“Lower the quarter-boat! Mr. Young, go and pick up those men.”
This was worse than ever. Shell fire was a horrible menace to a wooden ship that could so easily be set into an inextinguishable blaze. It was utterly infuriating to be exposed to these perils for no profit. The quarter-boat was on its way back when the next shell screamed overhead. Hornblower recognized the difference in the sound from that of a round-shot; he should have done so earlier. A shell from a howitzer had a belt about it, a thickening in the centre which gave its flight, as it arched across the sky, the peculiarly malevolent note he had already heard.
It was the French army that was firing at them. To fight the French navy was the essence of Hotspur’s duty, and of his own but to expose precious ships and seamen to the attack of soldiers who cost almost nothing to a government that enforced conscription was bad business, and to expose them without a chance of firing back was sheer folly. Hornblower drummed on the hammock cloths over the netting in front of him with his gloved hands in a fury of bad temper, while Young rowed about the wreckage picking up the survivors. A glance ashore coincided with the appearance of a puff of white smoke. That was one of the howitzers at least—before the wind dispersed it he could clearly see the initial upward direction of the puff; howitzers found their best range at an angle of fifty degrees, and at the end of their trajectory the shells-dropped at sixty degrees. This one was behind a low bank, or in some sort of ditch; his glass revealed an officer standing above it directing the operation of the gun at his feet.
Now came the shriek of the shell, not so far overhead; even the fountain of water that it threw up when it plunged into the sea was different in shape and duration from those flung up by round-shot from a cannon. Young brought the quarter-boat under the falls and hooked on; Bush had his men ready to tail away at the tackles, while Hornblower watched the operation and fumed at every second of delay. Most of the survivors picked up were wounded, some of them dreadfully. He would have to go and see they were properly attended to—he would have to pay a visit of courtesy—but not until Hotspur were safely out of this unnecessary peril.
“Very well, Mr. Prowse. Bring her before the wind.”
The yards creaked round; the quartermaster spun the wheel round into firm resistance, and Hotspur slowly gathered way, to leave this hateful coast behind her. Next came a sudden succession of noises, all loud, all different, distinguishable even though not two seconds elapsed between the first and the last—the shriek of a shell, a crash of timber aloft, a deep note as the main-topmast backstay parted, a thud against the hammock nettings beside Hornblower, and then a thump three yards from his feet, and there on the deck death, sizzling death, was rolling towards him and as the ship heaved death changed its course with the canting of the deck in a blundering curve as the belt round the shell deflected its roll. Hornblower saw the tiny thread of smoke, the burning fuse one-eighth of an inch long. No time to think. He sprang at it as it wobbled on its belt, and with his gloved hand he extinguished the fuse, rubbing at it to make sure the spark was out, rubbing at it again unnecessarily before he straightened up. A marine was standing by and Hornblower gestured to him.
“Throw the damned thing overboard!” he ordered; the fact that he swore indicated his bad temper.
Then he looked round. Every soul on that crowded little quarter-deck was rigid, posed in unnatural attitudes, as if some Gorgon’s head had turned them all into stone, and then with his voice and his gesture they all came back to life again, to move and relax—it was as if time had momentarily stood still for everyone except himself. His bad temper was fanned by the delay, and he lashed out with his tongue indiscriminately.
“What are you all thinking about? Quartermaster, put your helm over! Mr. Bush! Just look at that mizzen tops’l yard! Send the hands aloft this minute! Splice that backstay! You, there! Haven’t you coiled those falls yet? Move, damn you!”
“Aye aye, sir! Aye aye, sir!”
The automatic chorus of acknowledgements had a strange note, and in the midst of the bustle Hornblower saw first Bush from one angle and then Prowse from another, both looking at him with strange expressions on their faces.
“What’s the matter with you?” he blazed out, and with the last word understanding came to him.
That extinguishing of the fuse appeared to them in monstrous disproportion, as something heroic, even perhaps as something magnificent. They did not see it in its true light as the obvious thing to do, indeed the only thing to do; nor did they know of the instinctive flash of action that had followed his observation of that remaining one-eighth of an inch of fuse. All there was to his credit was that he had seen and acted quicker than they. He had not been brave, and most certainly not heroic.
He returned the glance of his subordinates, and with all his senses still keyed up to the highest pitch he realized that this was the moment of the conception of a legend, that the wildest tales would be told later about this incident, and he was suddenly hideously embarrassed. He laughed, and before the laugh was finished he knew it was a self-conscious laugh, the motiveless laugh of an idiot, and he was angrier than ever with himself and with Chambers of the Naiad and with the whole world. He wanted to be away from all this, back in the approaches to Brest doing his proper work and not engaged in these hare-brained actions that did not forward the defeat of Bonaparte an iota.
Then another thought struck him, occasioned by the discovery that the fuse had burned a hole in his right hand glove. Those were the gloves Maria had given him on that dark morning when he had walked with her from the George to take Hotspur to sea.
Chapter XIX
In the Iroise, comfortably sheltered with the wind to the east of south, Hotspur was completing her stores again. This was the second time since her refitting in Plymouth that she had gone through this laborious process, refilling her casks from the water-hoys, replacing the empty beef and pork barrels from the victuallers, and coaxing all the small stores she could from the itinerant slop-ship that Cornwallis had put into commission. She had been six months continuously at sea, and was now ready for three more.
Hornblower watched with something of relief the slop-ship bearing away; that six months at sea had barely been sufficient to get his ship clear of all the plagues that had come on board at Plymouth; disease, bed bugs, fleas and lice. The bed bugs had been the worst; they had been hunted from one hiding place in the woodwork to another, scorched with smouldering oakum, walled in with the paint, time after time, and each time that he had thought he had extirpated the pests some unfortunate seaman would approach his division officer and with a knuckling of his forehead would report, “Please, sir, I think I’ve got ‘em this time.”
He had seven letters from Maria to read—he had opened the last one already to make sure that she and little Horatio were well—and he had already completed this task when Bush came knocking at his door. Sitting at the chart-table Hornblower listened to what Bush had to report; trifles, only, and Hornblower wondered at Bush disturbing his captain about them. Then Bush produced something from his side pocket, and Hornblower, with a sigh, knew what had been the real object of this visit. It was the latest number of the Naval Chronicle, come on board with the mail; the wardroom mess subscribed to it jointly. Bush thumbed through the pages, and then laid the open magazine before him, a gnarled finger indicating the passage he had found. It only took Hornblower a couple of minutes to read it; Chambers’ report to Cornwallis on the affray off Aber Wrack, which apparently had been published in the Gazette to inform the public regarding the circumstances in which Grasshopper had been lost. Bush’s finger pointed again to the last four lines. ‘Captain Hornblower informs me that Hotspur suffered no casualties although she was struck by a five-inch shell which did considerable damage aloft but which fortunately failed to explode.’