“Bring her to the wind on the starboard tack,” he snapped at Prowse, and Hotspur swung round further still, the invisible hands hauling at the invisible braces.
There was the second ship in the French line just completing her turn, with Hotspur’s bows pointing almost straight at her.
“Starboard a little.” Hotspur’s bows swung away. “Meet her.”
He wanted to be as close alongside as he possibly could be without running foul of her.
“I’ve sent a good hand up with the lights, sir.” This was Bush reporting. “Another two minutes and they’ll be ready.”
“Get down to the guns,” snapped Hornblower, and then, with the need for silence at an end, he reached for the speaking-trumpet.
“Main‑deck! Man the starboard guns! Run ’em out.”
How would the French squadron be composed? It would have an armed escort, not to fight its way through the Channel Fleet, but to protect the transports, after the escape, from stray British cruising frigates. There would be two big frigates, one in the van and one bringing up the rear, while the intermediate ships would be defenceless transports, frigates armed en flute.
“Starboard! Steady!”
Yard arm to yard arm with the second ship in the line, going down the Goulet alongside her, ghost ships side by side in the falling snow. The rumble of gun‑trucks had ceased.
“Fire!”
At ten guns, ten hands jerked at the lanyards, and Hotspur’s side burst into flame, illuminating the sails and hull of the Frenchman with a bright glare; in the instantaneous glare snowflakes were visible as if stationary in mid air.
“Fire away, you men!”
There were cries and shouts to be heard from the French ship, and then a French voice speaking almost in his ear — the French captain hailing him from thirty yards away with his speaking‑trumpet pointed straight at him. It would be an expostulation, the French captain wondering why a French ship should be firing into him, here where no British ship could possibly be. The words were cut off abruptly by the bang and the flash of the first gun of the second broadside, the others following as the men loaded and fired as fast as they could. Each flash brought a momentary revelation of the French ship, a flickering, intermittent picture. Those nine‑pounder balls were crashing into a ship crammed with men. At this very moment, as he stood there rigid on the deck, men were dying in agony by the score just over there, for no more reason than that they had been forced into the service of a continental tyrant. Surely the French would not be able to bear it. Surely they would flinch under this unexpected and unexplainable attack. Ah! She was turning away, although she had nowhere to turn to except the cliffs and shoals of the shore close overside. There were the three red lights on her mizzen topsail yard. By accident or design she had put her helm down. He must make sure of her.
“Port a little.”
Hotspur swung to starboard, her guns blazing. Enough.
“Starboard a little. Steady as you go.”
Now the speaking‑trumpet. “Cease fire!”
The silence that followed was broken by the crash as the Frenchman struck the shore, the clatter of falling spars, the yells of despair. And in this darkness, after the glare of the guns, he was blinder than ever, and yet he must act as if he could see; he must waste no moment.
“Back the main tops’l! Stay by the braces!”
The rest of the French line must be coming down, willy-nilly; with the wind over their quarter and the ebb under their keels and rocks on either side of them they could do nothing else. He must think quicker than they; he still had the advantage of surprise — the French captain in the following ship would not yet have had time to collect his thoughts.
The Little Girls were under their lee; he must not delay another moment.
“Braces, there!”
Here she came, looming up, close, close, yells of panic from her forecastle.
“Hard‑a‑starboard!”
Hotspur had just enough way through the water to respond to her rudder; the two bows swung from each other, collision averted by a hair’s breadth.