‘Listen!’ Bush’s elbow dug into Hornblower’s ribs with the urgency of the moment.
‘Avast there at the lead!’ said Hornblower. He spoke in a normal tone to make sure he was understood; with the wind blowing that way his voice would not carry far in the direction he was peering into.
There was the sound again; there were other noises. A long drawn monosyllable borne by the wind, and Hornblower’s straining senses picked it up. It was a Frenchman calling ‘Seize,’ sixteen. French pilots still used the old-fashioned toise to measure depths, and the toise was slightly greater than the English fathom.
‘Lights!’ muttered Bush, his elbow at Hornblower’s ribs again. There was a gleam here and there – the Frenchman had not darkened his ship nearly as effectively as the Hotspur. There was enough light to give some sort of indication. A ghost ship sweeping by within biscuit toss. The topsails were suddenly visible – there must be a thin coating of snow on the after surfaces whose gleaming white could reflect any light there was. And then—
‘Three red lights in a row on the mizzen tops’l yard,’ whispered Bush.
Visible enough now; shaded in front, presumably, with the light directed aft to guide following ships. Hornblower felt a surge of inspiration, of instant decision, plans for the moment, plans for the next five minutes, plans for the more distant future.
‘Run!’ he snapped at Bush. ‘Get three lights hoisted the same way. Keep ’em shaded, ready to show.’
Bush was off at the last word, but the thoughts had to come more rapidly like lightning. Hotspur dared not tack; she must wear.
‘Wear ship!’ he snapped at Prowse – no time for the politenesses he usually employed.
As Hotspur swung round he saw the three separated red lights join together almost into one, and at the same moment he saw a blue glare; the French ship was altering course to proceed down the Goulet and was burning a blue light as an indication to the ships following to up helm in succession. Now he could see the second French ship, a second faint ghost – the blue light helped to reveal it.
Pellew in the old Indefatigable, when Hornblower was a prisoner in Ferrol, had once confused a French squadron escaping from Brest by imitating the French signals, but that had been in the comparatively open waters of the Iroise. It had been in Hornblower’s mind to try similar tactics, but here in the narrow Goulet there was a possibility of more decisive action.
‘Bring her to the wind on the starboard tack,’ he snapped at Prowse, and Hotspur swung round further still, the invisible hands hauling at the invisible braces.
There was the second ship in the French line just completing her turn, with Hotspur’s bows pointing almost straight at her.
‘Starboard a little.’ Hotspur’s bows swung away. ‘Meet her.’
He wanted to be as close alongside as he possibly could be without running foul of her.
‘I’ve sent a good hand up with the lights, sir.’ This was Bush reporting. ‘Another two minutes and they’ll be ready.’
‘Get down to the guns,’ snapped Hornblower, and then, with the need for silence at an end, he reached for the speaking-trumpet.
‘Main-deck! Man the starboard guns! Run ’em out.’
How would the French squadron be composed? It would have an armed escort, not to fight its way through the Channel Fleet, but to protect the transports, after the escape, from stray British cruising frigates. There would be two big frigates, one in the van and one bringing up the rear, while the intermediate ships would be defenceless transports, frigates armed en flûte.
‘Starboard! Steady!’
Yard arm to yard arm with the second ship in the line, going down the Goulet alongside her, ghost ships side by side in the falling snow. The rumble of gun-trucks had ceased.
‘Fire!’
At ten guns, ten hands jerked at the lanyards, and Hotspur’s side burst into flame, illuminating the sails and hull of the Frenchman with a bright glare; in the instantaneous glare of the gun-fire snowflakes were visible as if stationary in mid air.
‘Fire away, you men!’
There were cries and shouts to be heard from the French ship, and then a French voice speaking almost in his ear – the French captain hailing him from thirty yards away with his speaking-trumpet pointed straight at him. It would be an expostulation, the French captain wondering why a French ship should be firing into him, here where no British ship could possibly be. The words were cut off abruptly by the bang and the flash of the first gun of the second broadside, the others following as the men loaded and fired as fast as they could. Each flash brought a momentary revelation of the French ship, a flickering, intermittent picture. Those nine-pounder balls were crashing into a ship crammed with men. At this very moment, as he stood there rigid on the deck, men were dying in agony by the score just over there, for no more reason than that they had been forced into the service of a continental tyrant. Surely the French would not be able to bear it. Surely they would flinch under this unexpected and unexplainable attack. Ah! She was turning away, although she had nowhere to turn to except the cliffs and shoals of the shore close overside. There were the three red lights on her mizzen topsail yard. By accident or design she had put her helm down. He must make sure of her.
‘Port a little.’
Hotspur swung to starboard, her guns blazing. Enough.
‘Starboard a little. Steady as you go.’
Now the speaking-trumpet. ‘Cease fire!’
The silence that followed was broken by the crash as the Frenchman struck the shore, the clatter of falling spars, the yells of despair. And in this darkness, after the glare of the guns, he was blinder than ever, and yet he must act as if he could see; he must waste no moment.
‘Back the main tops’l! Stay by the braces!’
The rest of the French line must be coming down, willy-nilly; with the wind over their quarter and the ebb under their keels and rocks on either side of them they could do nothing else. He must think quicker than they; he still had the advantage of surprise – the French captain in the following ship would not yet have had time to collect his thoughts.
The Little Girls were under their lee; he must not delay another moment.
‘Braces, there!’
Here she came, looming up, close, close, yells of panic from her forecastle.
‘Hard-a-starboard!’
Hotspur had just enough way through the water to respond to her rudder; the two bows swung from each other, collision averted by a hair’s breadth.
‘Fire!’
The Frenchman’s sails were all a-shiver; she was not under proper control, and with those nine-pounder balls sweeping her deck she would not recover quickly. Hotspur must not pass ahead of her; he still had a little time and a little room to spare.
‘Main tops’l aback!’
This was a well-drilled crew; the ship was working like a machine. Even the powder-boys, climbing and descending the ladders in pitch darkness, were carrying out their duties with exactitude, keeping the guns supplied with powder, for the guns never ceased from firing, bellowing in deafening fashion and bathing the Frenchman with orange light while the smoke blew heavily away on the disengaged side.
He could not spare another moment with the main topsail aback. He must fill and draw ahead even if it meant disengagement.
‘Braces, there!’
He had not noticed until now the infernal din of the quarter-deck carronades beside him; they were firing rapidly, sweeping the transport’s deck with grape. In their flashes he saw the Frenchman’s masts drawing aft as Hotspur regained her way. Then in the next flash he saw something else, another momentary picture – a ship’s bowsprit crossing the Frenchman’s deck from the disengaged side, and he heard a crash and the screams. The next Frenchman astern had run bows on into her colleague. The first rending crash was followed by others; he strode aft to try to see, but already the darkness had closed like a wall round his blinded eyes. He could only listen, but what he heard told him the story. The
ship that rammed was swinging with the wind, her bowsprit tearing through shrouds and halliards until it snapped against the main-mast. Then the fore-topmast would fall, yards would fall. The two ships were locked together and helpless, with the Little Girls under their lee. Now he saw blue lights burning as they tried to deal with the hopeless situation; with the ships swinging the blue lights and the red lights on the yards were revolving round each other like some planetary system. There was no chance of escape for them; as wind and current carried him away he thought he heard the crash as they struck upon the Little Girls, but he could not be sure, and there was no time – of course there was no time – to think about it. At this stage of the ebb there was an eddy that set in upon Pollux Reef and he must allow for that. Then he would be out in the Iroise, whose waters he used to think so dangerous before he had ventured up the Goulet, and an unknown number of ships was coming down from Brest, forwarned now by all the firing and the tumult that an enemy was in their midst.
He took a hasty glance into the binnacle, gauged the force of the wind on his cheeks. The enemy – what there was left of them – would certainly, with this wind, run for the Raz du Sein, and would certainly give the Trepieds shoal a wide berth. He must post himself to intercept them; the next ship in the line must be close at hand in any case, but in a few seconds she would no longer be confined to the narrow channel of the Goulet. And what would the first frigate be doing, the one he had allowed to pass without attacking her?’
‘Main chains, there! Get the lead going.’
He must keep up to windward as best he could.
‘No bottom! No bottom with this line.’
He was clear of Pollux, then.
‘Avast, there, with the lead.’
They stood on steadily on the starboard-tack; in the impenetrable darkness he could hear Prowse breathing heavily at his side and all else was silence round him. He would have to take another cast of the lead soon enough. What was that? Wind and water had brought a distinctive sound to his ears, a solemn noise, of a solid body falling into the water. It was the sound of a lead being cast – and then followed, at the appropriate interval, the high pitched cry of the leadsman. There was a ship just up there to windward, and now with the distance lessening and with his hearing concentrated in that direction he could hear other sounds, voices, the working of yards. He leaned over the rail and spoke quietly down into the waist.
‘Stand by your guns.’
There she was, looming faintly on the starboard bow.
‘Starboard two points. Meet her.’
They saw Hotspur at that same moment; from out of the darkness came the hail of a speaking-trumpet, but in the middle of a word Hornblower spoke down into the waist again.
‘Fire!’
The guns went off so nearly together that he felt Hotspur’s light fabric heel a little with the force of the recoil, and there again was the shape of a ship lit up by the glare of the broadside. He could not hope to force her on the shoals; there was too much sea-room for that. He took the speaking – trumpet.
‘Elevate your guns! Aim for her spars!’
He could cripple her. The first gun of the new broadside went off immediately after he said the words – some fool had not paid attention. But the other guns fired after the interval necessary to withdraw the coigns, flash after flash, bang after bang. Again and again and again. Suddenly a flash revealed a change in the shape of the illuminated mizzen topsail, and at the same moment that mizzen topsail moved slowly back abaft the beam. The Frenchman had thrown all aback in a desperate attempt to escape this tormentor, risking being raked in the hope of passing under Hotspur’s stern to get before the wind. He would wear the Hotspur round and bring her under the fire of the port broadside and chase her on to the Trepieds; the speaking-trumpet was at his lips when the darkness ahead erupted into a volcano of fire.
Chaos. Out of the black snow-filled night had come a broadside, raking the Hotspur from bow to stern. Along with the sound and the flash came the rending crash of splintered woodwork, the loud ringing noise as a cannon-ball hit the breech of a gun, the shriek of the flying splinters, and following on that came the screaming of a wounded man, cutting through the sudden new stillness.
One of the armed frigates of the escort – the leader of the line, most likely – had seen the firing and had been close enough to intervene. She had crossed Hotspur’s bows to fire in a raking broadside.
‘Hard-a-starboard!’
He could not tack, even if he were prepared to take the chance of missing stays with the rigging as much cut up as it must be, for he was not clear of the transport yet. He must wear, even though it meant being raked once more.
‘Wear the ship!’
Hotspur was turning even as her last guns fired into the transport. Then came the second broadside from ahead, flaring out of the darkness, a fraction of a second between each successive shot, crashing into Hotspur’s battered bows, while Hornblower stood, trying not to wince, thinking what he must do next. Was that the last shot? Now there was a new and rending crash forward, a succession of snapping noises, another thundering crash, and cries and shrieks from forward. That must be the foremast fallen. That must be the fore-topsail yard crashing on the deck.
‘Helm doesn’t answer, sir,’ called the quartermaster at the wheel.
With the foremast down Hotspur would tend to fly up in the wind, even if the wreckage were not dragging alongside to act as a sea-anchor. He could feel the wind shifting on his cheek. Now Hotspur was helpless. Now she could be battered to destruction by an enemy twice her size, with four times her weight of metal, with scantlings twice as thick to keep out Hotspur’s feeble shot. He would have to fight despairingly to the death. Unless … The enemy would be putting his helm a-starboard to rake Hotspur from astern, or he would be doing so as soon as he could make out in the darkness what had happened. Time would pass very fast and the wind was still blowing, thank God, and there was the transport close on his starboard side still. He spoke loudly into the speaking-trumpet.
‘Silence! Silence!’
The bustle and clatter forward, where the hands had been struggling with the fallen spars, died away. Even the groaning wounded fell silent; that was discipline, and not the discipline of the cat o’ nine tails. He could just hear the rumble of the French frigate’s gun-trucks as they ran out the guns for the next broadside, and he could hear shouted orders. The French frigate was turning to deliver the coup de grâce as soon as she made certain of her target. Hornblower pointed the speaking-trumpet straight upwards as if addressing the sky, and he tried to keep his voice steady and quiet. He did not want the French frigate to hear.
‘Mizzen topsail yard! Unmask those lights.’
That was a bad moment; the lights might have gone out, the lad stationed on the yard might be dead. He had to speak again.
‘Show those lights!’
Discipline kept the hand up there from hailing back, but there they were – one, two, three red lights along the mizzen topsail yard. Even against the wind he heard a wild order being shouted from the French frigate, excitement, even panic in the voice. The French captain was ordering his guns not to fire. Perhaps he was thinking that some horrible mistake had already been made; perhaps in the bewildering darkness he was confusing Hotspur with her recent victim not so far off. At least he was holding fire; at least he was going off to leeward, and a hundred yards to leeward in that darkness was the equivalent of a mile in ordinary conditions.
‘Mask those lights again!’
No need to give the Frenchman a mark for gunfire or an objective to which to beat back when he should clear up the situation. Now a voice spoke out of the darkness close to him.
‘Bush reporting, sir. I’ve left the guns for the moment, if you give me leave, sir. Fore-tops’ls all across the starboard battery. Can’t fire those guns in any case yet.’
‘Very well, Mr Bush. What’s the damage?’
‘Foremast’s gone six feet above the deck, sir. Ever
ything went over the starboard side. Most of the shrouds must have held – it’s all trailing alongside.’
‘Then we’ll get to work – in silence, Mr Bush. I want every stitch of canvas got in first, and then we’ll deal with the wreckage.’
‘Aye aye, sir.’
Stripping the ship of her canvas would make her far less visible to the enemy’s eyes, and would reduce Hotspur’s leeway while she rode to her strange sea anchor. Next moment it was the carpenter, up from below.
‘We’re making water very fast, sir. Two feet in the hold. My men are plugging one shot hole, aft by the magazine, but there must be another one for’ard in the cable tier. We’ll need hands at the pumps, sir, an’ I’d like half a dozen more in the cable tier.’
‘Very well.’
So much to be done, in a nightmare atmosphere of unreality, and then came an explanation of some of the unreality. Six inches of snow lay on the decks, piled in deeper drifts against the vertical surfaces, silencing as well as impeding every movement. But most of the sense of unreality stemmed from simple exhaustion, nervous and physical, and the exhaustion had to be ignored while the work went on, trying to think clearly in the numbing darkness, with the knowledge that the Trepieds shoal lay close under their lee, on a falling tide. Getting up sail when the wreckage had been cleared away, and discovering by sheer seaman’s instinct how to handle Hotspur under sail without her foremast, with only the feel of the wind on his cheeks and the wavering compass in the binnacle to guide him, and the shoals waiting for him if he miscalculated.
‘I’d like you to set the sprit-sail, Mr Bush, if you please.’
‘Aye aye, sir.’
A dangerous job for the hands that had to spread the sprit-sail under the bowsprit in the dark, with all the accustomed stays swept away by the loss of the foremast, but it had to be done to supply the necessary leverage forward to keep Hotspur from turning into the wind. Setting the ponderous main-course, because the main-topmast could not be trusted to carry sail. Then creeping westward, with the coming of the dawn and the cessation of the snowfall. Then it was light enough to see the disorder of the decks and the trampled snow – snow stained pink here and there, in wide areas. Then at last came the sight of the Doris, and help at hand; it might almost be called safety, except that later they would have to beat back against contrary winds and with a jury foremast and in a leaky ship, to Plymouth and refitting.
The Young Hornblower Omnibus Page 79
