“I should think we’ve made our offing, sir.” Prowse had to shout each syllable separately. Hornblower had to do the same when he replied.
“We’ll hold on a little longer, while we can.”
Extraordinary how rapidly time went by in these circumstances. It could not be long now until daylight. And this storm was still working up; it was nearly twenty-four hours since Hornblower had detected the premonitory symptoms, and it had not yet reached its full strength. It was likely to blow hard for a considerable time, as much as three days more, possibly even longer than that. Even when it should abate the wind might stay westerly for some considerable further time, delaying the water-hoys and the victuallers in their passage from Plymouth, and when eventually they should come, Hotspur might well be up in her station off the Goulet.
“Mr Bush!” Hornblower had to reach out and touch Bush’s shoulder to attract his attention in the wind. “We’ll reduce the water allowance from today. Two between three.”
“Aye aye, sir. Just as well, I think, sir.”
Bush gave little thought to hardship, either for the lower-deck or for himself. It was no question of giving up a luxury; to reduce the water ration meant an increase in hardship. The standard issue of a gallon a day a head was hardship, even though a usual one; a man could just manage to survive on it. Two thirds of a gallon a day was a horrible deprivation; after a few days thirst began to colour every thought. As if in mockery the pumps were going at this moment. The elasticity and springiness that kept Hotspur from breaking up under these strains meant also that the sea had greater opportunities of penetrating her fabric, working its way in through the straining seams both above and below the water line. It would accumulate in the bilge, one — two — three feet deep. While the storm blew most of the crew would have six hours’ hard physical work a day — an hour each watch — pumping the water out.
Here was the grey dawn coming, and the wind was still increasing, and Hotspur could not battle against it any longer.
“Mr Cargill!” Cargill was now officer of the watch. “We’ll heave to. Put her under main-topmast stays’l.”
Hornblower had to shout the order at the top of his lungs before Cargill nodded that he understood.
“All hands! All hands!”
Some minutes of hard work effected a transformation. Without the immense leverage of the topsails Hotspur ceased to lie over quite so steeply; the more gentle influence of the main-topmast stay-sail kept her reasonably steady, and now the rudder desisted from its hitherto constant effort to force the little ship to battle into the wind. Now she rose and swooped more freely, more extravagantly yet with less strain. She was leaping wildly enough, and still shipping water over her weather bow, but her behaviour was quite different as she yielded to the wind instead of defying it at the risk of being torn apart.
Bush was offering him a telescope, and pointing to windward, where there was now a grey horizon dimly to be seen — a serrated horizon, jagged with the waves hurrying towards them. Hornblower braced himself to put two hands to the telescope. Sea and then sky raced past the object glass as Hotspur tossed over successive waves. It was hard to sweep the area indicated by Bush; that had to be done in fits and starts, but after a moment something flashed across the field, was recaptured — many hours of using a telescope had developed Hornblower’s reflex skills — and soon could be submitted to intermittent yet close observation.
“Naiad, sir,” shouted Bush into his ear.
The frigate was several miles to windward, hove-to like Hotspur. She had one of those new storm-topsails spread, very shallow and without reefs. It might be of considerable advantage when lying-to, for even the reduction in height alone would be considerable, but when Hornblower turned his attention back to the Hotspur and observed her behaviour under her main-topmast stay-sail he felt no dissatisfaction. Politeness would have led him to comment on it when he handed back the glass, but politeness stood no chance against the labour of making conversation in the wind, and he contented himself with a nod. But the sight of Naiad out there to westward was confirmation that Hotspur was on her station, and beyond her Hornblower had glimpses of the Doris reeling and tossing on the horizon. He had done all there was to be done at present. A sensible man would get his breakfast while he might, and a sensible man would resolutely ignore the slight question of stomach occasioned by this new and different motion of the ship. All he had to do now was to endure it.
There was a pleasant moment when he reached his cabin and Huffnell the purser came in to make his morning report, for then it appeared that at the first indication of trouble Bush and Huffnell between them had routed out Simmonds the cook and had set him to work cooking food.
“That’s excellent, Mr Huffnell.”
“It was laid down in your standing orders, sir.”
So it was, Hornblower remembered. He had added that paragraph after reading Cornwallis’s orders regarding stations to be assumed in westerly gales. Simmonds had boiled three hundred pounds of salt pork in Hotspur‘s cauldrons, as well as three hundred pounds of dried peas, before the weather had compelled the galley fires to be extinguished.
“Pretty nigh on cooked, anyway, sir,” said Huffnell.
So that for the next three days — four at a pinch — the hands would have something more to eat than dry biscuit. They would have cold parboiled pork and cold pease porridge; the latter was what the Man in the Moon burned his mouth on according to the nursery rhyme.
“Thank you, Mr Huffnell. It’s unlikely that this gale will last more than four days.”
That was actually the length of time that gale lasted, the gale that ushered in the worst winter in human memory, following the best summer. For those four days Hotspur lay hove-to, pounded by the sea, flogged by the wind, while Hornblower made anxious calculations regarding leeway and drift; as the wind backed northerly his attention was diverted from Ushant to the north to the Isle de Sein to the south of the approaches to Brest. It was not until the fifth day that Hotspur was able to set three-reefed top-sails and thrash her way back to station while Simmonds managed to start his galley fires again and to provide the crew — and Hornblower — with hot boiled beef as a change from cold boiled pork.
Even then that three-reefed gale maintained the long Atlantic rollers in all their original vastness, so that Hotspur soared over them and slithered unhappily down the far side, adding her own corkscrew motion as her weather-bow met the swells, her own special stagger when a rogue wave crashed into her, and the worse lurch when — infrequently — a higher wave than usual blanketed her sails so that she reeled over her decks. But an hour’s work at the pumps every watch kept the bilges dear, and by tacking every two hours Hotspur was able to beat painfully out to sea again — not more than half a mile’s gain to windward on each tack — and recover the comparative safety of her original station before the next storm.
It was as if in payment for that fair weather summer that these gales blew, and perhaps that was not an altogether fanciful thought; to Hornblower’s mind there might be some substance to the theory that prolonged local high pressure during the summer now meant that the pent-up dirty weather to the westward could exert more than its usual force. However that might be, the mere fresh gale that endured for four days after the first storm then worked up again into a tempest, blowing eternally from the westward with almost hurricane force; grey dreary days of lowering cloud, and wild black nights, with the wind howling unceasingly in the rigging until the ear was sated with the noise, until no price seemed too great to pay for five minutes of peace — and yet no price however great could buy even a second of peace. The creaking and the groaning of Hotspur‘s fabric blended with the noise of the wind, and the actual woodwork of the ship vibrated with the vibration of the rigging until it seemed as if body and mind, exhausted with the din and with the fatigues of mere movement, could not endure for another minute, and yet went on to endure for days.