“We’ve water for twenty-eight days, sir. Twenty-four allowing for spillage and ullage.”
“Thirty-six, on short allowance,” corrected Hornblower.
“Yes, sir,” said Bush, with a world of significance in those two syllables.
“I’ll give the order within a week,” said Hornblower.
No gale could be expected to blow for a month continuously, but a second gale might follow the first before the water-hoys could beat down from Plymouth to refill the casks. It was a tribute to the organization set up by Cornwallis that during nearly six continuous months at sea Hotspur had not yet had to go on short allowance for water. Should it become necessary, it would be one more irksome worry brought about by the passage of time.
“Thank you, sir,” said Bush, touching his hat and going off about his business along the darkened reeling deck.
There were worries of all sorts. Yesterday morning Doughty had pointed out to Hornblower that there were holes appearing in the elbows of his uniform coat, and he only had two coats apart from full dress. Doughty had done a neat job of patching, but a search through the ship had not revealed any material of exactly the right weather-beaten shade. Furthermore the seats of nearly all his trousers were paper-thin, and Hornblower did not fancy himself in the baggy slop-chest trousers issued to the lower-deck; yet as that store was fast running out he had had to secure a pair for himself before they should all go. He was wearing his thick winter underclothing; three sets had appeared ample last April, but now he faced the prospect, in a gale, of frequent wettings to the skin with small chance of drying anything. He cursed himself and went off to try to make sure of some sleep in anticipation of a disturbed night. At least he had a good dinner inside him; Doughty had braised an oxtail, the most despised and rejected of all the portions of the weekly ration bullock, and had made of it a dish fit for a king. It might be his last good dinner for a long time if the gale lasted — winter affected land as well as sea, so that he could expect no other vegetables than potatoes and boiled cabbage until next spring.
His anticipation of a disturbed night proved correct. He had been awake for some time, feeling the lively motion of the Hotspur and trying to make up his mind to rise and dress or to shout for a light and try to reads when they came thundering on his door.
“Signal from the Flag, sir!”
“I’ll come.”
Doughty was really the best of servants; he arrived at the same moments with a storm lantern.
“You’ll need your pea jacket, sir, and oilskins over it. Your sou’wester, sir. Better have your scarf, sir, to keep your pea jacket dry.”
A scarf round his neck absorbed spray that might otherwise drive in between sou’wester and oilskin coat and soak the pea jacket. Doughty tucked Hornblower into his clothes like a mother preparing her son for school, while they reeled and staggered on the leaping deck. Then Hornblower went out into the roaring darkness.
“A white rocket and two blue lights from the Flag, sir,” reported Young. “That means ‘take offshore stations’.”
“Thank you. What sail have we set?” Hornblower could guess the answer by the feel of the ship, but he wanted to be sure. It was too dark for his dazzled eyes to see as yet.
“Double reefed tops’ls and main course, sir.”
“Get that course in and lay her on the port tack.”
“Port tack. Aye aye, sir.”
The signal for offshore stations meant a general withdrawal of the Channel Fleet. The main body took stations seventy miles to seaward off Brest, safe from that frightful lee shore and with a clear run open to them for Tor Bay — avoiding Ushant on the one hand and the Start on the other — should the storm prove so bad as to make it impossible to keep the sea. The Inshore Squadron was to be thirty miles closer in. They were the most weatherly ships and could afford the additional risk in order to be close up to Brest should a sudden shift of wind enable the French to get out.
But there was not merely the question of the French coming out, but of other French ships coming in. Out in the Atlantic there were more than one small French squadron — Bonaparte’s own brother was on board one of them, with his American wife — seeking urgently to regain a French port before food and water should be completely exhausted. So Naiad and Doris and Hotspur had to stay close in, to intercept and report. They could best encounter the dangers of the situation. And they could best be spared if they could not. So Hotspur had to take her station only twenty miles to the west of Ushant, where French ships running before the gale could be best expected to make their landfall.
Bush loomed up in the darkness, shouting over the gale.
“The equinox, just as I said, sir.”
“Yes.”
“It’ll be worse before it’s better, sir.”
“No doubt.”
Hotspur was close-hauled now, soaring, pitching and rolling over the vast invisible waves that the gale was driving in upon her port bow. Hornblower felt resentfully that Bush was experiencing pleasure at this change of scene. A brisk gale and a struggle to windward was stimulating to Bush after long days of fair weather, while Hornblower struggled to keep his footing and felt a trifle doubtful about the behaviour of his stomach as a result of this sudden change.
The wind howled round them and the spray burst over the deck so that the black night was filled with noise. Hornblower held on to the hammock netting; the circus riders he had seen in his childhood, riding round the ring, standing upright on two horses with one foot on each, had no more difficult task than he had at present. And the circus riders were not smacked periodically in the face with bucketfuls of spray.
There were small variations in the violence of the wind. They could hardly be called gusts; Hornblower took note that they were increases in force without any corresponding decreases. Through the soles of his feet, through the palms of his hands, he was aware of a steady increase in Hotspur‘s heel and a steady stiffening in her reaction. She was showing too much canvas. With his mouth a yard from Young’s ear he yelled his order.
“Four reefs in the tops’ls!”
“Aye aye, sir.”
The exaggerated noises of the night were complicated now with the shrilling of the pipes of the bos’n’s mates; down in the waist the orders were bellowed at hurrying, staggering men.
“All hands reef tops’ls!”
The hands clawed their way to their stations; this was the moment when a thousand drills bore fruit, when men carried out in darkness and turmoil the duties that had been ingrained into them in easier conditions. Hornblower felt Hotspur‘s momentary relief as Young set the topsails a-shiver to ease the tension on them. Now the men were going aloft to perform circus feats compared with which his maintenance of his foothold was a trifle. No trapeze artist ever had to do his work in utter darkness on something as unpredictable as a foot-rope in a gale, or had to exhibit the trained strength of the seaman passing the ear-ring while hanging fifty feet above an implacable sea. Even the lion tamer, keeping a wary eye on his treacherous brutes, did not have to encounter the ferocious enmity of the soulless canvas that tried to tear the topmost men from their precarious footing.
A touch of the helm set the sails drawing again, and Hotspur lay over in her fierce struggle with the wind. Surely there was no better example of the triumph of man’s ingenuity over the blind forces of nature than this, whereby a ship could wring advantage out of the actual attempt of the gale to push her to destruction. Hornblower clawed his way to the binnacle and studied the heading of the ship, working out mental problems of drift and leeway against the background of his mental picture of the trend of the land. Prowse was there, apparently doing the same thing.