“Message from Mr Bush, sir. One gun run out ready for action, sir. The other one in five minutes.”
“Thank you, Mr Orrock. Tell Mr Bush to station the two best gun-layers there.”
Félicité‘s main-topsail was filling again.
“Hands to the braces!”
Hotspur stood in towards her enemy. Hornblower would not yield an inch of sea room unnecessarily.
“Helm a-weather!”
That was very long cannon shot as Hotspur wore round. Félicité‘s bow was pointing straight at her; Hotspur‘s stern was turned squarely to her enemy, the ships exactly in line.
“Tell Mr Bush to open fire!”
Even before the message could have reached him Bush down below had acted. There was the bang-bang of the guns, the smoke bursting out under the counter, eddying up over the quarter-deck with the following wind. Nothing visible to Hornblower’s straining eye at the telescope; only the beautiful lines of Félicité‘s bows, her sharply-steeved bowsprit, her gleaming canvas. The rumble of the gun-trucks underfoot as the guns were run out again. Bang! Hornblower saw it. Standing right above the gun, looking straight along the line of flight, he saw the projectile, a lazy pencil mark against the white and blue, up and then down, before the smoke blew forward. Surely that was a hit. The smoke prevented his seeing the second shot.
The long British nine-pounder was the best gun in the service as far as precision went. The bore was notoriously true, and the shot could be more accurately cast than the larger projectiles. And even a nine-pounder shot, flying at a thousand feet a second, could deal lusty blows. Bang! The Frenchman would he unhappy at receiving this sort of punishment without hitting back.
“Look at that!” said Prowse.
Félicité‘s fore-staysail was out of shape, flapping in the wind; it was hard to see at first glance what had happened.
“His fore-stay’s parted, sir,” decided Prowse.
That Prowse was correct was shown a moment later when Félicité took in the fore-staysail. The loss of the sail itself made little difference, but the fore-stay was a most important item in the elaborate system of checks and balances (like a French constitution before Bonaparte seized power) which kept a ship’s masts in position under the pressure of the sails.
“Mr Orrock, run below and say ‘Well done’ to Mr Bush.”
Bang! As the smoke eddied Hornblower saw Félicité round-to, and as her broadside presented itself to his sight it vanished in a great bank of leaping smoke. There was the horrid howl of a passing cannon-ball somewhere near; there were two jets of water from the surface of the sea, one on each quarter, and that was all Hornblower saw or heard of the broadside. An excited crew, firing from a wheeling ship, could not be expected to do better than that, even with twenty-two guns.
A ragged cheer went up from Hotspur‘s crew, and Hornblower, turning, saw that every idle hand was craning out of the gun-ports, peering aft at the Frenchman. He could hardly object to that, but when he turned back to look at Félicité again he saw enough to set the men hurriedly at work. The Frenchman had not yawed merely to fire her broadside; she was hove-to, mizzen topsail to the mast, in order to splice the fore-stay. Lying like that, her guns would not bear. But not a second was to be lost, with Hotspur before the wind and the range increasing almost irretrievably.
“Stand by your guns to port! Hands to the braces! Hard-a-starboard!”
Hotspur wore sweetly round on to the port-tack. She was on Félicité‘s port quarter where not a French gun would bear. Bush came running from aft to keep his eye on the port-side guns; he strode along from gun to gun, making sure by eye that elevation and training were correct as Hotspur fired her broadside into her hapless enemy. Very long range, but some of those shots must have caused damage. Hornblower watched the bearing of Félicité altering as Hotspur drew astern of her.
“Stand-by to go about after the next broadside!”
The nine guns roared out, and the smoke was still eddying in the waist as Hotspur tacked.
“Starboard side guns!”
Excited men raced across the deck to aim and train; another broadside, but Félicité‘s mizzen topsail was wheeling round.
“Helm a-weather!”
By the time the harassed Frenchman had come before the wind again Hotspur had anticipated her; both ships were again in line and Bush was racing aft to supervise the fire of the stern chasers once more. This was revenge for the action with the Loire so long ago. In this moderate breeze and smooth sea the handy sloop held every advantage over the big frigate; what had gone on up to now was only a sample of what was to continue all through that hungry weary day of golden sun and blue sea and billowing powder smoke.
The leeward position that Hotspur held was a most decided advantage. To leeward over the horizon lay the British squadron; the Frenchman dared not chase her for long in that direction, lest he find himself trapped between the wind and overwhelming hostile strength. Moreover the Frenchman had a mission to perform; he was anxious to find and warn the Spanish Squadron, yet when he had won for himself enough sea room to weather St Vincent and to turn away his teasing little enemy hung on to him, firing into his battered stern, shooting holes in his sails, cutting away his running rigging.
During that long day Félicité fired many broadsides, all at long range, and generally badly aimed as Hotspur wheeled away out of the line of fire. And during all that long day Hornblower stood on his quarter-deck, watching the shifts of the wind, rapping out his orders, handling his little ship with unremitting care and inexhaustible ingenuity. Occasionally a shot from Félicité struck home; under Hornblower’s very eyes an eighteen-pounder ball came in through a gun-port and struck down five men into a bloody heaving mass. Yet until long after noon Hotspur evaded major damage, while the wind backed round southerly and the sun crept slowly round to the west. With the shifting of the wind his position was growing more precarious, and with the passage of time fatigue was numbing his mind.
At a long three-quarters of a mile Félicité at last scored an important hit, one hit out of the broadside she fired as she yawed widely off her course. There was a crash aloft, and Hornblower looked up to see the main yard sagging in two halves, shot clean through close to the centre, each half hanging in the slings at its own drunken angle, threatening, each of them, to come falling like an arrow down through the deck. It was a novel and cogent problem to deal with, to study the dangling menaces and to give the correct helm order that set the sails a-shiver and relieved the strain.
“Mr Wise! Take all the men you need and secure that wreckage!”
Then he could put his glass again to his aching eye to see what Félicité intended to do. She could force a close action if she took instant advantage of the opportunity. He would have to fight now to the last gasp. But the glass revealed something different, something he had to look at a second time before he could trust his swimming brain and his weary eye. Félicité had filled away. With every sail drawing she was reaching towards the sunset. She had turned tail and was flying for the horizon away from the pest which had plagued all the spirit out of her in nine continuous hours of battle.