Looney knew his business. The canvas-covered powder keg lay beside him; it was bound with line, and Looney took another short length of line, secured one end to the keg, passed the line round the mooring line of the buoy, and secured the other end to the keg again. He checked to see that the free end of the fuse-hose was properly fastened to the empty keg that was to buoy it up, and then gave a piping order to one of his colleagues, who stood up to take off his clothes. Looney laid hold of the powder keg, but it was too heavy for his spindly arms.
“Help him, you two,” said Hornblower to the two seamen nearest. “See that the line’s clear and see that the hose is clear, too.”
Under Looney’s direction the powder keg was lifted up and lowered over the side.
“Let go! Handsomely! Handsomely!” ordered Hornblower.
It was a tense moment — one more tense moment — to watch the powder keg sink below the choppy surface. By the line attached to it the seamen lowered it slowly down, the fuse-hose uncoiling after it as the keg sank. The loop of line which Looney had passed round the mooring line of the buoy made certain that the keg would sink to the right place.
“Bottom, sir,” said a seaman, as the lowering line went slack in his hands. Several feet of hose remained in the boat.
The diver was sitting on the opposite gunwale; he carried a sheath knife on a string round his naked waist, and he took in his hands the cannon ball that Looney gave him. Then he lowered himself over and vanished under the surface. They waited until he came up; they waited while the next diver went down and came up again, they waited while Looney took his turn too. Dive succeeded dive; apparently it was not too easy an operation to move the powder keg to exactly the right place under the break of the Speedwell‘s poop. But presumably, down below the surface, the thing was achieved in the end. Looney came up from what seemed to be an extra long dive; he had to be helped over the gunwale and he lay gasping in the bows for some time recovering. Then at last he sat up and made to Hornblower the unmistakable gesture of handling flint and steel.
“Strike a light,” said Hornblower to Leadbitter. In all his life he had never properly acquired the knack of it.
Leadbitter opened the tinder box, and struck, and struck again. It did not take Leadbitter more than six times before he succeeded. He bent and blew the spark on the tinder into life, took the piece of slow match and caught the fire on it, blew that into life too, and looked to Hornblower for further orders.
“I’ll do it,” said Hornblower.
Leadbitter handed him the glowing match, and Hornblower sat with it in his hand for a second while he checked once more to see that all was ready. He was tingling with excitement.
“Stand by with the cask!” he said. “Leadbitter, have the stopper ready.”
There were four or five inches of quick match hanging out of the fuse-hose; Hornblower dabbed the glowing match upon it. A second’s hesitation and it took fire. Hornblower watched the spark run along the quick match and vanish down into the hose.
“Stopper it!” said Hornblower, and Leadbitter forced the wooden stopper into the end of the hose, grinding down upon the brittle ashes of the match.
At five seconds to the foot the fire was now, he hoped, travelling down the hose, down, down, far below the level of the sea. At the far end, next to the powder keg, there was a foot of slow match. That burned at five minutes to the foot; they had plenty of time — no need for feverish haste, however great the urge to hurry.
“Over with it!” said Hornblower, and Leadbitter picked up the empty cask and lowered it gently into the water. It floated there, holding up above the surface the stoppered end of the fuse-hose.
“Oars!” said Hornblower. “Give way!”
The gig swung away from the floating keg. The spark was still travelling along the quick match, Hornblower presumed; it would be some seconds yet before it even reached the slow match down there by the wreck of the Speedwell. He remembered to take the time by his watch.
“Take her back to the ship,” he ordered Leadbitter; he looked back to where the empty cask bobbed on the surface.
McCullum had said, “I advise you to keep clear of the explosion.” Apparently the explosion of a barrel of powder, even far down under the water, created a turmoil on the surface that would endanger the gig. Beside the ship they would be a quarter of a mile away; that should be safe enough. When the bowman hooked on to the main chains of the Atropos, Hornblower looked at his watch again. It was exactly five minutes since he had seen the spark passing into the end of the fusehose. The explosion could be expected at any time from now.
Naturally the side of the ship was lined with every idler who could find a place there. The preparation of the charge and the fuse had excited gossip throughout the ship.
Hornblower changed his mind about awaiting the explosion in the gig and mounted to the deck.
“Mr. Jones!” he bellowed. “Is this a raree-show? Keep the hands at work, if you please.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
He very much wanted to see the explosion himself, but he feared to display curiosity inconsonant with his dignity. And there was the chance — a likely chance, according to McCullum — that there would be no explosion at all. A glance at his watch showed him that it was by now overdue. With an appearance of the utmost indifference he strolled forward to McCullum’s bedside, where McCullum was listening to the reports of his divers.
“Nothing as yet?” said McCullum.
“Nothing.”
“I never trust a fuse-hose beyond five fathoms,” said McCullum, “even when I handle it myself.”
Hornblower kept back an irritated answer, and gazed out towards the scene of his recent activities. In the choppy water he could just perceive at intervals the dark spot which was the keg that floated the end of the fuse-hose. He glanced at his watch again.
“Long overdue,” he said.
“Water’s in that hose. You’ll have to use a flying-fuse after all.”
“The sooner the better,” said Hornblower. “How do I set about it?” He was glad for the sake of his precious dignity that he had not waited in sight of the men.
Chapter XV
This time so many men were wanted for the operation that Hornblower was using the launch instead of the gig. As usual the three Ceylonese divers were huddled in the bows, but next to them in the bottom of the boat stood an iron pot of melted pitch, and beside it squatted a sailmaker’s mate, and Mr. Clout, the gunner, sat amidships with the powder keg between his legs. The canvas covering to the keg was incompletely sewn, gaping wide at the upper end. They dropped the grapnel and the launch rode on the little waves beside the little keg that floated with the end of the useless fuse-hose, a monument to the previous failure.
“Carry on, Mr. Clout,” said Hornblower.
This was something more than exciting. This was dangerous. The divers stripped themselves for their work, and sat up to begin their exercises of inflating and deflating their lungs. There would not be any time to spare later. Clout took the tinderbox and proceeded to strike a spark upon the tinder, crouching low to shelter it from the small breeze which blew over the surface of the Bay. He caught fire upon the slow match, brought it to a glow, and looked over at Hornblower.
“Carry on, I said,” said Hornblower.
Clout dabbed the slow match upon the fuse that protruded through a hole in the end of the powder keg. Hornblower could hear the faint irregular hissing of the fuse as Clout waited for it to burn down into the hole. Among them now, in the middle of the boat, fire was creeping towards thirty pounds of gunpowder. If there were a few powder grains out of place, if the fuse were the least faulty, there would come a sudden crashing explosion which would blow them and the boat to fragments. There was not a sound in the boat save the hissing of the fuse. The spark crept down into the hole. The powder keg at this upper end had a double head, the result of the most careful work by the ship’s cooper. In the space between the two heads was coiled the fuse, whose farther end penetrated the inner head to rest amid the powder. Along that coil stapled to the inner head the fire was now moving unseen, creeping round on its way to dive down along its final length through the inner head.