“They’ll start now,” he said at length, his head back on his pillow. “You can take ’em. Looney, here — that’s what I call him — will be in charge. I’ve told ’em there are no sharks. Generally when one of ’em’s down at the bottom the other two pray against sharks — they’re all three of ’em shark doctors. A good thing they’ve seen men flogged on board here. I promised ’em you’d give ’em a taste of the cat if there was any nonsense.”
Hornblower had seen very plainly what the reactions of these twittering, bird‑like creatures had been to that horror.
“Take ’em away,” said McCullum, lying back on his pillow.
With longboat and launch over at the far side of the Bay for stores and water only the gig and the tiny jolly boat were available. The gig was uncomfortably crowded but it served, with four hands at the oars, Hornblower and Leadbitter in the stern — Hornblower felt he could not possibly endure not taking part in this first essay — and the Ceylonese crowded into the bows. Hornblower had formed a shrewd notion about the extent of McCullum’s ability to speak the divers’ language. He had no doubt that McCullum made no attempt to speak it accurately or with any attempt at inflection. He made his points, Hornblower guessed, with a few nouns and verbs and some energetic gestures. McCullum’s command of the Ceylonese tongue could not compare with Hornblower’s Spanish, nor even with his French. Hornblower felt a sense of grievance about that, as he sat with his hand on the tiller and steered the gig over the dancing water — already the flat calm of dawn had given way to a moderate breeze that ruffled the surface.
They reached the first of the buoys — a plank wallowing among the wavelets at the end of its line — and Hornblower stood to identify the others. A stroke or two of the oars carried the gig into the centre of the area, and Hornblower looked down the boat to where the divers huddled together.
“Looney,” he said.
Now that he had been paying special attention to them he could distinguish each of the three divers from the others. Until that time they might as well have been triplets as far as his ability went to tell them apart.
“Looney,” said Hornblower again.
Looney rose to his feet and dropped the grapnel over the side. It went down fast, taking out the coiled‑down line rapidly over the gunwale. Slowly Looney took off his clothes until he stood naked. He sat himself on the gunwale and swung his legs over. As his feet felt the cold of the water he cried out, and the other two joined with him in cries of alarm or commiseration.
“Shall I give ‘im a shove, sir?” asked the hand at the bow oar.
“No,” said Hornblower.
Looney was sitting systematically inflating and deflating his chest, inhaling as deeply as he could, forcing air into his lungs. Hornblower could see how widely the ribs moved at each breath. One of the other two Ceylonese put a cannon‑ball into Looney’s hands, and be clasped it to his naked chest. Then he let himself slip from the gunwale and disappeared below the surface, leaving the gig rocking violently.
Hornblower took out his watch; it had no second hand — watches with second hands were far too expensive for him to afford — but he could measure the time roughly. He watched the tip of the minute hand creep from one mark to the next, from there to the next, and into the third minute. He was concentrating so deeply on the task that he did not hear Looney break water; his attention was called by a word from Leadbitter. Looney’s head was visible twenty yards astern, his long thick switch of black hair, tied with a string, beside his ear.
“Back water!” said Hornblower promptly. “Pay out that line, there!”
The second order was understood clearly enough by the Ceylonese, or at least they knew their business, for as a vigorous stroke or two sent the gig down to Looney one of them attended to the line over the bows. Looney put his hands up to the gunwale and the other two pulled him on board. They talked volubly, but Looney at first sat still on the thwart, his head down by his thighs. Then he lifted his head, the water streaming from his wet hair. Clearly he talked about the cold — that sharp breeze must have been icy upon his wet skin — for the others towelled him and assisted him to cover himself with his clothes.