“We have to have daylight to run the Thames stauncher,” said the steersman. “Two hours? We’ll only just get there by daylight if we go now.”
He looked round him, at the silent canal cut and tunnel mouths at the chattering women in the boat and the few doddering old gaffers along with them.
“Twelve hours late, we’ll be,” he concluded, morosely.
A day late in taking up his command, thought Hornblower.
“Damn it,” he said, “I’ll help you leg through.”
“Good on ye, sir,” said the steersman, significantly dropping the equalitarian “captain” for the “sir” he had carefully eschewed so far. “D’ye think you can?”
“Likely enough,” said Hornblower.
“Let’s fit those wings,” said the steersman, with sudden decision.
They were small platforms, projecting out from either bow.
“Horatio,” asked Maria, “whatever are you doing?”
That was just what Maria would ask. Hornblower was tempted to make use of the rejoinder he had heard used once in the Renown, to the effect that he was getting milk from a male ostrich, but he checked himself.
“Just helping the boatman, dear,” he said patiently.
“You don’t think enough of your position,” said Maria.
Hornblower was by now a sufficiently experienced married man to realize the advantages of allowing his wife to say what she liked as long as he could continue to do as he liked. With the wings fitted he and the steersman on board, and the horseholder on the bank, took their places along the side of the Queen Charlotte. A strong united shove sent the boat gliding into the cut, heading for the tunnel.
“Keep ‘er goin’, sir,” said the steersman, scrambling forward to the port side wing. It was obvious that it would be far easier to maintain gentle way on the boat than to progress in fits and starts of alternate stopping and moving. Hornblower hurried to the starboard side wing and laid himself down on it as the bows of the boat crept into the dark tunnel. Lying on his right side, with his head inboard, he felt his feet come into contact with the brick lining of the tunnel. He pressed with his feet, and then by a simple backwards walking motion he urged the boat along.
“Hold hard, sir,” said the steersman — his head was just beside Hornblower’s — “there’s two miles an’ more to go.”
A tunnel two miles long, driven through the solid rock of the Cotswolds! No wonder it was the marvel of the age. The Romans with all their aqueducts had achieved nodding to compare with this. Farther and farther into the tunnel they went, into darkness that increased in intensity, until it was frightfully, astonishingly dark, with the eye recording nothing at all, strain as it might. At their entrance into the tunnel the women had chattered and laughed, and had shouted to hear the echoes in the tunnel.
“Silly lot o’ hens,” muttered the steersman.
Now they fell silent, oppressed by the darkness, all except Maria.
“I trust you remember you have your good clothes on, Horatio,” she said.
“Yes, dear,” said Hornblower, happy in the knowledge that she could not possibly see him.
It was not a very dignified thing he was doing, and not at all comfortable. After a few minutes he was acutely aware of the hardness of the platform on which he was lying; nor was it long before his legs began to protest against the effort demanded of them. He tried to shift his position a little, to bring other muscles into play and other areas of himself into contact with the platform, but he learned fast enough that it had to be done with tact and timing, so as not to disturb the smooth rhythm of the propulsion of the boat — the steersman beside him grunted a brief protest as Hornblower missed a thrust with his right leg and the boat baulked a little.
“Keep ‘er goin’, sir,” he repeated.
So they went on through the darkness, in the strangest sort of mesmeric nightmare, suspended in utter blackness, utterly silent, for their speed was not sufficient to raise a ripple round the Queen Charlotte’s bows. Hornblower went on thrusting with his feet, urging his aching legs into further efforts; he could tell by the sensations conveyed through the soles of his shoes that the tunnel was no longer brick‑lined — his feet pressed against naked rock, rough and irregular as the tunnellers’ picks and gunpowder had left it. That made his present employment more difficult.