“If you please, sir,” said Montgomery, touching his hat. “Isn’t that gunfire which I can hear?”
Everybody listened, enwrapped in the clammy fog. The only noises to be heard were those of the ship, and the condensed fog dripping from the rigging to the deck. Then a flat-sounding thud came faintly to their ears.
“That’s a gun, sir, or my name’s not Sylvanus Montgomery!”
“From astern,” said Hornblower.
“Beg your pardon, sir, but I thought it was on the port bow.”
“Damn this fog,” said Bush.
If the Blanchefleur once had warning of the presence of a British squadron in pursuit of her, and then got away, she would vanish like a needle in a haystack. Hornblower held up a wetted finger and glanced into the binnacle.
“Wind’s north,” he said. “Maybe nor’nor’east.”
That was comforting. To leeward, the likely avenue of escape, lay Rügen and the coast of Swedish Pomerania, twenty miles away. If Blanchefleur did not slip through the net he had spread she would be hemmed in.
“Set the lead going, Mr Montgomery,” said Bush.
“Aye aye, sir.”
“There’s another gun!” said Hornblower. “On the port bow, sure enough.”
A wild yell from the masthead.
“Sail ho! Sail right ahead!”
The mist was thinner in that direction. Perhaps as much as a quarter of a mile away could be seen the thinnest palest ghost of a ship creeping through the fog across the bows.
“Ship-rigged, flush-decked,” said Bush. “That’s the Blanchefleur sure as a gun!”
She vanished as quickly as she had appeared, into a thicker bank of fog.
“Hard-a-starboard!” roared Bush. “Hands to the braces!”
Hornblower was at the binnacle, taking a hurried bearing.
“Steady as you go!” he ordered the helmsman. “Keep her at that!”
In this gentle breeze the heavily sparred privateer would be able to make better speed than a clumsy two-decker. All that could be hoped for would be to keep Nonsuch up to windward of her to head her off if she tried to break through the cordon.
“Call all hands,” said Bush. “Beat to quarters.”
The drums roared through the ship, and the hands came pouring up to their stations.
“Run out the guns,” continued Bush. “One broadside into her, and she’s ours.”
The trucks roared as three hundred tons of metal were run out. At the breech of every gun there clustered an eager group. The linstocks smouldered sullenly.
“Masthead, there! Stay awake!” pealed Bush, and then more quietly to Hornblower, “He may double back and throw us off the scent.”
There was always the possibility of the masthead being above this thin fog — the lookout in Nonsuch might catch a glimpse of the Blanchefleur‘s topmasts when nothing could be seen from the deck.
For several minutes there was no more sound save for the cry of the leadsman; Nonsuch rolled gently in the trough of the waves, but it was hard to realize in the mist that she was making headway.
“By the mark twenty,” called the leadsman.
Before he had uttered the last word Hornblower and Bush had turned to glance at each other; up to that moment their subconscious minds had been listening to the cries without their consciousness paying any attention. But ‘by the mark’ meant that now there was at most twenty fathoms under them.
“Shoaling, sir,” commented Bush.
Then the masthead lookout yelled again.
“Sail on the lee quarter, sir!”
Bush and Hornblower sprang to the rail, but in the clinging fog there was nothing to be seen.
“Masthead, there! What d’you see?”
“Nothin’ now, sir. Just caught a glimpse of a ship’s royals, sir. There they are again, sir. Two points — three points abaft the port beam.”
“What’s her course?”
“Same as ours, sir. She’s gone again now.”
“Shall we bear down on her, sir?” asked Bush.
“Not yet,” said Hornblower.
“Stand to your guns on the port side!” ordered Bush.
Even a distant broadside might knock away a spar or two and leave the chase helpless.
“Tell the men not to fire without orders,” said Hornblower. “That may be Lotus.”
“So it may, by God,” said Bush.
Lotus had been on Nonsuch‘s port beam in the cordon sweeping down towards Rügen. Someone had undoubtedly been firing — that must have been Lotus, and she would have turned in pursuit of the Blanchefleur, which could bring her into just the position where those royals had been seen; and the royals of two ship-rigged sloops, seen through mist, would resemble each other closely enough to deceive the eye even of an experienced seaman.
“Wind’s freshening, sir,” commented Hurst.
“That’s so,” said Bush. “Please God it clears this fog away.”
Nonsuch was perceptibly leaning over to the freshening breeze. From forward came the cheerful music of the sea under the bows.
“By the deep eighteen!” called the leadsman.
Then twenty voices yelled together.
“There she is! Sail on the port beam! That’s Lotus!”
The fog had cleared in this quarter, and there was Lotus under all sail, three cables’ lengths away.
“Ask her where’s the chase,” snapped Bush.
“Sail — last — seen — ahead,” read of the signal midshipman, glass to eye.
“Much use that is to us,” Bush grumbled. There were enough streaks of fog still remaining to obscure the whole circle of the horizon, even though there was a thin watery sunshine in the air, and a pale sun — silver instead of gold — visible to the eastward.
“There she is!” suddenly yelled someone at the masthead. “Hull down on the port quarter!”
“Stole away, by God!” said Hurst. “She must have put up her helm the moment she saw us.”
The Blanchefleur was a good six miles away, with only her royals visible from the deck of the Nonsuch, heading downwind under all sail. A string of signal flags ran up Lotus‘s mast, and a gun from her called attention to the urgency of her signal.
“She’s seen her too,” said Bush.
“Wear ship, Captain Bush, if you please. Signal ‘general chase’.”
Nonsuch came round on the other tack, amid the curses of the officers hurled at the men for their slowness. Lotus swung round with her bow pointing straight at Blanchefleur. With the coast of Pomerania ahead, Nonsuch to windward, and Lotus and R.aven on either side, Blanchefleur was hemmed in.
“Raven must be nearly level with her over there, sir,” said Bush, rubbing his hands. “And we’ll pick the bombs up again soon, wherever they got to in the fog.”
“By the deep fourteen!” chanted the leadsman. Hornblower watched the man in the chains, whirling the lead with practised strength, dropping it in far ahead, reading off the depth as the ship passed over the vertical line, and then hauling in ready for a fresh cast. It was tiring work, continuous severe exercise; moreover, the leadsman was bound to wet himself to the skin, hauling in a hundred feet of dripping line. Hornblower knew enough about life below decks to know that the man would have small chance of ever getting his clothes dry again; he could remember as a midshipman in Pellew’s Indefatigable being at the lead that wild night when they went in and destroyed the Droits de l’homme in the Biscay surf. He had been chilled to the bone that night, with fingers so numb as almost to be unable to feel the difference between the markers — the white calico and the leather with a hole in it and all the others. He probably could not heave the lead now if he tried, and he was quite sure he could not remember the arbitrary order of the markers. He hoped Bush would have the humanity and the common sense to see that his leadsmen were relieved at proper intervals, and given special facilities for drying their clothes, but he could not interfere directly in the matter. Bush was personally responsible for the interior economy of the ship and would be quite rightly jealous of any interference; there were crumpled roseleaves in the bed even of a Commodore.