Hornblower remembered with pride that he had not known a moment’s fear last night in Port Vendres, not when he leaped on board the guard boat, not even when he had found himself in the nightmare embrace of the boarding netting. Just as he now had the wealth, for which he had longed, so he had proved to himself to his own surprise that he possessed the brute physical courage which he had envied in his subordinates. Even though, characteristically, he attached no importance to the moral courage and organising ability and ingenuity he had displayed he was on the crest of a wave of optimism and self-confidence. With high spirits bubbling inside him he turned once more to scan the flat repulsive coast on his left hand, applying himself to the problem of how to stir up confusion there. Down below there were the captured French charts with which the Admiralty had supplied him—as they had the Pluto and Caligula as well, presumably. Hornblower spent the earliest hours of daylight in poring over them. He called up their details before his mind’s eye as he looked across the shallows at the green bar of coast, and the brown sails beyond. He was as close in as he dared, and yet that sail was half a mile beyond cannon shot.
Over to the left was Cette, perched up on the top of a little hill prominent above the surrounding flat land. Hornblower was reminded of Rye overlooking Romney Marsh, but Cette was a gloomy little town of a prevailing black colour, unlike Rye’s cheerful grey and reds. And Cette, he knew, was a walled town, with a garrison, against which he could attempt nothing. Behind Cette was the big lagoon called the Etang de Thau, which constituted a major link in the chain of inland waterways which offered shelter and protection to French shipping all the way from Marseille and the Rhone Valley to the foot of the Pyrenees. Cette was invulnerable as far as he was concerned, and vessels on the Etang de Thau were safe from him.
Of all the whole inland route he was opposite the most vulnerable part, this short section where the navigable channel from Aigues Mortes to the Etang de Thau was only divided from the sea by a narrow spit of land. If a blow were to be struck, it was here that he must strike it; moreover, at this very moment he could see something at which to strike—that brown sail no more than two miles away. That must be one of the French coasters, plying between Port Vendres and Marseille with wine and oil. It would be madness to attempt anything against her, and yet—and yet—he felt mad today.
“Pass the word for the captain’s coxswain,” he said to the midshipman of the watch. He heard the cry echo down the main deck, and in two minutes Brown was scurrying towards him along the gangway, halting breathless for orders.
“Can you swim, Brown?”
“Swim, sir? Yes, sir.”
Hornblower looked at Brown’s burly shoulders and thick neck. There was a mat of black hair visible through the opening of his shirt.
“How many of the barge’s crew can swim!”
Brown looked first one way and then the other before he made the confession which he knew would excite contempt. Yet he dared not lie, not to Hornblower.
“I dunno, sir.”
Hornblower refraining from the obvious rejoinder was more scathing than Hornblower saying “You ought to know.”
“I want a crew for the barge,” said Hornblower. “Everyone a good swimmer, and everyone a volunteer. It’s for a dangerous service, and, mark you, Brown, they must be true volunteers—none of your pressgang ways.”
“Aye aye, sir,” said Brown, and after a moment’s hesitation. “Everyone’ll volunteer, sir. It’ll be hard to pick ‘em. Are you going, sir?”
“Yes. A cutlass for every man. And a packet of combustibles for every man.”
“Com-combustibles, sir?”
“Yes. Flint and steel. A couple of port-fires, oily rags, and a bit of slowmatch, in a watertight packet for each man. Go to the sail-maker and get oilskin for them. And a lanyard each to carry it if we swim.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
“And give Mr. Bush my compliments. Ask him to step this way, and then get your crew ready.”
Bush came rolling aft, his face alight with excitement; and before he had reached the quarterdeck the ship was abuzz with rumours—the wildest tales about what the captain had decided to do next were circulating among the crew, who had spent the morning with one eye on their duties and the other on the coast of France.
“Mr. Bush,” said Hornblower. “I am going ashore to burn that coaster over there.”
“Aye aye, sir. Are you going in person, sir?”
“Yes,” snapped Hornblower. He could not explain to Bush that he was constitutionally unable to send men away on a task for which volunteers were necessary and not go himself. He eyed Bush defiantly, and Bush eyed him back, opened his mouth to protest, thought better of it, and changed what he was going to say. “Longboat and launch, sir?”
“No. They’d take the ground half a mile from the shore.” That was obvious; four successive lines of foam showed where the feeble waves were breaking, far out from the water’s edge. “I’m taking my barge and a volunteer crew.”
Still Hornblower, by his expression, dared Bush to make any protest at all, but this time Bush actually ventured to make one.
“Yes, sir. Can’t I go, sir?”
“No.”
There was no chance of further dispute in the face of that blank negative. Bush had the queer feeling—he had known it before—as he looked at Hornblower’s haughty expression that he was a father dealing with a high-spirited son; he loved his captain as he would have loved a son if ever he had had one.
“And mark this, too, Bush. No rescue parties. If we’re lost, we’re lost. You understand? Shall I give you that in writing?”
“No need, sir. I understand.”
Bush said the words sadly. When it came to the supreme test of practice, Hornblower, however much he respected Bush’s qualities and abilities, had no opinion whatever of his first lieutenant’s capacity to make original plans. The thought of Bush blundering about on the mainland of France throwing away valuable lives in a hopeless attempt to rescue his captain frightened him.
“Right. Heave the ship to, Mr. Bush. We’ll be back in half an hour if all goes well. Stand off and wait for us.”
The barge pulled eight oars; as Hornblower gave the word he had high hopes that her launching had passed unobserved from the shore. Bush’s morning sail drill must have accustomed the French to seemingly purposeless manoeuvres by the Sutherland; her brief backing of her topsails might be unnoticed. He sat at Brown’s side while the men went to their oars. The boat danced quickly and lightly over the sea; he set a course so as to reach the shore a little ahead of the brown sail which was showing just over the green strip of coast. Then he looked back at the Sutherland, stately under her pyramids of sails, and dwindling with extraordinary rapidity as the barge shot away from her. Even at that moment Hornblower’s busy mind set to work scanning her lines and the rake of her masts, debating how he could improve her sailing qualities.
They had passed the first line of breakers without taking ground—breakers they could hardly be called, so sluggish was the sea—and darted in towards the golden beach. A moment later the boat baulked as she slid over the sand, moved on a few yards, and grounded once more.
“Over with you, men,” said Hornblower.
He threw his legs over the side and dropped thigh deep into the water. The crew were as quick as he, and seizing the gunwales, they ran the lightened boat up until the water was no higher than their ankles. Hornblower’s first instinct was to allow excitement to carry him away and head a wild rush inland, but he checked himself.