“Bolt Head, sir!” he yelled. “Fine on the port bow. And I could just make out the Start.”
“Thank you.”
Even though it meant shouting, Bush wanted to express his feelings about this feat of navigation, but Hornblower had no time for that, nor the patience, nor, for that matter, the strength. There was the question of not being blown too far to leeward at this eleventh hour, of making preparations to come to an anchor in conditions that would certainly be difficult. There was the tide rip off the Start to be borne in mind, the necessity of rounding to as close under Berry Head as possible. There was the sudden inexpressible change in wind and sea as they came under the lee of the Start; the steep choppiness here seemed nothing compared with what Hotspur had been enduring five minutes before, and the land took the edge off the hurricane wind to reduce it to the mere force of a full gale that still kept Hotspur flying before it. There was the Newstone and the Blackstones — here as well as in the Iroise — and the final tricky moment of the approach to Berry Head.
“Ships of war at anchor, sir,” reported Bush, sweeping Tor Bay with his glass as they opened it up. “That’s Dreadnought. That’s Temeraire. It’s the Channel Fleet. My God! There’s one aground in Torquay Roads. Two-decker — she must have dragged her anchors.”
“Yes. We’ll back the best bower anchor before we let go, Mr Bush. We’ll have to use the launch’s carronade. You’ve time to see about that.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
Even in Tor Bay there was a full gale blowing; where a two-decker had dragged her anchors every precaution must be taken at whatever further cost in effort. The seven hundredweight of the boat carronade, attached to the anchor-cable fifty feet back from the one ton of the best bower, might just save that anchor from lifting and dragging. And so Hotspur came in under goose-winged fore-topsail and storm mizzen stay-sail, round Berry Head, under the eyes of the Channel Fleet, to claw her way in towards Brixham pier and to round-to with her weary men furling the fore-topsail and to drop her anchors while with a last effort they sent down the topmasts and Prowse and Hornblower took careful bearings to make sure she was not dragging. It was only then that there was leisure to spare to make her number to the flag-ship.
“Flag acknowledges, sir,” croaked Foreman.
“Very well.”
It was still possible to do something more without collapsing. “Mr Foreman, kindly make this signal. ‘Need drinking water’.”
Chapter 14
Tor Bay was a tossing expanse of white horses. The land lessened the effect of the wind to some extent; the Channel waves were hampered in their entry to Berry Head, but all the same the wind blew violently and the waves racing up the Channel managed to wheel leftwards, much weakened, but now running across the wind, and with the tide to confuse the issue Tor Bay boiled like a cauldron. For forty hours after Hotspur‘s arrival the Hibernia, Cornwallis’s big three-decker, flew the signal 715 with a negative beside it, and 715 with a negative meant that boats were not to be employed.
Not even the Brixham fishermen, renowned for their small boat work, could venture out into Tor Bay while it was in that mood, so that until the second morning at anchor the crew of the Hotspur supported an unhappy existence on two quarts of tainted water a day. And Hornblower was the unhappiest man on board, from causes both physical and mental. The little ship almost empty of stores was the plaything of wind and wave and tide; she surged about at her anchors like a restive horse. She swung and she snubbed herself steady with a jerk; she plunged and snubbed herself again. With her topmasts sent down she developed a shallow and rapid roll. It was a mixture of motions that would test the strongest stomach, and Hornblower’s stomach was by no means the strongest, while there was the depressing association in his memory of his very first day in a ship of war, when he had made himself a laughing stock by being seasick in the old Justinian at anchor in Spithead.
He spent those forty hours vomiting his heart out, while to the black depression of sea-sickness was added the depression resulting from the knowledge that Maria was only thirty miles away in Plymouth, and by a good road. Cornwallis’s representations had caused the government to cut that road, over the tail end of Dartmoor, so that the Channel Fleet in its rendezvous could readily be supplied from the great naval base. Half a day on a good horse and Hornblower could be holding Maria in his arms, he could be hearing news first-hand about the progress of the child, on whom (to his surprise) his thoughts were beginning to dwell increasingly. The hands spent their free moments on the forecastle, round the knightheads, gazing at Brixham and Brixham Pier; even in that wind with its deluges of rain there were women to be seen occasionally, women in skirts, at whom the crew stared like so many Tantaluses. After one good night’s sleep, and with pumping only necessary now for half an hour in each watch, those men had time and energy so that their imaginations had free play. They could think about women, and they could think about liquor — most of them dreamed dreams of swilling themselves into swinish unconsciousness on Brixham’s smuggled brandy, while Hornblower could only vomit and fret.
But he slept during the second half of the second night, when the wind not only moderated but backed two points northerly, altering the conditions in Tor Bay like magic, so that after he had assured himself at midnight that the anchors were still holding, his fatigue took charge and he could sleep without moving for seven hours. He was still only half awake when Doughty came bursting in on him.
“Signal from the Flag, sir.”
There were strings of bunting flying from the halliards of the Hibernia; with the shift of wind they could be read easily enough from the quarter-deck of the Hotspur.
“There’s our number there, sir,” said Foreman, glass at eye. “It comes first.”
Cornwallis was giving orders for the victualling and re-watering of the fleet, establishing the order in which the ships were to be replenished, and that signal gave Hotspur priority over all the rest.
“Acknowledge,” ordered Hornblower.
“We’re lucky, sir,” commented Bush.
“Possibly,” agreed Hornblower. No doubt Cornwallis had been informed about Hotspur‘s appeal for drinking water, but he might have further plans, too.
“Look at that, sir,” said Bush. “They waste no time.”
Two lighters, each propelled by eight sweeps, and with a six-oared yawl standing by, were creeping out round the end of Brixham Pier.
“I’ll see about the fend-offs, sir,” said Bush, departing hastily.
These were the water lighters, marvels of construction, each of them containing a series of vast cast-iron tanks. Hornblower had heard about them; they were of fifty-tons’ burthen each of them, and each of them carried ten thousand gallons of drinking water, while Hotspur, with every cask and hogshead brim full, could not quite store fifteen thousand.
So now began an orgy of freshwater, clear springwater which had not lain in the cast-iron tanks for more than a few days. With the lighters chafing uneasily alongside, a party from Hotspur went down to work the beautiful modern pumps which the lighters carried, forcing the water up through four superb canvas hoses passed in through the ports and then down below. The deck scuttle butt, so long empty, was swilled out and filled, to be instantly emptied by the crew and filled again; just possibly at that moment the hands would rather have freshwater than brandy.
It was glorious waste; down below the casks were swilled and scrubbed out with freshwater, and the swillings drained into the bilge whence the ship’s pumps would later have to force it overboard at some cost of labour. Every man drank his fill and more; Hornblower gulped down glass after glass until he was full, yet half an hour later found him drinking again. He could feel himself expanding like a desert plant after rain.