“Mr. Bush!” he roared. “Set the main tops’l again, if you please. And send Mr. Savage up here.”
The four French ships were rolling along in lubberly French fashion in a wide line abreast, half a mile apart—presumably their captains were afraid of collision if they drew closer—and it was a hundred to one that their lookouts would never notice the tiny dot which would be all they could see of the Sutherland. Savage came tumbling up beside him, hardly out of breath after his lightning scramble up the ratlines.
“Take this glass,” said Hornblower. “You see the French squadron? I want to hear instantly if they alter course, or if they headreach upon us, or we on them.”
“Aye aye, sir,” said Savage.
He had done all he could do now, when he reached the deck again. It only remained to wait, patiently, until tomorrow. Tomorrow would see some sort of battle, hopeless or even—or if there were no battle it would mean that the French had disappeared and he would go before a court martial. He was careful to keep his expression quite composed, and to try and appear as if he did not feel the tension of waiting in the least. It would be in the old tradition if he invited his officers to dinner and whist tonight.
Chapter XX
The situation was one likely to disturb any captain’s sleep, with four hostile ships of the line to windward needing to be kept under observation, and with calculations continually bobbing up from the subconscious to the conscious regarding the chances of the Cassandra bringing down Admiral Leighton in time to cut off the enemy. The weather conditions were unsettling, too—the wind, having worked up nearly to a gale force towards evening, diminished until midnight, increased again, and then, with the inconsequence of Mediterranean winds, began to die away steadily.
Certainly Hornblower never expected sleep. He was too excited, and his mind was too active. He lay down on his cot when the watch was changed in the evening to have a rest, and, being quite convinced that he had no chance of sleeping he naturally fell into a heavy dreamless sleep so heavy that Polwheal had to shake him by the shoulder at midnight to awaken him. He came on deck to find Bush standing by the binnacle.
“Too dark for anything to be seen, sir,” said Bush, and then, excitement and exasperation getting the better of his formality, he growled, “Black as Newgate Knocker.”
“Have you seen anything of the enemy?”
“I thought I did, sir, half an hour back, but nothing to be sure of. Wind’s dropped a lot, too.”
“Yes,” said Hornblower.
As so often was the case at sea, there was nothing to do but wait. Two screened lanterns swayed down on the maindeck, where the watch lay at their stations by the guns; the keen wind harped in the rigging, and the ship rose and plunged in the following sea with a lightness and grace no one would expect of her who had only seen her with the wind abeam. Nothing to do but to wait; if he stayed on deck he would only fidget and display his nervousness, so that he might as well go and conceal his nervousness in his screened-off cot.
“Send for me at once if you catch sight of the enemy,” he said, with elaborate carelessness, and went back again below.
He lay on his cot with his mind busy, for he knew that having slept once there was no chance whatever of sleeping again. So perfect was this conviction that sleep ambushed him once more, leaped upon him unawares, as he lay thinking about the Cassandra, sothat it only seemed two minutes later that he heard Polwheal speaking to him as if from another world.
“Mr. Gerard’s compliments, sir, an’ it’s beginnin’ to get lighter, sir.”
It called for quite an effort to rouse himself and get up from his cot; only when he was drowsily on his feet did he begin to feel pleased at having been genuinely asleep each time that Polwheal came to call him. He could picture Polwheal telling his cronies about the iron nerves of the captain, who could sleep like a child on a night when the ship was aboil with the prospect of action.
“Anything to report, Mr. Gerard?” he said, as he reached the quarterdeck.
“No, sir. I had to reef down for an hour at two bells, it blew so hard. But it’s dropping fast now, sir, and backing sou’easterly.”
“H’m,” said Hornblower.
The faintest hint of light was beginning to tinge the gloomy sky, but nothing could be seen yet more than a cable’s length away. A south-easterly wind would be nearly foul for the French on their course to Barcelona; it would be dead foul for the Pluto and Caligula.
“Thought I felt the loom o’ the land, sir, before the light came,” said Gerard.
“Yes,” said Hornblower. Their course during the night would bring them close into Cape Creux of hated memory; he picked up the slate beside the binnacle, and, calculating from the hourly readings of the log, he made their position to be some fifteen miles off the cape. If the French had held the same course during the night they would soon have Rosas Bay and comparative security under their lee—of course, if they had not, if they had evaded him in the darkness, the consequence to him did not bear thinking about.
The light was broadening fast. Eastwards the watery clouds seemed to be thinning; just above the horizon. Undoubtedly they were thinning; for a second they parted, and a speck of gold could be seen through them, just where the white-flecked sea met the sky, and a long beam of sunlight shone level over the sea.
“Land-ho!” yelled the masthead lookout, and westward they could see a bluish smudge on the horizon where the mountains of Spain loomed faintly over the curve of the world.
And Gerard glanced anxiously at his captain, took a turn or two up and down the deck, gnawed at his knuckles, and then could restrain his impatience no longer.
“Masthead, there! What do you see of the enemy?”
The pause that followed seemed ages long before the reply came.
“Northin’, sir. Northin’ in sight barrin’ the land to looard.”
Gerard renewed his anxious glance at his captain, but Hornblower, during that pause, had set his face sternly so that his expression was unmoved. Bush was coming on to the quarterdeck now; anyone could see that he was wild with anxiety. If four French ships of the line had evaded action it would mean half pay for Hornblower for life, if nothing worse. Hornblower retained his stony expression; he was proud of being able to do so.
“Put the ship about, Mr. Gerard, if you please, and lay her on the starboard tack.”
The French might perhaps have altered course in the darkness, and might now be lost in the centre of the Western Mediterranean, but Hornblower still did not think it likely. His officers had made insufficient allowance for the lubberliness of the unpractised French. If Gerard had had to reef topsails in the night they might well have had to heave to; and both Bush and Gerard were over-eager—during the night the Sutherland might have gained twenty miles on the French. By retracting his course he was confident that he would sight them again.
Confident as far as the whist-playing part of his mind was concerned, that is to say. He could not control the sick despair in his breast, nor the acceleration of his heart beats; he could only conceal them, keeping his face a mask and forcing himself to stand still instead of pacing about in his anxiety. Then he thought of an activity which would help to occupy his mind and yet not betray his nervousness.
“Pass the word for my steward,” he said.
His hands were just steady enough to permit him to shave, and a chill bath under the washdeck pump gave him new vigour. He put on clean clothes and parted his lessening hair with elaborate exactitude, for under the washdeck pump he had told himself that they would sight the French again before he had completed his toilet. It was with a sense of acute disappointment that he laid down the comb when he had no more smallest excuse to continue its use, and turned to put on his coat, with no news of the French. And then, with his foot on the companion, there came a wild yell from Midshipman Parker at the masthead.