“I’ll do it,” said Hornblower.
Leadbitter handed him the glowing match, and Hornblower sat with it in his hand for a second while he checked once more to see that all was ready. He was tingling with excitement.
“Stand by with the cask!” he said. “Leadbitter, have the stopper ready.”
There were four or five inches of quick match hanging out of the fusehose; Hornblower dabbed the glowing match upon it. A second’s hesitation and it took fire. Hornblower watched the spark run along the quick match and vanish down into the hose.
“Stopper it!” said Hornblower, and Leadbitter forced the wooden stopper into the end of the hose, grinding down upon the brittle ashes of the match.
At five seconds to the foot the fire was now, he hoped, travelling down the hose, down, down, far below the level of the sea. At the far end, next to the powder keg, there was a foot of slow match. That burned at five minutes to the foot; they had plenty of time—no need for feverish haste, however great the urge to hurry.
“Over with it!” said Hornblower, and Leadbitter picked up the empty cask and lowered it gently into the water. It floated there, holding up above the surface the stoppered end of the fusehose.
“Oars!” said Hornblower. “Give way!”
The gig swung away from the floating keg. The spark was still travelling along the quick match, Hornblower presumed; it would be some seconds yet before it even reached the slow match down there by the wreck of the Speedwell. He remembered to take the time by his watch.
“Take her back to the ship,” he ordered Leadbitter; he looked back to where the empty cask bobbed on the surface.
McCullum had said, “I advise you to keep clear of the explosion.” Apparently the explosion of a barrel of powder, even far down under the water, created a turmoil on the surface that would endanger the gig. Beside the ship they would be a quarter of a mile away; that should be safe enough. When the bowman hooked on to the main chains of the Atropos, Hornblower looked at his watch again. It was exactly five minutes since he had seen the spark passing into the end of the fusehose. The explosion could be expected at any time from now.
Naturally the side of the ship was lined with every idler who could find a place there. The preparation of the charge and the fuse had excited gossip throughout the ship.
Hornblower changed his mind about awaiting the explosion in the gig and mounted to the deck.
“Mr. Jones!” he bellowed. “Is this a rareeshow? Keep the hands at work, if you please.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
He very much wanted to see the explosion himself, but he feared to display curiosity inconsonant with his dignity. And there was the chance—a likely chance, according to McCullum—that there would be no explosion at all. A glance at his watch showed him that it was by now overdue. With an appearance of the utmost indifference he strolled forward to McCullum’s bedside, where McCullum was listening to the reports of his divers.
“Nothing as yet?” said McCullum.
“Nothing.”
“I never trust a fusehose beyond five fathoms,” said McCullum, “even when I handle it myself.”
Hornblower kept back an irritated answer, and gazed out towards the scene of his recent activities. In the choppy water he could just perceive at intervals the dark spot which was the keg that floated the end of the fusehose. He glanced at his watch again.
“Long overdue,” he said.
“Water’s in that hose. You’ll have to use a flyingfuse after all.”
“The sooner the better,” said Hornblower. “How do I set about it?” He was glad for the sake of his precious dignity that he had not waited in sight of the men.
Chapter XV
This time so many men were wanted for the operation that Hornblower was using the launch instead of the gig. As usual the three Ceylonese divers were huddled in the bows, but next to them in the bottom of the boat stood an iron pot of melted pitch, and beside it squatted a sailmaker’s mate, and Mr. Clout, the gunner, sat amidships with the powder keg between his legs. The canvas covering to the keg was incompletely sewn, gaping wide at the upper end. They dropped the grapnel and the launch rode on the little waves beside the little keg that floated with the end of the useless fusehose, a monument to the previous failure.
“Carry on, Mr. Clout,” said Hornblower.
This was something more than exciting. This was dangerous. The divers stripped themselves for their work, and sat up to begin their exercises of inflating and deflating their lungs. There would not be any time to spare later. Clout took the tinderbox and proceeded to strike a spark upon the tinder, crouching low to shelter it from the small breeze which blew over the surface of the Bay. He caught fire upon the slow match, brought it to a glow, and looked over at Hornblower.
“Carry on, I said,” said Hornblower.
Clout dabbed the slow match upon the fuse that protruded through a hole in the end of the powder keg. Hornblower could hear the faint irregular hissing of the fuse as Clout waited for it to burn down into the hole. Among them now, in the middle of the boat, fire was creeping towards thirty pounds of gunpowder. If there were a few powder grains out of place, if the fuse were the least faulty, there would come a sudden crashing explosion which would blow them and the boat to fragments. There was not a sound in the boat save the hissing of the fuse. The spark crept down into the hole. The powder keg at this upper end had a double head, the result of the most careful work by the ship’s cooper. In the space between the two heads was coiled the fuse, whose farther end penetrated the inner head to rest amid the powder. Along that coil stapled to the inner head the fire was now moving unseen, creeping round on its way to dive down along its final length through the inner head.
Clout took from his pocket the canvascovered stopper, and dipped it into the warm pitch.
“Make sure of it, Mr. Clout,” said Hornblower.
Clout rammed the stopper into the hole in the outer head. The action cut off the sound of the hissing fuse, but everyone in the boat knew that the fire was still pursuing its inexorable way inside. Clout smeared pitch thickly about the stopper and then moved out of the way.
“Now, my hearty,” he said to the sailmaker’s mate.
This last needed no urging. Needle and palm in hand, he took Clout’s place and sewed up the canvas cover over the top of the keg.
“Keep those stitches small,” said Hornblower; the sailmaker’s mate, crouching over instant death, was not unnaturally nervous. So was Hornblower, but the irritation caused by the previous failure made him anxious that the work should be well done.
The sailmaker’s mate finished the last stitch, oversewed it, and, whipping out his sheath knife, cut the twine. There could be hardly anything more harmless in appearance than that canvascovered keg. It looked a stupid, a brainless object, standing there in the boat. Rout was already daubing pitch over the newlysewn end; the sides and the other end had been thickly pitched before the keg was put into the launch.
“Now the line,” said Hornblower.
As on the previous occasion a loop of line attached to the keg was passed round the mooring line of the buoy and secured to the keg again.
“Hoist it, you two. Lower away. Handsomely.”
The keg sank below the surface, dangling on the lowering line as the men let it down hand over hand. There was a sudden relief from tension in the boat, marked by a sudden babble of talk.