Hornblower and the Hotspur h-3

by Cecil Scott Forester

  “Mr. Wise!” yelled Hornblower into the speaking-trumpet. “Get that halliard re-rove.”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  The spirit of mischief asserted itself in Hornblower’s mind along with his excitement, and he raised the trumpet again.

  “And Mr. Wise! If you think proper you can tell the hands we’re at war!”

  That raised the laugh that Hornblower anticipated, all over the ship, but there was no more time for frivolity.

  “Pass the word for Mr. Cargill.”

  Cargill presented himself with a faint look of anxiety on his round face.

  “You’re not in trouble, Mr. Cargill. I’ve selected you for a responsible duty.”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Arrange with Mr. Bush to give you four steady hands and take your station on the fo’c’sle at the jib halliard and jib sheets. I shall be going about very shortly, and then I shall change my mind and come back on my original tack. So now you can see what you have to do. The moment you get my signal run the jib up the stay and then flat it out to port. I want to be quite sure you understand?”

  Several seconds went by while Cargill digested the plan before he answered “Yes, sir.”

  “I’m relying on you to keep us from being laid flat a-back, Mr. Cargill. You’ll have to use your own judgement after that. The moment the ship’s turning and under command again run the jib down. You can do that?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Very well, carry on.”

  Prowse was standing close by, straining to hear all this. His long face was longer than ever, it seemed.

  “Is it the gale that’s making your ears flap, Mr. Prowse?” snapped Hornblower, in no mood to spare anyone; he regretted the words as soon as they were said, but now there was no time to compensate for them.

  Loire was dead to leeward, and beyond her was Ushant. They had opened up the Bay of Lampoul on Ushant’s seaward side, and now were beginning to close it again. The moment had come; no, better to wait another minute. The scream of a cannon-ball and a simultaneous crash. There was a gaping hole in the weather side bulwark; the shot had crossed the heeling deck and smashed its way through from within outwards. A seaman at the gun there was looking stupidly at his left arm where the blood was beginning to flow from a splinter wound.

  “Stand by to go about!” yelled Hornblower.

  Now for it. He had to fool the French captain, who had already proved he was no fool.

  “Keep your glass on the Frenchman, Mr. Prowse. Tell me just what he’s doing. Quartermaster, a little lee helm. Just a little. Handsomely. Helm’s alee!”

  The fore-topsail shivered. Now every moment was precious, and yet he must delay so as to induce the Frenchman to commit himself.

  “His helm’s alee, sir! He’s coming round.”

  This would be the moment—actually it was just past the moment—when the Frenchman would expect him to tack to avoid the gunfire, and the Frenchman would try to tack as nearly simultaneously as possible.

  “Now, quartermaster. Hard down. Tacks and sheets!”

  Hotspur was coming to the wind. Despite the brief delay she was still well under command.

  “Mr. Bush!”

  On the weather side they opened the gun-ports, and the straining gun crews dragged the guns up the slope A rogue wave slapping against the side came in through the ports and flooded the deck knee deep in water; but the Frenchman must see those gun muzzles run out on the port side.

  “He’s coming about, sir!” reported Prowse. “He’s casting off the braces!”

  He must make quite sure.

  “Mainsail haul!”

  This was the danger point.

  “He’s past the wind’s eye, sir. His foretops’ls coming round.”

  “Ava-a-ast!”

  The surprised crew stopped dead as Hornblower screamed into the speaking-trumpet.

  “Brace all back again! Jump to it! Quartermaster! Hard-a-port! Mr. Cargill!”

  Hornblower waved his hand, and the jib rushed up the stay. With its tremendous leverage on the bowsprit the jib, given a chance, would turn the ship back irresistibly. Cargill and his men were hauling it out to port by main force. There was just enough of an angle for the wind to act upon it in the right direction. Was there? Yes! Hotspur was swinging back again, gallantly ignoring her apparent mistreatment and the wave that she met bows-on which burst over her forecastle. She was swinging, more and more rapidly, Cargill and his men hauling down the jib that had played so great a part in the operation.

  “Braces, there! She’s coming before the wind. Stand by! Quartermaster, meet her as she swings. Mr. Bush!”

  The guns’ crews flung themselves on the tackles and ran the guns in again. It was a pleasure to see Bush restraining their excitement and making certain that they were secure. The ports slammed shut and the crews raced over to the starboard side. He could see the Loire now that Hotspur had completed her turn, but Prowse was still reporting, as his order dictated.

  “She’s in irons, sir. She’s all a-back.”

  That was the very thing Hornblower had hoped for. He had believed it likely that he would be able to effect his escape to leeward, perhaps after an exchange of broadsides; this present situation had appeared possible but too good to materialize. The Loire was hanging helpless in the wind. Her captain had noted Hotspur’s manoeuvre just too late. Instead of going round on the other tack, getting his ship under command, and then tacking once more in pursuit, he had tried to follow Hotspur’s example and revert to his previous course. But with an unskilled crew and without a carefully prepared plan the improvisation had failed disastrously. While Hornblower watched he saw Loire yaw off the wind and then swing back again, refusing obstinately, like a frightened horse, to do the sensible thing. And Hotspur, dead before the wind, was rushing down upon her. Hornblower measured the dwindling gap with a calculating eye all the keener for his excited condition.

  “We’ll render passing honours, Mr. Bush!” he yelled—no trumpet needed with the wind behind him. “You gunners! Hold your fire until her mainmast comes into your sights. Quartermaster! Starboard a little. We’ll pass her close.”

  ‘Pistol shot’ was the ideal range for firing a broadside according to old tradition, or even ‘half pistol shot’, twenty yards or ten yards. Hotspur was passing Loire starboard side to starboard side, but on the starboard side Hotspur had her guns run out, manned, and ready, while Loire presented to his gaze a line of blank ports—no wonder, with the ship in her present state of confusion.

  They were level with her. No. 1 gun went off with a crash; Bush was standing beside it and gave the word, and apparently he intended to walk along the battery firing each gun in turn but Hotspur with the wind behind her was going far too fast for him. The other guns went off in a straggling roll. Hornblower saw the splinters fly from the Frenchman’s side, saw the holes battered in it. With the wind behind her Hotspur was hardly rolling at all; she was pitching, but any cool-headed gun captain could make sure of hitting his mark at fifteen yards. Hornblower saw a single gun-port open in Loire’s side—they were trying to man the guns, minutes too late. Then he was level with the Loire’s quarter-deck. He could see the bustling crowd there; for a moment he thought he distinguished the figure of the French captain, but at that moment the carronade beside him went off with a crash that took him by surprise so that he almost leaped from the deck.

  “Canister on top of the round-shot, sir,” said the gun captain turning to him with a grin. “That’ll learn ‘em.”

  A hundred and fifty musket bullets in a round of canister would sweep the Loire’s quarter-deck like a broom. The marines posted on the deck were all biting fresh cartridges and plying their ramrods—they must have been firing too, without Hornblower perceiving it. Bush was back beside him.

  “Every shot told!” he spluttered. “Every single shot, sir!”

  It was amazing and interesting to see Bush so excited, but there was still no time for trifles. Hornblower looked back a
t the Loire; she was still in irons—that broadside must have thrown her crew into complete disorder again. And over there was Ushant, grim and black.

  “Port two points,” he said to the men at the wheel. A sensible man would conserve all the sea room available.

  “Shall we come to the wind and finish her off, sir?” asked Bush.

  “No.”

  That was the sensible decision, reached in spite of his fighting madness. Despite the advantage gained by firing an unanswered broadside Hotspur was far too weak to enter voluntarily into a duel with Loire. If Loire had lost a mast, if she had been disabled, he would have tried it. The ships were already a mile apart; in the time necessary to beat back to his enemy she would recover and be ready to receive him. There she was; now she had swung, she had come under control again. It simply would not do.

  The crew were chattering like monkeys, and like monkeys they were dancing about the deck in their excitement. Hornblower took the speaking-trumpet to magnify his order.

  “Silence!”

  At his bellow the ship instantly fell silent, with every eye turned towards him. He was impervious to that, strangely. He paced across the quarter-deck and back again, judging the distance of Ushant, now receding over the starboard quarter, and of the Loire, now before the wind. He waited, almost reached his decision, and then waited again, before he gave his orders.

  “Helm a-weather! Mr. Prowse, back the maintops’l, if you please.”

  They were in the very mouth of the English Channel now, with Loire to windward and with an infinite avenue of escape available to leeward. If Loire came down upon him he would lure her up-channel. In a stern chase and with night coming on he would be in little enough danger, and the Loire would be cutting herself off from safety with every prospect of encountering powerful units of the British Navy. So he waited, hove-to, on the faint chance that the Frenchman might not resist temptation. Then he saw her yards swing, saw her come about, on to the starboard tack. She was heading for home, heading to keep Brest under her lee. She was acting conservatively and sensibly. But to the world, to everyone in Hotspur—and to everyone in the Loire, for that matter—Hotspur was challenging her to action and she was running for safety with her tail between her legs. At the sight of her in flight the Hotspur’s crew raised an undisciplined cheer; Hornblower took the speaking-trumpet again.

  “Silence!”

  The rasp in his voice came from fatigue and strain, for reaction was closing in upon him in the moment of victory. He had to stop and think, he had to prod his mind into activity before he could give his next orders. He hung the speaking-trumpet on its becket and turned to Bush; the two unplanned gestures took on a highly dramatic quality in the eyes of the ship’s company, who were standing watching him and expecting some further speech.

  “Mr. Bush! You can dismiss the watch below, if you would be so kind.” Those last words were the result of a considerable effort.

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  “Secure the guns, and dismiss the men from quarters.”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  “Mr. Prowse!” Hornblower gauged by a glance at Ushant the precious distance they had lost to leeward. “Put the ship on the port tack close-hauled, if you please.”

  “Close-hauled on the port tack. Aye aye, sir.”

  Strictly speaking, that was the last order he need give at this moment. He could abandon himself to his fatigue now, this very second. But a few words of explanation were at least desirable, if not quite necessary.

  “We shall have to beat back. Call me when the watch is changed.” As he said those words he could form a mental picture of what they implied. He would be able to fall across his cot, take the weight off his weary legs, let the tensions drain out of him, abandon himself to his fatigue, close his aching eyes, revel in the thought that no further decisions would be demanded of him for an hour or two. Then he recalled himself in momentary surprise. Despite those visions he was still on the quarter-deck with all eyes on him. He knew what he had to say; he knew what was necessary—he had to make an exit, like some wretched actor leaving the stage as the curtain fell. On these simple seamen it would have an effect that would compensate them for their fatigue, that would be remembered and quoted months later, and would—this was the only reason for saying it—help to reconcile them to the endless discomforts of the blockade of Brest. He set his tired legs in motion towards his cabin, and paused at the spot where the greatest number of people could hear his words to repeat them later.

  “We are going back to watch Brest again.” The melodramatic pause. “Loire or no Loire.”

  Chapter VII

  Hornblower was seated in the cramped chart-room eating his dinner. This salt beef must have come from the new cask, for there was an entirely different tang about it, not unpleasant. Presumably it had been pickled at some other victualling yard, with a different quality of salt. He dipped the tip of his knife into the mustard pot; that mustard was borrowed—begged—from the wardroom, and he felt guilty about it. The wardroom stores must be running short by now—but on the other hand he himself had sailed with no mustard at all, thanks to the distractions of getting married while commissioning his ship.

  “Come in!” he growled in response to a knock.

  It was Cummings, one of the ‘young gentlemen’, First Class Volunteers, King’s Letter Boys, with whom the ship was plagued in place of experienced midshipmen, thanks again to the haste with which she had been commissioned.

  “Mr. Poole sent me, sir. There’s a new ship joining the Inshore Squadron.”

  “Very well. I’ll come.”

  It was a lovely summer day. A few cumulus clouds supplied relief to the blue sky. Hotspur was hardly rocking at all as she lay hove-to, her mizzen topsail to the mast, for she was so far up in the approaches to Brest that the moderate easterly wind had little opportunity, since leaving the land, to raise a lop on the water. Hornblower swept his eye round as he emerged on the quarter-deck, landward at first, naturally. They lay right in the mouth of the Goulet, with a view straight up into the Outer Roads. On one side, was the Capuchins, on the other the Petit Minou, with Hotspur carefully stationed—as in the days of peace but for a more forceful reason—so that she was just out of cannon-shot of the batteries on those two points. Up the Goulet lay the reefs of the Little Girls, with their outlier, Pollux Reef, and beyond the Little Girls, in the outer roadstead, lay the French navy at anchor, forced to tolerate this constant invigilation because of the superior might of the Channel Fleet waiting outside, just over the horizon.

  Hornblower naturally turned his gaze in that direction next. The main body was out of sight, so as to conceal its strength; even Hornblower did not know its present numbers correctly—some twelve ships of the line or so. But well in sight, only three miles out to sea, lay the Inshore Squadron, burly two-deckers lying placidly hove-to, ready at any minute to support Hotspur and the two frigates, Doris and Naiad, should the French decide to come out and drive off these insolent sentries. There had been three of these ships of the line; now, as Hornblower looked, a fourth was creeping in close-hauled to join them. Automatically Hornblower looked over again at the Petit Minou. As he expected, the semaphore arms of the telegraph on the cliffs at the point there were swinging jerkily, from vertical to horizontal and back again. The watchers there were signalling to the French fleet the news of the arrival of this fourth ship to join the inshore squadron; even the smallest activity was noted and reported, so that in clear weather the French admiral was informed within minutes. It was an intolerable nuisance—it helped to smooth the path of the coasters perennially trying to sneak into Brest through the passage of the Raz. Some action should be taken about that semaphore station.

  Bush was rating Foreman, whom he was patiently—impatiently—training to be the signal officer of the Hotspur.

  “Can’t you get that number yet?” he demanded.

  Foreman was training his telescope; he had not acquired the trick of keeping the other eye open, y
et idle. In any case it was not easy to read the flags, with the wind blowing almost directly from one ship to the other.

  “Seventy-nine, sir,” said Foreman at length.

  “You’ve read it right for once,” marvelled Bush. “Now let’s see what you do next.”

  Foreman snapped his fingers as he recalled his duties, and hastened to the signal book on the binnacle. The telescope slipped with a crash to the deck from under his arm as he tried to turn the pages, but he picked it up and managed to find the reference. He turned back to Bush, but a jerk of Bush’s thumb diverted him to Hornblower.

  “Tonnant, sir,” he said.

  “Now, Mr. Foreman, you know better than that. Make your report in proper form and as fully as you can.”

  “Tonnant, sir. Eighty-four guns. Captain Pellew.” Hornblower’s stony face and steady silence spurred Foreman into remembering the rest of what he should say. “Joining the Inshore Squadron.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Foreman,” said Hornblower with the utmost formality, but Bush was already addressing Foreman again, his voice pitched as loudly as if Foreman were on the forecastle instead of three yards away.

  “Mr. Foreman! The Tonnant’s signalling! Hurry up, now.”

  Foreman scuttled back and raised his telescope.

  “That’s our number!” he said.

  “So I saw five minutes ago. Read the signal.”

  Foreman peered through the telescope, referring to the book, and checked his reference before looking up at the raging Bush.

  “‘Send boat’,” it says, sir.

  “Of course it does. You ought to know all routine signals by heart, Mr. Foreman. You’ve had long enough. Sir, Tonnant signals us to send a boat.”