“Send the hands to quarters as soon as they have breakfasted, Mr Bush,” said Hornblower. “Clear for action, but keep the ports shut, I want the long boat and launch ready to be hoisted out at a moment’s notice.”
The hands came tumbling up from breakfast in a perfect babble of sound — the order to clear for action, the tricolour at the peak, the mountains of Spain ahead, the morning’s capture, all combining to work them up into wild excitement.
“Keep those men silent on the maindeck, there!” bellowed Hornblower. “It sounds like Bedlam turned loose.”
The noise dwindled abruptly, the men creeping about like children in a house with an irascible father. The bulkheads came down, the galley fire was tipped overside. The boys were running up with powder for the guns; the shot garlands between the guns were filled with the black iron spheres ready for instant use.
“Cleared for action, sir,” said Bush.
“H-h’m,” said Hornblower. “Captain Morris, if I send away the long boat and launch, I want twenty marines in each. Have your men told off ready.”
Hornblower took his glass and studied once more the rapidly nearing coast line. There were cliffs there, and the coast road wound at the foot of them, at the water’s edge, and the shore was steep-to, according to his charts. But it would be a sensible precaution to start the lead going soon. He was taking a risk in approaching a lee shore guarded by heavy batteries — the Sutherland might be badly knocked about before she could beat to windward out of range again. Hornblower was counting not merely on the disguise he had adopted, but on the very fact that the French would not believe that an English ship could take that risk.
To the French in the batteries the presence of a French ship of the line off that coast was susceptible of explanation — she might have ventured forth from Toulon, or have come in from the Atlantic, or she might be a refugee from some Ionian island attacked by the British, seeking refuge after long wanderings. He could not believe that they would open fire without allowing time for explanation.
At a word from Hornblower the Sutherland turned on a course parallel with the shore, heading northward with the wind abeam. She was creeping along now, in the light breeze, only just out of gunshot of the shore. The sun was blazing down upon them, the crew standing silently at their stations, the officers grouped on the quarterdeck, Hornblower with the sweat running down his face, sweeping the coast with his glass in search of an objective. The little wind was calling forth only the faintest piping from the rigging; the rattle of the blocks to the gentle roll of the ship sounded unnaturally loud in the silence as did the monotonous calling of the man at the lead. Suddenly Savage hailed from the foretop.
“There’s a lot of small craft, sir, at anchor round the point, there. I can just see ’em from here, sir.”
A dark speck danced in the object glass of Hornblower’s telescope. He lowered the instrument to rest his aching eye, and then he raised it again. The speck was still there; it was a tricolour flag waving lazily in the wind from a flagstaff on the point. That was what Hornblower had been seeking. A French battery perched on the top of the cliff. Forty-two pounders, probably, sited with a good command, probably with furnaces for heating the shot — no ship that floated could fight them. Clustered underneath, a little coasting fleet, huddling there for shelter at the sight of a strange sail.
“Tell your men to lie down,” said Hornblower to Morris. He did not want the red coats of the marines drawn up on the quarterdeck to reveal his ship prematurely for what she was.
The Sutherland crept along, the grey cliffs growing more clearly defined as at Hornblower’s order she was edged closer in shore. Beyond the cliffs mountain peaks were revealing themselves with startling suddenness whenever Hornblower’s rigid concentration on the battery relaxed. He could see the parapets now in his glass, and he almost thought he could see the big guns peeping over them. At any moment now the battery might burst into thunder and flame and smoke, and in that case he would have to turn and fly, baffled. They were well within gunshot now. Perhaps the French had guessed the Sutherland’s identity, and were merely waiting to have her well within range. Every minute that the Sutherland approached meant another minute under fire when she tried to escape. The loss of a mast might mean in the end the loss of the ship.