Hornblower and the Hotspur. C. S. Forester

At the first watery light of dawn they set the goose-winged fore‑topsail again while Hornblower faced the problem of getting Hotspur round with the wind over her quarter without laying her over on her beam ends. Then they were thrashing along in the old way, decks continually under water, rolling until every timber groaned, with Orrock freezing at the fore-topmast‑head with his glass. It was noon before he sighted the land; half an hour later Bush returned to the quarter‑deck from the ascent he made to confirm Orrock’s findings. Bush was more weary than he would ever admit, his dirty hollow cheeks overgrown with a stubble of beard, but he could still show surprise and pleasure.

“Bolt Head, sir!” he yelled. “Fine on the port bow. And I could just make out the Start.”

“Thank you.”

Even though it meant shouting, Bush wanted to express his feelings about this feat of navigation, but Hornblower had no time for that, nor the patience, nor, for that matter, the strength. There was the question of not being blown too far to leeward at this eleventh hour, of making preparations to come to an anchor in conditions that would certainly be difficult. There was the tide rip off the Start to be borne in mind, the necessity of rounding to as close under Berry Head as possible. There was the sudden inexpressible change in wind and sea as they came under the lee of the Start; the steep choppiness here seemed nothing compared with what Hotspur had been enduring five minutes before, and the land took the edge off the hurricane wind to reduce it to the mere force of a full gale that still kept Hotspur flying before it. There was the Newstone and the Blackstones — here as well as in the Iroise — and the final tricky moment of the approach to Berry Head.

“Ships of war at anchor, sir,” reported Bush, sweeping Tor Bay with his glass as they opened it up. “That’s Dreadnought. That’s Temeraire. It’s the Channel Fleet. My God! There’s one aground in Torquay Roads. Two‑decker — she must have dragged her anchors.”

“Yes. We’ll back the best bower anchor before we let go, Mr Bush. We’ll have to use the launch’s carronade. You’ve time to see about that.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

Even in Tor Bay there was a full gale blowing; where a two-decker had dragged her anchors every precaution must be taken at whatever further cost in effort. The seven hundredweight of the boat carronade, attached to the anchor‑cable fifty feet back from the one ton of the best bower, might just save that anchor from lifting and dragging. And so Hotspur came in under goose‑winged fore‑topsail and storm mizzen stay‑sail, round Berry Head, under the eyes of the Channel Fleet, to claw her way in towards Brixham pier and to round‑to with her weary men furling the fore‑topsail and to drop her anchors while with a last effort they sent down the topmasts and Prowse and Hornblower took careful bearings to make sure she was not dragging. It was only then that there was leisure to spare to make her number to the flag‑ship.

“Flag acknowledges, sir,” croaked Foreman.

“Very well.”

It was still possible to do something more without collapsing. “Mr Foreman, kindly make this signal. ‘Need drinking water’.”

Chapter 14

Tor Bay was a tossing expanse of white horses. The land lessened the effect of the wind to some extent; the Channel waves were hampered in their entry to Berry Head, but all the same the wind blew violently and the waves racing up the Channel managed to wheel leftwards, much weakened, but now running across the wind, and with the tide to confuse the issue Tor Bay boiled like a cauldron. For forty hours after Hotspur’s arrival the Hibernia, Cornwallis’s big three‑decker, flew the signal 715 with a negative beside it, and 715 with a negative meant that boats were not to be employed.

Not even the Brixham fishermen, renowned for their small boat work, could venture out into Tor Bay while it was in that mood, so that until the second morning at anchor the crew of the Hotspur supported an unhappy existence on two quarts of tainted water a day. And Hornblower was the unhappiest man on board, from causes both physical and mental. The little ship almost empty of stores was the plaything of wind and wave and tide; she surged about at her anchors like a restive horse. She swung and she snubbed herself steady with a jerk; she plunged and snubbed herself again. With her topmasts sent down she developed a shallow and rapid roll. It was a mixture of motions that would test the strongest stomach, and Hornblower’s stomach was by no means the strongest, while there was the depressing association in his memory of his very first day in a ship of war, when he had made himself a laughing stock by being seasick in the old Justinian at anchor in Spithead.

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