Chapter XV
This time so many men were wanted for the operation that Hornblower was using the launch instead of the gig. As usual the three Ceylonese divers were huddled in the bows, but next to them in the bottom of the boat stood an iron pot of melted pitch, and beside it squatted a sailmaker’s mate, and Mr. Clout, the gunner, sat amidships with the powder keg between his legs. The canvas covering to the keg was incompletely sewn, gaping wide at the upper end. They dropped the grapnel and the launch rode on the little waves beside the little keg that floated with the end of the useless fuse‑hose, a monument to the previous failure.
“Carry on, Mr. Clout,” said Hornblower.
This was something more than exciting. This was dangerous. The divers stripped themselves for their work, and sat up to begin their exercises of inflating and deflating their lungs. There would not be any time to spare later. Clout took the tinderbox and proceeded to strike a spark upon the tinder, crouching low to shelter it from the small breeze which blew over the surface of the Bay. He caught fire upon the slow match, brought it to a glow, and looked over at Hornblower.
“Carry on, I said,” said Hornblower.
Clout dabbed the slow match upon the fuse that protruded through a hole in the end of the powder keg. Hornblower could hear the faint irregular hissing of the fuse as Clout waited for it to burn down into the hole. Among them now, in the middle of the boat, fire was creeping towards thirty pounds of gunpowder. If there were a few powder grains out of place, if the fuse were the least faulty, there would come a sudden crashing explosion which would blow them and the boat to fragments. There was not a sound in the boat save the hissing of the fuse. The spark crept down into the hole. The powder keg at this upper end had a double head, the result of the most careful work by the ship’s cooper. In the space between the two heads was coiled the fuse, whose farther end penetrated the inner head to rest amid the powder. Along that coil stapled to the inner head the fire was now moving unseen, creeping round on its way to dive down along its final length through the inner head.
Clout took from his pocket the canvas‑covered stopper, and dipped it into the warm pitch.
“Make sure of it, Mr. Clout,” said Hornblower.
Clout rammed the stopper into the hole in the outer head. The action cut off the sound of the hissing fuse, but everyone in the boat knew that the fire was still pursuing its inexorable way inside. Clout smeared pitch thickly about the stopper and then moved out of the way.
“Now, my hearty,” he said to the sailmaker’s mate.
This last needed no urging. Needle and palm in hand, he took Clout’s place and sewed up the canvas cover over the top of the keg.
“Keep those stitches small,” said Hornblower; the sailmaker’s mate, crouching over instant death, was not unnaturally nervous. So was Hornblower, but the irritation caused by the previous failure made him anxious that the work should be well done.
The sailmaker’s mate finished the last stitch, oversewed it, and, whipping out his sheath knife, cut the twine. There could be hardly anything more harmless in appearance than that canvas‑covered keg. It looked a stupid, a brainless object, standing there in the boat. Rout was already daubing pitch over the newly‑sewn end; the sides and the other end had been thickly pitched before the keg was put into the launch.
“Now the line,” said Hornblower.
As on the previous occasion a loop of line attached to the keg was passed round the mooring line of the buoy and secured to the keg again.
“Hoist it, you two. Lower away. Handsomely.”
The keg sank below the surface, dangling on the lowering line as the men let it down hand over hand. There was a sudden relief from tension in the boat, marked by a sudden babble of talk.
“Silence!” said Hornblower.
Even though the thing was invisible now, sinking down to the bottom of the Bay, it was still deadly — the men did not understand that. One of the divers was already sitting on the gunwale, a cannon‑ball in his hands — that was a ridiculous moment for Hornblower to remember that he had not carried out his earlier resolution to get in a store of rocks for that purpose — and his chest expanding and contracting. Hornblower would have liked to tell him to make certain to place the powder keg to the best advantage, but that was impossible owing to the difficulties of language. He had to content himself with a glance, half encouragement and half threat.