“Back the mizzen tops’l,” snapped Hornblower to Bush. “Mr. Gerard!”
The Sutherland steadied herself for a crashing blow. “Take your aim!” screamed Gerard, mad with excitement. He was by the forward section of guns on the main deck, which would bear first. “Wait till your guns bear! Fire!”
The rolling broadside which followed, as the ship slowly swung round, seemed to Hornblower’s tense mind to last for at least five minutes. The intervals between the shots was ragged, and some of the guns were clearly fired before they bore. Elevation was faulty, too, as the splashes both this side of, and far beyond, the lugger bore witness. Nevertheless, some of the shot told. He saw splinters flying in the lugger, a couple of shrouds part. Two sudden swirls in the crowd on her deck showed where cannon balls had ploughed through it.
The brisk breeze blew the smoke of the straggling broadside clear instantly, so that his view of the lugger a hundred yards away was uninterrupted. She had still a chance of getting away. Her sails were filled, and she was slipping fast through the water. He gave the orders to the helmsman which would cause the Sutherland to yaw again and bring her broadside to bear. As he did so nine puffs of smoke from the lugger’s side gave warning that she was firing her nine-pounder popguns.
The Frenchmen were game enough. A musical tone like a brief expiring note on an organ sang in his ear as a shot passed close overhead, and a double crash below told him that the Sutherland was hit. Her thick timbers ought to keep out nine-pounder shot at that range.
He heard the rumble of the trucks as the Sutherland’s guns were run out again, and he leaned over the rail to shout to the men on the maindeck.
“Take your aim well!” he shouted. “Wait till your sights bear!”
The guns went off in ones or twos down the Sutherland’s side as she yawed. There was only one old hand at each of the Sutherland’s seventy-four guns, and although the officers in charge of the port side battery had sent over some of their men to help on the starboard side they would naturally keep the trained layers in case the port side guns had to be worked suddenly. And there were not seventy-four good gun layers left over from the Lydia’s old crew—he remembered the difficulty he had experienced in drawing up the watch bill.
“Stop your vents!” shouted Gerard, and then his voice went up into a scream of excitement. “There it goes! Well done, men!”
The big main mast of the lugger, with the mainsail and topmast and shrouds and all, was leaning over to one side. It seemed to hang there naturally, for a whole breathing space, before it fell with a sudden swoop. Even then a single shot fired from her aftermost gun proclaimed the Frenchman’s defiance. Hornblower turned back to the helmsman to give the orders that would take the Sutherland within pistol shot and complete the little ship’s destruction. He was aflame with excitement. Just in time he remembered his duty; he was granting the other lugger time to get in among the convoy, and every second was of value. He noted his excitement as a curious and interesting phenomenon, while his orders brought the Sutherland round on the other tack. As she squared away a long shout of defiance rose from the lugger, lying rolling madly in the heavy sea, her black hull resembling some crippled water-beetle. Someone was waving a tricolour flag from the deck.
“Good-bye, Mongseer Crapaud,” said Bush. “You’ve a long day’s work ahead of you before you see Brest again.”
The Sutherland threshed away on her new course; the convoy had all turned and were beating up towards her, the lugger on their heels like a dog after a flock of sheep. At the sight of the Sutherland rushing down upon her she sheered off again. Obstinately, she worked round to make a dash at the Walmer Castle–steering wide as usual—but Hornblower swung the Sutherland round and the Walmer Castle scuttled towards her for protection. It was easy enough, even in a clumsy ship like the Sutherland, to fend off the attacks of a single enemy. The Frenchman realised this after a few minutes more, and bore away to the help of her crippled consort.
Hornblower watched the big lugsail come round and fill, and the lugger lying over as she thrashed her way to windward; already the dismasted Frenchman was out of sight from the Sutherland’s quarterdeck. It was a relief to see the Frenchman go—if he had been in command of her he would have left the other to look after herself and hung on to the convoy until nightfall; it would have been strange if he had not been able to snap up a straggler in the darkness.
“You can secure the guns, Mr. Bush,” he said, at length. Someone on the main deck started to cheer, and the cheering was taken up by the rest of the crew. They were waving their hands or their hats as if a Trafalgar had just been won.
“Stop that noise,” shouted Hornblower, hot with rage. “Mr. Bush, send the hands aft here to me.”
They came, all of them, grinning with excitement, pushing and playing like schoolboys; even the rawest of them had forgotten his seasickness in the excitement of the battle. Hornblower’s blood boiled as he looked down at them, the silly fools.
“No more of that!” he rasped. “What have you done? Frightened off a couple of luggers not much bigger than our long boat! Two broadsides from a seventy-four, and you’re pleased with yourselves for knocking away a single spar! God, you ought to have blown the Frenchie out of the water! Two broadsides, you pitiful baby school! You must lay your guns better than that when it comes to real fighting, and I’ll see you learn how—me and the cat between us. And how d’you make sail? I’ve seen it done better by Portuguese niggers!”
There was no denying the fact that words spoken from a full heart carry more weight than all the artifices of rhetoric. Hornblower’s genuine rage and sincerity had made a deep impression, so stirred up had he been at the sight of botched and bungling work. The men were hanging their heads now, and shifting uneasily from one foot to the other, as they realised that what they had done had not been so marvellous after all. And to do them justice, half their exhilaration arose from the mad excitement of the Sutherland’s rush through the convoy, with ships close on either hand. In later years, when they were spinning yarns of past commissions, the story would be embroidered until they began to affirm that Hornblower had steered a two-decker in a howling storm through a fleet of two hundred sail all on opposing courses.
“You can pipe down now, Mr. Bush,” said Hornblower. “And when the hands have had their breakfasts you can exercise them aloft.”
In the reaction following his excitement he was yearning to get away to the solitude of the stern gallery again. But here came Walsh the surgeon, trotting up the quarterdeck and touching his hat.
“Surgeon’s report, sir,” he said. “One warrant officer killed. No officers and no seamen wounded.”
“Killed?” said Hornblower, his jaw dropping. “Who’s killed?”
“John Hart, midshipman,” answered Walsh.
Hart had been a promising seaman in the Lydia, and it was Hornblower himself who had promoted him to the quarterdeck and obtained his warrant for him.
“Killed?” said Hornblower again.
“I can mark his ‘mortally wounded’, sir, if you prefer it,” said Walsh. “He lost a leg when a nine-pounder ball came in through No. 11 gun port on the lower deck. He was alive when they got him down to the cockpit, but he died the next minute. Popliteal artery.”