The Commodore

Chapter Fifteen

This was an ideal night in which to reconnoitre the entrance to the Frisches Haff. Overcast, so that not much light came from the summer sky with the sun only just below the horizon, and a strong breeze blowing—the sloop Hornblower had just quitted had single-reefed her topsails earlier in the evening. A strong breeze and a choppy sea meant that there would be far less chance of guard-boats—guard-boats manned by landsmen—rowing a close watch over this boom that Hornblower was setting out to investigate.

But at the same time Hornblower was suffering considerable personal inconvenience from the choppy sea. The cutter in whose sternsheets he sat was rearing and plunging, standing first on her bows and then on her stern, with the spray flying across her in a continuous sheet, so that a couple of hands had to bale all the time. The spray was finding its way remorselessly through the interstices of his boat-cloak, so that he was wet and cold, and the cold and the violent motion inevitably turned his mind towards seasickness. His stomach felt as uneasy as his body felt uncomfortable. In the darkness he could not see Vickery, beside him at the tiller, nor Brown tending the sheet, and he felt a poor sort of relief at the thought that his pallor and uneasiness were not apparent to them. Unlike some victims he had met he could never be seasick unselfconsciously, he told himself bitterly, and then with his usual rasping self-analysis he told himself that that should not surprise him, seeing that he was never unselfconscious at all.

He shifted his position in the stern of the cutter, and clutched his cloak more tightly round him. The Germans and Frenchmen guarding Pillau had as yet no knowledge that an English squadron was so close to them; it was less than an hour ago that he had come up in the darkness with the two sloops, leaving Nonsuch and the bomb-vessels over the horizon. A soft-hearted senior officer in Königsberg might easily hesitate before giving orders that a guard-boat should toilsomely row guard up and down the boom on such a blustery night, and even if the orders were given there was every chance that the petty officer in charge of the boat might shirk his duty—especially as there could not be much love lost between French who would occupy the higher ranks and the Germans who would fill the lower ones.

A low warning cry came from the lookout in the bows, and Vickery put down his tiller a trifle, bringing the cutter closer to the wind. She rose over a crest, and then as she came down in the trough a dark object appeared close overside, dimly visible in the darkness in a flurry of foam.

“A cable, sir,” reported Vickery. “An’ there’s the boom, right ahead.”

On the heaving surface of the sea just ahead could be seen a faint hint of blackness.

“Lay me alongside it,” said Hornblower, and Vickery turned up into the wind, and at his shouted order the lugsail came down and the cutter ranged herself against the boom. The wind was blowing not quite along it, so that there was a tiny lee on their side of the boom; on the far side the steep waves broke against it with a roar, but on this side the surface for a narrow space was smooth although covered with foam that reflected what little light made its way from the dark sky. The bowmen had hooked on to the cable just where it was secured to the boom.

Hornblower put off his cloak and left himself exposed to the spray which hurtled at him, poised himself for a leap, and sprang for the boom. As he landed on it a wave broke across it, sousing him to the skin, and he had to clutch desperately with fingers and toes to save himself from being washed off. He was riding an enormous tree trunk, floating on the surface with very little of itself exposed above the surface. With the best timber country in Europe to draw upon, and easy water transport available, it was, of course, certain that the French would select the heaviest trees possible to guard the entrance to the port. He clawed his way on all fours along the log, balancing in nightmare fashion on his pitching and rolling mount. An active topman, or Vickery for that matter, would probably walk upright, but then Hornblower wanted the evidence of his own senses regarding the boom, not a report at secondhand. The cable, when he reached it, was the largest he had ever seen in his life—a thirty-inch cable at least; the largest cable Nonsuch carried was only nineteen inches. He felt about the log with inquiring fingers while the icy water soused him to the ears, and found what he was expecting to find, one of the chain cables that attached this log to the next. It was a two-inch chain cable with a breaking strain of a hundred tons or so, heavily stapled down to the log, and further search immediately revealed another one. Presumably there were others below the surface, making four or five altogether. Even a ship of the line, charging down full tilt before the wind, would be hardly likely to break that boom, but would only cause herself desperate under-water damage. Peering through the spray, he could see the end of the next log and its cable; the gap was some ten feet only. The wind, blowing almost lengthwise along the boom, had pushed it down to leeward as far as the cables would allow, boom and cables making a herring-bone with the cables as taut as could be.

Hornblower clawed his way back down the trunk, poised himself, and leaped for the boat. In the darkness, with the irregular motion of boom and boat in the choppy sea, it was hard to time the moment to jump, and he landed awkwardly across the gunwale with one leg in the sea, and Vickery hauled him into the boat without much dignity left him.

“Let her drop down to leeward,” ordered Hornblower. “I want soundings taken at every log.”

Vickery handled the boat well. He kept her bows to the wind after shoving off, and with a couple of oars pulling steadily he manoeuvred her past each cable as the boat drifted to leeward. Brown stood amidships, balancing himself against the boat’s extravagant plunges, while he took soundings with the awkward thirty-foot sounding pole. It called for a powerful man to handle that thing in this wind, but properly used it was quicker and far less noisy than a hand lead. Four fathoms—three and a half—four—the boom was laid right across the fairway, as was only to be expected. At the windward end it was not more than a couple of hundred yards—a cable’s length—from the beach at Pillau, and Hornblower, staring into the night, more than suspected a supplementary boom from that shore which, overlapping this one, would compel any vessel entering to go about so as to make the turn. That meant that any ship trying to enter with hostile intentions would be sunk or set afire for certain by the heavy guns in Pillau.

They reached the leeward end of the boom; a stretch of clear water extended from here towards the sandspit—the Nehrung, to use the curious German word for it—which divided the Haff from the Baltic for twenty miles. The open stretch must be a quarter of a mile wide, but it was useless for navigation. Brown’s pole recorded a depth of ten feet for a couple of soundings, and then the water shallowed to no more than six or eight.

Vickery suddenly put his hand on Hornblower’s arm and pointed to the land. There was a nucleus of greater darkness there—a guard-boat beating out through the shallows to keep watch over the boom.

“Out oars,” said Hornblower. “Get out to sea.”

There were thrum mats round the looms of the oars to muffle the noise they made against the thole-pins; the men put their backs into their work, and the cutter crept out to sea as the guard-boat continued its course. When the two boats were far enough apart for the sail to be invisible Hornblower gave orders for the lug to be set and they began the beat back to Lotus, with Hornblower shivering uncontrollably in his wet clothes, bitterly ashamed though he was that Vickery should be aware that his Commodore should shiver on account of a mere wet jacket which any tough seaman would think nothing of. It was irritating, though it was no more than was to be expected, that the first attempt to find Lotus in the darkness should be unsuccessful, and the cutter had to go about and reach to windward on the other tack before at last they picked up the loom of her in the night. When her hail reached their ears Brown made a speaking-trumpet of his hands.

“Commodore!” he shouted, and Vickery turned the cutter into the Lotus’s lee, and Hornblower went up the sloop’s low side as the two came together. On the quarter-deck Vickery turned to him for orders.

“Haul up and make an offing, Mr. Vickery,” said Hornblower. “Make sure Raven follows us. We must be out of sight of land by dawn.”

Down in Vickery’s tiny cabin, stripping off his wet clothes, with Brown hovering round him, Hornblower tried to make his dulled mind work on the problem before him. Brown produced a towel and Hornblower rubbed a little life into his chilled limbs. Vickery knocked and entered, coming, as soon as he had seen his ship on her proper course, to see that his Commodore had all that he needed. Hornblower straightened up after towelling his legs and hit his head with a crash against the deck beams; in this small sloop there was hardly more than five feet clearance. Hornblower let out an oath.

“There’s another foot of headroom under the skylight, sir,” said Vickery, diplomatically.

The skylight was three feet by two, and standing directly beneath it Hornblower could just stand upright, and even then his hair brushed the skylight. And the lamp swung from a hook in a deck beam beside the aperture; an incautious movement on Hornblower’s part brought his bare shoulder against it so that warm stinking oil ran out of the receiver on to his collarbone. Hornblower swore again.

“There’s hot coffee being brought to you, sir,” said Vickery.

The coffee when it came was of a type which Hornblower had not tasted for years—a decoction of burnt bread with the merest flavouring of coffee—but at least it was warming. Hornblower sipped it and handed back the cup to Brown, and then took his dry shirt from the breech of the twelve-pounder beside him and struggled into it.

“Any further orders, sir?” asked Vickery.

“No,” replied Hornblower heavily; his head poked forward to make sure it did not hit the deck beams again. He tried to keep the disappointment and the bad temper out of his voice, but he feared he had not succeeded. It irked him to have to admit that there was no chance of any successful attempt against the Frisches Haff, and yet prudence, common sense, his whole instinct dictated such a decision. There was no breaking that boom, and there was no going round it, not in any of the vessels under his command. He remembered bitterly his unnecessary words to Bush about the desirability of raiding this area from the sea. If ever he needed a lesson in keeping his mouth shut he was receiving one now. The whole flotilla was expecting action, and he was going to disappoint them, sail away without doing anything at all. In future he would double lock his jaws, treble curb his unruly tongue, for if he had not talked so light-heartedly to Bush there would not be nearly so much harm done; Bush, in the absence of orders to the contrary, would naturally have discussed the future with his officers, and hope would be running high—everyone was expecting great things of the bold Hornblower (said he to himself with a sneer) whose reputation for ingenious daring was so tremendous.

Unhappy, he went back again over the data. At the sandspit end of the boom there was water enough for a flotilla of ship’s boats to pass. He could send in three or four launches, with four-pounders mounted in the bows and with a hundred and fifty men on board. There was not much doubt that at night they could run past the boom, and, taking everyone in the lagoon by surprise, could work swift havoc on the coasting trade. Very likely they could destroy thousands of tons of shipping. But they would never get out again. The exit would be watched far too carefully; the batteries would be manned day and night, gunboats would swarm round the end of the boom, and even gunboats manned by landsmen, if there were enough of them, would destroy the flotilla. His squadron could ill afford to lose a hundred and fifty trained seamen—one-tenth of the total ships’ complements—and yet a smaller force might well be completely wasted.

No; no destruction of coasters would be worth a hundred and fifty seamen. He must abandon the idea; as if symbolical of that decision he began to pull on the dry trousers Vickery had provided for him. And then, with one leg in and one leg out, the idea suddenly came to him, and he checked himself, standing in his shirt with his left leg bare and his right leg covered only from ankle to knee.

“Mr. Vickery,” he said, “let’s have those charts out again.”

“Aye aye, sir,” said Vickery.

There was eagerness and excitement in his voice at once, echoing the emotion which must have been obvious in Hornblower’s tone—Hornblower took notice of it, and as he buckled his waistband he reaffirmed his resolution to be more careful how he spoke, for he must regain his reputation as a silent hero. He stared down at the charts which Vickery spread for him—he knew that Vickery was studying his face, and he took great care to show no sign whatever of reaching a decision one way or the other. When his mind was made up he said: “Thank you,” in the flattest tone he could contrive, and then, suddenly remembering his most non-committal exclamation, he cleared his throat.

“Ha-h’m,” he said, without any expression at all, and, pleased with the result, he repeated it and drew it out longer still, “Ha-a-a-a-h’m.”

The bewildered look in Vickery’s face was a great delight to him.

Next morning, back in his own cabin in Nonsuch, he took a mild revenge in watching the faces of his assembled captains as he laid the scheme before them. One and all, they thirsted for the command, hotly eager to risk life and liberty on a mission which might at first sight seem utterly harebrained. The two commanders yearned for the chance of promotion to post rank; the lieutenants hoped they might become commanders.

“Mr. Vickery will be in command,” said Hornblower, and had further opportunity of watching the play of emotion over the faces of his audience. But as in this case everyone present had a right to know why he had been passed over, he gave a few words of explanation.

“The two captains of the bomb-vessels are irreplaceable; there are no other lieutenants with us who can use their infernal machines as well as they can. I don’t have to explain to you why Captain Bush is irreplaceable. It was Mr. Vickery who happened to go with me to investigate the boom, and so he happens to know more about the situation than Mr. Cole, who’s the other obvious candidate for the command.”

There was no harm in soothing Cole’s feelings with an excuse like that, for no good end would be served by letting people guess that he would not trust Cole with any command out of his sight—poor old Cole, grey-haired and bowed, almost too old for his work, hoping against hope for promotion to captain. Hornblower had an uneasy feeling that Cole saw through the excuse, and had to comfort himself with the trite thought that no war can be fought without someone’s feelings being hurt. He passed on hurriedly to the next point.

“Having settled that question, gentlemen, I would welcome your views on who else should go as Mr. Vickery’s subordinates. Mr. Vickery first, as he is most concerned.”

When those details were settled the next step was to prepare the four boats for the expedition—Nonsuch’s launch and cutter, and the cutters from Lotus and Raven. A four-pounder in the eyes of the launch, a three-pounder in the eyes of each of the cutters; food, water, ammunition, combustibles for setting captures on fire. The crews that had been told off for the expedition were paraded and inspected, the seamen with pistols and cutlasses, the marines with muskets and bayonets. At the end of the day Vickery came back on board Nonsuch for a final confirmation of the future rendezvous.

“Good luck,” said Hornblower.

“Thank you, sir,” said Vickery.

He looked frankly into Hornblower’s eyes.

“I have so much to thank you for, sir,” he added.

“Don’t thank me, thank yourself,” said Hornblower testily.

He found it particularly irksome to be thanked for risking young Vickery’s life. He calculated to himself that if he had married as a midshipman he might by now be the father of a son just Vickery’s age.

At nightfall the squadron stood in towards the land. The wind was backing northerly a little, but it was still blowing a strong breeze, and although the night was not quite as overcast as the preceding one, there was every chance that the boats would slip through unobserved. Hornblower watched them go, just as two bells struck in the middle watch, and as they vanished into the greyness he turned away. Now he would have to wait. It interested him to discover once more that he would genuinely and sincerely have preferred to be in action himself, that he would rather be risking life and limb and liberty there in the Frisches Haff than be here safe at sea with nothing to do but await results. He looked on himself as a coward; he dreaded mutilation and he disliked the thought of death only less than that, so that it was a matter of peculiar interest to find that there were some things he disliked even more than danger. When a long enough time had elapsed for the boats to have passed the boom—or for them to have fallen into the hands of the enemy—Hornblower went below to rest for the brief interval before dawn, but he could only pretend to sleep, he could only hold himself down in his cot and prevent himself by sheer mental effort from tossing and turning. It was a positive relief to go out on the half-deck again when the sky began to grow lighter, to souse himself under the head-pump, and then to go up on the quarter-deck and drink coffee there, glancing the while over the starboard quarter where (with the ship hove-to on the port tack) lay Pillau and the entrance to the Haff.

The growing daylight revealed it all through Hornblower’s glass. At random cannon-shot lay the yellow and green headland on which Pillau was set; the twin church steeples were clearly visible. The line of the boom showed up, lying across the entrance, marked by breaking waves and occasionally a glimpse of dark timber. Those dark mounds above the water’s edge must be the batteries thrown up there to defend the entrance. On the other side lay the long line of the Nehrung, a yellowish green line of sandhills, rising and falling with minute variations of altitude as far as the eye could see, and beyond. But through the entrance there was nothing to see at all, nothing except grey water, flecked here and there with white where the shoals dotted the lagoon. The opposite shore of the Haff was too distant to be visible from the deck.

“Captain Bush,” ordered Hornblower, “would you please be good enough to send an officer with good eyes to the masthead with a glass?”

“Aye aye, sir.”

Hornblower watched the young lieutenant dashing up the rigging, moving as fast as he could with his Commodore’s eye on him, hanging back downward as he scaled the futtock-shrouds, going hand over hand up the topgallant-shrouds, Hornblower knew that in his present condition he could not do that without resting in the maintop for a space, and he also knew that his eyes were not as good as they were—not as good as the lieutenant’s. He watched the lieutenant settle himself at the topgallant mast-head, adjust his glass, and sweep the horizon, and he waited impatiently for a report. Unable to wait longer he grabbed his speaking-trumpet.

“Mast-head, there! What do you see of the shore inside?”

“Nothing, sir. It’s too hazy to see plain. But I can see no sails, sir.”

Maybe the garrison was laughing up their sleeves at him. Maybe the boats had fallen straight into their hands, and now they were amusing themselves watching the squadron beginning an endless wait for any further sight of the lost boats and seamen. Hornblower refused to allow himself to be pessimistic. He set himself to picture the state of affairs in the batteries and in the town, when the dawn revealed a British squadron lying-to just out of range. How the drums would beat and trumpets peal, as the troops were hurriedly turned out to guard against a possible landing. That was what must be going on at this very moment. The garrison, the French governor, must be still unaware as yet that wolves had slipped into their sheep-fold, that British boat crews had penetrated into the waters of the Haff where no enemy had been seen since Danzig fell to the French five years back. Hornblower tried to comfort himself with thought of all the additional bustle that would develop as soon as the situation disclosed itself to the enemy; the messengers that would gallop with warnings, the gunboats that would be hastily warned, the coasters and barges which would seek the shelter of the nearest batteries—if batteries there were; Hornblower was willing to bet that there was none between Elbing and Königsberg, for none had been necessary so far.

“Mast-head! Can’t you see anything inshore?”

“No, sir—yes, sir. There’s gunboats putting out from the town.”

Hornblower could see those himself, a flotilla of small two-masted vessels, rigged with the sprit-mainsails usual to small Baltic craft, putting out from Elbing. They were a little like Norfolk wherries. Presumably they each carried one heavy gun, a twenty-four-pounder possibly, mounted right up in the eyes of the boat. They anchored at intervals in the shoal water, obviously as a further protection to the boom in case of an attempt upon it. Four of them moved right across and anchored to guard the shallows between the boom and the Nehrung—not exactly locking the stable door after the horse had been stolen, decided Hornblower, rejecting the simile after it came to his mind; they were locking the stable door to prevent the thief getting out, if they knew as yet (which was highly doubtful) that there was a thief inside. The haziness was fast clearing; overhead the sky was almost blue and a watery sun was showing through.

“Deck, there! If you please, sir, there’s a bit of smoke in sight now, right up the bay. Can’t see more than that, sir, but it’s black smoke and might be from a burning ship.”

Bush, measuring with his eye the dwindling distance between the ship and the boom, was giving orders to brace up and work a trifle farther out to sea again, and the two sloops conformed to the Nonsuch’s movements. Hornblower wondered whether or not he had put too much trust in young Mound with the bomb-ketches. Mound had an important rendezvous for next morning; with the Moth and the Harvey he was out of sight below the horizon. So far the garrison of Elbing had seen only the three British ships, and did not know of the existence of the ketches. That was well—as long as Mound carried out his orders correctly. Or a gale might blow up, or a shift of the wind might raise too much of a surf for the project Hornblower had in mind. Hornblower felt anxiety surge upon him. He had to force himself to relax, to appear composed. He permitted himself to walk the deck, but slowed down his nervous strides to a casual saunter.

“Deck, there! There’s more smoke inshore, sir. I can see two lots of it, as if there were two ships on fire now.”

Bush had just given orders to back the main-topsail again, and as the ship hove-to he came across to Hornblower.

“It looks as if Vickery had caught something, doesn’t it, sir?” he said, smiling.

“Let’s hope so,” answered Hornblower.

There was no sign of any anxiety in Bush’s expression; his craggy face denoted nothing more than fierce satisfaction at the thought of Vickery loose amid the coasting trade. His sublime confidence began to reassure Hornblower until the latter suddenly realized that Bush was not really paying consideration to circumstances. Bush knew that Hornblower had planned this attack, and that was enough for him. In that case he could imagine no possibility of failure, and Hornblower found it profoundly irritating that this should be the case.

“Deck, there! There’s two small sail heading across the bay close-hauled for the town. And I can’t be sure yet, sir, but I think the second one is our cutter.”

“Our cutter it is, sir!” yelled another voice. Every idle hand in the ship was perched by now at the mast-heads.

“That’ll be Montgomery,” said Bush. He had fitted the toe of his wooden leg into the ring-bolt of the aftermost carronade tackle so that he could stand without effort on the gently heaving deck.

“She’s caught her, sir!” yelled the voice from the mast-head. “Our cutter’s caught her!”

“That’s one lot of beef and bread that Boney won’t get,” said Bush.

Very heavy destruction of the coastal shipping in the Haff might be some compensation for the loss of 150 prime seamen. But it would be hard to convince Their Lordships of the Admiralty of that, if there was no certain evidence of the destruction.

“Deck, there! The two sail are parting company. Our cutter’s going off before the wind. The other has her mains’l brailed up, I think, sir. Looks to me as if—”

The lieutenant’s report terminated abruptly in mid-sentence.

“There she goes!” yelled another voice, and at the same moment there came a cheer from everyone aloft.

“She’s blown up!” shouted the lieutenant, forgetting in his excitement even to add ‘sir’ to his words when addressing his Commodore. “There’s a pillar of smoke as high as a mountain! You can see it from the deck, I think.”

They certainly could—a mushroom-topped pillar of smoke, black and heavy, apparent as it reached above the horizon. It lasted a perceptible time before the wind blew it into strange ragged shapes and then dispersed it utterly.

“That wasn’t beef and bread, by God!” said Bush, pounding his left palm with his right fist. “That was powder! A barge-load of powder! Fifty tons of powder, by God!”

“Mast-head! What of the cutter?”

“She’s all right, sir. Doesn’t look as if the explosion harmed her. She’s hull-down from here already, sir.”

“Off after another one, please God,” said Bush.

The destruction of a powder barge was the clearest possible proof that Bonaparte was using the inland water route for the transport of military stores. Hornblower felt he had achieved something, even though Whitehall might not be fully convinced, and he found himself smiling with pleasure. He suppressed the smile as soon as he was aware of it, for his dignity demanded that triumph should leave him as unmoved as uncertainty.

“It only remains to get Vickery and the men out to-night, sir,” said Bush.

“Yes, that is all,” said Hornblower, as woodenly as he could manage.

The blowing up of the powder barge was the only sure proof they had that day in the Nonsuch of success in the Haff, although more than once the lookouts hesitatingly reported smoke on the horizon inside. As evening came on another string of gunboats made their appearance, from Königsberg presumably, and took up their stations along the boom. A column of troops could be seen for a space, too, the horizontal lines of blue coats and white breeches clearly visible even from the deck as they marched in to strengthen the defences of Pillau. The entrance into the Haff was going to be stoutly defended, obviously, if the British should attempt a coup de main.

In the evening Hornblower came up from below, where he had been making pretence at eating his dinner, and looked round him again although his senses had been so alert in his cabin that his glance told him nothing he did not know already. The wind was moderating with the dying of the day; the sun was on the point of setting, although there would be daylight for a couple of hours more at least.

“Captain Bush, I’d be obliged if you would send your best gun pointers to the lower gun-deck starboard-side guns.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

“Have the guns cleared away and run out, if you please. Then I would like it if you would allow the ship to drop down within range of the batteries there. I want to draw their fire.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

Pipes twittered around the ship; bosun and bosun’s mates roared out orders, and the bands ran to their stations. A long earthquake-tremor shook the ship as the massive twenty-four pounders of the lower gun-deck ran thunderously out.

“Please see that the gun-captains are certain what their target is,” said Hornblower.

He knew how limited was the view afforded a man on the lower deck, looking through a gun-port only a yard or so above the water’s edge, and he did not want the enemy to jump to the conclusion that the feint he was about to make was no more than a feint. The hands at the main-topsail lee brace walking smartly down the deck, swung the big sail round and Nonsuch came to the wind and slowly gathered way.

“Port a little,” said Bush to the helmsman. “Let her fall off. Meet her there! Steady as you go!”

“Steady as you go, sir,” echoed the helmsman, and then by a neat feat of facial gymnastics transferred his quid from his cheek to his mouth, and a moment later spat accurately into the spit-kid beside the wheel without transferring any of his attention from the leech of the main-topsail and the compass in the binnacle.

Nonsuch edged down steadily towards the entrance and the batteries. This was a ticklish business, coming down to be shot at. There was smoke as from a fire visible not far from the batteries; maybe it was merely rising from the cooking stoves of the garrison, but it might well be smoke from the furnaces for heating red-hot shot. But Bush was aware of that possibility when in action against coastal batteries, and had needed no warning. Every available man was standing by with fire buckets, and every pump and hose was rigged. Now he was measuring the range with his eye.

“A little closer, if you please, Captain Bush,” said Hornblower to prompt him, for to Hornblower it was obvious that they were still out of range. A fountain of water was visible for a moment on the surface of the choppy sea, two cables’ lengths from the starboard bow.

“Not near enough yet, Captain Bush,” said Hornblower.

In tense silence the ship moved on. A whole cluster of fountains sprang suddenly into existence close under the starboard quarter, one so close indeed that a hatful of water, flung by some freak of wave and wind, hit Bush full in the face.

“God damn it to hell!” spluttered Bush, wiping his eyes.

That battery had no business to have come so close as that with that salvo. And there was no smoke near it either. Hornblower traversed his glass round, and gulped. It was another battery altogether which had fired, one farther to the left, and moreover one whose existence he had not suspected until that moment. Apparently the grass had grown over the parapets sufficiently to conceal it from quite close inspection; but it had unmasked itself a trifle too soon. If the officer commanding there had been patient for another ten minutes Nonsuch might have found herself in a difficult situation.

“That will do, Captain Bush,” said Hornblower.

“Full and by,” said Bush to the helmsman and then raised his voice. “Lee braces, there!”

Nonsuch swung round, turning her starboard broadside towards the batteries, and, close-hauled, was now edging towards them far less rapidly. Hornblower pointed out the exact situation of the newly revealed battery to the midshipman of the watch, and then sent him flying below to carry the information to the guns.

“Keep your luff!” growled Bush to the helmsman.

“Keep your luff, sir.”

For a moment or two there were waterspouts leaping from the surface of the sea all round, and the loud noise of cannon-balls passing through the air assaulted their ears. It was remarkable that they were not hit; at least, it was remarkable until Hornblower, glancing up, saw two elliptical holes in the mizzen-topsail. The shooting was poor, for there were at least twenty heavy guns firing at them, as Hornblower calculated from the smoke appearing on shore. He took careful note of the sites of the batteries—one never knew when such intelligence might be useful.

“Open fire, Captain, if you please,” said Hornblower, and before the polite ending of his sentence had passed his lips Bush had raised his speaking-trumpet and was repeating the order at the top of his lungs. The gunner’s mate posted at the main hatchway relayed the message to the lower gun-deck. There was a brief pause which Hornblower noted with pleasure, because it showed that the gun-captains were taking pains to train their guns on the target, and not merely jerking the lanyards the moment the word reached them. Then came a ragged crash; the ship trembled, and the smoke surged up and blew away to leeward. Through his glass Hornblower could see sand flying all round the masked battery. The seventeen twenty-four pounders roared out again and again, the deck vibrating under Hornblower’s feet with the concussion and with the rumble of the gun-tracks.

“Thank you, Captain Bush,” said Hornblower, “you can put the ship about, now.”

Bush blinked at him momentarily, his fighting blood roused so that he had to stop and think before dealing with the new order.

“Aye aye, sir.” He raised his trumpet. “Cease fire! Stand by to go about!”

The order was relayed to the guns, and the din died down abruptly, so that Bush’s “Hard-a-lee” to the helmsman sounded unnecessarily loud.

“Mainsail haul!” bellowed Bush.

As Nonsuch went ponderously about, rising to an even keel with her canvas slatting, a further cluster of waterspouts, grouped closely together for the first time, rose from the surface of the sea on the starboard bow. If she had not made the sudden turn the shots might well have hit her. Hornblower might be a mutilated corpse lying on the quarter-deck with his guts strung out beside him at this moment.

Nonsuch had passed the wind, and the after sails were filling.

“Let go and haul!” yelled Bush. The forward sails filled as the hands came aft with the lee braces, and Nonsuch settled down on the new tack.

“Any further orders, sir?” asked Bush.

“That will do for the present.”

Close-hauled on the starboard tack the ship was drawing away fast from the land, beating out to where the two sloops were backing and filling while waiting for her. The people on shore must be exulting over having driven off a serious attack; probably some garrulous gunner was swearing that he had seen with his own eyes damaging hits striking home on the British intruder. They must be encouraged in the belief that something desperate was still being meditated in this neighbourhood.

“Midshipman?” said Hornblower.

Strings of coloured flags soared up Nonsuch’s halliards; it was good practice for the signal midshipman to try to spell out ‘The curfew tolls the knell of parting day’ with the fewest possible number of flag hoists. With his telescope pointed the midshipman read off Raven’s reply.

“The—” he read, “l—o—w—must be ‘blowing’. No, it’s ‘lowing’, whatever he means by that. H—e—r—d. Herd. Two—five. That’s ‘wind’, and ‘s’. That ‘winds’—S—l—o—”

So Cole in the Raven was at least familiar with Gray’s Elegy, and whoever was responsible for the flag hoists on board her was ingenious enough to use the code hoist for ‘winds’. As Hornblower expected, he used the code hoist ‘lee’ for ‘lea’ as well, thereby saving one signal flag.

“The lowing herd winds slowly o’er the lee, sir,” reported the puzzled midshipman.

“Very good. Acknowledge.”

All these innumerable signals between battleship and sloops must be visible from the shore and exciting their interest. Hornblower sent up another signal under Lotus’s number—‘The ploughman homeward plods his weary way’—only to receive the puzzled reply ‘Signal not understood’. Purvis, the first lieutenant of the Lotus, at present in command, was obviously not very bright, or perhaps not very well read. What in the world, at that rate, he was making of all this, was beyond even Hornblower’s imagination, although the thought of it brought a smile to his lips.

“Cancel the signal, then,” he ordered, “and substitute ‘Report immediately number of red-haired married men on board’.”

Hornblower waited until the reply came; he could have wished that Purvis had not been so literal-minded and had been able to think up an answer which should combine the almost incompatible qualities of deference and wit, instead of merely sending the bald reply ‘Five’. Then he turned to business.

“Signal to both sloops,” he ordered. “’Advance on boom in threatening manner avoiding action’.”

In the dwindling daylight he watched the two vessels move down as though to attack. They wheeled, edged into the wind, and fell away again. Twice Hornblower saw a puff of smoke and heard, echoing over the water, the dull flat boom of a twenty-four-pounder as a gunboat tried the range. Then, while there was just light enough for the signal to be read, he hoisted ‘Discontinue the action after half an hour’. He had done all he could to attract the enemy’s attention to this end of the bay, the only exit. The garrison ought to be quite certain now that the raiding boats would attempt to escape by this route. Probably the garrison would anticipate a rush in the first light of dawn, assisted by an attack by the big ships from outside. He had done all he could, and it only remained now to go to bed and spend the rest of the night in tranquillity, if that were possible.

Naturally, it was impossible, with the fate of a hundred and fifty seamen at stake, with his own reputation for good fortune and ingenuity at stake. Half an hour after he had got into bed Hornblower found himself wishing that he had ordered three junior officers to join him in a game of whist until dawn. He dallied with the idea of getting up and doing so now, but put it aside in the certainty that if he should do so now everyone would know that he had tried to go to sleep and had failed. He could only turn over stoically and force himself to stay in bed until dawn came to release him.

When he came on deck the pearly mist of the Baltic morning was making the vague outline of visible objects vaguer yet. There was every promise of a fine day, wind moderate, backing a little. Bush was already on deck—Hornblower knew that, before he went up, because he had heard Bush’s wooden leg thumping over his head—and at first sight of him Hornblower hoped that his own face did not show the same signs of sleeplessness and anxiety. They had at least the effect of bracing him up to conceal his own anxiety as he returned Bush’s salute.

“I hope Vickery’s all right, sir,” said Bush.

The mere fact that Bush ventured to address Hornblower at this time in the morning after so many years of service under him was the best possible proof of his anxiety.

“Oh yes,” said Hornblower, bluffly. “I’ll trust Vickery to get out of any scrape.”

That was a statement made in all sincerity; it occurred to Hornblower as he made it—what he had often thought before—that worry and anxiety were not really connected with the facts of the case. He had done everything possible. He remembered his profound study of the charts, his careful reading of the barometer, his painstaking—and now clearly successful—attempts to predict the weather. If he were compelled to bet, he would bet that Vickery was safe, and moreover he would judge the odds to be at least three to one. But that did not save him from being anxious, all the same. What did save him was the sight of Bush’s nervousness.

“With this breeze there can’t have been much surf, sir,” said Bush.

“Of course not.”

He had thought of that fifty times at least during the night, and he tried to look as if it had not been more than once. The mist was thin enough now to make the land just visible; the gunboats were still stationed along the boom, and he could see a belated guard-boat rowing along it.

“The wind’s fair for the bomb-ketches, sir,” said Bush. “They ought to have picked Vickery up by now and be on their way towards us.”

“Yes.”

Bush turned a searching eye aloft to make sure that the lookouts were at their posts and awake. It was twelve miles down the Nehrung, the long spit of sand that divided the Haff from the Baltic, that Mound with the bomb-ketches was going to pick up Vickery and his men. Vickery was going to land in the darkness on the Nehrung, abandon his boats, cross the sandspit, and rendezvous with Mound an hour before dawn. With their shallow draught the ketches would be safe among the shoals, so that they could send in their boats and bring Vickery off. Vickery’s four ships’ boats would all be lost, but that was a small price to pay for the destruction he must have caused, and Hornblower hoped that, what with the distraction of his own demonstrations off Pillau, and what with the fact that the possibility of Vickery abandoning his boats might easily never occur to the enemy’s mind, Vickery would find no opposition on the Nehrung. Even if there were, the Nehrung was fifteen miles long and Vickery with a hundred and fifty determined men could be relied upon to break through any thin cordon of sentries or customs officials.

Yet if all had gone well the bomb-ketches ought to be in sight very soon. The next few minutes would be decisive.

“We couldn’t have heard gunfire in the bay yesterday, sir,” said Bush, “the wind being where it was. They may have met with any sort of armed vessel in the bay.”

“So they may,” said Hornblower.

“Sail ho!” yelled the masthead lookout. “Two sail on the port beam! It’s the bomb-ketches, sir.”

They might possibly be coming back, having been unable to pick up Vickery, but it was unlikely that in that case they would have returned so promptly. Bush was grinning broadly, with all his doubts at an end.

“I think, Captain,” said Hornblower, “you might put the helm down and go to meet them.”

It would not be consonant with the dignity of a Commodore to hang out a signal of inquiry as the vessels closed to visual range, for it to be read the moment a telescope in the Harvey could distinguish the flags. But Nonsuch was making a good five knots, with the water lapping cheerfully under her bows, and Harvey was doing the same, so that it was only a matter of waiting a few more minutes.

“Harvey’s signalling, sir,” reported the midshipman. He read the flags and hurriedly referred to the code book, “’seamen on board’, sir.”

“Very good. Make ‘Commodore to Captain. Come on board with Mr. Vickery to make your report’.”

There was not much longer to wait. As the two vessels came within hail they rounded-to, and Harvey’s gig dropped into the water and came bobbing across to Nonsuch. It was a weary Vickery who came up the side with Mound beside him; his face was grey, and below his eyes were marks like new scars as proof that he had not slept for three successive nights. He sat down gratefully when Hornblower gave him permission to do so as soon as they were in his cabin.

“Well?” said Hornblower. “I’ll hear you first, Vickery.”

“It went off very well, sir.” Vickery dragged a scrap of paper out of his pocket on which apparently he had kept notes. “There was no trouble going past the boom on the night of the 15th. We saw nothing of the enemy. At dawn on the 16th we were off the mouth of the Königsberg river. There we took and destroyed the—the Fried Rich, coaster, of Elbing, about two hundred tons, seven of a crew, with a cargo of rye and live pigs. We burned her, and sent the crew ashore in their own boat. Then we caught the—the—Blitzer, also of Elbing, about one hundred tons, laden with grain. We burned her, too. Then the Charlotte, of Danzig. She was ship-rigged, four hundred tons, twenty-five crew, laden with general cargo of military stores—tents, stretchers, horseshoes, ten thousand stand of small arms; we burned her. Then the Ritter Horse, powder barge, about seventy tons. We blew her up.”

“We saw that, I think,” said Hornblower. “That was Nonsuch’scutter.”

“Yes, sir. That was all at this end of the bay. Then we bore down to the westward. We caught the Weece Ross of Kolberg, two hundred tons. She carried four six-pounders and showed fight, but Montgomery boarded her over the bows and they threw down their arms. We had two men wounded. We burned her. Then there was—”

“How many altogether?”

“One ship, sir. Eleven sail of coasting vessels. Twenty-four barges. All destroyed.”

“Excellent,” said Hornblower. “And then?”

“By then it was nigh on dark, sir. I anchored on the north side of the bay until midnight. Then I ran over to the sandspit. We found two soldiers there, and made ‘em prisoners. ‘Twas easy enough crossing the spit, sir. We burned a blue light and made contact with the Harvey. They started taking us aboard at two a.m., and I was aboard at three, by the first light. I went back and burned the boats before I embarked, sir.”

“Better still.”

The enemy, then, had not even the sorry compensation of the capture of four ships’ boats in exchange for the frightful destruction Vickery had wrought. He turned to Mound.

“I have nothing particular to report, sir. Those waters are shoal, without a doubt, sir. But I had no difficulty making my way to the rendezvous. After taking Mr. Vickery’s party on board we touched bottom, sir. We had nearly a hundred extra hands on board an’ must have been drawing nigh on a foot more water. But we got off all right. I had the men run from side to side to rock the vessel, an’ I threw all aback an’ she came off.”

“I understand.”

Hornblower looked at Mound’s expressionless face and smiled inwardly at his studied languid manner. Picking the way in the dark through the shoals to the rendezvous must have been something of an epic achievement. Hornblower could estimate the seamanship it called for, but it was not in the tradition to lay stress on difficulties surmounted. And a less reliable officer might have tried to suppress the fact that his ship had touched ground once. It was to Mound’s credit that he had not done so.

“I shall call the attention of the Admiralty,” said Hornblower, trying his best to combat the pomposity which persisted in making itself heard in his voice, “to the conduct of both of you officers. I consider it excellent. I shall, of course, require reports from you immediately in writing.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

Now that he was a Commodore Hornblower felt more sympathy towards senior officers who had been pompous to him; he was pompous himself—it was one way in which could be concealed the fact that he had been anxious.