“God help us’”
“My shot’s just reaching the battery on that point, sir. If I can keep the embrasures swept I’ll slow their rate of fire even if I don’t silence them.”
Another crash as a shot struck home, and another.
“But the one across the channel’s out of range.”
“Yes,” said Hornblower.
The powder boys were running through all the bustle with fresh charges for the guns. And here was the messenger-midshipman threading his way through them.
“Mr Bush, sir! Will you please report to Mr Buckland, sir? And we’re aground, under fire, sir.”
“Shut your mouth. I leave you in charge here, Mr Hornblower.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
The sunlight on the quarterdeck was blinding. Buckland was standing hatless at the rail, trying to control the working of his features. There was a roar and a spluttering of steam as someone turned the jet of a hose on a fiery fragment lodged in the bulkhead. Dead men in the scuppers; wounded being carried off. A shot, or the splinters it had sent flying, must have killed the man at the wheel so that the ship, temporarily out of control, had run aground.
“We have to kedge off,” said Buckland.
“Aye aye, sir.”
That meant putting out an anchor and heaving in on the cable with the capstan to haul the ship off the mud by main force. Bush looked round him to confirm what he had gathered regarding the ship’s position from his restricted view below. Her bows were on the mud; she would have to be hauled off stern first. A shot howled close overhead, and Bush had to exert his self-control not to jump.
“You’ll have to get a cable out aft through a stern port.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
“Roberts’ll take the stream anchor off in the launch.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
The fact that Buckland omitted the formal ‘Mister’ was significant of the strain he was undergoing and of the emergency of the occasion.
“I’ll take the men from my guns, sir,” said Bush.
“Very good.”
Now was the time for discipline and training to assert themselves; the Renown was fortunate in having a crew more than half composed of seasoned men drilled in the blockade of Brest. At Plymouth she had only been filled up with pressed men. What had merely been a drill, an evolution, when the Renown was one of the Channel Fleet, was now an operation on which the life of the ship depended, not something to be done perfunctorily in competition with the rest of the squadron. Bush gathered his guns’ crews around him and set about the task of rousing out a cable and getting it aft to a port, while overhead Roberts’ men were manning stay tackles and yard tackles to sway out the launch.
Down below the heat between the decks was greater even than above with the sun glaring down. The smoke from Hornblower’s guns was eddying thick under the beams; Hornblower was holding his hat in his hand and wiping his streaming face with his handkerchief. He nodded as Bush appeared; there was no need for Bush to explain the duty on which he was engaged. With the guns still thundering and the smoke still eddying, powder boys still running with fresh charges and fire parties bustling with their buckets, Bush’s men roused out the cable. The hundred fathoms of it weighed a trifle over a couple of tons; clear heads and skilled supervision were necessary to get the unwieldy cable laid out aft, but Bush was at his best doing work which called for single-minded attention to a single duty. He had it clear and faked down along the deck by the time the cutter was under the stern to receive the end, and then he watched the vast thing gradually snake out through the after port without a hitch. The launch came into his line of vision as he stood looking out, with the vast weight of the stream anchor dangling astern; it was a relief to know that the tricky business of getting the anchor into her had been successfully carried out. The second cutter carried the spring cable from the hawsehole. Roberts was in command; Bush heard him hail the cutter as the three boats drew off astern. There was a sudden jet of water among the boats; one or other, if not both, of the batteries ashore had shifted targets; a shot now into the launch would be a disaster, and one into a cutter would be a serious setback.
“Pardon, sir,” said Hornblower’s voice beside him, and Bush turned back from looking out over the glittering water.
“Well?”
“I could take some of the foremost guns and run ‘em aft,” said Hornblower. “Shifting the weight would help.”
“So it would,” agreed Bush; Hornblower’s face was streaked and grimy with his exertions, as Bush noted while he considered if he had sufficient authority to give the order on his own responsibility. “Better get Buckland’s permission. Ask him in my name if you like.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
These lower-deck twenty-four-pounders weighed more than two tons each; the transfer of some from forward aft would be an important factor in getting the bows off the mudbank. Bush took another glance through the port. James, the midshipman in the first cutter, was turning to look back to check that the cable was out in exact line with the length of the ship. There would be a serious loss of tractive effort if there was an angle in the cable from anchor to capstan. Launch and cutter were coming together in preparation for dropping the anchor. All round them the water suddenly boiled to a salvo from the shore; the skipping jets of the ricochets showed that it was the fort on the hill that was firing at them — and making good practice for that extreme range. The sun caught an axe blade as it turned in the air in the sternsheets of the launch; Bush saw the momentary flash. They were letting the anchor drop from where it hung from the gallows in the stern. Thank God.
Hornblower’s guns were still bellowing out, making the ship tremble with their recoil, and at the same time a splintering crash over his head told him that the other battery was still firing on the ship and still scoring hits. Everything was still going on at once; Hornblower had a gang of men at work dragging aft the foremost twenty-four-pounder on the starboard side — a ticklish job with the rolling handspike under the transom of the carriage. The trucks squealed horribly as the men struggled to turn the cumbersome thing and thread their way along the crowded deck. But Bush could spare Hornblower no more than a glance as he hurried up to the maindeck to see for himself what was happening at the capstan.
The men were already taking their places at the capstan bars under the supervision of Smith and Booth; the maindeck guns were being stripped of the last of their crews to supply enough hands. Naked to the waist, the men were spitting on their hands and testing their foothold — there was no need to tell them how serious the situation was; no need for Booth’s knotted rattan.
“Heave away!” hailed Buckland from the quarterdeck.
“Heave away!” yelled Booth. “Heave, and wake the dead!’
The men flung their weight on the bars and the capstan came round, the pawls clanking rapidly as the capstan took up the slack. The boys with the nippers at the messenger had to hurry to keep pace. Then the intervals between the clanking of the pawls became longer as the capstan turned more slowly. More slowly; clank — clank — clank. Now the strain was coming; the bitts creaked as the cable tightened. Clank — clank. That was a new cable, and it could be expected to stretch a trifle.
The sudden howl of a shot — what wanton fate had directed it here of all places in the ship? Flying splinters and prostrate men; the shot had ploughed through the whole crowded mass. Red blood was pouring out, vivid in the sunshine; in understandable confusion the men drew away from the bloody wrecks.
“Stand to your posts!” yelled Smith.“You, boys! Get those men out of the way. Another capstan bar here! Smartly now!”
The ball which had wrought such fearful havoc had not spent all its force on human flesh; it had gone on to shatter the cheekpiece of a gun carriage and then to lodge in the ship’s side. Nor had human blood quenched it; smoke was rising on the instant from where it rested. Bush himself seized a fire bucket and dashed its contents on the glowing ball; steam blended with the smoke and the water spat and sputtered. No single fire bucket could quench twenty-four pounds of red-hot iron, but a fire party came running up to flood the smouldering menace.