A sudden breaking wave drenched him with spray; he swept the water from his eyes and looked about him. Most of the men who had been on the quarterdeck with him were dead, marines, seamen, officers. Simmonds had what was left of the marines lined up against the taffrail, ready to reply with musketry to the Natividad’s twenty-four pounders. Bush was in the main top, and Hornblower suddenly realised that to him was due the cutting of the mizzen top mast stay which had finally freed the ship. At the wheel stood the two quartermasters, rigid, unmoving, gazing straight ahead; they were not the same as the men who had stood there when the action began, but the iron discipline of the Navy and its unbending routine had kept the wheel manned through the vicissitudes of the battle.
Out on the starboard quarter the Natividad was wearing round again. Hornblower realised with a little thrill that this time he need not submit meekly to the punishment she was determined to administer. It called for an effort to make himself work out the problem of how to work the ship round, but he forced his mind to concentrate on it, comparing the proportional leverages of the fore and main topsails, and visualising in his mind the relative positions of the centre of the ship and the mainmast — luckily this latter was stepped a little aft.
“Man the braces, there!” he called. “Mr Bush, we’ll try and bring her to the wind.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
He looked back at the Natividad, plunging and heaving towards them.
“Hard-a-starboard!” he snapped at the quartermaster. “Stand to your guns, men.”
The crew of the Natividad, looking along their guns, suddenly saw the Lydia’s battered stern slowly turn from them. For a fleeting half minute, while the English frigate held her way, the quartermasters straining at her wheel were able to bring the wind abeam of her as the Natividad swept by.
“Fire!” yelled Gerard — his voice, too, was cracking with excitement.
The Lydia heaved again with the recoil of the guns, and the smoke billowed over her deck, and through the smoke came the iron hail of the Natividad’s broadside.
“Give it her again, lads!” screamed Gerard. “There goes her foremast! Well done, lads.”
The guns’ crews cheered madly, even though their two hundred voices sounded feeble against the gale. In that sudden flurry of action the enemy had been hard hit. Through the smoke Hornblower saw the Natividad’s foremast shrouds suddenly slacken, tauten again, slacken once more, and then her whole foremast bowed forward; her main topmast whipped and then followed it, and the whole vanished over the side. The Natividad turned instantly up into the wind, while at the same time the Lydia’s head fell off as she turned downwind despite the efforts of the men at the wheel. The gale screamed past Hornblower’s ears as the strip of grey sea which divided the ships widened more and more. One last gun went off on the main deck, and then the two ships lay pitching upon the turbulent sea, each unable to harm the other.
Hornblower wiped the spray slowly from his eyes again. This battle was like some long drawn nightmare, where one situation of fantastic unreality merged into the next. He felt as if he were in a nightmare, too — he could think clearly, but only by compelling himself to do so, as though it was unnatural to him.
The gap between the ships had widened to a full half mile, and was widening further. Through his glass he could see the Natividad’s forecastle black with men struggling with the wreck of the foremast. The ship which was first ready for action again would win. He snapped the glass shut and turned to face all the problems which he knew were awaiting his immediate solution.
Chapter XV
The captain of the Lydia stood on his quarterdeck while his ship, hove to under the main staysail and three-reefed main topsail, pitched and wallowed in the fantastic sea. It was raining now, with such violence that nothing could be seen a hundred yards away, and there were deluges of spray sweeping the deck, too, so that he and his clothes were as wet as if he had been swimming in the sea, but he was not aware of it. Everyone was appealing to him for orders — first lieutenant, gunner, boatswain, carpenter, surgeon, purser. The ship had to be made fit to fight again, even though there was every doubt as to whether she would even live through the storm which shrieked round her. It was the acting-surgeon who was appealing to him at the moment.
“But what am I to do, sir?” he said pathetically, white faced, wringing his hands. This was Laurie, the purser’s steward, who had been appointed acting-surgeon when Hankey the surgeon died. He had fifty wounded down in the grim dark cockpit, maddened with pain, some with limbs torn off, and all of them begging for the assistance which he had no idea of how to give.
“What are you to do, sir?” mimicked Hornblower scornfully, beside himself with exasperation at this incompetence. “After two months in which to study your duties you have to ask what to do!”
Laurie only blenched a little more at this, and Hornblower had to make himself be a little helpful and put some heart in this lily-livered incompetent.
“See here, Laurie,” he said, in more kindly fashion. “Nobody expects miracles of you. Do what you can. Those who are going to die you must make easy. You have my orders to reckon every man who has lost a limb as one of those. Give them laudanum — twenty-five drops a man, or more if that won’t ease them. Pretend to bandage ‘em. Tell ‘em they’re certain to get better and draw a pension for the next fifty years. As for the others, surely your mother wit can guide you. Bandage ‘em until the bleeding stops. You have rags enough to bandage the whole ship’s crew. Put splints on the broken bones. Don’t move any man more than is necessary. Keep every man quiet. A tot of rum to every wounded man, and promise ‘em another at eight bells if they lie still. I never knew a Jack yet who wouldn’t go through hell fire for a tot of rum. Get below, man, and see to it.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
Laurie could only think of his own responsibility and duty; he scuttled away below without a thought for the hell-turned-loose on the main deck. Here one of the twelve-pounders had come adrift, its breechings shot away by the Natividad’s last broadside. With every roll of the ship it was rumbling back and forth across the deck, a ton and a half of insensate weight, threatening at any moment to burst through the ship’s side. Galbraith, with twenty men trailing ropes, and fifty men carrying mats and hammocks, was trailing it cautiously from point to point in the hope of tying it or smothering it into helplessness. As Hornblower watched them, a fresh heave of the ship canted it round and sent it thundering in a mad charge straight at them. They parted wildly before it, and it charged through them, its trucks squealing like a forest of pigs, and brought up with a shattering crash against the mainmast.
“Now’s your chance, lads! Jump to it!” yelled Hornblower.
Galbraith, running forward, risked limb and life to pass a rope’s end through an eye tackle. Yet he had no sooner done it than a new movement of the ship swung the gun round and threatened to waste his effort.
“Hammocks, there!” shouted Hornblower. “Pile them quick! Mr Galbraith, take a turn with that line round the mainmast. Whipple, put your rope through the breeching ring. Quick, man! Now take a turn!”