Hornblower and the Crisis, Forester, S. [ebook reader ink .TXT] 📗

their departure no efforts on the part of the Frenchmen left behind would extinguish the flames. Fifty — sixty — seventy Frenchmen would burn to death if they did not leap overboard to drown. He could not do it — at least he would not do it in cold blood: the alternative was already forming in his mind.

“We can leave her a wreck,” he said. “Cut the jeers, cut the halliards — cut the forestay, for that matter. Five minutes' work and it'll take 'em the best part of a day before they can get sail on her again.”

Perhaps it was the appeal to the demon of destruction that made up Baddlestone's mind for him.

“Come on!” he said. “Let's get 'em to work.”

It called for only the smallest amount of organization; the men they commanded were many of them trained officers who could grasp the situation with the briefest explanation. There were plenty of men to mount guard at the scuttle and at the hatch (whose cover was rapidly disintegrating under the force of axe blows from beneath) while the party to wreak destruction was told off and sent on its mission. It was as the turmoil began that Hornblower remembered one of the important duties of a King's officer in a captured ship; his mind seemed to be 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