‘Aye aye, sir.’
The boy dived down to the maindeck, and Hornblower watched him running forward, dodging the hurrying individuals in the crowded space there. He had to explain himself to the marine sentry at the fore hatchway – no one could go below without being able to show that it was his duty which was calling him there. Hornblower felt as if the message Howell had sent did not matter at all. It called for no decision on his part All there was to do was to go on fighting, whether the ship was sinking under their feet or not. There was a comfort in being free of all responsibility in this way.
‘One hour and a half already,’ said Bush, coming up rubbing his hands. ‘Glorious, sir. Glorious.’
It might have been no more than ten minutes for all Hornblower could tell, but Bush had in duty bound been watching the sand glass by the binnacle.
‘I’ve never known Dagoes stick to their guns like this before,’ commented Bush. ‘Their aim’s poor, but they’re firing as fast as ever. And it’s my belief we’ve hit them hard, sir.’
He tried to look through the eddying smoke, even fanning ridiculously with his hands in the attempt – a gesture which, by showing that he was not quite as calm as he appeared to be, gave Hornblower an absurd pleasure. Crystal came up as well as he spoke.
‘The smoke’s thinning a little, sir. It’s my belief that there’s a light air of wind blowing.’
He held up a wetted finger.
‘There is indeed, sir. A trifle of breeze over the port quarter. Ah!’
There came a stronger puff as he spoke, which rolled away the smoke in a solid mass over the starboard bow and revealed the scene as if a theatre curtain had been raised. There was the Natividad, looking like a wreck. Her jury foremast had gone the way of its predecessor, and her mainmast has followed it. Only her mizzen mast stood now, and she was rolling wildly in the swell with a huge tangle of rigging trailing over her disengaged side. Abreast her foremast three ports had been battered into one; the gap looked like a missing tooth.
‘She’s low in the water,’ said Bush, but on the instant a fresh broadside vomited smoke from her battered side, and this time by some chance every shot told in the Lydia, as the crash below well indicated. The smoke billowed round the Natividad, and as it cleared the watchers saw her swinging round head to the wind, helpless in the light air. The Lydia had felt the breeze. Hornblower could tell by the feel of her that she had steerage way again; the quartermaster at the wheel was twirling the spokes to hold her steady. He saw his chance on the instant.
‘Starboard a point,’ he ordered. ‘Forward, there! Cast off the cutter.’
The Lydia steadied across her enemy’s bows and raked her with thunder and flame.
‘Back the main tops’l!’ ordered Hornblower.
The men were cheering again on the maindeck through the roar of the guns. Astern the red sun was dipping to the water’s edge in a glory of scarlet and gold. Soon it would be night.
‘She must strike soon. Christ! Why don’t she strike?’ Bush was saying, as at close range the broadsides tore into the helpless enemy, raking her from bow to stern. Hornblower knew better. No ship under Crespo’s command and flying el Supremo’s flag would strike her colours. He could see the golden star on a blue ground fluttering through the smoke.
‘Pound him, lads, pound him!’ shouted Gerard.
With the shortening range he could rely on his gun captains to fire independently now. Every gun’s crew was loading and firing as rapidly as possible. So hot were the guns that at each discharge they leaped high in their carriages, and the dripping sponges thrust down their bores sizzled and steamed at the touch of the scorching hot metal. It was growing darker, too. The flashes of the guns could be seen again now, leaping in long orange tongues from the gun muzzles. High above the fast fading sunset could be seen the first star, shining out brilliantly.
The Natividad’s bowsprit was gone, splintered and broken and hanging under her forefoot, and then in the dwindling light the mizzen mast fell as well, cut through by shots which had ripped their way down the whole length of the ship.
‘She must strike now, by God!’ said Bush.
At Trafalgar Bush had been sent as prize master into a captured Spanish ship, and his mind was full of busy memories of what a beaten ship looked like – the dismounted guns, the dead and wounded heaped on the deck and rolling back and forth as the dismasted ship rolled on the swell, the misery, the pain, the helplessness. As if in reply to him there came a sudden flash and report from the Natividad’s bows. Some devoted souls with tackles and hand-spikes had contrived to slew a gun round so that it would bear right forward, and were firing into the looming bulk of the Lydia.
‘Pound him, lads, pound him!’ screamed Gerard, half mad with fatigue and strain.
The Lydia by virtue of her top hamper was going down to leeward fast upon the rolling hulk. At every second the range was shortening. Through the darkness, when their eyes were not blinded with gun flashes, Hornblower and Bush could see figures moving about on the Natividad’s deck. They were firing muskets now, as well. The flashes pricked the darkness and Hornblower heard a bullet thud into the rail beside him. He did not care. He was conscious now of his over-mastering weariness.
The wind was fluky, coming in sudden puffs and veering unexpectedly. It was hard, especially in the darkness, to judge exactly how the two ships were nearing each other.
‘The closer we are, the quicker we’ll finish it,’ said Bush.
‘Yes, but we’ll run on board of her soon,’ said Hornblower.
He roused himself for a further effort.
‘Call the hands to stand by to repel boarders,’ he said, and he walked across to where the two starboard side quarterdeck carronades were thundering away. So intent were their crews on their work, so hypnotised by the monotony of loading and firing, that it took him several seconds to attract their notice. Then they stood still, sweating, while Hornblower gave his orders. The two carronades were loaded with canister brought from the reserve locker beside the taffrail. They waited, crouching beside the guns, while the two ships drifted closer and closer together, the Lydia’s main deck guns still blazing away. There were shouts and yells of defiance from the Natividad, and the musket flashes from her bows showed a dark mass of men crowding there waiting for the ships to come together. Yet the actual contact was unexpected, as a sudden combination of wind and sea closed the gap with a rush. The Natividad’s bow hit the Lydia amidships, just forward of the mizzenmast, with a jarring crash. There was a pandemonium of yells from the Natividad as they swarmed forward to board, and the captains of the carronades sprang to their lanyards.
‘Wait!’ shouted Hornblower.
His mind was like a calculating machine, judging wind and sea, time and distance, as the Lydia slowly swung round. With hand spikes and the brute strength of the men he trained one carronade round and the other followed his example, while the mob on the Natividad’s forecastle surged along the bulwarks waiting for the moment to board. The two carronades came right up against them.
‘Fire!’
A thousand musket balls were vomited from the carronades straight into the packed crowd. There was a moment of silence, and then the pandemonium of shouts and cheers was replaced by a thin chorus of screams and cries – the blast of musket balls had swept the Natividad’s forecastle clear from side to side.
For a space the two ships clung together in this position; the Lydia still had a dozen guns that would bear, and these pounded away with their muzzles almost touching the Natividad’s bow. Then wind and sea parted them again, the Lydia to leeward now, drifting away from the rolling hulk; in the English ship every gun was in action, while from the Natividad came not a gun, not even a musket shot.
Hornblower fought off his weariness again.
‘Cease firing,’ he shouted to Gerard on the main deck, and the guns fell silent.
Hornblower stared through the darkness at the vague mass of the Natividad, wallowing in the waves.
‘Never!’ came the reply – Crespo’s voice, he could have sworn to it, thin and high pitched. It added two or three words of obscene insult.
Hornblower could afford to smile at that, even through his weariness. He had fought his battle and won it.
‘You have done all that brave men could do,’ he shouted.
‘Not all, yet, Captain,’ wailed the voice in the darkness.
Then something caught Hornblower’s eyes – a wavering glow or red about the Natividad’s vague bows.
‘Crespo, you fool!’ he shouted. ‘Your ship’s on fire! Surrender, while you can.’
‘Never!’
The Lydia’s guns, hard against the Natividad’s side, had flung their flaming wads in amongst the splintered timbers. The tinder-dry wood of the old ship had taken fire from them, and the fire was spreading fast. It was brighter already than when Hornblower had noticed it; the ship would be a mass of flames soon. Hornblower’s first duty was to his own ship – when the fire should reach the powder charges on the Natividad’s decks, or when it should attain the magazine, the ship would become a volcano of flaming fragments, imperilling the Lydia.
‘We must haul off from her, Mr Bush,’ said Hornblower, speaking formally to conceal the tremor in his voice. ‘Man the braces, there.’
The Lydia swung away, close hauled, clawing her way up to windward of the flaming wreck. Bush and Hornblower gazed back at her. There were bright flames now to be seen, spouting from the shattered bows – the red glow was reflected in the heaving sea around her. And then, as they looked, they saw the flames vanish abruptly, like an extinguished candle. There was nothing to be seen at all, nothing save darkness and the faint glimmer of the wave crests. The sea had swallowed the Natividad before the flames could destroy her.
‘Sunk, by God!’ exclaimed Bush, leaning out over the rail.
Hornblower still seemed to hear that last wailing ‘Never!’ during the seconds of silence that followed. Yet he was perhaps the first of all his ship’s company to recover from the shock. He put his ship about and ran down to the scene of the Natividad’s sinking. He sent off Hooker and the cutter to search for survivors – the cutter was the only boat left, for gig and jolly boat had been shattered by the Natividad’s fire, and the planks of the launch were floating five miles away. They picked up a few men – two were hauled out of the water by men in the Lydia’s chains, and the cutter found half a dozen swimmers; that was all. The Lydia’s crew tried to be kind to them, as they stood on her deck in the lantern light with the water streaming from their ragged clothes and their lank black hair, but they were sullen and silent; there was even one who struggled for a moment, as if to continue the battle which the Natividad had fought so desperately.
‘Never mind, we’ll make topmen of them yet,’ said Hornblower, trying to speak lightly.
Fatigue had reached such a pitch now that he was speaking as if out of a dream, as if all these solid surroundings of his, the ship, her guns and masts and sails, Bush’s burly figure, were unreal and ghostlike, and only his weariness and the ache inside his skull were existing things. He heard his voice as though he were speaking from a yard away.
‘Aye aye, sir,’ said the boatswain.
Anything was grist that came to the Royal Navy’s mill – Harrison was prepared to make seamen out of the strangest human material; he had done so all his life, for that matter.
‘What course shall I set, sir?’ asked Bush, as Hornblower turned back to the quarterdeck.
‘Course?’ said Hornblower, vaguely. ‘Course?’
It was terribly hard to realise that the battle was over, the Natividad sunk, that there was no enemy afloat within thousands of miles of sea. It was hard to realise that the Lydia was in acute danger, too; that the pumps, clanking away monotonously, were not quite able to keep the leaks under, that the Lydia still had a sail stretched under her bottom, and stood in the acutest need of a complete refit.
Hornblower came by degrees to realise that now he had to start a new chapter in the history of the Lydia, to make fresh plans. And there was a long line of people waiting for immediate orders, too – Bush, here, and the boatswain and the carpenter and the gunner and that fool Laurie. He had to force his tired brain to think again. He estimated the wind’s force and direction, as though it were an academic exercise and not a mental process which for twenty years had been second nature to him. He went wearily down to his cabin and found the shattered chart cases amid the indescribable wreckage, and he pored over the torn chart.
He must report his success at Panama as soon as he could; that was obvious to him now. Perhaps he could refit there, although he saw small chance of it in that inhospitable roadstead, especially with yellow fever in the town. So he must carry the shattered Lydia to Panama. He laid off a course for Cape Mala, by a supreme effort compelled his mind to realise that he had a fair wind, and came up again with his orders to find that the mass of people who were clamouring for his attention had miraculously vanished. Bush had chased them all away, although he never discovered it. He gave the course to Bush, and then Polwheal materialised himself at his elbow, with boat cloak and hammock chair. Hornblower had no protest left in him. He allowed himself to be wrapped in the cloak, and he fell half fainting into the chair. It was twenty-one hours since he had last sat down. Polwheal had brought food, too, but he merely ignored that. He wanted no food! all he wanted was rest.
Then for a second he was wide awake again. He had remembered Lady Barbara, battened down below with the wounded in the dark and stifling bowels of the ship. But he relaxed at once. The blasted woman could look after herself – she was quite capable of doing so. Nothing mattered now. His head sank on his breast again. The next thing to disturb him was the sound of his own snores, and that did not disturb him long. He slept and he snored through all the din which the crew made in their endeavour to get the Lydia ship-shape again.
XVIII
What awoke Hornblower was the sun, which lifted itself over the horizon and shone straight into his eyes. He stirred and blinked, and for a space he tried, like a child, to shield his eyes with his hands and return to sleep. He did not know where he was, and for that time he did not care. Then he began to remember the events of yesterday, and he ceased trying to sleep and instead tried to wake up. Oddly, at first he remembered the details of the fighting and could not recall the sinking of the Natividad. When that recollection shot into his brain he was fully awake.
He rose from his chair, stretching himself painfully, for all his joints ached with the fatigues of yesterday. Bush was standing by the wheel, his face grey and lined and strangely old in the hard light. Hornblower nodded to him and received his salute in return; Bush was wearing his cocked hat over the dirty white bandage round his forehead. Hornblower would have spoken to him, but all his attention was caught up immediately in looking round the ship. There was a good breeze blowing which must have backed round during the night, for the Lydia could only just hold her course close hauled. She was under all plain sail; Hornblower’s rapid inspection revealed to him innumerable splices both in standing and running rigging; the jury mizzenmast seemed to be standing up well to its work, but every sail that was spread seemed to have at least one shot hole in it – some of them a dozen or more. They gave the ship a little of the appearance of a tattered vagabond. The first part of today’s work would be spreading a new suit of sails; new rigging could wait for a space.
It was only then, after weather and course and sail set had been noted, that Hornblower’s sailor’s eye came down to the decks. From forward came the monotonous clangour of the pumps; the clear white water which was gushing from them was the surest indication that the ship was making so much water that it could only just be kept in check. On the lee side gangway was a long, long row of corpses, each in its hammock. Hornblower flinched when he saw the length of the row, and it called for all his will to count them. There were twenty-four dead men along the gangway; and f
ourteen had been buried yesterday. Some of these dead might be – probably were – the mortally wounded of yesterday, but thirty-eight dead seemed certainly to indicate at least seventy wounded down below. Rather more than one-third of the Lydia’s company were casualties, then. He wondered who they were, wondered whose distorted faces were concealed beneath those hammocks.
The dead on deck outnumbered the living. Bush seemed to have sent below every man save for a dozen men to hand and steer, which was sensible of him, seeing that every one must be worn out with yesterday’s toil while one man out of every seven on board would have to be employed at the pumps until the shot holes could be got at and plugged. The rest of the crew, at first glance, were all asleep, sprawled on the main deck under the gangways. Hardly anyone had had the strength to sling a hammock (if their hammocks had survived the battle); all the rest lay as they had dropped, lying tangled here and there, heads pillowed on each other or on more unsympathetic objects like ring bolts and the hind axletrees of the guns.
There were still evident many signs of yesterday’s battle, quite apart from the sheeted corpses and the dark stains, not thoroughly swabbed, which disfigured the white planking. The decks were furrowed and grooved in all directions, with jagged splinters still standing up here and there. There were shot holes in the ship’s sides with canvas roughly stretched over them. The port sills were stained black with powder; on one of them an eighteen-pounder shot stood out, half buried in the tough oak. But on the other hand an immense amount of work had been done, from laying out the dead to securing the guns and frapping the breechings. Apart from the weariness of her crew, the Lydia was ready to fight another battle at two minutes’ notice.
Hornblower felt a prick of shame that so much should have been done while he slept lazily in his hammock chair. He forced himself to feel no illwill on that account. Although to praise Bush’s work was to admit his own deficiencies he felt that he must be generous.
‘Very good indeed, Mr Bush,’ he said, walking over to him; yet his natural shyness combined with his feeling of shame to make his speech stilted. ‘I am both astonished and pleased at the work you have accomplished.’
Captain Hornblower R. N. Page 47