but he had no hope that they would. French ships of the line who had evaded the blockading squadron would race to accomplish their mission first, and would only fight afterwards, however tempting the bait dangled before them. If the wind shifted no farther round they could just hold their course for Barcelona, and he had not the least doubt that they would do so if not prevented. He would hang on to them and try to attack some isolated ship during the night if no help arrived.

“They’re signalling a lot, sir,” said Bush, his glass to his eye. They had been signalling all day, for that matter—the first flurry of bunting, Hornblower shrewdly surmised, had been occasioned by their catching sight of the Sutherland, unaware that she had been keeping company with them for fifteen hours. Frenchmen retained their talkative habits at sea, and no French captain was happy without messages passing back and forth along the squadron.

The Sutherland was clear of the Cape Creux peninsula now, and Rosas Bay was opening out on her beam. It was in these very waters, but in very different weather conditions, that the Pluto had lost her masts and had been towed to safety by the Sutherland; over there, on those green-grey slopes, had occurred the fiasco of the attack on Rosas; through his glass Hornblower thought he could discern the precipitous face of the mesa up which Colonel Claros had led his fugitive Catalans. If the wind came farther round now, the French had a refuge open to them under the guns of Rosas, where they would be safe until the British could bring up fireships and explosion vessels to drive them out again; actually it would be a more secure refuge for them than the anchorage at Barcelona.

He looked up at the pendant flapping at the masthead—the wind was certainly more southerly. It was growing doubtful whether the French would weather Palamos Point on their present tack, while he would certainly have to go about soon and stand out into the Frenchmen’s wake, with all his advantages of position lost by the inconstancy of the weather. And the wind was beginning to come in irregular puffs now—a sure sign of its diminishing force. He turned his glass on the French squadron again to see how they were behaving. There was a fresh series of signals fluttering at their yardarms.

“Deck, there!” yelled Savage from the masthead.

Then there was a pause. Savage was not too sure of what he could see.

“What is it, Mr. Savage?”

“I think—I’m not quite sure, sir—there’s another sail, right on the horizon, sir, abaft the enemy’s beam.”

Another sail! It might be a stray merchant ship. Otherwise it could only be Leighton’s ships or the Cassandra.

“Keep your eye on her, Mr. Savage.”

It was impossible to wait for news. Hornblower swung himself up into the shrouds and climbed upwards. At Savage’s side he trained his glass in the direction indicated. For a second the French squadron danced in the object glass, disregarded, as he searched.

“A bit farther round, sir. About there, I think, sir.”

It was the tiniest flash of white, too permanent for a wave crest, of a different shade from the few clouds against the blue. Hornblower nearly spoke, but succeeded in limiting himself to “Ha-h’m.”

“It’s nearer now, sir,” said Savage, telescope to eye. “I should say, sir, it’s a ship’s fore-royal.”

There could be no doubt about it. Some ship under full sail was out there beyond the Frenchmen, and standing in to cross their wake.

“Ha-h’m,” said Hornblower. He said no more, but snapped his telescope shut and addressed himself to the descent.

Bush dropped to the deck to meet him from the shrouds he had ascended; Gerard, Crystal, they were all on the quarterdeck eyeing him anxiously.

“The Cassandra,” said Hornblower, “standing in towards us.”

By saying that, he was risking his dignity to demonstrate his good sight. No one could guess the new arrival to be the Cassandra from just that glimpse of her royals. But it could only be the Cassandra who would be on that course, unless his judgment were sadly at fault. Should she be revealed not to be, he would appear ridiculous—but the temptation to appear to recognise her when Savage was not even sure whether she was a ship or a cloud was too strong.

All the implications of the Cassandra’s appearance were evident to the officers’ minds at once.

“Where’s the flagship and Caligula?” demanded Bush, of no one in particular.

“May be coming up, too,” said Gerard.

“The Frogs are cut off if they are,” said Crystal.

With the Pluto and Caligula to seaward of them, and the Sutherland to landward, Palamos Point to windward, and a fluky wind veering foul, it would be only by good fortune they could escape a battle. Every eye turned towards the French squadron; they were nearly hull-up now, heading south-by-west closehauled, a three-decker in the van followed by three two-deckers, admiral’s flags flying at the foremasts of the first and third ships. The broad white stripes which decorated their sides stood out sharp and clear in the pure air. If the Pluto and Caligula were far astern of the Cassandra the Frenchmen would still be as much in ignorance of their proximity as was the Sutherland, which would explain why they were still holding their course.

“Deck there!” hailed Savage. “The strange sail’s Cassandra. I can see her tops’l now, sir.”

Bush and Gerard and Crystal looked at Hornblower with a strange respect for his penetrating vision; it had been well worth risking his dignity for that.

The sails suddenly flapped loudly; a puff of wind had followed a comparative lull, and from a more southerly point than before. Bush turned to shout orders for the trimming of the sails, and the others turned instantly to watch the French reaction.

“They’re going about!” said Gerard, loudly.

Undoubtedly they were doing so; on the new tack they would weather Palamos Point but would be standing out to sea nearer to the British squadron—if the British were there.

“Mr. Bush,” said Hornblower. “Put the ship about, if you please.”

“Cassandra’s signalling, sir,” yelled Savage.

“Up with you!” snapped Hornblower to Vincent and Longley. Telescope and signal book in hand, they raced for the masthead; everyone on the quarterdeck watched their progress anxiously.

“Cassandra’s signalling to the flagship, sir!” yelled Vincent.

So Leighton was out there over the horizon—over the Frenchmen’s horizon, too, judging from their actions. Bonaparte might send out four French ships to fight three English ones, but no French admiral safely at sea and knowing the capacity of his crews far better than his emperor, would obey those orders if he could help it.

“What’s she saying, boy?” hailed Hornblower.

“She’s too far off to be sure, sir, but I think she’s reporting the enemy’s new course.”

Let the Frenchmen hold that course for an hour, and they were lost, cut off from Rosas and certain to be overhauled before they reached Barcelona.

“They’re going about again, by God!” said Gerard, suddenly.

Wordless, they watched the four French ships come up into the wind, and come over on to the other tack. Then they came round, farther and farther still, until in all four ships their three masts were in line; every one of them was heading straight for the Sutherland.

“Ha-h’m,” said Hornblower, watching his fate bearing down upon him: and again, “Ha-h’m.”

The French lookouts must have glimpsed Leighton’s mastheads. With Rosas Bay six miles under his lee and Barcelona a hundred miles almost to the windward the French admiral could have taken little time to reach a decision in face of those strange sails on the horizon. He was dashing instantly for shelter; the single ship of the line which lay directly in his path must be destroyed if she could not be evaded.

The sick wave of excitement and apprehension which Hornblower experienced did not prevent calculations pouring into his mind. The French had six miles to go with a fair wind. He still did not know whereabouts on the circumference of the possible circle whose centre was the French flagship Leighton was on at the moment But he would have twenty miles, perhaps a little more, to sail for certain, and with the wind—such wind as there was—abeam, if he were in the most advantageous position, and on his port bow if he were far astern. And shifting as it was, it would be dead foul for him in two hours. Twenty to one, Hornblower estimated the odds against the admiral being able to catch the French before they reached the protection of the guns of Rosas. Only unheard-of flukes of wind would do it, and only then if the Sutherland were able to knock away a good many spars before she was beaten into helplessness. So keenly had Hornblower been calculating that it was only then that he remembered, with a gulp of excitement, that the Sutherland was his ship, and the responsibility his, as well.

Longley came sliding down the backstay, the whole height from topmast head to the deck, his face white with excitement.

“Vincent sent me, sir. Cassandra’s signalling, and he thinks it’s ‘Flag to Sutherland, no. 21’. Twenty-one’s ‘Engage the enemy’, sir. But it’s hard to read the flags.”

“Very good. Acknowledge.”

So Leighton at least had the moral courage to assume the responsibility for sending one ship against four. In that respect he was worthy of being Barbara’s husband.

“Mr. Bush,” he said. “We’ve a quarter of an hour. See that the men get a bite to eat in that time.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

He looked again at the four ships all steering slowly down upon him. He could not hope to turn them back, but he could only hope to accompany them in their race to Rosas Bay. Any ship that he could totally dismast would fall a prey to Leighton; the others he must damage so sorely that they could not repair themselves in Rosas, which had the smallest dockyard facilities. Then they would stay there until fireships, or a large scale cutting out expedition, or a properly organised attack by land on the fortress, should result in their destruction. He thought he ought to succeed in that, but he could not bring himself to visualise what would happen to the Sutherland meanwhile. He swallowed hard, and set himself to plan the manoeuvres of the first encounter. The leading French ship mounted eighty guns—they were run out and grinning at him through her open ports, while each of the Frenchmen had, as though in bravado, at least four tricolour flags floating in the rigging. He looked up at the battered red ensign hanging from the peak against the blue of the sky, and then he plunged into realities.

“Hands to the braces, Mr. Bush. I want the ship handled like lightning when the time comes. Mr. Gerard! I’ll have every gun captain flogged tomorrow who fires before his gun bears.”

The men at the guns grinned; they would give of their best for him without any threat of flogging, and they knew he knew it.

Bow to bow the Sutherland was approaching the eighty-gun ship, unwavering; if both captains held their courses steadily there would be a collision which might sink both ships. Hornblower kept his eye on the Frenchman to detect the first signs of irresolution; the Sutherland was lying as near to the wind as she could, with her sails on the point of flapping. If the French captain had the sense to bring his ship to the wind the Sutherland could do nothing decisive against her, but the chances were he would leave his decision to the last moment and then instinctively put his ship before the wind as the easiest course with an unhandy crew. At half a mile smoke suddenly eddied round the Frenchman’s bows, and a shot came humming overhead. She was firing her bow chasers, but there was no need to warn Gerard not to reply—he knew the value of that first unhurried broadside too well. With the distance halved two holes appeared in the Sutherland’s main topsail; Hornblower did not hear the passing of the shot, so intent was he on noting the Frenchman’s actions.

“Which way will he go?” said Bush, beating one hand with the other. “Which way? He’s holding on farther than I thought.”

The farther the better; the more hurried the Frenchman’s manoeuvre the more helpless he would be. The bowsprits were only a hundred yards apart now, and Hornblower set his teeth so as not to give the instinctive order to up helm. Then he saw a flurry on the Frenchman’s decks, and her bow swung away from him—to leeward.

“Hold your fire!” Hornblower shouted to Gerard, fearful lest a premature broadside should waste the opportunity. Gerard waved his hat in reply, with a flash of white teeth in his brown face. The two ships were overlapping now, not thirty yards apart, and the Frenchman’s guns were beginning to bear. In the bright sunlight Hornblower could see the flash of the epaulettes of the officers on the quarterdeck, the men at the forecastle cannonades stooping to look along the sights. This was the moment.

“Helm a-weather, slow,” he said to the helmsman. A glance at Bush was enough—he was anticipating this order. The Sutherland began to wear round slowly, beginning her turn to cross the Frenchman’s stern before the two ships were alongside. Bush began to bellow the orders to the men at the braces and the headsail sheets, and as he did so the Frenchman’s broadside burst into thunder and flame and smoke. The Sutherland shook and jarred with the impact of the shot; one of the mizzen shrouds above Hornblower’s head parted with a twang at the same moment as a hole appeared in the quarterdeck bulwark near him amid a shower of splinters. But the Sutherland’s bow was already almost touching the Frenchman’s stern. Hornblower could see an eddy of panic on her quarterdeck.

“Keep her at that!” he shouted to the helmsman.

Then with a series of heavy crashes, one following another as the Sutherland crossed her enemy’s stern and each section of guns bore in turn, she fired her broadside into her, heeling slightly at each discharge, with every shot tearing its destructive course from end to end of the ship. Gerard came leaping on to the quarterdeck, having run down the whole length of the maindeck, keeping pace with the firing. He bent eagerly over the nearest carronade, altered its elevation with a quick twist of the screw, and jerked the lanyard, with a wave of the hand to the other gun captains to do the same. The carronades roared out, sweeping the Frenchman’s quarterdeck with grape on top of the roundshot. Hornblower saw the officers there dashed to the deck like lead soldiers, saw rigging parting, and the big stern windows of the French ship disappear like a curtain jerked from its pole.

“That’s given him a bellyful,” said Bush.

That was the sort of broadside which won battles. That single discharge had probably knocked half the fight out of the Frenchmen, killing and wounding a hundred men or more, dismounting half a dozen guns. In a single-ship duel she would strike her flag in less than half an hour. But now she had drawn ahead while the Sutherland was completing her turn, and the second Frenchman, the one with the rear-admiral’s flag, was loose on the weather quarter. She had all plain sail set, and was overhauling them fast; in a moment she would be able to rake the Sutherland as the Sutherland had raked her consort.

“Starboard!” said Hornblower to the helmsman. “Stand to your guns on the port side!” His voice rang uncannily loud in the stillness following the firing.

The Frenchman came on undeviating, not disdaining a broadside to broadside duel, but not attempting to manoeuvre, especially against an enemy who had proved himself alert, at a time when manoeuvring meant delay in gaining the shelter of Rosas. The ships inclined together, growing nearer and nearer as the Frenchman headreached upon the Sutherland and the Sutherland’s course approached hers. From the Sutherland’s deck they could hear the excited orders which the French officers were shouting to their men, trying to restrain their eagerness until the decisive moment.

They were not entirely successful all the same, as first one gun and then another went off as excitable gunners let fly—where the shots went Heaven alone knew. A word from Hornblower swung the Sutherland round till she lay parallel to her opponent, and as she steadied on her new course Hornblower waved his hand to Gerard as a signal to open fire. There was not more than half a second between the two broadsides; the Sutherland, heaving up her side to the recoil of her guns, heaved over farther still to the impact of the shot. As the smoke came billowing up round her the air was filled with the splintering crash of the shot striking her sides; there were screams and cries from below in proof of the damage received.

“Keep at it now, lads! Fire as you will!” shouted Gerard.

Those hours of drill bore fruit now. The sponges were thrust into the reeking gun muzzles, and the moment they were withdrawn the powder and the rammer and the shot were ready for insertion. Almost simultaneously the gun trucks rumbled as the crews flung themselves on the tackles and ran the guns up; almost simultaneously the guns roared out. This time there was a perceptible and measurable interval before the Frenchman replied in a straggling and irregular salvo. The gentle wind blowing on the engaged quarter kept the ship engulfed in the smoke; the gunners labouring on the main-deck were as vague as in a dense fog to Hornblower, but the masts and sails of the Frenchman still stood out clear against the blue sky. The Sutherland’s third broadside followed close on the heels of the Frenchman’s second.

“Three to her two, as usual,” said Bush, coolly. A shot struck the mizzen mast bitts and sprayed the deck with splinters. “She’s still drawing ahead, sir.”

It was hard to think dearly in this frightful din, with death all round. Captain Morris had his marines all along the port side gangway firing away at everyone visible on the other ship’s decks; the two ships were within easy musket shot. The Sutherland’s broadsides were growing irregular now, as the most efficient crews worked their guns faster than the others, while the Frenchman was delivering a running fire in which there were occasional louder explosions to be heard when several guns went off together. It was like the clattering of the hoofs of four coach horses on a hard road, sometimes in unison for a space, and then spreading out again.

“I fancy his fire’s slackening, sir,” said Bush. “It doesn’t surprise me.”

The Sutherland had not suffered mortally yet, judging by the number of dead on the maindeck. She could still fight for a long time yet.

“See his main mast, sir!” yelled Bush.

His main topmast was bowing forward, slow and dignified, with the topgallant mast bowing further forward still. Through the smoke they could see the main mast inclining aft. Then all dignity left the soaring mass of spars and canvas. It hung S-shaped in the air for a breathless second, and then tumbled down with a rush, fore and mizzen topmasts falling with it. Hornblower felt a grim satisfaction at the sight—there were no spare main masts to be had in Rosas. The Sutherland’s crew cheered piercingly, and hastened to fire in a few last shots as their ship drew ahead of her crippled opponent. A minute later the din of the firing ceased, the tiny breeze blew away the smoke, and the sun came shining through upon the littered deck again.

Aft lay their late antagonist, a great mass of wreckage trailing alongside, the second lower deck gun from the bow pointing out of its port at an impossible angle of elevation to show she had one gun at least knocked useless. A quarter of a mile ahead was the first ship they had fired into; she had paid no attention to the duel behind her but had continued under all sail for the safety of Rosas Bay, just like a Frenchman. And beyond her, sweeping round the horizon, were the cruel mountains of Spain, and the white roofs of Rosas were clearly visible above the golden shore. The Sutherland was close to the wide mouth of the bay; half way between her and Rosas lay two gigantic beetles on the flat blue surf ace—gunboats coming out of Rosas under sweeps.

And close astern of the crippled ship came the other two ships of the French squadron, the three-decker with the vice-admiral’s flag and a two-decker in her wake. It was the moment for decision.

“Masthead there!” hailed Hornblower. “Can you see anything of the flagship?”

“No, sir. Nothing but Cassandra.”

Hornblower could see the Cassandra’s royals himself, from the deck, pearly white on the horizon; the Pluto and Caligula must still be nearly twenty miles away—possibly becalmed. The tiny breeze which was urging the Sutherland into the bay was probably a sea breeze; the day was hot enough for that. Leighton would hardly arrive in time to take part in this battle. Hornblower could put his ship about now, and tack into safety, beating off the two enemies if they interfered with him, or he could throw himself into their path; and with every second carrying him a yard nearer Rosas he must decide quickly. If he fought, there was the faintest possible chance that Leighton might be brought up in time to pick up the cripples, but so faint a chance as to be negligible.

The Sutherland would be destroyed, but her enemies would be so knocked about as to be detained in Rosas for days or even weeks. And that was desirable, because it would be several days before preparations could be made to attack them in their anchorage, and during those days there would always be the chance of their escaping—three of them, at least—from Rosas as they had escaped from Toulon.

Hornblower balanced in his mind the loss of a seventy-four to England against the certain loss of four ships of the line to France. And then he knew, suddenly, that his cogitation had been wasted. If he withdrew, he would all the rest of his life suspect himself of having done so out of cowardice, and he foresaw with clarity the years of mental uneasiness it would bring. He would fight whether it was the right thing or not, and as he reached that decision he realised with relief that it was the correct course as well. One more second he wasted, looking up at the blue sky which he loved, and then he gulped down his muddled emotions.

“Lay the ship on the port tack, if you please, Mr. Bush,” he said.

The crew cheered again, the poor fools, when they saw that they were about to face the rest of the French, even though it meant the certain death of half of them at least. Hornblower felt pity—or was it contempt?—for them and their fighting madness or thirst for glory. Bush was as bad as any of them, judging by the way his face had lit up at the order. He wanted the Frenchman’s blood just because they were Frenchmen, and thought nothing of the chance of being a legless cripple if he were granted the chance of smashing a few French legs first.

The crippled two-decker with the rear-admiral’s flag came drifting down on them—this sea breeze would push all wrecks into Rosas Bay under the guns of the fortress—and the men working lackadaisically at clearing the wreckage ran from their work when they looked up and saw the Sutherland’s guns swinging around towards them. The Sutherland fired three broadsides into her with hardly a gun in reply before she drifted clear—another fifty or so dead Frenchmen for Bush, thought Hornblower, viciously, as the rumble of the gun trucks died away and the men stood waiting once more, silent now, beside their guns. Here came the three-decker, now, beautiful with her towering canvas, hideous with her grinning guns. Even at that moment Hornblower marked, with professional interest, the decided tumble-home of her sides, much greater than English shipwrights allowed.

“Let her pay off slowly, Mr. Bush,” he said. He was going to set his teeth into the three-decker like a bulldog.

Round came the Sutherland, slowly, slowly. Hornblower saw that his last manoeuvre with the Sutherland was going to be as well timed as ever he could wish. She was on the same course as the three-decker at exactly the moment the latter drew up opposite to her; the guns of both ships bore simultaneously, a hundred yards apart, and burst simultaneously into thunder and smoke.

In the earlier encounters time had seemed to pass slowly. Now it seemed to be passing fast, the infernal din of the broadsides seeming almost unintermitting, the figures hurrying about in the smoke seeming to be moving twice as fast as normally.

“Edge in closer on her,” said Hornblower to the helmsman, and then, his last order given, he could abandon himself to the mad inconsequence of it all. Shots seemed to be tearing up the deck all around him, smashing great gashes in the planking. With the clear unreality of a nightmare he saw Bush fall, with blood running from the stump of one leg where a foot was missing. Two men of the surgeon’s crew bent over him to carry him below.

“Leave me on deck,” said Bush. “Let go of me, you dogs.”

“Take him away,” said Hornblower. The harshness of his voice was a piece with the madness of everything else, for he was glad to be able to order Bush into a place of safety where he might yet live.

The mizzen topmast fell, and spars and blocks and tackle came raining all round him—death falling from the heavens as well as hurtling in from overside, but still he lived. Now the foretopsail yard was shot through in the slings; dimly through the smoke he could see Hooker leading a party aloft to repair it. Out of the tail of his eye he saw something new and strange looming through the smoke—it was the fourth French ship, coming up on the Sutherland’s disengaged side. He found himself waving his hat and shrieking some nonsense or other to his men, who cheered him back as they brought the starboard side guns into action. The smoke was thicker, and the din more tremendous, and the whole ship throbbing with every gun in action.

Little Longley was at his side now, white faced, miraculously alive after the fall of the mizzen topmast.

“I’m not frightened. I’m not frightened,” the boy said; his jacket was torn clean across the breast and he was trying to hold it together as he denied the evidence of the tears in his eyes.

“No, sonny, of course you’re not,” said Hornblower.

Then Longley was dead, hands and breast smashed into pulp. There was a maindeck gun not run out, he saw as he looked away from Longley’s body. He was about to call attention to the abandoned gun, when he noticed its slaughtered crew lying in fragments round it, and he saw that there were no longer any men to spare to get it into action again. Soon there would be more guns than one out of action. The very carronade beside him had but three men to man it—so had the next one, and the next. Down on the maindeck there were marines carrying powder and shot; Gerard must have set them to that work, and the powder boys must be mostly dead. If only this din would stop, and allow him to think!

It seemed to him as if at that the din redoubled. Foremast and mainmast came down together with a splintering crash audible high above the gunfire, the mass of wreckage tumbling over the starboard side. He ran forward, to find Hooker there already hard at work with a group of men drawn from the blinded guns hacking away at the rigging to cut it clear. The three-feet-thick end of the broken mainmast had smashed a gun carriage and killed the crew during its fall. Shots from the two-decker on that side were smashing through the men at work, and already smoke was pouring up from the canvas hanging over the side where the flame of the guns had set it on fire. Hornblower took an axe from the hand of a dead man and fell to work hacking and cutting along with the others. When the last rope was cut, and the flaring mass had dropped overside, and hasty inspection showed that the timber of the ship had not caught fire, he swept the sweat from his forehead and looked around the ship from his new point of view.

The whole deck was heaped and littered with dead men and fragments of dead men. The wheel was gone, the masts, the bulwarks were beaten flat, the very hatch coamings indicated by a mere fringe of splinters. But the guns which could still be worked were still firing, each manned by its attenuated crew. On either side the enemy loomed through the smoke, but the three-decker had lost two topmasts and the two-decker her mizzen mast, and their sails were in shreds and their rigging hanging in festoons, seen dimly in the smoke. The firing was as fierce as ever. He wondered dully by what miracle he survived to walk through the tempest of shot back to his post on the quarterdeck.

Some puff of wind was altering the relative position of the ships. The three-decker was swinging round, coming closer; Hornblower was already running forward down the port side, with seeming feet of lead, when the three-decker’s starboard bow came with a grinding bump against the Sutherland’s port bow. Frenchmen were gathering to leap down on to the Sutherland’s deck, and Hornblower drew his sword as he ran.

“Boarders!” he yelled. “All hands repel boarders! Boom them off, there, Hooker, Crystal.”

High above his head towered the three-decker. Musketry was spattering along her bulwarks, and Hornblower heard bullets rapping into the deck around him. Men with swords and pikes in their hands were scrambling down the three-decker’s sides, and more were spewing out of the middle-deck gunport on to the Sutherland’s gangway. Hornblower found himself caught up in a wave of British sailors with cutlasses and pikes, rammers and handspikes, men naked to the waist and grey with powder smoke. Everyone was jostling and slipping and struggling. He was flung up against a dapper little French lieutenant with his hat rakishly awry. For the moment his arms were pinned to his sides by the press, and the Frenchman was struggling to pull a pistol from his waistband.

“Rends-toi,” he spluttered, as the weapon came free, but Hornblower brought up his knee and the Frenchman’s head went back in agony and he dropped the pistol.

And the three-decker was swinging away clear again, urged by the puff of wind and the thrust of the spar Crystal and Hooker and their party were pushing against her side. Some of the Frenchmen leaped back to the ship. Some leaped into the sea. A dozen who were left dropped their weapons—one of them too late to check the pike which was thrust into his stomach. The puff of wind was still blowing, drifting the French ships away from the dismasted Sutherland and rolling away the smoke. The sun came out and shone upon them and the hideous decks as though from behind a cloud, and the din of the firing ended magically as the guns ceased to bear.

Sword in hand, Hornblower stood while the men about him secured the prisoners. The cessation of the noise had not brought him the relief he had hoped for—on the contrary, he was amazed and stupid, and in his weariness he found it a desperate effort to think clearly. The wind had drifted the Sutherland well inside the bay, and there was no sign at all of the Pluto and Caligula–only the Cassandra, hull down over the horizon, a helpless spectator of the fight. The two battered French ships, almost as helpless as the Sutherland, thanks to the damage they had received aloft, were floating a short distance off; down the side of the three-decker, dribbling from the scuppers, Hornblower noticed a dark streak—human blood.

The two-decker was still swinging round; her shattered side was out of sight, now she was presenting her stern, and now her other side to the Sutherland’s bow. Hornblower watched her stupidly. And then-a bellowing roar, and her broadside came tearing into the Sutherland. A cloud of splinters flew from the shattered stump of the foremast, and the gun beside Hornblower rang like a bell to a glancing shot.

“Oh, stop!” muttered Hornblower. “For God’s sake!”

The men on the Sutherland’s deck were dragging themselves to the guns again. Gerard was nowhere to be seen, but Hooker—a good boy, that—was walking along the main deck apportioning the men to the guns so that some at least might be worked. But the men were faint with fatigue, and at present no gun would bear, while the dismasted Sutherland could do nothing to save herself. Another broadside, ripping and tearing through the ship. Hornblower became conscious of a faint undercurrent of noise—the feeble chorus of the wounded men huddled in every corner of the ship. The gunboats were working round cautiously with their sweeps to take up a position under the Sutherland’s stern; soon they would be firing their forty-two pounders into her on the water line. Sun and blue sea and blue sky; the grey-green mountains of Spain, the golden beach and white houses of Rosas—Homblower looked round him at them all, despairingly, and it was agony to look.

Another broadside; Hornblower saw two men knocked into a bloody mess at Hooker’s side.

“Strike,” he said to himself. “We must strike.”

But the Sutherland had no colours flying that she could strike, and Hornblower’s dazed mind wrestled with this problem as he walked aft. The forty-two pounder in one of the gun boats boomed out loudly, and Hornblower felt the jar as the shot smashed into the ship’s side below him. Hooker was on the quarterdeck now, and Crystal, and Howell the carpenter.

“There’s four feet of water in the well, sir,” said this last, “an’ no pump left.”

“Yes,” said Hornblower, dully. “I shall surrender.”

He read agreement in the grey faces of his officers, but they said nothing. If only the Sutherland would sink under them the problem would solve itself but that would be too much to hope for. She would only grow more and more waterlogged, sinking as each deck in turn was submerged, while the pitiless cannonade would continue. It might be as much as twenty-four hours before she sank completely and in that time the little wind would have drifted her aground under the guns of Rosas. All he could do was to surrender. He thought of the other British captains who had found themselves in similar positions. Thompson of the Leander and the captain of the Swiftsure and the unfortunate man under Saumarez’ command in Algeciras Bay; they, too, had hauled down their flags after a long fight against heavy odds.

Somebody was hailing from the two-decker; he could not understand what was said, but it must be a demand to surrender.

“Oui,” he shouted back. “Oui.”

For answer there came another broadside, smashing home with a splintering of timber and to the accompaniment of a shriek from below.

“Oh God!” said Hooker.

Hornblower realised that he must have misunderstood the question, and with the realisation came a solution of the difficulty. He ran as fast as his stiff legs would carry him down to the indescribable chaos which represented what was left of his cabin. Hurriedly he turned over the litter there, while the men at the guns watched him expressionless as animals. He found what he sought at last, and came up on the quarterdeck with his arms full of it.

“Here,” he said, giving it to Crystal and Howell. “Hang that over the side.”

It was the tricolour flag he had had made to deceive the batteries at Llanza. At sight of it the men in the gunboats bent to their oars to propel their craft alongside, while Hornblower stood with the sun shining on his bare head waiting for them. They would take his sword of honour away from him. And the other sword of honour was still in pawn to Duddingstone the ship chandler, and he would never be able to redeem it now, with his career wrecked. And the shattered hull of the Sutherland would be towed in triumph under the guns of Rosas—how long would it be before the Mediterranean fleet came down to avenge her, to retake her from the captors, or burn her in one vast pyre along with her shattered conquerors? And Maria was going to bear him a child, whom he would never see during all the years of his captivity. And Lady Barbara would read of his capture in the newspapers—what would she think of his surrendering? But the sun was hot on his head, and he was very weary.