But decisions had to be made; those screams might have given the alarm and probably had done so. Against the thick bulk of the semaphore mast a ladder led up to a trap door. Overhead must be the apparatus for working the semaphore-arms. The bearded man in his shirt must be the telegraphist, a civilian perhaps, and he and his wife presumably lived beside their work. It must have been convenient for them that the construction of the working platform overhead made it easy to build these cottage rooms underneath.
Hornblower had come to burn the semaphore, and burn it he would, even if a civilian dwelling were involved. The rest of his party were crowding into the living-room, two of the musket men appearing from the bedroom into which they must have made their way by another window. Hornblower had to stop and think for a perceptible space. He had expected that at this moment he would be fighting French soldiers, but here he was already in complete possession and with a woman on his hands. But his wits returned to him and he was able to put his thoughts in order.
‘Get out, you musket men,’ he said. ‘Get out to the fence and keep watch. Côtard, up that ladder. Bring down all the signal books you can find. Any papers there are. Quick – I’ll give you two minutes. Here’s the lantern. Black, get something for this woman. The clothes from the bed’ll do, and then take these two out and guard ’em. Are you ready to burn this place, Hewitt?’
It flashed through his mind that the Moniteur in Paris could make a great deal of noise about ill-treatment of a woman by the licentious British sailors, but it would do that however careful he might be. Black hung a ragged quilt over the woman’s shoulders and then hustled his charge out of the front door. Hewitt had to stop and think. He had never set about burning a house before, and clearly he did not adapt himself readily to new situations.
‘That’s the place,’ snapped Hornblower, pointing to the foot of the telegraph mast. There were the great baulks of timber round the mast; Hornblower joined with Hewitt in pushing the furniture under them, and then hurried into the bedroom to do the same.
‘Bring some rags here!’ he called.
Côtard came scrambling down the ladder with one arm full of books.
‘Now. Let’s start the fire,’ said Hornblower.
It was a strange thing to do, in cold blood.
‘Try the stove,’ suggested Côtard.
Hewitt unlatched the door of the stove, but it was too hot to touch after that. He set his back to the wall and braced his feet against the stove and shoved; the stove fell and rolled, scattering a few embers over the floor. But Hornblower had snatched up a handful of blue lights from Hewitt’s bundle; the tallow dip was still burning and available to light the fuses. The first fuse spluttered and then the firework spouted flames. Sulphur and saltpetre with a sprinkling of gunpowder; blue lights were ideal for this purpose. He tossed the blazing thing on to the oily rags, lit another and threw it, lit another still.
This was like some scene in Hell. The uncanny blue gleam lit the room, but soon the haze of smoke made everything dim, and the fumes of the burning sulphur offended their nostrils as the fireworks hissed and roared, while Hornblower went on lighting fuses and thrusting the blue lights where they would be most effective in living-room and bedroom. Hewitt in an inspired moment tore the rush mat up from the floor and flung it over rising flames of the rags. Already the timber was crackling and throwing out showers of yellow sparks to compete with the blue glare and the thickening smoke.
‘That’ll burn!’ said Côtard.
The flames from the blazing mat were playing on one of the sloping timbers, and engendering new flames which licked up the rough wooden surface. They stood and watched fascinated. On this rocky summit there could be no well, no spring, and it would be impossible to extinguish this fire once it was thoroughly started. The laths of the partition wall were alight in two places where Hornblower had thrust blue lights into the crannies; he saw the flames at one point suddenly leap two feet up the partition with a volley of loud reports and fresh showers of sparks.
‘Come on!’ he said.
Outside the air was keen and clear and they blinked their dazzled eyes and stumbled over inequalities at their feet, but there was a faint tiny light suffusing the air, the first glimmer of daylight. Hornblower saw the vague shape of the fat woman standing huddled in her quilt; she was sobbing in a strange way, making a loud gulping noise regularly at intervals of a couple of seconds or so. Somebody must have kicked over the chicken coop, because there seemed to be clucking chickens everywhere in the half-light. The interior of the cottage was all ablaze, and now there was light enough in the sky for Hornblower to see the immense mast of the telegraph against it, oddly shaped with its semaphore arms dangling. Eight stout cables radiated out from it, attached to pillars sunk in the rock. The cables braced the unwieldy mast against the rude winds of the Atlantic, and the pillars served also to support the tottering picket fence that surrounded the place. There was a pathetic attempt at a garden on small patches of soil that might well have been carried up by hand from the valley below; a few pansies, a patch of lavender, and two unhappy geraniums trodden down by some blunderer.
Yet the light was still only just apparent; the flames that were devouring the cottage were brighter. He saw illuminated smoke pouring from the side of the upper storey, and directly after that flames shot out from between the warping timbers.
‘The devil of a collection of ropes and blocks and levers up there,’ said Côtard. ‘Not much of it left by this time.’
‘No one’ll put that out now. And we’ve heard nothing from the marines,’ said Hornblower. ‘Come along, you men.’
He had been prepared to fight a delaying action with his musket men if the enemy had appeared before the place was well alight. Now it was unnecessary, so well had everything gone. So well, indeed, that it called for a moment or two’s delay to collect the men. These leisurely minutes had made all haste appear unnecessary as they filed out through the gate. There was a slight haze lying over the surface of the summer sea; the topsails of the Hotspur – main-topsail aback – were far more visible than her hull, a grey pearl in the pearly mist. The fat woman stood at the gate, all modesty gone with the quilt that had fallen from her shoulders, waving her arms and shrieking curses at them.
From the misty valley on their right as they faced the descent came the notes of a musical instrument, some trumpet or bugle.
‘That’s their reveille,’ commented Côtard, sliding down the path on Hornblower’s heels.
He had hardly spoken when the call was taken up by other bugles. A second or two later came the sound of a musket shot, and then more musket shots, and along with them the echoing roll of a drum, and then more drums beating the alarm.
‘That’s the marines,’ said Côtard.
‘Yes,’ snapped Hornblower. ‘Come on!’
Musketry meant a bad mark against the landing party that had gone up against the battery. Very likely there was a sentry there, and he should have been disposed of silently. But somehow the alarm had been given. The guard had turned out – say twenty men armed and equipped – and now the main body was being roused. That would be the artillery unit in their hutments below the ridge; not too effective, perhaps, fighting with musket and bayonet, but over the other side there was a battalion of infantry at this very moment being roused from sleep. Hornblower had given his order and broken into a run along the right-hand path towards the battery before these thoughts had formulated themselves quite so clearly. He was ready with his new plan before they topped the ridge.
‘Halt!’
They assembled behind him.
‘Load!’
Cartridges were bitten open; pans were primed, and charges poured down the barrels of muskets and pistols. The wadded cartridge papers were thrust into the muzzles, the bullets were spat in on top, and then the ramrods were plied to drive all home.
‘Côtard, take the musket men out to the flank. You others, come with me.’
There was the great battery wit
h its four thirty-two pounders looking through the embrasures of its curving parapet. Beyond it a skirmish line of marines, their uniforms showing scarlet in the growing light, were holding at bay a French force only outlined by musket flashes and puffs of smoke. The sudden arrival of Côtard and his men, an unknown force on their flank caused the momentary withdrawal of this French force.
In the centre of the inner face of the parapet Captain Jones in his red coat with four other men were struggling with a door; beside him was laid out a bundle similar to the one Hewitt carried, blue lights, reels of slow match and quick match. Beyond him lay two dead marines, one of them shot hideously in the face. Jones looked up as Hornblower arrived, but Hornblower wasted no time in discussion.
‘Stand aside! Axemen!’
The door was of solid wood and reinforced with iron, but it was only intended to keep out thieving civilians; a sentry was supposed to guard it, and under the thundering of the axes, it gave way rapidly.
‘The guns are all spiked,’ said Jones.
That was only the smallest part of the business. An iron spike driven into the touch-hole of a gun would render it useless in the heat of the moment, but an armourer working with a drill would clear it in an hour’s work. Hornblower was on the step of the parapet looking over the top; the French were rallying for a new attack. But an axe-handle was working as a lever through a gap driven in the door. Black had hold of the edge of a panel and with a wild effort tore it free. A dozen more blows, another wrench, and there was a way open through the door. A crouching man could make his way into the blackness inside.
‘I’ll go,’ said Hornblower. He could not trust Jones or the marines. He could trust no one but himself. He seized the reel of quick match and squeezed through the shattered door. There were timbered steps under his feet, but he expected that and so did not fall down them. He crouched under the roof and felt his way down. There was a landing and a turn, and then more steps, much darker, and then his outstretched hands touched a hanging curtain of serge. He thrust this aside and stepped cautiously beyond it. Here it was utterly black. He was in the magazine. He was in the area where the ammunition party would wear list slippers, because nailed shoes might cause a spark to ignite the gun-powder. He felt cautiously about him; one hand touched the harsh outline of a cask. Those were the powder-barrels – his hand involuntarily withdrew itself, as though it had touched a snake. No time for that sort of idiocy, he was surrounded by violent death.
He drew his cutlass, snarling in the darkness with the intensity of his emotion. Twice he stabbed into the wall of cartridges, and his ears were rewarded by the whispering sound of a cascade of powder-grains pouring out through the gashes he had made. He must have a firm anchorage for the fuse; and he stooped and sank the blade of the cutlass into another cartridge. He unravelled a length of quick match and wound a bight firmly round the hilt, and he buried the end in the pile of powder-grains on the floor; an unnecessarily careful measure, perhaps, when a single spark would set off the explosion. Unreeling the quick match behind him, carefully, very carefully, lest he jerk the cutlass loose, he made his way out past the curtain again, and up the steps, up into the growing light, round the corner. The light through the broken door was dazzling, and he blinked as he came out crouching through it, still unreeling the quick match.
‘Cut this!’ he snapped, and Black whipped out his knife and sawed through the quick match at the point indicated by Hornblower’s hand.
Quick match burned faster than the eye could follow; the fifty feet or so that extended down to the magazine would burn in less than a second.
‘Cut me a yard off that!’ said Hornblower pointing to the slow match.
Slow match was carefully tested. It burned in still air at exactly thirty inches in one hour, one inch in two minutes. Hornblower had no intention whatever of allowing an hour or more for the combustion of this yard, however. He could hear the muskets banging; he could hear drums echoing in the hills. He must keep calm.
‘Cut off another foot and light it!’
While Black was executing this order Hornblower was tying quick match to slow match, making sure they were closely joined. Yet he still had to think of the general situation in addition to these vital details.
‘Hewitt!’ he snapped, looking up from his work. ‘Listen carefully. Run to the lieutenant’s party of marines over the ridge there. Tell him we’re going to fall back now, and he is to cover our retreat at the last slope above the boats. Understand?’
‘Aye aye, sir.’
‘Then run.’
Just as well that it was not Grimes who had to be entrusted with the mission. The fuses were knotted together now, and Hornblower looked round him.
‘Bring that dead man over here!’
Black asked no questions, but dragged the corpse to the foot of the door. Hornblower had looked first for a stone, but a corpse would be better in every way. It was not yet stiff, and the arm lay limply across the quick match just above the knot, after Hornblower had passed all excess slack back through the shattered door. The dead man served to conceal the existence of the fuse. If the French arrived too early he would gain valuable seconds for the plan; the moment the fire reached the quick match it would flash under the dead man’s arm and shoot on down to the powder. If to investigate the magazine they dragged the corpse out of the way, the weight of a fuse inside the door would whisk the knot inside and so gain seconds too – perhaps the burning end would tumble down the steps, perhaps right into the magazine.
‘Captain Jones! Warn everybody to be ready to retreat. At once, please. Give me that burning fuse, Black.’
‘Let me do that, sir.’
‘Shut your mouth.’
Hornblower took the smouldering slow match and blew on it to quicken its life. Then he looked down at the length of slow match knotted to the quick match. He took special note of a point an inch and a half from the knot; there was a black spot there which served to mark the place. An inch and a half. Three minutes.
‘Get up on the parapet, Black. Now. Yell for them to run. Yell!’
As Black began to bellow Hornblower pressed the smouldering end down upon the black spot. After two seconds he withdrew it; the slow match was alight and burning in two directions – in one, harmlessly towards the inoperative excess, and in the other towards the knot, the quick match an inch and a half away. Hornblower made sure it was burning, and then he scrambled to his feet and leaped up on the parapet.
The marines were trooping past him, with Côtard and his seamen bringing up the rear. A minute and a half – a minute, now, and the French were following them up, just out of musket range.
‘Better hurry, Côtard. Come on!’
They broke into a dogtrot.
‘Steady, there!’ yelled Jones. He was concerned about panic among his men if they ran from the enemy instead of retreating steadily, but there was a time for everything. The marines began to run, with Jones yelling ineffectually and waving his sword.
‘Come on, Jones,’ said Hornblower as he passed him, but Jones was filled with fighting madness, and went on shouting defiance at the French, standing alone with his face to the enemy.
Then it happened. The earth moved back and forth under their feet so that they tripped and staggered, while a smashing, overwhelming explosion burst on their ears, and the sky went dark. Hornblower looked back. A column of smoke was still shooting upwards, higher and higher, and dark fragments were visible in it. Then the column spread out, mushrooming at the top. Something fell with a crash ten yards away, throwing up chips of stone which rattled round Hornblower’s feet. Something came whistling through the air, something huge, curving down as it twirled. Selectively, inevitably, it fell, half a ton of rock, blown from where it roofed the magazine right on to Jones in his red coat, sliding along as if bestially determined to wipe out completely the pitiful thing it dragged beneath it. Hornblower and Côtard gazed at it in mesmerised horror as it came to rest six feet from their left hands.
&nb
sp; It was the most difficult moment of all for Hornblower to keep his senses, or to regain them. He had to shake himself out of a daze.
‘Come on.’
He still had to think clearly. They were at the final slope above the boats. The lieutenant’s party of marines, sent out as a flank guard, had fallen back to this point and were drawn up here firing at a threatening crowd of Frenchmen. The French wore white facings on their blue uniforms – infantry men, not the artillery men who had opposed them round the battery. And beyond them was a long column of infantry, hurrying along, with a score of drums beating an exhilarating rhythm – the pas de charge.
‘You men get down into the boats,’ said Hornblower, addressing the rallying group of seamen and marines from the battery, and then he turned to the lieutenant.
‘Captain Jones is dead. Make ready to run for it the moment those others reach the jetty.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Behind Hornblower’s back, turned as it was to the enemy, they heard a sharp sudden noise, like the impact of a carpenter’s axe against wood. Hornblower swung round again. Côtard was staggering, his sword and the books and papers he had carried all this time fallen to the ground at his feet. Then Hornblower noticed his left arm, which was swaying in the air as if hanging by a thread. Then came the blood. A musket bullet had crashed into Côtard’s upper armbone, shattering it. One of the axemen who had not yet left caught him as he was about to fall.
‘Ah – ah – ah!’ gasped Côtard, with the jarring of his shattered arm. He stared at Hornblower with bewildered eyes.
‘Sorry you’ve been hit,’ said Hornblower, and to the axeman, ‘Get him down to the boat.’
Côtard was gesticulating towards the ground with his right hand, and Hornblower spoke to the other axeman.
‘Pick those papers up and go down to the boat too.’
But Côtard was not satisfied.
The Young Hornblower Omnibus Page 70