The Commodore

At nightfall the squadron stood in towards the land. The wind was backing northerly a little, but it was still blowing a strong breeze, and although the night was not quite as overcast as the preceding one, there was every chance that the boats would slip through unobserved. Hornblower watched them go, just as two bells struck in the middle watch, and as they vanished into the greyness he turned away. Now he would have to wait. It interested him to discover once more that he would genuinely and sincerely have preferred to be in action himself, that he would rather be risking life and limb and liberty there in the Frisches Haff than be here safe at sea with nothing to do but await results. He looked on himself as a coward; he dreaded mutilation and he disliked the thought of death only less than that, so that it was a matter of peculiar interest to find that there were some things he disliked even more than danger. When a long enough time had elapsed for the boats to have passed the boom—or for them to have fallen into the hands of the enemy—Hornblower went below to rest for the brief interval before dawn, but he could only pretend to sleep, he could only hold himself down in his cot and prevent himself by sheer mental effort from tossing and turning. It was a positive relief to go out on the half-deck again when the sky began to grow lighter, to souse himself under the head-pump, and then to go up on the quarter-deck and drink coffee there, glancing the while over the starboard quarter where (with the ship hove-to on the port tack) lay Pillau and the entrance to the Haff.

The growing daylight revealed it all through Hornblower’s glass. At random cannon-shot lay the yellow and green headland on which Pillau was set; the twin church steeples were clearly visible. The line of the boom showed up, lying across the entrance, marked by breaking waves and occasionally a glimpse of dark timber. Those dark mounds above the water’s edge must be the batteries thrown up there to defend the entrance. On the other side lay the long line of the Nehrung, a yellowish green line of sandhills, rising and falling with minute variations of altitude as far as the eye could see, and beyond. But through the entrance there was nothing to see at all, nothing except grey water, flecked here and there with white where the shoals dotted the lagoon. The opposite shore of the Haff was too distant to be visible from the deck.

“Captain Bush,” ordered Hornblower, “would you please be good enough to send an officer with good eyes to the masthead with a glass?”

“Aye aye, sir.”

Hornblower watched the young lieutenant dashing up the rigging, moving as fast as he could with his Commodore’s eye on him, hanging back downward as he scaled the futtock-shrouds, going hand over hand up the topgallant-shrouds, Hornblower knew that in his present condition he could not do that without resting in the maintop for a space, and he also knew that his eyes were not as good as they were—not as good as the lieutenant’s. He watched the lieutenant settle himself at the topgallant mast-head, adjust his glass, and sweep the horizon, and he waited impatiently for a report. Unable to wait longer he grabbed his speaking-trumpet.

“Mast-head, there! What do you see of the shore inside?”

“Nothing, sir. It’s too hazy to see plain. But I can see no sails, sir.”

Maybe the garrison was laughing up their sleeves at him. Maybe the boats had fallen straight into their hands, and now they were amusing themselves watching the squadron beginning an endless wait for any further sight of the lost boats and seamen. Hornblower refused to allow himself to be pessimistic. He set himself to picture the state of affairs in the batteries and in the town, when the dawn revealed a British squadron lying-to just out of range. How the drums would beat and trumpets peal, as the troops were hurriedly turned out to guard against a possible landing. That was what must be going on at this very moment. The garrison, the French governor, must be still unaware as yet that wolves had slipped into their sheep-fold, that British boat crews had penetrated into the waters of the Haff where no enemy had been seen since Danzig fell to the French five years back. Hornblower tried to comfort himself with thought of all the additional bustle that would develop as soon as the situation disclosed itself to the enemy; the messengers that would gallop with warnings, the gunboats that would be hastily warned, the coasters and barges which would seek the shelter of the nearest batteries—if batteries there were; Hornblower was willing to bet that there was none between Elbing and Konigsberg, for none had been necessary so far.

“Mast-head! Can’t you see anything inshore?”

“No, sir—yes, sir. There’s gunboats putting out from the town.”

Hornblower could see those himself, a flotilla of small two-masted vessels, rigged with the sprit-mainsails usual to small Baltic craft, putting out from Elbing. They were a little like Norfolk wherries. Presumably they each carried one heavy gun, a twenty-four-pounder possibly, mounted right up in the eyes of the boat. They anchored at intervals in the shoal water, obviously as a further protection to the boom in case of an attempt upon it. Four of them moved right across and anchored to guard the shallows between the boom and the Nehrung—not exactly locking the stable door after the horse had been stolen, decided Hornblower, rejecting the simile after it came to his mind; they were locking the stable door to prevent the thief getting out, if they knew as yet (which was highly doubtful) that there was a thief inside. The haziness was fast clearing; overhead the sky was almost blue and a watery sun was showing through.

“Deck, there! If you please, sir, there’s a bit of smoke in sight now, right up the bay. Can’t see more than that, sir, but it’s black smoke and might be from a burning ship.”

Bush, measuring with his eye the dwindling distance between the ship and the boom, was giving orders to brace up and work a trifle farther out to sea again, and the two sloops conformed to the Nonsuch’s movements. Hornblower wondered whether or not he had put too much trust in young Mound with the bomb-ketches. Mound had an important rendezvous for next morning; with the Moth and the Harvey he was out of sight below the horizon. So far the garrison of Elbing had seen only the three British ships, and did not know of the existence of the ketches. That was well—as long as Mound carried out his orders correctly. Or a gale might blow up, or a shift of the wind might raise too much of a surf for the project Hornblower had in mind. Hornblower felt anxiety surge upon him. He had to force himself to relax, to appear composed. He permitted himself to walk the deck, but slowed down his nervous strides to a casual saunter.

“Deck, there! There’s more smoke inshore, sir. I can see two lots of it, as if there were two ships on fire now.”

Bush had just given orders to back the main-topsail again, and as the ship hove-to he came across to Hornblower.

“It looks as if Vickery had caught something, doesn’t it, sir?” he said, smiling.

“Let’s hope so,” answered Hornblower.

There was no sign of any anxiety in Bush’s expression; his craggy face denoted nothing more than fierce satisfaction at the thought of Vickery loose amid the coasting trade. His sublime confidence began to reassure Hornblower until the latter suddenly realized that Bush was not really paying consideration to circumstances. Bush knew that Hornblower had planned this attack, and that was enough for him. In that case he could imagine no possibility of failure, and Hornblower found it profoundly irritating that this should be the case.

“Deck, there! There’s two small sail heading across the bay close-hauled for the town. And I can’t be sure yet, sir, but I think the second one is our cutter.”

“Our cutter it is, sir!” yelled another voice. Every idle hand in the ship was perched by now at the mast- heads.

“That’ll be Montgomery,” said Bush. He had fitted the toe of his wooden leg into the ring-bolt of the aftermost carronade tackle so that he could stand without effort on the gently heaving deck.

“She’s caught her, sir!” yelled the voice from the mast-head. “Our cutter’s caught her!”

“That’s one lot of beef and bread that Boney won’t get,” said Bush.

Very heavy destruction of the coastal shipping in the Haff might be some compensation for the loss of 150 prime seamen. But it would be hard to convince Their Lordships of the Admiralty of that, if there was no certain evidence of the destruction.

“Deck, there! The two sail are parting company. Our cutter’s going off before the wind. The other has her mains’l brailed up, I think, sir. Looks to me as if—”

The lieutenant’s report terminated abruptly in mid-sentence.

“There she goes!” yelled another voice, and at the same moment there came a cheer from everyone aloft.

“She’s blown up!” shouted the lieutenant, forgetting in his excitement even to add ‘sir’ to his words when addressing his Commodore. “There’s a pillar of smoke as high as a mountain! You can see it from the deck, I think.”