The Commodore

“Very good, Mr. Mound. Carry on.”

Hornblower went back to his barge and rowed over to the Moth. The work here was a stage more advanced; so much sand had been shovelled out of the lighters that it was only with slow effort that the working parties could heave their shovelfuls over the side, shoulder-high. A wide streak of the Moth’s copper was already visible, so high was she riding.

“Watch your trim, Mr. Duncan,” said Hornblower. “She’s canting a little to port.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

It called for some complicated adjustment of the cables, veering out and hauling in, to set Moth on an even keel again.

“She won’t draw more’n two feet by the time we’re finished with her, sir,” said Duncan exultantly.

“Excellent,” said Hornblower.

Duncan addressed himself to putting more men to work in the lighters, shovelling sand across from the inboard to the outboard sides, to ease the work of those actually heaving the sand over.

“Two hours more an’ they’ll be clear, sir,” reported Duncan. “Then we’ll only have to pierce the sides for sweeps.”

He glanced over at the sun, still not far above the horizon.

“We’ll be ready for action half an hour before noon, sir,” he added.

“Put the carpenters to work piercing the sides now,” said Hornblower. “So that you can rest your men and give them a chance to have breakfast. Then when they start again they can shovel through the ports and work quicker.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

Half an hour before noon seemed to be a more likely sort of estimate with that improvement in the programme, yet even if the completion of the work were delayed by two hours there would still be long hours of daylight left in which the blow could be struck. While the sides of the lighters were being pierced Hornblower called Duncan and Mound to him and went over their final orders with them.

“I’ll be up in the church with the signalling party,” he said in conclusion. “I’ll see that you’re properly supported. So good luck.”

“Thank you, sir,” they answered in unison. Excitement and anticipation masked their weariness.

So Hornblower had himself rowed over to the village, where a tiny jetty saved him and the signallers from splashing through the shallows: the roar of the bombardment and the counter-bombardment grew steadily louder as they approached. Diebitch and Clausewitz came to meet them as they mounted the jetty, and led the way towards the church. As they skirted the foot of the earthworks which ringed the village on its landward side Hornblower looked up and saw the Russian artillerymen working their guns, bearded soldiers, naked to the waist in the hot sun. An officer walked from gun to gun in the battery, pointing each piece in succession.

“There are few men in our artillery who can be trusted to lay a gun,” explained Clausewitz.

The village was already badly knocked about, great holes showing in the walls and roofs of the flimsy cottages of which it was composed. As they neared the church a ricocheting ball struck the church wall, sending a cloud of chips flying, and remaining embedded in the brickwork like a plum in a cake. A moment later Hornblower swung round to a sudden unusual noise to see his two midshipmen standing staring at the headless corpse of a seaman who a moment before had been walking at their heels. A ball flying over the earthworks had shattered his head to atoms and flung his body against them. Somers was eyeing with disgust the blood and brains which had spattered his white trousers.

“Come along,” said Hornblower.

In the gallery under the dome they could look down upon the siege. The zigzag approach trench was almost half-way towards the defences, the head of it almost obscured by flying earth as the Russians fired furiously upon it. But the central redoubt which covered the entrance to the village was in bad shape, its parapets battered into nothing more than mounds, a gun lying half buried beside its shattered carriage, although the other one was still being worked by a devoted little group. The whole of the French works were obscured by the thin pall of smoke which spread from the breaching battery, but the smoke was not so thick as to hide a column of infantry marching down towards the first parallel from the rear.

“They relieve the guard of the trenches at noon,” explained Clausewitz. “Where are these boats of yours, sir?”

“Here they come,” said Hornblower.

They were creeping over the silvery water, fantastic in appearance, the ketches with their sails furled and the ugly bulks of the lighters beside them. The long clumsy sweeps, a dozen on each side, looked like the legs of a water-boatman on a pond, but far slower in movement as the toiling seamen who manned them tugged them through each successive endless stroke.

“Somers! Gerard!” said Hornblower, sharply. “How are your signalling arrangements working out? Lash those blocks to the cornice up there. Come along, you haven’t all day to get ready in.”

The midshipmen and seamen addressed themselves to the business of making a signalling station up on the gallery. The blocks were lashed to the cornice and the halliards rove through them, the Russian staff watching the operation with interest. Meanwhile the bomb-ketches came crawling up the bay, painfully slowly under their sweeps, heading crabwise on account of the gentle breeze on their bow, before which they sagged away to leeward quite perceptibly to Hornblower’s eye above them. No one among the enemy seemed to be paying them the least attention; Bonaparte’s armies, lords of Europe from Madrid to Smolensk, had had few opportunities of becoming acquainted with bomb-ketches. The firing from the big battery went on steadily, pounding at the crumbling Russian earthworks below, with the Russians returning the fire with desperate energy.

The Harvey and the Moth came creeping in until they were quite close to shore; Hornblower through his glass could see minute figures moving in their bows, and knew they were dropping their anchors. The sweeps worked spasmodically, first on one side and then on the other— Hornblower up in the gallery, his heart beating fast, could well picture Mound and Duncan on their quarter-decks shouting their orders to the rowers as they manoeuvred themselves about like beetles pinned to a card. They were placing themselves in position to drop other anchors at the stern, so that by veering and hauling in on their cables they could swing themselves so as to be able to point their mortars anywhere along a wide arc. Clausewitz and the staff looked on uncomprehending, having no notion of the meaning of these manoeuvres. Hornblower saw the stern anchors let go, and could see little groups of men bending to work at the capstans; the bomb-ketches turned almost imperceptibly first this way and then that as their captains trained them round by the aid of the leading marks on the shore.

“There’s the ‘ready’ flag going up in Harvey,” said Hornblower, the glass at his eye.

The sheave in the block above his head shrilled noisily as the halliard ran over it, bearing the acknowledgement. A big puff of smoke suddenly spurted upwards from the Harvey’s bows; Hornblower at that distance could see nothing of the shell in its flight, and he waited nervously, compelling himself to search the whole area round about the battery to make sure of seeing the burst. And he saw nothing, nothing at all. Reluctantly he ordered hoisted the black cone for ‘unobserved’ and Harvey fired again. This time he could see the burst, a little volcano of smoke and fragments just beyond the battery.

“That was over, sir,” said Somers.

“Yes. Make that to Harvey.”

Duncan had anchored Moth by now, and was flying the signal of readiness. Harvey’s next shell fell square in the centre of the battery, and immediately afterwards Moth’s first shell did the same. At once the two ketches began a systematic bombardment of the battery, dropping shells into it in constant succession, so that there was not a moment when a fountain of smoke and earth was not apparent within its earthworks. It was a plain rectangular structure, without traverses or internal subdivisions, and there was no shelter for the men within it now that their enemy had found means to circumvent their earthworks. They only maintained their fire for a few seconds, and then Hornblower could see them running from their guns; the interior of the battery looked like a disturbed ants’ nest. One of the big thirteen-inch shells landed full on the parapet, and the smoke clearing away revealed the breastwork blown flat, opening the interior of the battery to view from ground level in the village, and through the gap was visible the