authorities or by anyone else at all, as far as he knew. So far, nobody had thought of employing a gun to bridge a gap with a line as he was thinking of doing. If his plan did not succeed, he would have to think of another one - but he thought it was worth trying.
He broke off his train of thought to issue a whole series of orders to his puzzled subordinates. The blacksmith was given orders to forge an iron rod with a loop at the end and to wrap it with oakum and twine to fit the bore of the long boat’s 6-pounder. The bos’un had to get out 100 fathoms of the finest hemp line that the ship possessed and work it into utter flexibility by straining every inch round a belaying-pin and then coil it away with perfect symmetry into one of the oaken fire-buckets. The cooper and his mates were set to work breaking out beef casks, half emptying them, and then heading them up securely. A puzzled bos’un’s mate was set to work with half a dozen hands linking these twenty half-empty casks into an immense chain, like beads on a string where every bead was represented by a cask containing 2-hundredweight of meat connected with its fellows by 60 yards of cable. The deck of the Sutherland presented a pretty tangle to any possible observer by the time all these operations were well started. And through the gathering evening the Sutherland held her course steadily, closehauled for Cabrera.
At dawn she was there, and the earliest hint of daylight found her nosing her way cautiously towards the beach, from which even here, with the wind in the wrong direction, could be heard the thunderous beat of the surf.
“That’s the dagos’ victualling-ship, I’ll lay a guinea,” said Bush with his glass to his eye.
It was a small brig, hull down and hove to, over on the horizon.
“Yes,” said Hornblower-the speech deserved no more ample rejoinder. He was much too occupied looking through his own glass at the craggy beach of rock on which the Spaniards had seen fit to place twenty-thousand men. It was just a grey fragment, one single ridge projecting like a tooth from the blue Mediterranean, its steep slopes unrelieved by any trace of green. Around its foot the rollers broke into white fountains of spray - Hornblower could see the waves reaching 20 or 30 feet up the cliffs as they beat upon them - save in the centre where a long flurry of foam revealed the landing beach and all its dangers. It was a wicked enough place.
“Can’t blame the dagos for not landing stores here in an easterly wind,” said Bush, and this time he received no answer at all.
“Hoist out the longboat,” Hornblower rasped; when approaching a difficult task he would take out no insurance by minor politeness for his subordinates’ sympathy in the event of failure.
The bos’un’s mates twittered on their pipes while Harrison, the bos’un, repeated the order in his resounding bellow. The tackles were manned and the longboat was swung up from her chocks and hoisted overside. The longboat’s crew stood fending her off as the Sutherland surged in the choppy sea.
“I’m going in her, Mr Bush,” said Hornblower briefly.
He took hold of one of the falls and lowered himself down; his unathletic figure dangled in ungainly fashion while the longboat’s crew fell over each other in their haste to protect his fall. It was a source of continual inward disturbance to Hornblower that the poorest topman in his whole ship was better on a rope than he was himself. He managed just well enough, and with only a small loss of dignity, with a 3-foot drop as a result of his not quite correctly estimating the relative movements of the ship and the boat. Somebody picked up his hat and gave it to him and he clapped it on his head again.
“Give way,” he snapped, and the longboat crept under oars over the surging sea towards the distant beach.
Now, with his glass, Hornblower could see little figures pouring down to the water’s edge on Cabrera. They were all as naked as the two men he picked up yesterday; Hornblower wondered what it was like to climb about with a bare skin over the jagged rocks of Cabrera; he wondered what it was like to try and live naked through a winter storm with only a hollow in a rock for shelter. He felt sick with the thought of all the horror and misery which that jagged lump of rock must have witnessed for the past two years. He was glad he was going to make this small attempt at relief. He put away his glass and walked forward between the rowers to where the 6-pounder was mounted in the bows.
At his command, one of the crew broke open a paper cartridge, poured the powder into the muzzle of the gun and rammed the wad home upon the charge. Another hand knotted the line to the queer missile which the blacksmith had prepared. Hornblower dropped the thing into the muzzle of the gun and rammed it down. He twirled the elevating screw; the wedges slid from under the breech of the gun, and the muzzle cocked itself up as the gun rested at its fullest elevation. He gauged the strength of the wind and glanced round him trying to predict the motion of the boat in the choppy sea. Then he pulled the lanyard, and the gun roared out.
At his elbow the line suddenly came to life, whirring viciously as it shot from the tub; the smoke vanished just in time to give him a glimpse of the line hanging in an arc in the air before the projectile fell into the surf and the line after it. A little groan went up from the crew of the longboat- they had been taking the usual childlike interest in the novelty of all this, to be expected of sailors welcoming any break in the monotony of a long voyage.
“Get that line in again,” said Hornblower sitting down on a thwart. “Make those coils absolutely smooth.”
That was one comforting piece of knowledge which the study of scientific gunnery had given him; because one first shot had failed was no proof at all that the twentieth would not succeed. And this time line and projectile would be wet and heavier; the gun would be hot and would react differently; the likelihood that the boat would be at the same angle to the horizon on the waves was very remote; and in any case the trial shot had indicated that they must move a little farther up the coast to make the proper allowance for the wind. He ordered a double wad to be put on top of the new charge so as to keep the wet projectile from damping the powder while the longboat crept a few yards north along the edge of the surf.
When the gun was fired again, it looked for a second as if the shot would be successful, but it dropped into the surf 10 yards from the waiting crowd - and for all practical purposes 10 yards were as effective as 100. The third and fourth and fifth shots failed by even wider margins. It began to look to Hornblower as if the initial velocity were insufficient - perhaps the pull of the line as it ran out was stronger than he had allowed for. At the risk of straining the gun, he could increase the powder charge; there was an additional risk in that because the line might break and the projectile fly free, in which case it would go clean through somebody in the crowd on the beach. But when the sixth and seventh shots also failed, Hornblower decided to take the risk. He put in a charge and a half of powder and rammed it well down. Then he ordered the whole crew aft as far as possible into the stern sheets of the boat - if the gun should burst, he wanted only a minimum of casualties, and it seemed perfectly logical to him that he should take the risk of pulling the lanyard himself instead of ordering someone else to do so.
He took a last glance down at the line and then jerked the lanyard. The gun went off with a crash which jerked the whole longboat sternwards, and the gun itself leapt in its carriage with a clatter. But the stout metal held firm, and the projectile, trailing its curved arc of line, cleared the water’s edge and dropped into the waiting crowd.
Communication was established, but it was a frail enough bond, because those madmen on shore had no sooner grabbed the line than they began to haul it in. Hornblower cursed himself for not having seen this
