“Glorious! Damme! Damn my eyes! Damn my soul! Glorious!” spluttered Bush, thumping his right fist into his left hand and leaping up and down on the quarterdeck.
Hornblower had no attention to spare for Bush nor for Bush’s good opinion, although later he was to remember hearing the words and find warm comfort in them. As the ships diverged he shouted for the Lydia to go about again, but even as the sheets were handed and the helm put over the Natividad wore round to pass her to leeward. So much the better. At the cost of a single exchange of broadsides he would be able to assail that vulnerable stern again, and if the Natividad attempted to circle, his was the handier ship and he could rely on getting in at least two effective shots to his opponent’s one. He watched the Natividad come foaming up; her bulwarks were riddled with shot and there was a trickle of blood from her scuppers. He caught a glimpse of Crespo on the poop — he had hoped that he might have been killed in the last two broadsides, for that would mean, almost for certain, a slackening in the attack. But her guns were run out ready, and on this, her weather side, her lower deck ports were open.
“For what we are about to receive —,” said Bush, repeating the hackneyed old blasphemy quoted in every ship awaiting a broadside.
Seconds seemed as long as minutes as the two ships neared. They were passing within a dozen yards of each other. Bow overlapped bow, foremast passed foremast and then foremast passed mainmast. Rayner was looking aft, and as soon as he saw that the aftermost gun bore on the target he shouted the order to fire. The Lydia lifted to the recoil of the guns, ears were split with the sound of the discharge, and then, even before the gale had time to blow away the smoke, came the Natividad’s crashing reply.
It seemed to Hornblower as if the heavens were falling round him. The wind of a shot made him reel; he found at his feet a palpitating red mass which represented half the starboard side carronade’s crew, and then with a thunderous crackling the mizzen mast gave way beside him. The weather mizzen rigging entangled him and flung him down into the blood on the deck, and while he struggled to free himself he felt the Lydia swing round as she paid off despite the efforts of the men at the wheel.
He got to his feet, dizzy and shaken, to find ruin all round him. The mizzen mast was gone, snapped off nine feet from the deck, taking the main top gallant mast with it, and masts and yards and sails and rigging trailed alongside and astern by the imparted shrouds. With the loss of the balancing pressure of the mizzen topsail the Lydia had been unable to keep her course on the wind and was now drifting helplessly dead before the gale. And at that very moment he saw the Natividad going about to cross his stern and repay, with a crushing broadside, the several unanswered salvoes to which earlier she had been forced to submit. His whole world seemed to be shattered. He gulped convulsively, with a sudden sick fear of defeat at the pit of his stomach.
Chapter XIV
But he knew, and he told himself, at the moment of his getting to his feet, that he must not delay an instant in making the Lydia ready for action again.
“Afterguard!” he roared — his voice sounding unnatural to himself as he spoke — “Mr Clay! Benskin! Axes here! Cut that wreckage away!”
Clay came pounding aft at the head of a rush of men with axes and cutlasses. As they were chopping at the mizzen shrouds he noticed Bush sitting up on the deck with his face in his hands — apparently a falling block had struck him down but there was no time to spare for Bush. The Natividad was coming down remorselessly on them; he could see exultant figures on her deck waving their hats in triumph. To his strained senses it seemed to him that even through the din on board the Lydia he could hear the creaking of Natividad’s rigging and the rumble of her reloaded guns being run out. She was steering to pass as close as possible. Hornblower saw her bowsprit go by, felt her reefed fore topsail loom over him, and then her broadside crashed out as gun after gun bore on the Lydia’s stern. The wind caught the smoke and whipped it round Hornblower, blinding him. He felt the deck leap as the shots struck home, heard a scream from Clay’s party beside him, felt a splinter scream past his cheek, and then, just as annihilation seemed about to engulf him, the frightful succession of shots ended, the smoke was borne away, the Natividad had gone by, and he was still alive and could look round him. The slide of the aftermost carronade had been smashed, and one of Clay’s men was lying screaming on the deck with the gun across his thighs and two or three of his mates striving futilely to prise it off them.
“Stop that!” screamed Hornblower — the necessity of having to give such an order sent his voice up to the same pitch as that of the miserable wretch in his agony — “Cut that bloody wreckage away! Mr Clay, keep them at work!”
A cable’s length away, over the grey topped waves the Natividad was slowly wearing round to return and deal a fresh blow at her helpless opponent. It was lucky that the Natividad was an unhandy ship, like all those stumpy fourth rates — it gave Hornblower more time between the broadsides to try and get the Lydia into a condition so that she could face her enemy again.
“Foretop, there! Mr Galbraith! get the headsails in.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
The absence of the fore-topmast-staysail and storm jib would balance to some extent the loss of the mizzen topsail and driver. He might, by juggling with the helm, get the Lydia to lie to the wind a trifle then, and hit back at his big opponent. But there was no hope of doing so while all this wreckage was trailing astern like a vast sea anchor. Until that was cut away she could only lie helpless, dead before the wind, suffering her enemy’s blows in silence. A glance showed him that the Natividad had worn round now, and was heading to cross their stern again.
“Hurry up!” he screamed to the axe men. “You, there, Holroyd, Tooms, get down into the mizzen chains.”
He suddenly realised how high-pitched and hysterical his voice had become. At all costs he must preserve before Clay and the men his reputation for imperturbability. He forced himself convulsively, to look casually at the Natividad as she came plunging down on them again, wicked with menace; he made himself grin, and shrug his shoulders, and speak in his normal voice.
“Don’t mind about her, my lads. One thing at a time. Cut this wreckage away first, and we’ll give the Dagoes their bellyful after.”
The men hacked with renewed force at the tough tangles of cordage. Something gave way, and a new extravagant plunge on the part of the Lydia as a huge wave lifted her stern caused the wreckage to run out a little farther before catching again, this time on the mizzen stay, which, sweeping the deck, tumbled three men off their feet. Hornblower seized one of the fallen axes, and fell desperately on the rope as it sawed back and forth with the roll of the ship. From the tail of his eye he saw the Natividad looming up, but he could spare no attention for her. For the moment she represented merely a tiresome interruption to his work, not a menace to his life.
Then once more he was engulfed in the smoke and din of the Natividad’s broadside. He felt the wind of shot round him, and heard the scream of splinters. The cries of the man under the carronade ceased abruptly, and beneath his feet he could feel the crash as the shot struck home in the Lydia’s vitals. But he was mesmerised by the necessity of completing his task. The mizzen stay parted under his axe; he saw another rope draw up taut, and cut that as well — the pattern of the seams of the deck planking at that point caught his notice — felt another severed and flick past him, and then knew that the Lydia was free from the wreckage. Almost at his feet lay young Clay, sprawled upon the deck, but Clay had no head. He noted that as an interesting phenomenon, like the pattern of the deck seams.