A Ship of the Line

Chapter XVI

The thunder was already rolling on the horizon when Hornblower set foot on the Sutherland’s deck again, although the heat showed no signs of diminishing at present and the wind had dropped away almost to nothing. The black clouds had stretched over the sky nearly overhead, and what blue was left was of a hard metallic tint.

“It’ll be coming soon, sir,” said Bush. He looked complacently upwards; the Sutherland’s sail had already been reduced by his orders to topsails only, and now the crew were busy taking a reef in them. “But where it’ll come from, God only knows.”

He mopped his sweating forehead; the heat was frightful, and the ship, with no wind to steady her, was heaving painfully on the uneasy sea. The blocks were chattering loudly as she rolled.

“Oh, come on, blast you,” grumbled Bush.

A breath of air, hot as though from a brick kiln, stole upon them, and the Sutherland steadied for a moment. Then came another, hotter and stronger.

“There it comes!” said Bush pointing.

The black sky was suddenly split by dazzling lightning, followed almost instantaneously by a tremendous crash of thunder, and the squall came racing down upon them; they could see its hard, metallic line on the surface of the grey sea. Almost taken aback, the Sutherland shuddered and plunged. Hornblower bellowed orders to the helmsman, and she paid off before it, steadying again. The shrieking wind brought hail with it—hailstones as big as cherries, which bit and blinded and stung, rattling with an infernal din on the decks, and whipping the sea into a yeasty foam whose hiss was audible even through the other noises. Bush held the big collar of his tarpaulin coat up round his face, and tried to shield his eyes with the brim of his sou’wester, but Hornblower found the keen wind so delicious that he was unconscious of the pain the hailstones caused him. Polwheal, who came ru

The Pluto, hove to, came drifting down two cables’ lengths clear of the Sutherland’s starboard bow; the big three-decker was even more unhandy and made more leeway than the Sutherland herself. Hornblower watched her and wondered how Villena was feeling now, battened down below with the timbers groaning round him. He was commending himself to the saints, presumably. The Caligula was still up to windward under reefer topsails, her man o’ war pendant blown out stiff and as straight as a pole. She was the most weatherly of the three ships, for her British designers had had in mind as principal object the building of a ship to contend with storms—not, as in the case of the Pluto, of cramming the utmost artillery into a given length and beam, nor, as the Dutch designers had been compelled to do in the case of the Sutherland, to give the minimum of draught compatible with a minimum of sea-worthiness. Almost without warning the wind whipped round four whole points, and the Sutherland lurched and plunged, her storm canvas slatting like a discharge of guns, before she paid off again. The hail had given place to torrential rain now, driven along almost horizontally by the howling wind, and the sudden change in the wind called up a short, lumpy sea over which the Sutherland bucked and plunged in ungainly fashion. He looked over to the Pluto–she had been caught nearly aback, but Elliott was handling her well and she had paid off in time. Hornblower felt that he would rather command the flat-bottomed old Sutherland than a clumsy three-decker ninety-eight guns and thirty-two pounders and first-rate’s pay notwithstanding.

The wind shrieked at him again, nearly tearing his tarpaulin from his back. The Sutherland trying to lie over on her side in a gale like this was like a cow trying to waltz. Bush was yelling something at him. Hornblower caught the words “relieving tackles” and nodded, and Bush vanished below. Four men at the wheel, aided by the powerful leverage of the barrel of the wheel, might possibly manage to control it despite the Sutherland’s frantic behaviour, but the strain thrown on the tiller ropes would be enormous, and as precautionary measure it would be better to place six or eight men at relieving tackles in the gunroom, to share the strain both on the men at the wheel and on the tipper ropes. A petty officer would have to be posted at the grating nearest the wheel to shout down instructions to the men at the relieving tackles—all highly skilled work, the thought of which made Hornblower bless his own resolution in stripping the East India convoy of seamen.

To windward the horizon was concealed in a pearly mistiness of rare beauty, but to leeward it was clearer, and reaching up to the sky in that direction there was a bar of blue—the mountains of Spain. In that direction there was Rosas Bay, poor shelter with the present south-easterly gale blowing, and closed to British ships in any case because of the French guns mounted there; Rosas was a fortress whose siege and capture by the French had provided Cochrane with opportunities for distinguishing himself a year ago. The northern extremity of Rosas Bay was Cape Creux—the Sutherland had captured the Amelie while the latter was endeavouring to weather this point. Beyond Cape Creux the coast trended away again northwesterly, giving them ample sea room in which to ride out the gale, for these summer storms in the Mediterranean never lasted long, violent though they were.

“Flagship’s signalling, sir,” yelled the midshipman of the watch. “No. 35, make all sail conformable with the weather.”

The Pluto was showing storm-staysails as well as her close reefed topsails; apparently the admiral had decided that Cape Creux was dangerously near, and wished to claw out a little farther to windward in case of emergencies. It was a sensible precaution; Hornblower gave the necessary orders to set the Sutherland on the same course, although it was all that the men at the wheel and relieving tackles could do to keep her from coming up into the wind. The guns’ crews were busy double-breeching the guns lest the heavings of the ship should cause any to break loose, and there was already a party of men at work on the two chain pumps. The working of the ship was not causing her to take in much water as yet, but Hornblower believed in keeping the well as clear as possible in case the time should come when pumping would be urgently necessary. The Caligula was far to windward already—Bolton was making the fullest use of the weatherly qualities of his ship and was keeping, very properly, as far as possible out of harm’s way. But the Sutherland and the Pluto were safe enough, always excepting accidents. The loss of a spar, a gun breaking loose, a sudden leak developing, and the situation might be dramatically changed, but at present they were safe enough.

Overhead the thunder was rolling so unceasingly that Hornblower noticed it no longer. The play of the lightning among the black clouds was dazzling and beautiful. At this rate the storm could not last much longer; equilibrium was restoring itself fast. But there would be some flurries yet, and the wind had already kicked up a heavy sea, here in this shallow corner of the Mediterranean; there was plenty of water washing over the maindeck as the Sutherland rolled. The air, even the deluges of rain and spray, were exhilarating after the stifling heat of the past few days, and the wind screaming in the rigging made a music which even Hornblower’s tone-deaf ear could appreciate. He was surprised that so much time had passed when Polwheal came to tell him his di