Quick match burned faster than the eye could follow; the fifty feet or so that extended down to the magazine would burn in less than a second.
“Cut me a yard off that!” said Hornblower pointing to the slow match.
Slow match was carefully tested. It burned in still air at exactly thirty inches in one hour, one inch in two minutes. Hornblower had no intention whatever of allowing an hour or more for the combustion of this yard, however. He could hear the muskets banging; he could hear drums echoing in the hills. He must keep calm.
“Cut off another foot and light it!”
While Black was executing this order Hornblower was tying quick match to slow match, making sure they were closely joined. Yet he still had to think of the general situation in addition to these vital details.
“Hewitt!” he snapped, looking up from his work. “Listen carefully. Run to the lieutenant’s party of marines over the ridge there. Tell him we’re going to fall back now, and he is to cover our retreat at the last slope above the boats. Understand?”
“Aye aye, sir.”
“Then run.”
Just as well that it was not Grimes who had to be entrusted with the mission. The fuses were knotted together now, and Hornblower looked round him.
“Bring that dead man over here!”
Black asked no questions, but dragged the corpse to the foot of the door. Hornblower had looked first for a stone, but a corpse would be better in every way. It was not yet stiff, and the arm lay limply across the quick match just above the knot, after Hornblower had passed all excess slack back through the shattered door. The dead man served to conceal the existence of the fuse. If the French arrived too early he would gain valuable seconds for the plan; the moment the fire reached the quick match it would flash under the dead man’s arm and shoot on down to the powder. If to investigate the magazine they dragged the corpse out of the way, the weight of a fuse inside the door would whisk the knot inside and so gain seconds too — perhaps the burning end would tumble down the steps, perhaps right into the magazine.
“Captain Jones! Warn everybody to be ready to retreat. At once, please. Give me that burning fuse, Black.”
“Let me do that, sir.”
“Shut your mouth.”
Hornblower took the smouldering slow match and blew on it to quicken its life. Then he looked down at the length of slow match knotted to the quick match. He took special note of a point an inch and a half from the knot; there was a black spot there which served to mark the place. An inch and a half. Three minutes.
“Get up on the parapet, Black. Now. Yell for them to run. Yell!”
As Black began to bellow Hornblower pressed the smouldering end down upon the black spot. After two seconds he withdrew it; the slow match was alight and burning in two directions — in one, harmlessly towards the inoperative excess, and in the other towards the knot, the quick match an inch and a half away. Hornblower made sure it was burning, and then he scrambled to his feet and leaped up on the parapet.
The marines were trooping past him, with Côtard and his seamen bringing up the rear. A minute and a half — a minute, now, and the French were following them up, just out of musket range.
“Better hurry, Côtard. Come on!”
They broke into a jogtrot.
“Steady, there!” yelled Jones. He was concerned about panic among these men if they ran from the enemy instead of retreating steadily, but there was a time for everything. The marines began to run, with Jones yelling ineffectually and waving his sword.
“Come on, Jones,” said Hornblower as he passed him, but Jones was filled with fighting madness, and went on shouting defiance at the French, standing alone with his face to the enemy.
Then it happened. The earth moved back and forth under their feet so that they tripped and staggered, while a smashing, overwhelming explosion burst on their ears, and the sky went dark. Hornblower looked back. A column of smoke was still shooting upwards, higher and higher, and dark fragments were visible in it. Then the column spread out, mushrooming at the top. Something fell with a crash ten yards away, throwing up chips of stone which rattled round Hornblower’s feet. Something came whistling through the air, something huge, curving down as it twirled. Selectively, inevitably, it fell, half a ton of rock, blown from where it roofed the magazine right on to Jones in his red coat, sliding along as if bestially determined to wipe out completely the pitiful thing it dragged beneath it. Hornblower and Côtard gazed at it in mesmerized horror as it came to rest six feet from their left hands.
It was the most difficult moment of all for Hornblower to keep his senses, or to regain them. He had to shake himself out of a daze.
“Come on.”
He still had to think clearly. They were at the final slope above the boats. The lieutenant’s party of marines, sent out as a flank guard, had fallen back to this point and were drawn up here firing at a threatening crowd of Frenchmen. The French wore white facings on their blue uniforms — infantry men, not the artillery men who had opposed them round the battery. And beyond them was a long column of infantry, hurrying along, with a score of drums beating an exhilarating rhythm — the pas de charge.
“You men get down into the boats,” said Hornblower, addressing the rallying group of seamen and marines from the battery, and then he turned to the lieutenant.
“Captain Jones is dead. Make ready to run for it the moment those others reach the jetty.”
“Yes, sir.”
Behind Hornblower’s back, turned as it was to the enemy, they heard a sharp sudden noise, like the impact of a carpenter’s axe against wood. Hornblower swung round again. Côtard was staggering, his sword and the books and papers he had carried all this time fallen to the ground at his feet. Then Hornblower noticed his left arm, which was swaying in the air as if hanging by a thread. Then came the blood. A musket bullet had crashed into Côtard’s upper armbone, shattering it. One of the axemen who had not left caught him as he was about to fall.
“Ah — ah — ah!” gasped Côtard, with the jarring of his shattered arm. He stared at Hornblower with bewildered eyes.
“Sorry you’ve been hit,” said Hornblower, and to the axeman, “Get him down to the boat.”
Côtard was gesticulating towards the ground with his right hand, and Hornblower spoke to the other axeman.
“Pick those papers up and go down to the boat too.”
But Côtard was not satisfied.
“My sword! My sword!”
“I’ll look after your sword,” said Hornblower. These absurd notions of honour were so deeply ingrained that even in these conditions Côtard could not bear the thought of leaving his sword on the field of battle. Hornblower realized he had no cutlass as he picked up Côtard’s sword. The axeman had gathered up the books and papers.
“Help Mr Côtard down,” said Hornblower, and added, as another thought struck him. “Put a scarf round his arm above the wound and strain it tight. Understand?”
Côtard, supported by the other axeman was already tottering down the path. Movement meant agony. That heartrending “ah — ah — ah!” came back to Hornblower’s ears at every step Côtard took.
“Here they come!” said the marine lieutenant.
The skirmishing Frenchmen, emboldened by the near approach of their main body, were charging forward. A hurried glance told Hornblower that the others were all down on the jetty; the lobster-boat was actually pushing off, full of men.
“Tell your men to run for it,” he said, and the moment after they started he followed them.
It was a wild dash, slipping and sliding, down the path to the jetty, with the French yelling in pursuit. But here was the covering party, as Hornblower had ordered so carefully the day before; Hotspur‘s own thirteen marines, under their own sergeant. They had built a breastwork across the jetty, again as Hornblower had ordered when he had visualized this hurried retreat. It was lower than waist-high, hurriedly put together with rocks and fish-barrels full of stones. The hurrying mob poured over it. Hornblower, last of all, gathered himself together and leaping over it, arms and legs flying, to stumble on the far side and regain his footing by a miracle.