He stepped back into his own quarter gallery, and as he did, as he stood with one leg suspended and with the rudder gudgeons creaking a little in their pintles in the stream below him, the idea came to him, so that he stood stock still for a space, with one leg in mid-air. Then he brought his leg over and walked into his cabin and shouted for a messenger.
“My compliments to the officer of the watch, and will he please signal to Harvey for Mr. Mound to come on board at once.”
Mound came down into the cabin, young and expectant, and yet with his eagerness thinly overlaid with assumed nonchalance. It suddenly dawned upon Hornblower as he greeted him that that careless lackadaisical air of Mound’s was assumed in imitation of himself. Hornblower realized that he was something of a hero—more than that, very much of a hero—to this young lieutenant who was paying him the sincerest flattery of imitation. It made him grin wryly to himself even while he motioned Mound to a chair, and then it was forgotten as he plunged into the vital discussion.
“Mr. Mound, do you know of the progress of the French siege-works?”
“No, sir.”
“Then look at this chart with me. They have a line of trenches here, with a battery here. Their main flank and stores are behind a dyke, here. If we could bring the bomb-vessels up the bay we could shell them out of both places.”
“Shoal water, sir,” said Mound regretfully.
“Yes,” said Hornblower, and for the life of him he could not stop himself from making a dramatic pause before uttering the crucial word. “But with camels we could reduce the draught.”
“Camels!” exclaimed Mound, and as he realized all the implications his face lit up. “By George, sir, you’re right.”
Camels are a means of reducing the draught of a ship—loaded vessels lashed tightly one on each side and then emptied, so as to raise the centre ship farther out of the water. Mound was already grappling with the details.
“There are lighters and barges in Riga, sir. They’ll give us some, sure as a gun. Plenty of sand to ballast ‘em, or we can fill ‘em with water and pump ‘em out. With two big lighters I could lessen Harvey’s draught by five feet easy—lift her clear out of the water for that matter. Those lighters are two hundred tons burden an’ don’t draw more than a couple of feet empty.”
A difficulty had occurred to Hornblower while Mound was speaking, one which he had not thought of before.
“How are you going to steer ‘em all?” he demanded. “They’ll be unmanageable.”
“Rig a Danube rudder, sir,” replied Mound instantly. “Make it big enough and you could steer anything with one.”
“’Give me a fulcrum and I will move the world’,” quoted Hornblower.
“Exactly, sir. An’ I’ll pierce the lighters for sweeps, There’ll be no beatin’ to wind’ward any more than in a raft. I could put the men to work at once if you’ll give the order, sir.”
Mound might have been a boy of ten instead of one of twenty from the eagerness of his voice. The languid calm was quite forgotten.
“I’ll send a note to the Governor,” said Hornblower, “asking for the loan of four lighters. I’ll make it six, in case of accidents. Have your plans ready in an hour’s time. You can draw upon this ship and the sloops for the materials and men you’ll need.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
There was need for haste, for that very evening there came sullenly booming across the bay the sound of heavy guns firing, not the higher-pitched incisive growl of the field-pieces they had heard before, but the deep-toned roar of siege artillery; the enemy was trying a few shots with the first of the big guns dragged up into their battery. And the next morning, just as Hornblower came out on the quarter-deck, there was a sudden loud crash ashore, like a peal of thunder, to herald the opening salvo of the enemy. Its echoes had not died away before a more ragged salvo succeeded it, and then another more ragged still, and so on until the air was ceaselessly tormented by the loud reports, like a continuous thunderstorm from which the ear waited continually for relief that was not granted it. The masthead lookout reported a long smear of smoke drifted by the breeze across the countryside from the enemy’s battery.
“Call away my barge,” said Hornblower.
At Nonsuch’s boat booms there already lay an assortment of the boats of the squadron, piled high with the stores which bad been taken out of the two bomb-ketches. The barge danced over the water in the sparkling dawn to where the bomb-ketches lay anchored, each with a lighter on either side, Duncan, captain of the Moth, was being rowed round the group in a jollyboat. He touched his hat as the barge approached.
“Morning, sir,” he said, and then instantly turned back to the work in hand, raising his speaking-trumpet to his lips. “Too much by the bows! Take up the for’ward cable another pawl!”
Hornblower had himself rowed on to the Harvey, and leaped from his barge to the lighter on her starboard side—not much of a leap, because she was laden down with ballast—without bothering officers or men for compliments. Mound was standing on his tiny quarter-deck, testing with his foot the tension of the big cable—one of Nonsuch’s—which was wrapped round his own ship and both lighters, two turns round each, forward and aft.
“Carry on, port side!” he yelled.
In each of the lighters a large working party was stationed, the men equipped with shovels for the most part extemporized out of wood. At Mound’s order the men in the port-side lighter recommenced lustily shovelling sand over the side. Clouds of it drifted astern on the faint wind. Mound tested the tension again.
“Carry on, starboard side!” he yelled again, and then, perceiving his Commodore approaching, he came to the salute.
“Good morning, Mr. Mound,” said Hornblower.
“Good morning, sir. We have to do this part of it step by step, you see, sir. I have the old ketch so light she’ll roll over in the cables if I give her the chance.”
“I understand, Mr. Mound.”
“The Russians were prompt enough sending out the lighters to us, sir.”
“Can you wonder?” replied Hornblower. “D’you hear the French battery at work?”
Mound listened and apparently heard it for the first time. He had been engrossed too deeply in his work to pay any attention to it before; his face was unshaven and grey with fatigue, for his activity had not ceased since Hornblower had summoned him the afternoon before. In that time both ketches had been emptied of their stores, the cables roused out and got across to them, the lighters received and laid alongside in the dark, and each group of three vessels bound into a single mass with the cables hauled taut by the capstans.