Matthews and Carson put a bowline round him and lowered him over. He found himself dangling against the ship’s side, with the sea bubbling just below him; as the ship pitched the sea came up to meet him, and he was wet to the waist in the first five seconds; and as the ship rolled he was alternately swung away from the side and bumped against it. The men with the line walked steadily aft, giving him the chance to examine the whole side of the brig above water, and there was not a shot hole to be seen. He said as much to Matthews when they hauled him on deck.
“Then it’s below the waterline, sir,” said Matthews, saying just what was in Hornblower’s mind. “You’re sure the shot hit her, sir?”
“Yes, I’m sure,” snapped Hornblower.
Lack of sleep and worry and a sense of guilt were all shortening his temper, and he had to speak sharply or break down in tears. But he had already decided on the next move — he had made up his mind about that while they were hauling him up.
“We’ll heave her to on the other tack and try again,” he said.
On the other tack the ship would incline over to the other side, and the shot-hole, if there was one, would not be so deeply submerged. Hornblower stood with the water dripping from his clothes as they wore the brig round; the wind was keen and cold, but he was shivering with expectancy rather than cold. The heeling of the brig laid him much more definitely against the side, and they lowered him until his legs were scraping over the marine growths which she carried there between wind and water. They then walked aft with him, dragging him along the side of the ship, and just abaft the foremast he found what he was seeking.
“Avast, there!” he yelled up to the deck, mastering the sick despair that he felt. The motion of the bowline along the ship ceased. “Lower away! Another two feet!”
Now he was waist-deep in the water, and when the brig swayed the water closed briefly over his head, like a momentary death. Here it was, two feet below the waterline even with the brig hove to on this tack — a splintered, jagged hole, square rather than round, and a foot across. As the sea boiled round him Hornblower even fancied he could hear it bubbling into the ship, but that might be pure fancy.
He hailed the deck for them to haul him up again, and they stood eagerly listening for what he had to say.
“Two feet below the waterline, sir?” said Matthews. “She was close hauled and heeling right over, of course, when we hit her. But her bows must have lifted just as we fired. And of course she’s lower in the water now.”
That was the point. Whatever they did now, however much they heeled her, that hole would be under water. And on the other tack it would be far under water, with much additional pressure; yet on the present tack they were headed for France. And the more water they took in, the lower the brig would settle, and the greater would be the pressure forcing water in through the hole. Something must be done to plug the leak, and Hornblower’s reading of the manuals of seamanship told him what it was.
“We must fother a sail and get it over that hole,” he announced. “Call those Frenchmen over.”
To fother a sail was to make something like a vast hairy doormat out of it, by threading innumerable lengths of half-unravelled line through it. When this was done the sail would be lowered below the ship’s bottom and placed against the hole. The inward pressure would then force the hairy mass so tightly against the hole that the entrance of water would be made at least much more difficult.
The Frenchmen were not quick to help in the task; it was no longer their ship, and they were heading for an English prison, so that even with their lives at stake they were somewhat apathetic. It took time to get out a new topgallant sail — Hornblower felt that the stouter the canvas the better — and to set a party to work cutting lengths of line, threading them through, and unravelling them. The French captain looked at them squatting on the deck all at work.
“Five years I spent in a prison hulk in Portsmouth during the last war,” he said. “Five years.”
“Yes,” said Hornblower.
He might have felt sympathy, but he was not only preoccupied with his own problems but he was numb with cold. He not only had every intention if possible of escorting the French captain to England and to prison again but he also at that very moment intended to go below and appropriate some of his spare clothing.
Down below it seemed to Hornblower as if the noises all about him — the creaks and groans of a wooden ship at sea — were more pronounced than usual. The brig was riding easily enough hove-to, and yet the bulkheads down below were cracking and creaking as if the brig were racking herself to pieces in a storm. He dismissed the notion as a product of his over-stimulated imagination but by the time he had towelled himself into something like warmth and put on the captain’s best suit it recurred to him; the brig was groaning as if in stress.
He came on deck again to see how the working party was progressing. He had hardly been on deck two minutes when one of the Frenchmen, reaching back for another length of line, stopped in his movement to stare at the deck. He picked at a deck seam, looked up and caught Hornblower’s eye, and called to him. Hornblower made no pretence of understanding the words; the gestures explained themselves. The deck seam was opening a little; the pitch was bulging out of it. Hornblower looked at the phenomenon without understanding it — only a foot or two of the seam was open, and the rest of the deck seemed solid enough. No! Now that his attention was called to it, and he looked further, there were one or two other places in the deck where the pitch had risen in ridges from out of the seams. It was something beyond his limited experience, even beyond his extensive reading. But the French captain was his side staring at the deck too.
“My God!” he said. “The rice! The rice!”
The French word ‘riz’ that he used was unknown to Hornblower, but he stamped his foot on the deck and pointed down through it.
“The cargo!” he said in explanation. “It — it grows bigger.”
Matthews was with them now, and without knowing a word of French he understood.
“Didn’t I hear this brig was full of rice, sir?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“That’s it, then. The water’s got into it and it’s swelling.”
So it would. Dry rice soaked in water would double or treble its volume. The cargo was swelling and bursting the seams of the ship open. Hornblower remembered the unnatural creaks and groans below. It was a black moment; he looked round at the unfriendly sea for inspiration and support, and found neither. Several seconds passed before he was ready to speak, and ready to maintain the dignity of a naval officer in face of difficulties.
“The sooner we get that sail over that hole the better, then,” he said. It was too much to be expected that his voice should sound quite natural. “Hurry those Frenchmen up.”
He turned to pace the deck, so as to allow his feelings to subside and to set his thoughts running in an orderly fashion again, but the French captain was at his elbow, voluble as a Job’s comforter.
“I said I thought the ship was riding heavily,” he said. “She is lower in the water.”
“Go to the devil,” said Hornblower, in English — he could not think up the French for that phrase.
Even as he stood he felt a sudden sharp shock beneath his feet, as if someone had hit the deck underneath them with a mallet. The ship was springing apart bit by bit.
“Hurry with that sail!” he yelled, turning back to the working party, and then was angry with himself because the tone of his voice must have betrayed undignified agitation.
At last an area five feet square of the sail was fothered, lines were rove through the grommets, and the working party hurried forward to work the sail under the brig and drag it aft to the hole. Hornblower was taking off his clothes, not out of regard for the captain’s property but so as to keep them dry for himself.