“Well, sir —”
“Come on. Out with it.”
“Ortega comes back tomorrow morning to hear our terms again, sir. I suppose he’ll get up at dawn or not long after. He’ll have a bite of breakfast. Then he’ll have a few words with Villanueva. Then he’ll row across the bay. He might be here at eight bells. Later than that, probably, a little —”
“Who cares when Ortega has his breakfast? What’s all this rigmarole for?”
“Ortega gets here at two bells in the forenoon. If he finds we haven’t wasted a minute; if I can tell him that you’ve rejected his terms absolutely, sir, and not only that, if we can show him the gun mounted, and say we’ll open fire in an hour if they don’t surrender without conditions, he’ll be much more impressed.”
“That’s true, sir,” said Bush.
“Otherwise it won’t be so easy, sir. You’ll either have to temporise again while the gun’s being got into position, or you’ll have to use threats. I’ll have to say to him if you don’t agree, then we’ll start hoisting a gun up. In either case you’ll be allowing him time, sir. He might think of some other way out of it. The weather might turn dirty — there might even be a hurricane get up. But if he’s sure we’ll stand no nonsense, sir —”
“That’s the way to treat ‘em,” said Bush.
“But even if we start at dawn “ said Buckland, and having progressed so far in his speech he realised the alternative. “You mean we can get to work now?”
“We have all night before us, sir. You could have the launches hoisted out and the gun swayed down into one of them. Slings and cables and some sort of carrying cradle prepared. Hands told off —”
“And start at dawn!”
“At dawn the boats can be round the peninsula waiting for daylight, sir. You could send some hands with a hundred fathoms of line up from the ship to here. They can start off along the path before daylight. That’d save time.”
“So it would, by George!” said Bush; he had no trouble in visualising the problems of seamanship involved in hoisting a gun up the face of a cliff.
“We’re shorthanded already in the ship,” said Buckland. “I’ll have to turn up both watches.”
“That won’t hurt ‘em, sir,” said Bush. He had already been two nights without sleep and was now contemplating a third.
“Who shall I send? I’ll want a responsible officer in charge. A good seaman at that.”
“I’ll go if you like, sir,” said Hornblower.
“No. You’ll have to be here to deal with Ortega. If I send Smith I’ll have no lieutenant left on board.”
“Maybe you could send me, sir,” said Bush. “That is, if you were to leave Mr Hornblower in command here.”
“Um —” said Buckland. “Oh well, I don’t see anything else to do. Can I trust you, Mr Hornblower?”
“I’ll do my best, sir.”
“Let me see —” said Buckland.
“I could go back to the ship with you in your gig, sir,” said Bush. “Then there’d be no time wasted.”
This prodding of a senior officer into action was something new to Bush, but he was learning the art fast. The fact that the three of them had not long ago been fellow conspirators made it easier; and once the ice was broken, as soon as Buckland had once admitted his juniors to give him counsel and advice, it became easier with repetition.
“Yes, I suppose you’d better,” said Buckland, and Bush promptly rose to his feet, so that Buckland could hardly help doing the same.
Bush ran his eye over Hornblower’s battered form.
“Now look you here, Mr Hornblower,” he said. “You take some sleep. You need it.”
“I relieve Whiting as officer on duty at midnight, sir,” said Hornblower, “and I have to go the rounds.”
“Maybe that’s true. You’ll still have two hours before midnight. Turn in until then. And have Whiting relieve you at eight bells again.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
At the very thought of abandoning himself to the sleep for which he yearned Hornblower swayed with fatigue.
“You could make that an order, sir,” suggested Bush to Buckland.
“What’s that? Oh yes, get a rest while you can, Mr Hornblower.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
Bush picked his way down the steep path to the landing stage at Buckland’s heels, and took his seat beside him in the stern sheets of the gig.
“I can’t make that fellow Hornblower out,” said Buckland a little peevishly on one occasion as they rowed back to the anchored Renown.
“He’s a good officer, sir,” answered Bush, but he spoke a little absently. Already in his mind he was tackling the problem of hoisting a long nine-pounder up a cliff, and he was sorting out mentally the necessary equipment, and planning the necessary orders. Two heavy anchors — not merely boat grapnels — to anchor the buoy solidly. The thwarts of the launch had better be shored up to bear the weight of the gun. Travelling blocks. Slings — for the final hoist it might be safer to suspend the gun by its cascabel and trunnions.
Bush was not of the mental type that takes pleasure in theoretical exercises. To plan a campaign; to put himself mentally in the position of the enemy and think along alien lines; to devise unexpected expedients; all this was beyond his capacity. But to deal with a definite concrete problem, a simple matter of ropes and tackles and breaking strains, pure seamanship — he had a lifetime of experience to reinforce his natural bent in that direction.
Chapter XIII
“Take the strain,” said Bush, standing on the cliff’s edge and looking far, far down to where the launch floated moored to the buoy and with an anchor astern to keep her steady. Black against the Atlantic blue two ropes came down from over his head, curving slightly but almost vertical, down to the buoy. A poet might have seen something dramatic and beautiful in those spider lines cleaving the air, but Bush merely saw a couple of ropes, and the white flag down in the launch signalling that all was clear for hoisting. The blocks creaked as the men pulled in on the slack.
“Now, handsomely,” said Bush. This work was too important to be delegated to Mr Midshipman James, standing beside him. “Hoist away. Handsomely.”
The creaking took on a different tone as the weight came on the blocks. The curves of the ropes altered, appeared almost deformed, as the gun began to rise from its cradle on the thwarts. The shallow, lovely catenaries changed to a harsher, more angular figure. Bush had his telescope to his eye and could see the gun stir and move, and slowly — that was what Bush meant by ‘handsomely’ in the language of the sea — it began to upend itself, to dangle from the traveller, to rise clear of the launch; hanging, just as Bush had visualized it, from the slings through its cascabel and round its trunnions. It was safe enough — if those slings were to give way or to slip, the gun would crash through the bottom of the launch. The line about its muzzle restrained it from swinging too violently.
“Hoist away,” said Bush again, and the traveller began to mount the rope with the gun pendant below it. This was the next ticklish moment, when the pull came most transversely. But everything held fast.
“Hoist away.”
Now the gun was mounting up the rope. Beyond the launch’s stern it dipped, with the stretching of the cable and the straightening of the curve, until its muzzle was almost in the sea. But the hoisting proceeded steadily, and it rose clear of the water, up, up, up. The sheaves hummed rhythmically in the blocks as the hands hove on the line. The sun shone on the men from its level position in the glowing east, stretching out their shadows and those of the trees to incredible lengths over the irregular plateau.
“Easy, there!” said Bush. “Belay!”