Now came the shriek of the shell, not so far overhead; even the fountain of water that it threw up when it plunged into the sea was different in shape and duration from those flung up by round‑shot from a cannon. Young brought the quarter‑boat under the falls and hooked on; Bush had his men ready to tail away at the tackles, while Hornblower watched the operation and fumed at every second of delay. Most of the survivors picked up were wounded, some of them dreadfully. He would have to go and see they were properly attended to — he would have to pay a visit of courtesy — but not until Hotspur were safely out of this unnecessary peril.
“Very well, Mr Prowse. Bring her before the wind.”
The yards creaked round; the quartermaster spun the wheel round into firm resistance, and Hotspur slowly gathered way, to leave this hateful coast behind her. Next came a sudden succession of noises, all loud, all different, distinguishable even though not two seconds elapsed between the first and the last — the shriek of a shell, a crash of timber aloft, a deep note as the main‑topmast backstay parted, a thud against the hammock nettings beside Hornblower, and then a thump three yards from his feet, and there on the deck death, sizzling death, was rolling towards him and as the ship heaved death changed its course with the canting of the deck in a blundering curve as the belt round the shell deflected its roll. Hornblower saw the tiny thread of smoke, the burning fuse one‑eighth of an inch long. No time to think. He sprang at it as it wobbled on its belt, and with his gloved hand he extinguished the fuse, rubbing at it to make sure the spark was out, rubbing at it again unnecessarily before he straightened up. A marine was standing by and Hornblower gestured to him.
“Throw the damned thing overboard!” he ordered; the fact that he swore indicated his bad temper.
Then he looked round. Every soul on that crowded little quarter‑deck was rigid, posed in unnatural attitudes, as if some Gorgon’s head had turned them all into stone, and then with his voice and his gesture they all came back to life again, to move and relax — it was as if time had momentarily stood still for everyone except himself. His bad temper was fanned by the delay, and he lashed out with his tongue indiscriminately.
“What are you all thinking about? Quartermaster, put your helm over! Mr Bush! Just look at that mizzen tops’l yard! Send the hands aloft this minute! Splice that backstay! You, there! Haven’t you coiled those falls yet? Move, damn you!”
“Aye aye, sir! Aye aye, sir!”
The automatic chorus of acknowledgements had a strange note, and in the midst of the bustle Hornblower saw first Bush from one angle and then Prowse from another, both looking at him with strange expressions on their faces.
“What’s the matter with you?” he blazed out, and with the last word understanding came to him.
That extinguishing of the fuse appeared to them in monstrous disproportion, as something heroic, even perhaps as something magnificent. They did not see it in its true light as the obvious thing to do, indeed the only thing to do; nor did they know of the instinctive flash of action that had followed his observation of that remaining one‑eighth of an inch of fuse. All there was to his credit was that he had seen and acted quicker than they. He had not been brave, and most certainly not heroic.
He returned the glance of his subordinates, and with all his senses still keyed up to the highest pitch he realized that this was the moment of the conception of a legend, that the wildest tales would be told later about this incident, and he was suddenly hideously embarrassed. He laughed, and before the laugh was finished he knew it was a self‑conscious laugh, the motiveless laugh of an idiot, and he was angrier than ever with himself and with Chambers of the Naiad and with the whole world. He wanted to be away from all this, back in the approaches to Brest doing his proper work and not engaged in these hare-brained actions that did not forward the defeat of Bonaparte an iota.