“God bless my soul,” said Hornblower.
It was a shilling; Hornblower could only stare at it, and turn it over in his fingers. Every eye in the boat was directed at it; the men were quick enough to guess even if they could not see it clearly. Someone started to cheer, and the others took it up. Hornblower looked down the boat at the grinning faces. Even Clout was waving his hat and yelling.
“Silence!” shouted Hornblower. “Mr. Clout, you ought to be ashamed of yourself.”
But the noise did not stop instantly as before; the men were too excited. But it died away at length, and the men waited. Hornblower had to think now about the next moves completely at a loss—this development had taken him by surprise and he had no idea for the moment what to do next. It would have to be anticlimax, he decided at last. For the recovery of the treasure fresh equipment would be necessary; that was certain. The divers had made nearly as many dives that day as they could. Moreover, McCullum must be informed of the results of the explosion and his decision heard regarding further steps. Hornblower even realized that there was no certainty that subsequent operations would be easy. One shilling did not make a quarter of a million sterling. There might be much further work necessary.
“Oars!” he snapped at the waiting men. The oarlooms clattered into the rowlocks and the men bent forward ready to pull. “Give way!”
The oarblades bit into the water and the launch slowly gathered way.
“Head for the ship!” he growled at the coxswain.
He sat glowing in the sternsheets. Anyone seeing his face might well have thought that the launch was returning after a complete failure, but it was merely that he was annoyed with himself at not being quickwitted enough to have had the appropriate orders ready at once when that astonishing shilling was put into his hand. The whole boat’s crew had seen him at a loss. His precious dignity was hurt. When he got on board he was inclined to sulk in his cabin, but common sense made him go forward soon to discuss the situation with McCullum.
“There’s a cascade of silver,” said McCullum, who had been listening to the reports of the divers. “The bags have rotted, and when the treasure room was blown open the silver poured out. I think that’s clear enough.”
“And the gold?” asked Hornblower.
“Looney can’t tell me as yet,” said McCullum. “If I had been in the launch I daresay I should have acquired more information.”
Hornblower bit back an angry retort. Nothing would please McCullum better than a quarrel, and he had no wish to indulge him.
“At least the explosion served its purpose,” he said pacifically.
“Like enough.”
“Then why,” asked Hornblower—the question had been awaiting the asking for a long time—“if the wreck was blown open why didn’t wreckage come to the surface?”
“You don’t know?” asked McCullum in reply, dearly gratified at possessing superior knowledge.
“No.”
“That’s one of the elementary facts of science. Timber submerged at great depths soon becomes waterlogged.”
“Indeed?”
“Wood only floats—as I presume you known—virtue of the air contained in the cavities in its substance. Under pressure that air is squeezed out, and, deprived of this upthrust, the residual material has no tendency to rise.”
“I see,” said Hornblower. “Thank you, Mr. McCullum.”
“I am accustomed by now,” said McCullum, “to supplementing the education of King’s officers.”
“Then I trust,” said Hornblower, still keeping his temper, “you will continue with mine. What is the next step to take?”
McCullum pursed his lips.
“If that damned Dutch doctor,” he said, “would only have the sense to allow me out of this bed I could attend to it all myself.”
“He’ll have the stitches out of you soon,” said Hornblower. “Meanwhile time is of importance.”
It was infuriating that a captain in his own ship should have to endure this sort of insolence. Hornblower thought of the official complaints he could make. He could quarrel with McCullum, abandon the whole attempt, and in his report to Collingwood he would declaim that “owing to the complete lack of cooperation on the part of Mr. William McCullum, of the Honourable East India Company’s Service” the expedition had ended in failure. No doubt McCullum would then be rapped on the knuckles officially. But it was better to achieve success, even without receiving any sympathy for the trials he was enduring, than to return with the best of excuses emptyhanded. It was just as meritorious to pocket his pride and to coax McCullum into giving clear instructions as it was to head a boarding party on to an enemy’s deck. Just as meritorious—although less likely to achieve a paragraph in the Gazette. He forced himself to ask the right questions and to listen to McCullum’s grudging explanations of what should next be done.
And it was pleasant, later, when eating his dinner, to be able to congratulate himself on his duty done, orders given, all prepared. Those words of McCullum’s, “a cascade of silver,” ran in his mind as he sat and ate. It called for little imagination to conjure up a mental picture of the wreck down there in the translucent water, with her strong-room torn open and the silver in a frozen stream pouring out of it. Gray could have written a poem about it; and somewhere in that strong-room there was the gold. Life was good, and he was a fortunate man. He slowly consumed his last mouthful of roast lamb, and addressed himself to his lettuce salad, tender young plants, sweet and delicious, the first fruits of the Turkish spring.
Chapter XVI
The Turkish spring was not going to give way to summer without a last struggle, without calling the vanished winter back to her aid. The wind blew wildly and cold from the northwestward; the skies were grey, and the rain lashed down torrentially. It drummed upon the deck, streaming out through the scuppers; it poured in unexpected streams down from points in the rigging; even though it grudgingly gave to the crew the chance to wash their clothes in fresh water it denied them the opportunity of drying them again. Atropos swung fitfully to her anchor as the gusts blowing down from the surrounding mountains backed and veered, whipping the surface of the Bay into turbulent whitecaps. Wind and rain seemed peculiarly searching. Everyone seemed to be colder and wetter than if the ship were battling a storm in midAtlantic, with the deck leaking as she worked in a sea way and the waves crashing down upon it; sulkiness and bad temper made their appearance among the ship’s company along with the cold and wet—lack of exercise and lack of occupation combined with the constant drumming of the rain to bring that about.
Walking upon the quarterdeck with the raindrops rattling upon his oilskin seemed to Hornblower to be a cheerless business, the more so until this gale dropped there would be no chance of continuing the salvage operations. Boxes of gold lay over there under that wind-whipped surface; he hated having to wait through these empty hours before knowing if they could be recovered. He hated the thought of having to rouse himself from his inertia and exert himself to reestablish the good spirits of the ship’s company, but he knew he must.
“Messenger!” he said, “my compliments to Mr. Smiley and Mr. Horrocks, and I’ll see them at once in my cabin.”