“Bottom, sir,” announced the seaman at the lowering line.
The diver slipped from the gunwale and vanished under the surface. Down there with the powder charge and the glowing fuse he was in worse peril even than before. “They’ve seen one of their mates blown to bits using a flying fuse off Cuddalore,” McCullum had said. Hornblower wanted nothing like that to happen now. It occurred to him that if it were to happen the launch, with him in it, would be on top of the explosion and turmoil, and he wondered what was the mysterious force that always drove him into voluntarily taking part in dangerous adventures. He thought it must be curiosity, and then he realized that it was a sense of shame as well; and it never occurred to him that a sense of duty had something to do with it too.
The second diver was sitting on the gunwale, cannon‑ball in hand and breathing deeply, and the moment the first diver’s head broke water he let himself ship down and vanished. “I’ve put the fear of God into ’em,” McCullum had said. “I’ve told ’em that if the charge explodes without being properly placed they’ll all get two dozen. An’ I’ve said we’re here to stay. No matter how long we try to get the money up. So you can rely on ’em. They’ll do their best.”
And they certainly were doing their best. Looney was waiting on the gunwale now, and down he went as soon as the second diver appeared. They wanted to waste no time at all. Not for the first time Hornblower peered overside in the attempt to see down through the water, unsuccessfully again. It was clear, and the loveliest deep green, but there was just sufficient lop and commotion on the surface to make it impossible to see down. Hornblower had to take it for granted that deep down below, in semi‑darkness at least, and amid paralysing cold, Looney was dragging the powder charge towards the wreck and shoving it under the break of the poop. That powder keg under water could weigh little enough, thanks to the upthrust that Archimedes discovered, twenty centuries ago.
Looney reappeared, and the first diver instantly went down to replace him. This business was for the divers a gamble with life and death, a losing lottery. If the charge were to explode prematurely it would be chance that would dictate who would happen to be down there with it at that moment. But surely it could not take long to move the charge a few yards along the bottom and into the right place. And down there, he hoped, the fire was creeping along the coils of the fuse, sandwiched tight between the two barrel‑heads. The philosophers had decided chat fuses were able to burn in the absence of air — unlike candles — because the nitre that permeated the cord supplied the same combustible substance that air supplied. It was a discovery that went close to solving the problem of life — a human being’s life went out like a candle’s in the absence of air. It might be reasonably expected soon that the discovery might be made as to how to maintain life without air.
Yet another dive. The fire was hurrying along the fuse. Clout had allowed enough for an hour’s burning — it must not be too little, obviously, but also it must not be too much, for the longer the keg was exposed to the water pressure the greater the chance of a weak point giving way and water seeping in. But Clout had pointed out that in that confined space between the barrel‑heads the heat would not be able to escape; it would grow hotter and hotter in there and the fuse would burn faster — the fire might even jump from one part of the coil to another. The rate of burning, in other words, was unpredictable.
The diver who had just appeared gave a sharp cry, in time to prevent the next one — Looney — from going down. An eager question and answer, and Looney turned to Hornblower with a waving of hands.
“Get that man on board,” ordered Hornblower. “Up anchor!”