“If you please,” he drawled, dragging out every word with all the nonchalance he could muster, “I will have the signal bent ready for hoisting, ‘Proceed to leeward in the order of battle’.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
Everything was done now. This last two minutes of waiting in inactivity, with nothing left to do, were especially trying. Hornblower was about to walk up and down, when he remembered that he must stand still to maintain his pose of indifference. The batteries on shore might have their furnaces alight, to heat shot red-hot; there was a possibility that in a few minutes the whole force of which he was so proud might be no more than a chain of blazing wrecks. Now it was time.
“Hoist,” said Hornblower. “Captain Bush, I’ll trouble you to square away and follow the squadron.”
“Aye aye, sir,” said Bush.
Bush’s voice hinted at suppressed excitement; and it came to Hornblower, with a blinding flash of revelation, that his pose was ineffective with Bush. The latter had learned, during years of experience, that when Hornblower stood still instead of walking about, and when he drawled out his words as he was doing at present, then in Hornblower’s opinion there was danger ahead. It was an intensely interesting discovery, but there was no time to think about it, not with the squadron going up the Sound.
Lotus was leading. Vickery, her commander, was the man Hornblower had picked out as the captain with the steadiest nerves who could be trusted to lead without flinching. Hornblower would have liked to have led himself, but in this operation the rear would be the post of danger—the leading ships might well get through before the gunners on shore could get to their guns and find the range—and the Nonsuch as the most solidly built and best able to endure fire must come last so as to be able to succour and tow out of action any disabled ship. Hornblower watched Lotus set topsails and courses and square away. The cutter Clam followed—she was the feeblest of all; a single shot might sink her, and she must be given the best chance of getting through. Then the two ugly bomb-ketches, and then the other sloop, Raven, just ahead of Nonsuch; Hornblower was not sorry to have the opportunity to watch how her commander, Cole, would behave in action. Nonsuch followed, driving hard with the strong breeze on her starboard quarter. Hornblower watched Bush shaking the wind out of the mizzen-topsail so as to keep exact station astern of the Raven. The big two-decker seemed a lumbering clumsy thing compared with the grace and elegance of the sloops.
That was Sweden in sight now, Cape Kullen, now on the port bow.
“A cast of the log, if you please, Mr. Hurst.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
Hornblower thought Hurst looked a little sidelong at him, unable to conceive why any sane man should want a cast of the log at a moment when the ship was about to risk everything; but Hornblower wanted to know how long the strain was likely to endure, and what was the use of being a Commodore if one could not then indulge one’s whims? A midshipman and a couple of quartermasters came running aft with log and glass; the speed of the ship was sufficient to make the quartermaster’s arms vibrate as he held the reel above his head.
“Nigh on nine knots, sir,” reported the midshipman to Hurst.
“Nigh on nine knots, sir,” reported Hurst to Hornblower.
“Very good.”
It would be a full eight hours, then, before they were beyond Saltholm and comparatively out of danger. There was the Danish coast on the starboard bow now, just visible in the half-light; the channel was narrowing fast. Hornblower could imagine sleepy sentries and lookouts peering from their posts at the hardly visible sails, and calling to their sergeants, and the sergeants coming sleepily to see for themselves and then hastening away to tell their lieutenants and then the drums beating to arms and the gunners running to their places. On the Danish side they would make ready to fire, for there were the minions of Bonaparte, and any sail was likely to be an enemy. But on the Swedish side? What had Bernadotte decided during the last few days? Was Bonaparte’s Marshal still neutral, or had he at last made up his mind to throw the weight of Sweden on the side of his native land?
There were the low cliffs of Elsinore, and there were the steeples of Helsingborg in plain view to port, and the fortress above the town. Lotus, nearly a mile head, must be into the narrows. Hornblower levelled his glass at her; her yards were bracing round for the turn, and still no shot had been fired. Clam was turning next—please God the clumsy bomb-ketches did not misbehave. Ah! There it was. The heavy dull boom of a gun, and then the sullen roar of a salvo. Hornblower turned his glass to the Swedish coast. He could see no smoke there. Then to the Danish side. Smoke was evident, although the brisk wind was dispersing it fast. Under Bush’s orders the helmsman was putting the wheel over a spoke or two, in readiness for the turn; Elsinore and Helsingborg were suddenly surprisingly near. Three miles wide was the channel, and Vickery in Lotus was carrying out his orders correctly, and keeping well to the port side of the fairway, two miles from Denmark and only a mile from Sweden, with every vessel following exactly in his track. If the Swedish guns came into action and were well handled, they could deal the squadron some shrewd blows. Three jets of water from the surface of the sea on the starboard beam; although the eye could not see the ball that made them it was easy to imagine one could, as it skipped over the surface, but the last jet was a full cable’s length from the side. The Swedish guns were still not firing; Hornblower wished he could tell whether it was because the Swedish gunners were taken by surprise or because they were under orders not to fire.
Elsinore was abaft the beam now, and the channel was opening wide. Hornblower shut his telescope with a snap, and a decided feeling of anticlimax. He could hardly imagine now what he had been worrying about. Calling up in his mind’s eye the chart that he had so anxiously studied, he calculated that it would be an hour before they were in range of the shore again, where the fairway lay close in to the Swedish island of Hven—however that was pronounced in these barbarous northern tongues. This latter thought made him glance round. Braun was at his station on the quarter-deck, in attendance on the Commodore, as he should be. With his hands on the rail he was gazing over at the Swedish shore; Hornblower could not see his face, but every line of the man’s figure disclosed rapt attention. The poor devil of an exile was looking longingly on the shores on which he could never hope to set foot. The world was full of exiles, but Hornblower felt sorry for this one.
Here came the sun, peeping between two Swedish hills as they opened up the valley. It was full daylight, with every promise of a fine day. The minute warmth of the sun, as the shadow of the mizzen-rigging ran across the quarter-deck, suddenly awoke in Hornblower the knowledge that he was stiff and chilled with having made himself stand still so long. He took a turn or two along the quarter-deck, restoring his circulation, and the fresh knowledge was borne in upon him that he wanted his breakfast. Glamorous visions of steaming cups of coffee danced momentarily in his mind’s eye, and it was with a sense of acute disappointment that he remembered that, with the ship cleared for action and all fires out, there was no chance of hot food at all. So acute was the disappointment that he realized guiltily that his six months ashore had made him soft and self-indulgent; it was with positive distaste that he contemplated the prospect of breakfasting off biscuit and cold meat, and washing them down with ship’s water which already had obviously been kept a long time in cask.