The Happy Return

“Pass the word for Sullivan and his fiddle,” he ordered.

The red-haired Irish madman came aft, and knuckled his forehead, his fiddle and bow under his arm.

“Give us a tune, Sullivan,” he ordered. “Hey there, men, who is there among you who dances the best hornpipe?”

There was a difference of opinion about that, apparently.

“Benskin, sir,” said some voices.

“Hall, sir,” said others.

“No, MacEvoy, sir.”

“Then we’ll have a tournament,” said Hornblower. “Here, Benskin, Hall, MacEvoy. A hornpipe from each of you, and guinea for the man who does it best.”

In later years it was a tale told and retold, how the Lydia was towed into action with hornpipes being danced on her maindeck. It was quoted as an example of Hornblower’s cool courage, and only Hornblower knew how little truth there was in the attribution. It kept the men happy, which was why he did it. No one guessed how nearly he came to vomiting when a shot came in through a forward gun-port and spattered Hall with a seaman’s brains without causing him to miss a step.

Then later in that dreadful afternoon there came a crash from forward, followed by a chorus of shouts and screams overside.

“Launch sunk, sir!” hailed Galbraith from the forecastle, but Hornblower was there as soon as he had uttered the words.

A round shot had dashed the launch practically into its component planks, and the men were scrambling in the water, leaping up for the bobstay or struggling to climb into the cutter, all of them who survived wild with fear of sharks.

“The Dagoes have saved us the trouble of hoisting her in,” he said, loudly. “We’re close enough now for them to feel our teeth.”

The men who heard him cheered.

“Mr. Hooker!” he called to the midshipman in the cutter. “When you have picked up those men, kindly starboard your helm. We are going to open fire.”

He came aft to the quarterdeck again.

“Hard a-starboard,” he growled at the quartermaster. “Mr. Gerard, you may open first when your guns bear.”

Very slowly the Lydia swung round. Another broadside from the Natividad came crashing into her before she had completed the turn, but Hornblower actually did not notice it. The period of inaction was now over. He had brought his ship within four hundred yards of the enemy, and all his duty now was to walk the deck as an example to his men. There were no more decisions to make.

“Cock your locks!” shouted Gerard in the waist.

“Easy, Mr. Hooker. Way enough!” roared Hornblower.

The Lydia turned inch by inch, with Gerard squinting along one of the starboard guns to judge of the moment when it would first bear.

“Take your aim!” he yelled, and stood back, timing the roll of the ship in the heavy swell. “Fire!”

The smoke billowed out amid the thunder of the discharge, and the Lydia heaved to the recoil of the guns.

“Give him another, lads!” shouted Hornblower through the din. Now that action was joined he found himself exalted and happy, the dreadful fears of mutilation forgotten. In thirty seconds the guns were reloaded, run out, and fired. Again and again and again, with Gerard watching the roll of the ship and giving the word. Counting back in his mind, Hornblower reckoned five broadsides from the Lydia, and he could only remember two from the Natividad in that time. At that rate of firing the Natividad’s superiority in numbers of guns and weight of metal would be more than counterbalanced. At the sixth broadside a gun went off prematurely, a second before Gerard gave the word. Hornblower sprang forward to detect the guilty crew—it was easy enough from their furtive look and suspicious appearance of busyness. He shook his finger at them.

“Steady, there!” he shouted. “I’ll flog the next man who fires out of turn.”

It was very necessary to keep the men in hand while the range was as long as at present, because in the heat and excitement of the action the gun captains could not be trusted to judge the motion of the ship while preoccupied with loading and laying.

“Good old Horny!” piped up some unknown voice forward, and there was a burst of laughing and cheering, cut short by Gerard’s next order to fire.

The smoke was banked thick about the ship already—as thick as a London fog so that from the quarterdeck it was impossible to see individuals on the forecastle, and in the u

Hornblower found Bush beside him.

“Natividad’s feeling our fire, sir,” he roared through the racket. “She’s firing very wild. Look at that, sir.”

Of the broadside fired only one or two shots struck home. Half a dozen plunged together into the sea astern of the Lydia so that the spray from the fountains which they struck up splashed round them on the quarterdeck. Hornblower nodded happily. This was his justification for closing to that range and for ru

He looked down through the smoke at the Lydia’s main deck. The inexperienced eye, observing the hurry and bustle of the boys with the cartridge buckets, the mad efforts of the gun crews, the dead and the wounded, the darkness and the din, might well think it a scene of confusion, but Hornblower knew better. Everything that was being done there, every single action, was part of the scheme worked out by Hornblower seven months before when he commissioned the Lydia, and grained into the minds of all on board during the long and painful drills since. He could see Gerard standing by the mainmast, looking almost saintly in his ecstasy—gu

The port side battery was already depleted of most of its men; there were only two men to a gun there, standing idle yet ready to spring into action if a shift of the fight should bring their guns to bear. The remainder were on duty round the ship—replacing casualties on the starboard side, ma

Something—the concussion of the guns, a faint breath of air, or the send of the sea—was causing the Lydia to turn away a trifle from her enemy. Hornblower could see that the guns were having to be trained round farther and farther so that the rate of firing was being slowed down. He raced forward, ru

“Mr. Hooker, bring her head round two points to starboard.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

The men bent to their oars and headed their boat towards the Natividad; the tow-rope tightened while another badly aimed broadside tore the water all round them into foam. Tugging and straining at the oars they would work the ship round in time. Hornblower left them and ran back to the quarterdeck. There was a white-faced ship’s boy seeking him there.