Now they were only a mile from the locked ships and running down fast. Years of experience at sea told him how rapidly those last few minutes passed when ships needed each other.
“Muster the port side guns’ crews,” he said. “Every man, gun captains and all. Arm them for boarding. Arm every idler in the ship. But leave the hands at the mizzen braces.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
“Pikes, pistols and cutlasses, lads,” said Hornblower to the eager men thronging round the arms chests. “Mr. Smiley, muster your topmen for’rard by No. 1 gun. Starboard side. Stand by for a rush.”
Young Smiley was the best fighting man of them all, better than the nervous Jones or the stupid Still or the aged Turner. It was best to give him the command at the other end of the ship. Aft here he would have things under his own eye. And he realized be was still unarmed himself. His sword—the sword he had worn at the court of his King—was a cheap one. He could guess its temper was unreliable; he had never been able to afford a good sword. He stepped to the arms chest and took a cutlass for himself, drawing it and dropping the scabbard discarded on the deck; looping the knot over his wrist he stood with the naked blade in his hand and the sunlight beating down in his face.
Now they were closing on Castilla; only a cable’s length apart and it looked closer. It called for accurate judgment to come close alongside.
“Starboard a point,” he said to the helmsman.
“Starboard a point,” came the repetition of the order.
Discipline kept the helmsman entirely attentive to his particular duty, even though Castilla’s port side gun ports were opening, even though at that close range the gun muzzles were glaring straight at them, and the faces of the gunners could be seen through the ports looking along the guns. Oh God, it was just coming!
“Now, starboard slowly. Bring her gently round.”
Like the end of the world that broadside came, ripping and smashing into the ship; there were screams, there were frightful crashes, the sunlight was full of dust particles flung up by the hurtling cannonballs as the splinters whizzed through the air, and then the ship sidled into the powder smoke jutting forth from the gun muzzles. But he must think about only one doing at this moment.
“Now! Hard aport. Braces there! Back the mizzen tops’l!”
There was a tiny gap between the sides of the two ships, closing by inches. If she struck violently she might rebound and open the gap again; if her forward way was not checked she might scrape forward and swing. In the loftier sides of the Castilla the gun ports were above the level of those of the Atropos. The dishshaped Atropos had no “tumblehome” to her sides. Her bulwarks would make contact—he had been counting on that.
“Starboard side! Fire!”
The infernal crash of the broadside; the smoke whirling round, the orangepainted side of Castilla torn by the carronade balls; but not a moment to think about it.
“Come on!”
Up over Castilla’s side in the eddying smoke pierced by sunbeams; up over the side, cutlass in hand, wild with fighting madness. A distorted face looking up at him. Strike, swinging the heavy blade like an axe. Wrench the blade free, and strike again at this new face. Plunge forward. Gold lace here, a lean brown face gashed by a black moustache, a slender blade luring at him; beat it aside and strike and strike and strike with every ounce of strength, with all the speed possible to him; beat down the feeble guard and strike again without pity. Trip over something and recover again. The terrified eyes of the men at the wheel looking round at him before they ran from his fury. A uniformed soldier with white crossbelts extending his arms in surrender; a pike appearing from nowhere beside him and plunging into the soldier’s unprotected breast. The quarterdeck cleared but no time to breathe; shout “Come on” and plunge down on to the maindeck.
Something hit his cutlass blade and sent a numbing shock up his arm—a pistol bullet, most likely. There was a crowd of men massed round the main mast, but before he could reach it a surge of pikes from the side broke it up into fleeing fragments. Now a sudden rally on the part of the enemy, pistols banging, and then suddenly opposition ceased and Hornblower found himself glaring into a pair of wild eyes and realized that it was an English uniform, an English face although unknown to him—a midshipman from Nightingale, leading the boarding party which had stormed into the Castilla along Nightingale’s bowsprit.
He could stand there now amid the wreckage and the dead with the madness ebbing out of him, sweat running into his eyes and blinding him; and yet once more he had to clear his mind and brace himself. He had to stop the killing that was still going on, he had to organize the disarming of the prisoners and the herding of them against the ship’s side. He had to remember to say a word of thanks to Smiley, covered with blood and smoke, when he met him on the gangway forward. Here was the huge hulk of Eisenbeiss, chest heaving, the bloody cutlass like a toy in his vast hand. The sight roused his wrath.
“What the hell are you doing here, doctor? Get back on board and attend to the wounded. You’ve no business to neglect them.”
A smile for the Prince, and then his attention was demanded by a thinnosed, longfaced rat of a man.
“Captain Hornblower? My name’s Ford.”
He was going to shake the proffered hand, but discovered that first he must slip the cutlass lanyard from his wrist and transfer the weapon to his other hand.
“All’s well that ends well,” said Ford. “You arrived in time, but only just in time, captain.”
It was no use trying to point out to a senior the senior’s errors. They shook hands there, standing on the gangway of the captured Castilla, looking round at the three ships clinging together, battered and shattered. Far down to leeward, drifting over the blue sea, the long trail of powder smoke was slowly dissipating under the blue heaven.
Chapter XXI
The church bells of Palermo were ringing, as always, in the drowsy heat of the morning. The sound of them drifted over the water of the bay, the Conca d’Oro, the golden shell which holds the pearl of Palermo in its embrace. Hornblower could hear them as he brought Atropos in, echoing round from Monte Pellegrino to Zaffarano, and of all musical noises that was the one that annoyed him most. He looked over at the senior ship, impatient for her to start firing her salute to shatter this maddening sound. If it were not for the church bells this would be almost a happy moment, dramatic enough in all conscience. Nightingale under her jury rig, the clear water gushing out of her as the pumps barely kept her afloat, Atropos with the raw plugs in the shot holes in her sides, and then Castilla, battered and shot torn, too, and with the White Ensign proudly flying over the red and gold of Spain. Surely even the Sicilians must be struck by the drama of this entrance, and for additional pleasure, there were a trio of English ships of war at anchor over there; their crews at least would gape at the proud procession; they at least would be sensitive to all that the appearance of the newcomers implied; they would know of the din and the fury, the agony of the wounded and the distressing ceremony of the burial of the dead.