“Excuse me, sir,” said Mound, and ran forward to examine the forward cable.
With the shovelling-out of the sand, hove overside by a hundred lusty pairs of arms, the lighters were rising in the water, lifting the ketch between them, cables and timber all a-creaking, and it was necessary to keep the cables taut as the rising of the lighters relieved the strain upon them. Hornblower turned aft to see what another working party were doing there. A large barrel half filled with water had been streamed out astern with a line to either quarter of the ketch, conducted in each case through a fair-lead to an extemporized windlass fixed to the deck. Paying out or heaving in on the lines would regulate the pull of the barrel, were the ketch under way, to one side or the other, exerting a powerful leverage. The barrel then was intended to undertake the duties of the rudder, which was already sufficiently high out of the water to be almost useless.
“It’s only a contraption, sir,” said Mound, who had returned from forward. “I had intended, as I told you, sir, to rig a Danube rudder. It was Wilson here who suggested this—I’d like to call your attention to him, sir. It’ll be much more effective, I’m sure.”
Wilson looked up from his work with a gap-toothed grin.
“What’s your rating?” asked Hornblower.
“Carpenter’s mate, sir.”
“As good a one as I’ve known, sir,” interpolated Mound.
“What service?”
“Two commissions in the old Superb, sir. One in Arethusa, an’ now this one, sir.”
“I’ll make out an acting warrant for you as carpenter,” said Hornblower.
“Thankee, sir, thankee.”
Mound could easily have taken the whole credit for devising this jury rudder to himself if he had wished. Hornblower liked him all the more for not having done so. It was good for discipline and for the spirits of the men to reward good work promptly.
“Very good, Mr. Mound. Carry on.”
Hornblower went back to his barge and rowed over to the Moth. The work here was a stage more advanced; so much sand had been shovelled out of the lighters that it was only with slow effort that the working parties could heave their shovelfuls over the side, shoulder-high. A wide streak of the Moth’s copper was already visible, so high was she riding.
“Watch your trim, Mr. Duncan,” said Hornblower. “She’s canting a little to port.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
It called for some complicated adjustment of the cables, veering out and hauling in, to set Moth on an even keel again.
“She won’t draw more’n two feet by the time we’re finished with her, sir,” said Duncan exultantly.
“Excellent,” said Hornblower.
Duncan addressed himself to putting more men to work in the lighters, shovelling sand across from the inboard to the outboard sides, to ease the work of those actually heaving the sand over.
“Two hours more an’ they’ll be clear, sir,” reported Duncan. “Then we’ll only have to pierce the sides for sweeps.”
He glanced over at the sun, still not far above the horizon.
“We’ll be ready for action half an hour before noon, sir,” he added.
“Put the carpenters to work piercing the sides now,” said Hornblower. “So that you can rest your men and give them a chance to have breakfast. Then when they start again they can shovel through the ports and work quicker.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
Half an hour before noon seemed to be a more likely sort of estimate with that improvement in the programme, yet even if the completion of the work were delayed by two hours there would still be long hours of daylight left in which the blow could be struck. While the sides of the lighters were being pierced Hornblower called Duncan and Mound to him and went over their final orders with them.
“I’ll be up in the church with the signalling party,” he said in conclusion. “I’ll see that you’re properly supported. So good luck.”
“Thank you, sir,” they answered in unison. Excitement and anticipation masked their weariness.
So Hornblower had himself rowed over to the village, where a tiny jetty saved him and the signallers from splashing through the shallows: the roar of the bombardment and the counter-bombardment grew steadily louder as they approached. Diebitch and Clausewitz came to meet them as they mounted the jetty, and led the way towards the church. As they skirted the foot of the earthworks which ringed the village on its landward side Hornblower looked up and saw the Russian artillerymen working their guns, bearded soldiers, naked to the waist in the hot sun. An officer walked from gun to gun in the battery, pointing each piece in succession.
“There are few men in our artillery who can be trusted to lay a gun,” explained Clausewitz.
The village was already badly knocked about, great holes showing in the walls and roofs of the flimsy cottages of which it was composed. As they neared the church a ricocheting ball struck the church wall, sending a cloud of chips flying, and remaining embedded in the brickwork like a plum in a cake. A moment later Hornblower swung round to a sudden unusual noise to see his two midshipmen standing staring at the headless corpse of a seaman who a moment before had been walking at their heels. A ball flying over the earthworks had shattered his head to atoms and flung his body against them. Somers was eyeing with disgust the blood and brains which had spattered his white trousers.
“Come along,” said Hornblower.
In the gallery under the dome they could look down upon the siege. The zigzag approach trench was almost half-way towards the defences, the head of it almost obscured by flying earth as the Russians fired furiously upon it. But the central redoubt which covered the entrance to the village was in bad shape, its parapets battered into nothing more than mounds, a gun lying half buried beside its shattered carriage, although the other one was still being worked by a devoted little group. The whole of the French works were obscured by the thin pall of smoke which spread from the breaching battery, but the smoke was not so thick as to hide a column of infantry marching down towards the first parallel from the rear.
“They relieve the guard of the trenches at noon,” explained Clausewitz. “Where are these boats of yours, sir?”
“Here they come,” said Hornblower.
They were creeping over the silvery water, fantastic in appearance, the ketches with their sails furled and the ugly bulks of the lighters beside them. The long clumsy sweeps, a dozen on each side, looked like the legs of a water-boatman on a pond, but far slower in movement as the toiling seamen who manned them tugged them through each successive endless stroke.
“Somers! Gerard!” said Hornblower, sharply. “How are your signalling arrangements working out? Lash those blocks to the cornice up there. Come along, you haven’t all day to get ready in.”
The midshipmen and seamen addressed themselves to the business of making a signalling station up on the gallery. The blocks were lashed to the cornice and the halliards rove through them, the Russian staff watching the operation with interest. Meanwhile the bomb-ketches came crawling up the bay, painfully slowly under their sweeps, heading crabwise on account of the gentle breeze on their bow, before which they sagged away to leeward quite perceptibly to Hornblower’s eye above them. No one among the enemy seemed to be paying them the least attention; Bonaparte’s armies, lords of Europe from Madrid to Smolensk, had had few opportunities of becoming acquainted with bomb-ketches. The firing from the big battery went on steadily, pounding at the crumbling Russian earthworks below, with the Russians returning the fire with desperate energy.