The leeward position that Hotspur held was a most decided advantage. To leeward over the horizon lay the British squadron; the Frenchman dared not chase her for long in that direction, lest he find himself trapped between the wind and overwhelming hostile strength. Moreover the Frenchman had a mission to perform; he was anxious to find and warn the Spanish Squadron, yet when he had won for himself enough sea room to weather St. Vincent and to turn away his teasing little enemy hung on to him, firing into his battered stern, shooting holes in his sails, cutting away his running rigging.
During that long day Felicite fired many broadsides, all at long range, and generally badly aimed as Hotspur wheeled away out of the line of fire. And during all that long day Hornblower stood on his quarter-deck, watching the shifts of the wind, rapping out his orders, handling his little ship with unremitting care and inexhaustible ingenuity. Occasionally a shot from Felicite struck home; under Hornblower’s very eyes an eighteen-pounder ball came in through a gun-port and struck down five men into a bloody heaving mass. Yet until long after noon Hotspur evaded major damage, while the wind backed round southerly and the sun crept slowly round to the west. With the shifting of the wind his position was growing more precarious, and with the passage of time fatigue was numbing his mind.
At a long three-quarters of a mile Felicite at last scored an important hit, one hit out of the broadside she fired as she yawed widely off her course. There was a crash aloft, and Hornblower looked up to see the main yard sagging in two halves, shot clean through close to the centre, each half hanging in the slings at its own drunken angle, threatening, each of them, to come falling like an arrow down through the deck. It was a novel and cogent problem to deal with, to study the dangling menaces and to give the correct helm order that set the sails a-shiver and relieved the strain.
“Mr. Wise! Take all the men you need and secure that wreckage!”
Then he could put his glass again to his aching eye to see what Felicite intended to do. She could force a close action if she took instant advantage of the opportunity. He would have to fight now to the last gasp. But the glass revealed something different, something he had to look at a second time before he could trust his swimming brain and his weary eye. Felicite had filled away. With every sail drawing she was reaching towards the sunset. She had turned tail and was flying for the horizon away from the pest which had plagued all the spirit out of her in nine continuous hours of battle.
The hands saw it, they saw her go, and someone raised a cheer which ran raggedly along the deck. There were grins and smiles which revealed teeth strangely white against the powder blackened faces. Bush came up from the waist, powder blackened like the others.
“Sir!” he said. “I don’t know how to congratulate you.”
“Thank you, Mr. Bush. You can keep your eye on Wise. There’s the two spare stuns’l booms—fish the main yard with those.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
Despite the blackening of his features, despite the fatigue that even Bush could not conceal, there was that curious expression in Bush’s face again, inquiring, admiring, surprised. He was bursting with things that he wanted to say. It called for an obvious effort of will on Bush’s part to turn away without saying them; Hornblower fired a parting shot at Bush’s receding back.
“I want the ship ready for action again before sunset, Mr. Bush.”
Gurney the Gunner was reporting.
“We’ve fired away all the top tier of powder, sir, an’ we’re well into the second tier. That’s a ton an’ a half of powder. Five tons of shot, sir. We used every cartridge; my mates are sewing new ones now.”
The carpenter next, and then Huffnell the purser and Wallis the surgeon; arrangements to feed the living, and arrangements to bury the dead.
The dead whom he had known so well; there was a bitter regret and a deep sense of personal loss as Wallis read the names. Good seamen and bad seamen, alive this morning and now gone from this world, because he had done his duty. He must not think along those lines at all. It was a hard service to which he belonged, hard and pitiless like steel, like flying cannon-shot.
At nine o’clock at night Hornblower sat down to the first food he had eaten since the night before, and as he submitted to Bailey’s clumsy ministrations, he thought once more about Doughty, and from Doughty he went on—the step was perfectly natural—to think about eight million Spanish dollars in prize money. His weary mind was purged of the thought of sin. He did not have to class himself with the cheating captains he had heard about, with the peculating officers he had known. He could grant himself absolution; grudging absolution.
Chapter XXIII
With her battered sides and her fished main yard, Hotspur beat her way back towards the rendezvous appointed in case of separation. Even in this pleasant latitude of Southern Europe winter was asserting itself. The nights were cold and the wind blew chill, and Hotspur had to ride out a gale for twenty-four hours as she tossed about; St. Vincent, bearing north fifteen leagues, was the place of rendezvous, but there was no sign of the frigate squadron. Hornblower paced the deck as he tried to reach a decision, as he calculated how far off to leeward the recent gale might have blown Indefatigable and her colleagues, and as he debated what his duty demanded he should do next. Bush eyed him from a distance as he paced; even though he was in the secret regarding the flota he knew better than to intrude. Then at last came the hail from the mast-head.
“Sail ho! Sail to windward! Deck, there! There’s another. Looks like a fleet, sir.”
Now Bush could join Hornblower.
“I expect that’s the frigates, sir.”
“Maybe.” Hornblower hailed the main-topmast-head. “How many sail now?”
“Eight, sir. Sir, they look like ships of the line, some of them, sir. Yes, sir, a three-decker an’ some two-deckers.”
A squadron of ships of the line, heading for Cadiz. They might possibly be French—fragments of Bonaparte’s navy sometimes evaded blockade. In that case it was his duty to identify them, risking capture. Most likely they were British, and Hornblower had a momentary misgiving as to what their presence would imply in that case.
“We’ll stand towards them, Mr. Bush. Mr. Foreman! Hoist the private signal.”
There were the topsails showing now, six ships of the line ploughing along in line ahead, a frigate out on either flank.
“Leading ship answers 264, sir. That’s the private signal for this week.”
“Very well. Make our number.”
Today’s grey sea and grey sky seemed to reflect the depression that was settling over Hornblower’s spirits.
“Dreadnought, sir. Admiral Parker. His flag’s flying.”
So Parker had been detached from the fleet off Ushant; Hornblower’s unpleasant conviction was growing.
“Flag to Hotspur, sir. ‘Captain come on board’.”
“Thank you, Mr. Foreman. Mr. Bush, call away the quarter boat.”
Parker gave an impression of greyness like the weather when Hornblower was led aft to Dreadnought’s quarter-deck. His eyes and his hair and even his face (in contrast with the swarthy faces round him) were of a neutral grey. But he was smartly dressed, so that Hornblower felt something of a ragamuffin in his presence, wishing, too, that this morning’s shave had been more effective.
“What are you doing here, Captain Hornblower?”
“I am on the rendezvous appointed for Captain Moore’s squadron, sir.”
“Captain Moore’s in England by this time.”