The Happy Return

That long nine, although of smaller calibre, was of longer range than his shorter main deck guns, while the carronades which comprised half of the Lydia’s armament were useless at anything longer than close range. The Lydia would have to draw up close to her enemy before she could attack her with effect. There would be a long and damaging interval between the moment when the Natividad should be able to bring all her guns into action and the moment when the Lydia could hit back at her. There would be casualties, guns dismounted perhaps, serious losses. Hornblower balanced the arguments for and against continuing to try and close with the enemy while Mr. Marsh was squinting along the sights of the nine pounder. Then Hornblower scowled to himself, and ceased tugging at his chin, his mind made up. He had started the action; he would go through with it to the end, cost what it might. His flexibility of mind could crystallise into sullen obstinacy.

The nine pounder went off as though to signal this decision.

“Just alongside her!” screamed Knyvett triumphantly from the foretop.

“Well done, Mr. Marsh,” said Hornblower, and Marsh wagged his beard complacently.

The Natividad was firing faster now. Three times a splintering crash told of a shot which had been aimed true. Then suddenly a thrust as if from an invisible hand made Hornblower reel on the quarterdeck, and his ears were filled with a brief rending noise. A skimming shot had ploughed a cha

“Are you hurt, sir?” cried Bush, leaping across to Hornblower.

“No.”

Hornblower turned back to stare through his glass at the Natividad while the wounded were being dragged away. He saw a dark dot appear alongside the Natividad, and lengthen and diverge. It was the boat with which they had been trying to row—perhaps they were giving up the attempt. But the boat was not being hoisted in. For a second Hornblower was puzzled. The Natividad’s stumpy fore mast and main mast came into view. The boat was pulling the ship laboriously round so that her whole broadside would bear. Not two, but twenty-five guns would soon be opening their fire on the Lydia.

Hornblower felt his breath come a little quicker, unexpectedly, so that he had to swallow in order to regulate things again. His pulse was faster, too. He made himself keep the glass to his eye until he was certain of the enemy’s manoeuvre, and then walked forward leisurely to the gangway. He was compelling himself to appear lighthearted and carefree; he knew that the fools of men whom he commanded would fight more diligently for a captain like that.

“They’re waiting for us now, lads,” he said. “We shall have some pebbles about our ears before long. Let’s show ‘em that Englishmen don’t care.”

They cheered him for that, as he expected and hoped they would do. He looked through his glass again at the Natividad. She was still turning, very slowly—it was a lengthy process to turn a clumsy two-decker in a dead calm. But he could see a hint of the broad white stripes which ornamented her side.

“Ha-h’m,” he said.

Forward he could hear the oars grinding away as the men in the boats laboured to drag the Lydia to grips with her enemy. Across the deck a little group of officers—Bush and Crystal among them—were academically discussing what percentage of hits might be expected from a Spanish broadside at a range of a mile. They were coldblooded about it in a fashion he could never hope to imitate with sincerity. He did not fear death so much—nor nearly as much—as defeat and the pitying contempt of his colleagues. The chiefest dread at the back of his mind was the fear of mutilation. An ex-naval officer stumping about on two wooden legs might be an object of condolence, might receive lip service as one of Britain’s heroic defenders, but he was a figure of fun, nevertheless. Hornblower dreaded the thought of being a figure of fun. He might lose his nose or his cheek and be so mutilated that people would not be able to bear to look at him. It was a horrible thought which set him shuddering while he looked through the telescope, so horrible that he did not stop to think of the associated details, of the agonies he would have to bear down there in the dark cockpit at the mercy of Laurie’s incompetence.

The Natividad was suddenly engulfed in smoke, and some seconds later the air and the water around the Lydia and the ship herself, were torn by the hurtling broadside.

“Not more than two hits,” said Bush, gleefully.

“Just what I said,” said Crystal. “That captain of theirs ought to go round and train every gun himself.”

“How do you know he did not?” argued Bush.

As punctuation the nine pounder forward banged out its defiance. Hornblower fancied that his straining eyes saw splinters fly amidships of the Natividad, unlikely though it was at that distance.

“Well aimed, Mr. Marsh!” he called. “You hit him squarely.”

Another broadside came from the Natividad, and another followed it, and another after that. Time after time the Lydia’s decks were swept from end to end with shot. There were dead men laid out again on the deck, and the groaning wounded were dragged below.

“It is obvious to anyone of a mathematical turn of mind,” said Crystal, “that those guns are all laid by different hands. The shots are too scattered for it to be otherwise.”

“Nonsense!” maintained Bush sturdily. “See how long it is between broadsides. Time enough for one man to train each gun. What would they be doing in that time otherwise?”

“A Dago crew—,” began Crystal, but a sudden shriek of ca

“Mr. Galbraith!” shouted Bush. “Have that main t’gallant stay spliced directly.” Then he turned triumphantly on Crystal. “Did you notice,” he asked, “how every shot from that broadside went high? How does the mathematical mind explain that?”

“They fired on the upward roll, Mr. Bush. Really, Mr. Bush, I think that after Trafalgar—”

Hornblower longed to order them to cease the argument which was lacerating his nerves, but he could not be such a tyrant as that.

In the still air the smoke from the Natividad’s firing had banked up around about her so that she showed ghostly through the cloud, her solitary mizzen topmast protruding above it into the clear air.

“Mr. Bush,” he asked, “at what distance do you think she is now?”

Bush gauged the distance carefully.

“Three parts of a mile, I should say, sir.”

“Two-thirds, more likely, sir,” said Crystal.

“Your opinion was not asked, Mr. Crystal,” snapped Hornblower.

At three-quarters of a mile, even at two-thirds, the Lydia’s carronades would be ineffective. She must continue ru

“Time for the men at the oars to be relieved,” he said, and went forward to attend it. Hornblower heard him bustling the new crews down into the boats, anxious that the pulling should be resumed before the Lydia had time to lose what little way she carried.

It was terribly hot under the blazing sun, even though it was now long past noon. The smell of the blood which had been spilt on the decks mingled with the smell of the hot deck seams and of the powder smoke from the nine pounder with which Marsh was still steadily bombarding the enemy. Hornblower felt sick—so sick that he began to fear lest he should disgrace himself eternally by vomiting in full view of his men. When fatigue and anxiety had weakened him thus he was far more conscious of the pitching and rolling of the ship under his feet. The men at the guns were silent now, he noticed—for long they had laughed and joked at their posts, but now they were begi