Hornblower and the Hotspur

Chapter X

“I’ll take this opportunity, Mr. Bush,” said Hornblower, “of repeating what I said before. I’m sorry you’re not being given your chance.”

“It can’t be helped, sir. It’s the way of the service,” replied the shadowy figure confronting Hornblower on the dark quarter-deck. The words were philosophical, but the tone was bitter. It was all part of the general logical madness of war, that Bush should feel bitter at not being allowed to risk his life, and that Hornblower, about to be doing so, should commiserate with Bush, speaking in flat formal tones as if he were not in the least excited—as if he were feeling no apprehension at all.

Hornblower knew himself well enough to be sure that if some miracle were to happen, if orders were to arrive forbidding him to take personal part in the coming raid, he would feel a wave of relief; delight as well as relief. But it was quite impossible, for the orders had definitely stated that ‘the landing party will be under the command of Captain Horatio Hornblower of the Hotspur.’ That sentence had been explained in advance in the preceding one… ‘because Lieut. Cotard is senior to Lieut. Bush.’ Cotard could not possibly have been transferred from one ship and given command of a landing party largely provided by another; nor could he be expected to serve under an officer junior to him, and the only way round the difficulty had been that Hornblower should command. Pellew, writing out those orders in the quiet of his magnificent cabin, had been like a Valkyrie in the Norse legends now attaining a strange popularity in England—he had been a Chooser of the Slain. Those scratches of his pen could well mean that Bush would live and Hornblower would die.

But there was another side to the picture. Hornblower had grudgingly to admit to himself that he would have been no more happy if Bush had been in command. The operation planned could only be successful if carried through with a certain verve and with an exactness of timing that Bush possibly could not provide. Absurdly, Hornblower was glad he was to command, and that was one demonstration in his mind of the defects of his temperament.

“You are sure about your orders until I return, Mr. Bush?” he said. “And in case I don’t return?”

“Yes, sir.”

Hornblower had felt a cold wave up his spine while he spoke so casually about the possibility of his death. An hour from now he might be a disfigured stiffening corpse.

“Then I’ll get myself ready,” he said, turning away with every appearance of nonchalance.

He had hardly reached his cabin when Grimes entered.

“Sir!” said Grimes, and Hornblower swung round and looked at him. Grimes was in his early twenties, skinny, highly strung, and excitable. Now his face was white—his duties as steward meant that he spent little time on deck in the sun—and his lips were working horribly.

“What’s the matter?” demanded Hornblower curtly.

“Don’t make me come with you, sir!” spluttered Grimes. “You don’t want me with you, sir, do you, sir?”

It was an astonishing moment. In all his years of service Hornblower had never met with any experience in the least similar, and he was taken aback. This was cowardice; it might even be construed as mutiny. Grimes had in the last five seconds made himself liable not merely to the cat but to the noose. Hornblower could only stand and stare, wordless.

“I’ll be no use, sir,” said Grimes. “I—I might scream!”

Now that was a very definite point. Hornblower, giving his orders for the raid, had nominated Grimes as his messenger and aide-de-camp. He had given no thought to the selection; he had been a very casual Chooser of the Slain. Now he was learning a lesson. A frightened man at his elbow, a man made clumsy by fear, could imperil the whole expedition. Yet the first words he could say echoed his earlier thoughts.

“I could hang you, by God!” he exclaimed.

“No, sir! No, sir! Please, sir—” Grimes was on the point of collapse; in another moment he would be down on his knees.

“Oh, for God’s sake—” said Hornblower. He was conscious of contempt, not for the coward, but for the man who allowed his cowardice to show. And then he asked himself by what right he felt this contempt. And then he thought about the good of the Service, and then—. He had no time to waste in these trivial analyses.

“Very well,” he snapped. “You can stay on board. Shut your mouth, you fool!”

Grimes was about to show gratitude, but Hornblower’s words cut it off short.

“I’ll take Hewitt out of the second boat. He can come with me. Pass the word for him.”

The minutes were fleeting by, as they always did with the final touches to put on to a planned scheme. Hornblower passed his belt through the loop on a cutlass sheath, and buckled it round him. A sword hanging on slings could be a hindrance, would strike against obstructions, and the cutlass was a handier weapon for what he contemplated. He gave a final thought to taking a pistol, and again rejected the idea. A pistol might be useful in certain circumstances, but it was a bulky encumbrance. Here was something more silent—a long sausage of stout canvas filled with sand, with a loop for the wrist. Hornblower settled it conveniently in his right hand pocket.

Hewitt reported, and had to be briefly told what was expected of him. The sidelong glance he gave to Grimes revealed much of what Hewitt thought, but there was no time for discussion; that matter would have to be sorted out later. Hewitt was shown the contents of the bundle originally allotted to Grimes—the flint and steel for use if the dark lantern were extinguished, the oily rags, the slow match, the quick match, the blue lights for instant intense combustion. Hewitt took solemn note of each item and weighed his sandbag in his hand.

“Very well. Come along,” said Hornblower.

“Sir!” said Grimes at that moment in a pleading tone, but Hornblower would not—indeed could not—spare time to hear any more.

On deck it was pitch dark, and Hornblower’s eyes took long to adjust themselves.

Officer after officer reported all ready.

“You’re sure of what you have to say, Mr. Cotard?”

“Yes, sir.”

There was no hint of the excitable Frenchman about Cotard. He was as phlegmatic as any commanding officer could desire.

“Fifty-one rank and file present, sir,” reported the captain of marines.

Those marines, brought on board the night before, had lain huddled below decks all day, concealed from the telescopes on Petit Minou.

“Thank you, Captain Jones. You’ve made sure no musket is loaded?”

“Yes, sir.”

Until the alarm was given not a shot was to be fired. The work was to be done with the bayonet and the butt, and the sandbag—but the only way to be certain of that was to keep the muskets unloaded.

“First landing party all down in the fishing boat, sir,” reported Bush.

“Thank you, Mr. Bush. Very well, Mr. Cotard, we may as well start.”

The lobster-boat, seized earlier in the night to the surprise of its crew, lay alongside. The crew were prisoners down below; their surprise was due to the breach of the traditional neutrality enjoyed during the long wars by fishing-boats. These men were all acquainted with Hornblower, had often sold him part of their catch in exchange for gold, yet they had hardly been reassured when they were told that their boat would be returned to them later. Now it lay alongside, and Cotard followed Hewitt, and Hornblower followed Cotard, down into it. Eight men were squatting in the bottom where the lobster-pots used to lie.

“Sanderson, Hewitt, Black, Downes take the oars. The rest of you get down below the gunners. Mr. Cotard, sit here against my knees, if you please.”

Hornblower waited until they had settled themselves. The black silhouette of the boat must appear no different in the dark night. Now came the moment.

“Shove off,” said Hornblower.

The oars dragged through the water, bit more effectively at the next stroke, pulled smoothly at the third, and they were leaving Hotspur behind them. They were setting off on an adventure, and Hornblower was only too conscious that it was his own fault. If he had not been bitten with this idea they might all be peacefully asleep on board; tomorrow men would be dead who but for him would still be alive.

He put the morbid thought to one side, and then immediately he had to do the same with thoughts about Grimes. Grimes could wait perfectly well until his return, and Hornblower would not trouble his mind about him until then. Yet even so, as Hornblower concentrated on steering the lobster-boat, there was a continual undercurrent of thought—like ship’s noises: during a discussion of plans—regarding how the crew on board would be treating Grimes, for Hewitt, before leaving the ship, would have certainly told the story to his cronies.

Hornblower, with his hand on the tiller, steered a steady course northward towards Petit Minou. A mile and a quarter to go, and it would never do if he missed the little jetty so that the expedition would end in a miserable fiasco. He had the faint outline of the steep hills on the northern shore of the Goulet to guide him; he knew them well enough now, after all these weeks of gazing at them, and the abrupt shoulder, where a little stream came down to the sea a quarter of a mile west of the semaphore, was his principal guide. He had to keep that notch open as the boat advanced, but after a few minutes he could actually make out the towering height of the semaphore itself, just visible against the dark sky, and then it was easy.

The oars groaned in the rowlocks, the blades splashing occasionally in the water; the gentle waves which raised them and lowered them seemed to be made of black glass. There was no need for a silent or invisible approach; on the contrary, the lobster-boat had to appear as if she were approaching on her lawful occasions. At the foot of the abrupt shore was a tiny half-tide jetty, and it was the habit of the lobster-boats to land there and put ashore a couple of men with the pick of the catch. Then, each with a basket on his head containing a dozen live lobsters, they would run along the track over the hills into Brest so as to be ready for the opening of the market, regardless of whether the boat was delayed by wind and tide or not. Hornblower, scouting at a safe distance in the jolly boat, had ascertained during a succession of nights such of the routine as he had not been able to pick up in conversation with the fishermen.

There it was. There was the jetty. Hornblower found his grip tightening on the tiller. Now came the loud voice of the sentry at the end of the jetty.

“Qui va la?”

Hornblower nudged Cotard with his knee, unnecessarily, for Cotard was ready with the answer.

“Camilla,” he hailed, and continued in French. “Lobster-boat. Captain Quillien.”

They were already alongside; the crucial moment on which everything depended. Black, the burly captain of the fo’c’sle, knew what he had to do the moment opportunity offered. Cotard spoke from the depths of the boat.

“I have the lobster for your officer.”

Hornblower, standing up and reaching for the jetty, could just see the dark of the sentry looking down, but Black had already leaped up from the bows like a panther, Downs and Sanderson following him. Hornblower saw a swift movement of shadow, but there was not a sound—not a sound.

“All right, sir,” said Black.

Hornblower, with a line in his hand, managed to propel himself up the slippery side, arriving on the top on his hands and knees. Black was standing holding the inanimated body of the sentry in his arms. Sandbags were silent; a vicious blow from behind at the exposed back of the neck, a quick grab, and it was finished. The sentry had not even dropped his musket; he and it were safe in Black’s monstrous arms.

Black lowered the body—senseless or dead, it did not matter which—on to the slimy stone flags of the jetty.

“If he makes a sound cut his throat,” said Hornblower.

This was all orderly and yet unreal, like a nightmare. Hornblower, turning to drop a clove-hitch with his line over a bollard, found his upper lip was still drawn up in a snarl like a wild beast’s. Cotard was already beside him; Sanderson had already made the boat fast forward.

“Come on.”

The jetty was only a few yards long; at the far end, where the paths diverged up to the batteries, they would find the second sentry. From the boat they passed up a couple of empty baskets, and Black and Cotard had them on their heads and set off, Cotard in the middle, Hornblower on the left, and Black on the right where his right arm would be free to swing his sandbag. There was the sentry. He made no formal challenge, greeting them in jocular fashion while Cotard spoke again about the lobster which was the recognized though unofficial toll paid to the officer commanding the guard for the use of the jetty. It was a perfectly ordinary encounter until Black dropped his basket and swung with his sandbag and they all three leaped on the sentry, Cotard with his hands on the sentry’s throat, Hornblower striking madly with his sandbag as well, desperately anxious to make sure. It was over in an instant, and Hornblower looked round at the dark and silent night with the sentry’s body lying at his feet. He and Black and Cotard were the thin point of the wedge that had pierced the ring of the French defences. It was time for the wedge to be driven home. Behind them were the half-dozen others who had crouched in the lobster-boat, and following them up were the seventy marines and seamen in the boats of the Hotspur.

They dragged the second sentry back to the jetty and left him with the two boat-keepers. Now Hornblower had eight men at his back as he set his face to the steep climb up the path, the path he had only seen through a telescope from Hotspur’s deck. Hewitt was behind him; the smell of hot metal and fat in the still night air told him that the dark lantern was still alight. The path was stony and slippery, and Hornblower had to exert his self-control as he struggled up it. There was no need for desperate haste, and although they were inside the ring of sentries, in an area where civilians apparently passed fairly freely, there was no need to scramble noisily and attract too much attention.

Now the path became less steep. Now it was level, and here it intersected another path at right angles.

“Halt!” grunted Hornblower to Hewitt, but he took another two paces forward while Hewitt passed the word back; a sudden stop would mean that the people behind would be cannoning into each other.

This was indeed the summit. Owing to the levelling-off of the top this was an area unsearched by telescopes from the Hotspur; even from the main topgallant masthead, with the ship far out in the Iroise, they had not been able to view the ground here. The towering telegraph had been plainly in view, and at its foot just a hint of a roof, but they had not been able to see what was at ground level here, nor had Hornblower been able to obtain any hint in his conversations with fishermen.

“Wait!” he whispered back, and stepped cautiously forward, his hands extended in front of him. Instantly they came into contact with a wooden paling, quite an ordinary fence and by no means a military obstacle. And this was a gate, an ordinary gate with a wooden latch. Obviously the semaphore station was not closely guarded—fence and gate were only polite warnings to unauthorized intruders—and of course there was no reason why they should be, here among the French coastal batteries.

“Hewitt! Cotard!”

They came up to him and all three strained their eyes in the darkness.

“Do you see anything?”

“Looks like a house,” whispered Cotard.

Something in two storeys. Windows in the lower one, and above that a sort of platform. The crew who worked the telegraph must live here. Hornblower cautiously fumbled with the latch of the gate, and it opened without resistance. Then a sudden noise almost in his ear tensed him rigid, to relax again. It was a cock crowing, and he could hear a fluttering of wings. The semaphore crew must keep chickens in coops here, and the cock was giving premature warning of day. No reason for further delay; Hornblower whispered his orders to his band whom he called up to the gate. Now was the time; and this was the moment when the parties of marines must be half-way up the climb to the battery. He was on the point of giving the final word when he saw something else which stopped him dead, and Cotard grabbed his shoulder at the same moment. Two of the windows before him were showing a light, a tiny glimmer, which nevertheless to their dilated pupils made the whole cottage plain to their view.

“Come on!”

They dashed forward, Hornblower, Cotard, Hewitt, and the two men with axes in one group, the other four musket men scattering to surround the place. The path led straight to a door, again with a wooden latch, which Hornblower feverishly tried to work. But the door resisted; it was bolted on the inside, and at the rattling of the latch a startled cry made itself heard inside. A woman’s voice! It was harsh and loud, but a woman’s voice, undoubtedly. The axeman at Hornblower’s shoulder heaved up his axe to beat in the door, but at the same moment the other axeman shattered a window and went leaping through followed by Cotard. The woman’s voice rose to a scream; the bolt was drawn and the door swung open and Hornblower burst in.

A tallow dip lit the odd scene, and Hewitt opened the shutter of the dark lantern to illuminate it further, sweeping its beam in a semicircle. There were large baulks of timber, each set at an angle of forty-five degrees, to act as struts for the mast. Where floor space remained stood cottage furniture, a table and chairs, a rush mat on the floor, a stove. Cotard stood in the centre with sword and pistol, and at the far side stood a screaming woman. She was hugely fat, with a tangle of black hair, and all she wore was a nightshirt that hardly came to her knees. There was an inner door from which emerged a bearded man with hairy legs showing below his shirt-tails. The woman still screamed, but Cotard spoke loudly in French, waving his pistol—empty presumably—and the noise ceased, not, perhaps, because of Cotard’s threats but because of the woman’s sheer curiosity regarding these dawn intruders. She stood goggling at them, making only the most perfunctory gestures to conceal her nakedness.

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. Cotard, 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 charges 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.

Cotard 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 Cotard.

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 he most effective in living-room and bedroom. Hewitt in an inspired moment tore the rush mat up from the floor and flung it over the 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 Cotard.

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 Cotard. “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 Cotard, 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 Cotard.

“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.

“Cotard, take the musket men out to the flank. You others, come with me.”

There was the great battery with 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 Cotard 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 axehandle 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 a wall of cartridges, serge cylinders ready filled, and the other 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 cartridge, 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 Cotard 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, Cotard. Come on!”

They broke into a jogtrot.

“Steady, there!” yelled Jones. He was concerned about panic among these 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 Cotard gazed at it in mesmerized horror as it came to rest six feet from their left hands.

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. Cotard 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 Cotard’s upper armbone, shattering it. One of the axemen who had not left caught him as he was about to fall.

“Ah—ah—ah!” gasped Cotard, 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.”

Cotard 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 Cotard was not satisfied.

“My sword! My sword!”

“I’ll look after your sword,” said Hornblower. These absurd notions of honour were so deeply ingrained that even in these conditions Cotard could not bear the thought of leaving his sword on the field of battle. Hornblower realized he had no cutlass as he picked up Cotard’s sword. The axeman had gathered up the books and papers.

“Help Mr. Cotard down,” said Hornblower, and added, as another thought struck him. “Put a scarf round his arm above the wound and strain it tight. Understand?”

Cotard, supported by the other axeman was already tottering down the path. Movement meant agony. That heartrending “ah—ah—ah!” came back to Hornblower’s ears at every step Cotard took.

“Here they come!” said the marine lieutenant.

The skirmishing Frenchmen, emboldened by the near approach of their main body, were charging forward. A hurried glance told Hornblower that the others were all down on the jetty; the lobster-boat was actually pushing off, full of men.

“Tell your men to run for it,” he said, and the moment after they started he followed them.

It was a wild dash, slipping and sliding, down the path to the jetty, with the French yelling in pursuit. But here was the covering party, as Hornblower had ordered so carefully the day before; Hotspur’s own thirteen marines, under their own sergeant. They had built a breastwork across the jetty, again as Hornblower had ordered when he had visualized this hurried retreat. It was lower than waist-high, hurriedly put together with rocks and fish-barrels full of stones. The hurrying mob poured over it. Hornblower, last of all, gathered himself together and leaping over it, arms and legs flying, to stumble on the far side and regain his footing by a miracle.

“Hotspur’s marines! Line the barricade. Get into the boats, you others!”

Twelve marines knelt at the barricade; twelve muskets levelled themselves over it. At the sight of them the pursuing French hesitated, tried to halt.

“Aim low!” shouted the marine lieutenant hoarsely.

“Go back and get the men into the boats, Mr. What’s-your-name,” snapped Hornblower. “Have the launch ready to cast off, while you shove off in the yawl and get away.”

The French were coming forward again; Hornblower looked back and saw the lieutenant drop off the jetty on the heels of the last marine.

“Now sergeant. Let ‘em have it.”

“Fire!” said the sergeant.

That was a good volley, but there was not a moment to admire it.

“Come on!” yelled Hornblower. “Over to the launch!”

With the weight of Hotspur’s marines leaping into it the launch was drifting away by the time he was at the edge; there was a yard of black water for Hornblower to leap over, but his feet reached the gunnel and he pitched forward among the men clustered there; he luckily remembered to drop Cotard’s sword so that he fell harmlessly into the bottom of the boat without wounding anyone. Oars and boat-books thrust against the jetty and the launch surged away while Hornblower scrambled into the stern sheets. He almost stepped on Cotard’s face; Cotard was lying apparently unconscious on the bottom boards.

Now the oars were grinding in the rowlocks. They were twenty yards away, thirty yards away, before the first Frenchmen came yelling along the jetty, to stand dancing with rage and excitement on the very edge of the masonry. For an invaluable second or two they even forgot the muskets in their hands. In the launch the huddled men raised their voices in a yell of derision that excited Hornblower’s cold rage.

“Silence! Silence, all of you!”

The stillness that fell on the launch was more unpleasant than the noise. One or two muskets banged off on the jetty, and Hornblower, looking over his shoulder, saw a French soldier drop on one knee and take deliberate aim, saw him choose a target, saw the musket barrel fore-shorten until the muzzle was pointed directly at him. He was wildly contemplating throwing himself down into the bottom of the boat when the musket went off. He felt a violent jar through his body, and realized with relief that the bullet had burried itself in the solid oak transom of the launch against which he was sitting. He recovered his wits; looking forward he saw Hewitt trying to force his way aft to his side and he spoke to him as calmly as his excitement permitted.

“Hewitt! Get for’ard to the gun. It’s loaded with grape. Fire when it bears.” Then he spoke to the oarsmen and to Cargill at the tiller. “Hard-a-port. Starboard-side oars, back water.”

“Port side, back water.”

The launch ceased to turn; she was pointed straight at the jetty, and Hewitt, having shoved the other men aside, was cold-bloodedly looking along the sights of the four-pounder carronade mounted in the bows, fiddling with the elevating coign. Then he leaned over to one side and pulled the lanyard. The whole boat jerked sternwards abruptly with the recoil, as though when underway she had struck a rock, and the smoke came back round them in a sullen pall.

“Give way, starboard side! Pull! Hard-a-starboard!” The boat turned ponderously. “Give way, port side!”

Nine quarter pound grapeshot-balls had swept through the group on the jetty; there were struggling figures, quiescent figures, lying there. Bonaparte had a quarter of a million soldiers under arms, but he had now lost some of them. It could not be called a drop out of the bucketful, but perhaps a molecule. Now they were out of musket shot, and Hornblower turned to Cargill in the stern sheets beside him.

“You managed your part of the business well enough, Mr. Cargill.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Cargill had been appointed by Hornblower to land with the marines and to take charge of the boats and prepare them for the evacuation.

“But it might have been better if you’d sent the launch away first and kept the yawl back until the last. Then the launch could have lain off and covered the others with her gun.”

“I thought of that, sir. But I couldn’t be sure until the last moment how many men would be coming down in the last group. I had to keep the launch for that.”

“Maybe you’re right,” said Hornblower, grudgingly, and then, his sense of justice prevailing, “In fact I’m sure you’re right.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Cargill again, and, after a pause, “I wish you had let me come with you, sir.”

Some people had queer tastes, thought Hornblower bitterly to himself, having regard to Cotard lying unconscious with a shattered arm at their feet, but he had to smooth down ruffled feelings in these touchy young men thirsting for honour and for the promotion that honour might bring.

“Use your wits, man,” he said, bracing himself once more to think logically. “Someone had to be in charge on the jetty, and you were the best man for the job.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Cargill all over again, but still wistfully, and therefore still idiotically.

A sudden thought struck Hornblower, and he turned and stared back over his shoulder. He actually had to look twice, although he knew what he was looking for. The silhouette of the hills had changed. Then he saw a wisp of black smoke still rising from the summit. The semaphore was gone. The towering thing that had spied on their movements and had reported every disposition of the Inshore Squadron was no more. Trained British seamen and riggers and carpenters could not replace it—if they had such a job to do—in less than a week’s work. Probably the French would take two weeks at least; his own estimate would be three.

And there was Hotspur waiting for them, main-topsail aback, as he had seen her half an hour ago; half an hour that seemed like a week. The lobster-boat and the yawl were already going round to her port side, and Cargill steered for her starboard side; in these calm waters and with such a gentle wind there was no need for the boats to be offered a lee.

“Oars!” said Cargill, and the launch ran alongside, and there was Bush looking down on them from close overhead. Hornblower seized the entering-ropes and swung himself up. It was his right as captain to go first, and it was also his duty. He cut Bush’s congratulations short.

“Get the wounded out as quick as you can, Mr. Bush. Send a stretcher down for Mr. Cotard.”

“Is he wounded, sir?”

“Yes.” Hornblower had no desire to enter into unnecessary explanations. “You’ll have to lash him to it and then sway the stretcher up with a whip from the yardarm. His arm’s in splinters.”

“Aye aye, sir.” Bush by now had realized that Hornblower was in no conversational mood.

“The surgeon’s ready?”

“He’s started work, sir.”

A wave of Bush’s hand indicated a couple of wounded men who had come on board from the yawl and were being supported below.

“Very well.”

Hornblower headed for his cabin; no need to explain that he had his report to write; no need to make excuses. But as always after action he yearned for the solitude of his cabin even more than he yearned to sink down and forget his weariness. But at the second step he pulled up short. This was not a neat clean end to the venture. No peace for him at the moment, and he swore to himself under this final strain, using filthy black blasphemies such as he rarely employed.

He would have to deal with Grimes, and instantly. He must make up his mind about what he should do. Punish him? Punish a man for being a coward? That would be like punishing a man for having red hair. Hornblower stood first on one foot and then on the other, unable to pace, yet striving to goad his weary mind to further action. Punish Grimes for showing cowardice? That was more to the point. Not that it would do Grimes any good, but it would deter other men from showing cowardice. There were officers who would punish, not in the interests of discipline, but because they thought punishment should be inflicted in payment for crime, as sinners had to go to Hell. Hornblower would not credit himself with the divine authority some officers thought natural.

But he would have to act. He thought of the court martial. He would be the sole witness, but the court would know he was speaking the truth. His word would decide Grimes’ fate, and then—the hangman’s noose, or at the very least five hundred lashes, with Grimes screaming in pain until he should fall unconscious, to be nursed round for another day of torture, and another after that, until he was a gibbering idiot with neither mind nor strength left.

Hornblower hated the thought. But he remembered that the crew must have already guessed. Grimes must have already started his punishment, and yet the discipline of the Hotspur must be preserved. Hornblower would have to do his duty; he must pay one of the penalties for being a naval officer, just as he suffered sea-sickness—just as he risked his life. He would have Grimes put under arrest at once, and while Grimes was spending twenty-four hours in irons he could make up his mind to the final decision. He strode aft to his cabin, with all relief gone from the thought of relaxation.

Then he opened the door, and there was no problem left; only horror, further horror. Grimes hung there, from a rope threaded through the hook that supported the lamp. He was swaying with the gentle motion of the ship, his feet dragging on the deck so that even his knees were almost on the deck too. There was a blackened face and protruding tongue—actually there was no likeness to Grimes at all in the horrible thing hanging there. Grimes had not the courage to face the landing operation, but when the realization had come to him, when the crew had displayed their feelings, he had yet had the determination to do this thing, to submit himself to this slow strangulation, falling with a small preliminary jerk from a cramped position crouching on the cot.

In all the crew of the Hotspur Grimes had been the one man who as captain’s steward could find the necessary privacy to do this thing. He had foreseen the flogging or the hanging, he had suffered the scorn of his shipmates; there was bitter irony in the thought that the semaphore station which he had feared to attack had turned out to be defended by a helpless civilian and his wife.

Hotspur rolled gently on the swell, and as she rolled the lolling head and the dangling arms swayed in unison, and the feet scraped over the deck. Hornblower shook off the horror that had seized him, drove himself to be clear-headed once more despite his fatigue and his disgust. He went to the door of the cabin; it was excusable that no sentry had yet been reposted there, seeing that the Hotspur’s marines had only just come on board.

“Pass the word for Mr. Bush,” he said.

Within a minute Bush hurried in, to pull up short as soon as he saw the thing.

“I’ll have that removed at once, if you please, Mr. Bush. Put it over the side. Give it a burial, Christian burial, if you like.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

Bush shut his mouth after his formal statement of compliance. He could see that Hornblower was in even less a conversational mood in this cabin than he had been when on deck. Hornblower passed into the chart-room and squeezed himself into the chair, and sat still, his hands motionless on the table. Almost immediately he heard the arrival of the working party Bush had sent. He heard loud amazed voices, and something like a laugh, all instantly repressed when they realized that he was next door. The voices died to hoarse whispers. There was a clump or two, and then a dragging noise and he knew the thing was gone.

Then he got to his feet to carry out the resolution formed during his recent clarity of mind. He walked firmly into the cabin, a little like someone unwillingly going into a duel. He did not want to; he hated this place, but in a tiny ship like Hotspur he had nowhere else to go. He would have to grow used to it. He put aside the weak thought that he could move himself into one of the screened-off cabins in the ‘tween decks, and send, for instance, the warrant officers up here. That would occasion endless inconvenience, and—even more important—endless comment as well. He had to use this place and the longer he contemplated the prospect the less inviting it would be. And he was so tired he could hardly stand. He approached the cot; a mental picture developed in his mind’s eye of Grimes kneeling on it, rope round his neck, to pitch himself off. He forced himself coldly to accept that picture, as something in the past. This was the present, and he dropped on to the cot, shoes on his feet, cutlass-sheath at his side, sandbag in his pocket. Grimes was not present to help him with those.