12 Hornblower and the Crisis

working jerkily, with flashes of clarity like lightning through the sombre cloud that oppressed it.

He dashed into the captain’s cabin; as be expected, there stood the captain’s desk, and as he should have expected, it was locked. He fetched a handspike from the nearest gun, and it was only a minute’s work with the aid of its powerful leverage to wrench the desk open. There were the ship’s papers, letter book and fair log and all. Here was something unusual, too, which he found when he began to gather them up. Something flat, rectangular, and heavy — a sheet of lead bound with tarred twine, at first sight. A further glance showed that it was actually a sandwich of lead, with papers enclosed. Undoubtedly those papers were unusually important dispatches, probably, or, if not, they would be additions and changes in the signal book. The leaden casing told its own story — it was to be thrown overboard if the ship were to be in danger of capture; a blow from Meadows’ cutlass had put an end to that scheme.

A tremendous crash outside on the deck told him that the work of dismantling the brig was proceeding already. He looked round him and dragged a blanket from the cot, dumped all the ship’s papers into it, and twisted it into a bag which he slung over his shoulder as he hurried out. The crash had been caused by the fall of the mainyard, as a result of the cutting of the jeers. It lay across the deck in a tangle of rigging which did not obscure the fact that the fall had sprung it — half broken it — in the centre. Five minutes’ work by a gang of men who knew exactly what to do had left the brig a wreck.

Forward Baddlestone and others were on guard over the hatchway, whose cover was disintegrating into its constituent planks as the frantic Frenchmen below battered at it with axes and levers. There was already a jagged hole visible.

“We’ve fired every shot we have down at ‘em,” said Baddlestone. “When we go we’ll have to run for it.”

His words were underlined by a bang and a flash from down below, and a musket bullet sang through the air between them.

“Wish we had —” began Baddlestone, and checked himself; the same idea had occurred to Hornblower in the same second.

Just at darkness, the brig, closing up on the Princess, had fired a shot across her bows, and in response the Princess hove-to in apparent surrender. The gun that fired that shot would almost certainly be ready for action still. Baddlestone rushed over to one battery, Hornblower to the other.

“There’s a charge here!” yelled Baddlestone “Here, Jenkins, Sansome! Bear a hand!”

Hornblower searched along the shot garlands and found eventually what he sought.

“It’s canister that’ll do the trick,” he said, bringing it over to the labouring group.

Baddlestone and the others were working like madmen with handspikes to swing the gun round to point at the hatchway. It called for vast effort; the trucks of the carriage groaned and shrieked as they scraped sideways on the deck. Baddlestone took the powder charge in its serge bag from out of the carrying bucket which had stood by the gun ready for use. They rammed it home, and then against the charge they rammed in the canister — a cylindrical box of thin metal containing a hundred and fifty bullets. Gurney the gunner pierced the serge through the touch hole with the pricker, and primed with the fine powder from the horn. Then he began to force in the quoin; the breech of the gun rose and the muzzle began to point with infinite menace down the hatchway. Baddlestone glowered round, turning his black face this way and that.

“Get down in the boats, all of you,” he said.

“I’d better stay with you,” said Hornblower.

“Get down into your boat with your party,” countered Baddlestone.

It was the sensible thing to do; this was a rearguard action, and the covering force should be reduced to the absolute minimum. Hornblower herded his party down into the Princess‘s boat, and most of Baddlestone’s went down into the brig’s. Hornblower stood for a moment on tiptoe, with the sea surging round, holding on to the forechains with one hand while the other still retained its grip on the blanket-bundle of books. He could just see from here; there was the swaying deck, with the dead men tumbled over it and the incredible confusion of the dismantling. Yet two lanterns still burned in the shrouds, and the light from the cabin still waxed and waned with the swinging of the door. Gurney had apparently forced a second quoin under the breech of the gun, so that it pointed down at a steep angle into the hatchway. He and Baddlestone stood clear, and then he jerked at the lanyard. A bellowing roar, a blinding flash, a billow of smoke; yells and screams from down below, distinctly heard where Hornblower was standing. Then the Englishmen came running across the deck, Baddlestone and Gurney, the guards at the scuttle and the hatchway, the guards over the prisoners. Hornblower watched them scrambling down into the boat, Baddlestone last, turning to yell defiance before he disappeared down into his boat. Hornblower released his hold on the chains and sat down in the sternsheets.

“Shove off!” he said.

Over there that tiny pinpoint of dancing light showed where Princess still lay-to. In five minutes they would be under way again, free from pursuit, with the wind fair for Plymouth.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Hornblower wrote the final lines of his letter, rapidly checked it through, from ‘My dear Wife’ to ‘Your loving husband, Horatio Hornblower’, and folded the sheet and put it in his pocket before going up on deck. The last turn was being taken round the last bollard, and Princess was safely alongside the quay in the victualling yard in Plymouth.

As always, there was something unreal, a sort of nightmare clarity in this first contact with England. The people, the sheds, the houses, seemed to stand out with unnatural sharpness; voices sounded different with the land to echo them; the wind was vastly changed from the wind he knew at sea. The passengers were already stepping ashore, and a crowd of curious onlookers had assembled; the arrival of a waterhoy from the Channel fleet was of interest enough became she might have news, but a waterhoy which had actually captured, and for a few minutes had held possession of, a French brig of war was something very new.

There were farewells to say to Baddlestone; besides making arrangements to land his sea chest and ditty bag there was something else to discuss.

“I have the French ship’s papers here,” said Hornblower, indicating the bundle.

“What of them?” countered Baddlestone.

“It’s your duty to hand them over to the authorities,” said Hornblower. “In fact I’m sure you’re legally bound to do that. Certainly as a King’s officer I must see that is done.”