‘Camels!’ exclaimed Mound, and as he realised all the implications his face lit up. ‘By George, sir, you’re right.’
Camels are a means of reducing the draught of a ship – loaded vessels lashed tightly one on each side and them emptied, so as to raise the centre ship farther out of the water. Mound was already grappling with the details.
‘There are lighters and barges in Riga, sir. They’ll give us some, sure as a gun. Plenty of sand to ballast ’em, or we can fill ’em with water and pump ’em out. With two big lighters I could lessen Harvey’s draught by five feet easy – lift her clear out of the water for that matter. Those lighters are two hundred tons burden an’ don’t draw more than a couple of feet empty.’
A difficulty had occurred to Hornblower while Mound was speaking, one which he had not thought of before.
‘How are you going to steer ’em all?’ he demanded. ‘They’ll be unmanageable.’
‘Rig a Danube rudder, sir,’ replied Mound instantly. ‘Make it big enough and you could steer anything with one.’
‘ “Give me a fulcrum and I will move the world”,’ quoted Hornblower.
‘Exactly, sir. An’ I’ll pierce the lighters for sweeps. There’ll be no beatin’ to wind’ard any more than in a raft. I could put the men to work at once if you’ll give the order, sir.’
Mound might have been a boy of ten instead of one of twenty from the eagerness of his voice. The languid calm was quite forgotten.
‘I’ll send a note to the Governor,’ said Hornblower, ‘asking for the loan of four lighters. I’ll make it six, in case of accidents. Have your plans ready in an hour’s time. You can draw upon this ship and the sloops for the materials and men you’ll need.’
‘Aye aye, sir.’
There was need for haste, for that every evening there came sullenly booming across the bay the sound of heavy guns firing, not the higher-pitched incisive growl of the field-pieces they had heard before, but the deep-toned roar of siege artillery; the enemy was trying a few shots with the first of the big guns dragged up into their battery. And the next morning, just as Hornblower came out on the quarterdeck, there was a sudden loud crash ashore, like a peal of thunder, to herald the opening salvo of the enemy. Its echoes had not died away before a more ragged salvo succeeded it, and then another more ragged still, and so on until the air was ceaselessly tormented by the loud reports, like a continuous thunderstorm from which the ear waited continually for relief that was not granted it. The masthead lookout reported a long smear of smoke drifted by the breeze across the countryside from the enemy’s battery.
‘Call away my barge,’ said Hornblower.
At Nonsuch’s boat booms there already lay an assortment of the boats of the squadron, piled high with the stores which had been taken out of the two bomb-ketches. The barge danced over the water in the sparkling dawn to where the bomb-ketches lay anchored, each with a lighter on either side. Duncan, captain of the Moth, was being rowed round the group in a jolly boat. He touched his hat as the barge approached.
‘Morning, sir,’ he said, and then instantly turned back to the work in hand, raising his speaking-trumpet to his lips. ‘Too much by the bows! Take up the for’ard cable another pawl!’
Hornblower had himself rowed on to the Harvey, and leaped from his barge to the lighter on her starboard side – not much of a leap, because she was laden down with ballast – without bothering officers or men for compliments. Mound was standing on his tiny quarterdeck, testing with his foot the tension of the big cable – one of Nonsuch’s – which was frapped round his own ship and both lighters, two turns round each, forward and aft.
‘Carry on, port side!’ he yelled.
In each of the lighters a large working party was stationed, the men equipped with shovels for the most part extemporised out of wood. At Mound’s order the men in the port-side lighter recommenced lustily shovelling the sand over the side. Clouds of it drifted astern on the faint wind. Mound tested the tension again.
‘Carry on, starboard side!’ he yelled again, and then, perceiving his Commodore approaching, he came to the salute.
‘Good morning, Mr Mound,’ said Hornblower.
‘Good morning, sir. We have to do this part of it step by step, you see, sir. I have the old ketch so light she’ll roll over in the cables if I give her the chance.’
‘I understand, Mr. Mound.’
‘The Russians were prompt enough sending out the lighters to us, sir.’
‘Can you wonder?’ replied Hornblower. ‘D’you hear the French battery at work?’
Mound listened and apparently heard it for the first time. He had been engrossed too deeply in his work to pay any attention to it before; his face was unshaven and grey with fatigue, for his activity had not ceased since Hornblower had summoned him the afternoon before. In that time both ketches had been emptied of their stores, the cables roused out and got across to them, the lighters received and laid alongside in the dark, and each group of three vessels bound into a single mass with the cables hauled taut by the capstans.
‘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 extemporised 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,’ repo
rted 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 lie 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 midshipman 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.
The Harvey and the Moth came creeping in until they were quite close to shore; Hornblower through his glass could see minute figures moving in their bows, and knew they were dropping their anchors. The sweeps worked spasmodically, first on one side and then on the other – Hornblower up in the gallery, his heart beating fast, could well picture Mound and Duncan on their quarterdecks shouting their orders to the rowers as they manoeuvred themselves about like beetles pinned to a card. They were placing themselves in position to drop other anchors at the stern, so that by veering and hauling in on their cables they could swing themselves so as to be able to point their mortars anywhere along a wide arc. Clausewitz and the staff looked on uncomprehending, having no notion of the meaning of these manoeuvres. Hornblower saw the stern anchors let go, and could see little groups of men bending to work at the capstans; the bomb-ketches turned almost imperceptibly first this way and then that as their captains trained them round by the aid of the leading marks on the shore.
‘There’s the “ready” flag going up in Harvey,’ said Hornblower, the glass at his eye.
The sheave in the block above his head shrilled noisily as the halliard ran over it, bearing the acknowledgement. A big puff of smoke suddenly spurted upwards from the Harvey’s bows; Hornblower at that distance could see nothing of the shell in its flight, and he waited nervously, compelling himself to search the whole area round about the battery to make sure of seeing the burst. And he saw nothing, nothing at all. Reluctantly he ordered hoisted the black cone for ‘unobserved’ and Harvey fired again. This time he could see the burst, a little volcano of smoke and fragments just beyond the battery.
‘That was over, sir,’ said Somers.
‘Yes. Make that to Harvey.’
Duncan had anchored Moth by now, and was flying the signal of readiness. Harvey’s next shell fell square in the centre of the battery, and immediately afterwards Moth’s first shell did the same. At once the two ketches began a systematic bombardment of the battery, dropping shells into it in constant succession, so that there was not a moment when a fountain of smoke and earth was not apparent within its earthworks. It was a plain rectangular structure, without traverses or internal subdivisions, and there was no shelter for the men within it now that their enemy had found means to circumvent their earthworks. They only maintained their fire for a few seconds, and then Hornblower could see them running from their guns; the interior of the battery looked like a disturbed ants’ nest. One of the big thirteen-inch shells landed full on the parapet, and the smoke clearing away revealed the breastwork blown flat, opening the interior of the battery to view from ground level in the village, and through the gap was visible the muzzle of a dismounted siege-gun, pointed skywards and helpless – a cheering sight for the defence. That was only the beginning. Gap after gap was blown in the earthworks; the whole interior was plastered with shells. At one moment there was a much bigger explosion than usual, and Hornblower guessed that an ‘expense magazine’ – the small store of gunpowder kept in the battery and continually replenished from the rear – had blown up. Down below him the defence had taken new heart, and every gun along the menaced front had reopened fire; it was a shot from the village, apparently, which hit the muzzle of the dismounted gun and flung it back upon the ground.
‘Signal “cease fire”,’ said Hornblower.
Thirteen-inch shells were not munitions of w
ar that could be readily obtained in the Baltic, and there was no purpose in wasting them upon a target which was silenced and at least made temporarily useless. And then came the countermove on the part of the attack, as he had expected. A battery of field artillery was coming over the distant slope, six guns, minute at that distance, jolting and swaying after their limbers. The country was still marshy, for the summer was not yet old enough to have dried up the fields, and the artillery, hock and axle-deep in the mire, made only slow progress.
‘Signal for the target to change,’ ordered Hornblower.
There was no means of observing the fall of the shells on the new target, for the bomb-ketches were dropping them just over the high dyke. It was a matter of chance should they do any destruction, but Hornblower could guess that the park and depots of an army of sixty thousand men conducting a first-class siege were likely to be both extensive and crowded; a few shells dropped there might do good. The first field battery was approaching the water’s edge, the horses wheeling round to leave the guns jointing at the bomb-ketches at neat geometrical intervals.
‘Harvey signals she’s shifting target, sir,’ reported Gerard.
‘Very good.’
Harvey was firing at the field battery; it took her a little while to get the range, and field-guns, spaced far apart in a long thin line, were not a good target for mortars, even though the fall of the shells was now under direct observation. And a second battery was coming up on the flank of the first and – Hornblower’s telescope could easily make them out across the narrow extremity of the bay – there were more guns coming into action to put the bomb-vessels under a cross-fire. One of Harvey’s shells burst close beside one of the guns, presumably killing every man serving it, but by chance leaving the gun itself still on its wheels. The other guns had opened fire, the smoke creeping lazily from their muzzles. Across the bay the other field batteries were coming into action, although at very long range for field artillery. There was no purpose in continuing to expose the bomb-ketches to the fire of the shore; Macdonald had two hundred field-guns, and there were only two bomb-ketches.
Admiral Hornblower Page 46