“Stand-by to go about after the next broadside!”
The nine guns roared out, and the smoke was still eddying in the waist as Hotspur tacked.
“Starboard side guns!”
Excited men raced across the deck to aim and train; another broadside, but Félicité’s mizzen topsail was wheeling round.
“Helm a-weather!”
By the time the harassed Frenchman had come before the wind again Hotspur had anticipated her; both ships were again in line and Bush was racing aft to supervise the fire of the stern chasers once more. This was revenge for the action with the Loire so long ago. In this moderate breeze and smooth sea the handy sloop held every advantage over the big frigate; what had gone on up to now was only a sample of what was to continue all through that hungry weary day of golden sun and blue sea and billowing powder smoke.
The leeward position that Hotspur held was a most decided advantage. To leeward over the horizon lay the British squadron; the Frenchman dared not chase her for long in that direction, lest he find himself trapped between the wind and overwhelming hostile strength. Moreover the Frenchman had a mission to perform; he was anxious to find and warn the Spanish Squadron, yet when he had won for himself enough sea room to weather St Vincent and to turn away his teasing little enemy hung on to him, firing into his battered stern, shooting holes in his sails, cutting away his running rigging.
During that long day Félicité fired many broadsides, all at long range, and generally badly aimed as Hotspur wheeled away out of the line of fire. And during all that long day Hornblower stood on his quarter-deck, watching the shifts of the wind, rapping out his orders, handling his little ship with unremitting care and inexhaustible ingenuity. Occasionally a shot from Félicité struck home; under Hornblower’s very eyes an eighteen-pounder ball came in through a gun-port and struck down five men into a bloody heaving mass. Yet until long after noon Hotspur evaded major damage, while the wind backed round southerly and the sun crept slowly round to the west. With the shifting of the wind his position was growing more precarious, and with the passage of time fatigue was numbing his mind.
At a long three-quarters of a mile Félicité at last scored an important hit, one hit out of the broadside she fired as she yawed widely off her course. There was a crash aloft, and Hornblower looked up to see the main yard sagging in two halves, shot clean through close to the centre, each half hanging in the slings at its own drunken angle, threatening, each of them, to come falling like an arrow down through the deck. It was a novel and cogent problem to deal with, to study the dangling menaces and to give the correct helm order that set the sails a-shiver and relieved the strain.
“Mr Wise! Take all the men you need and secure that wreckage!”
Then he could put his glass again to his aching eye to see what Félicité intended to do. She could force a close action if she took instant advantage of the opportunity. He would have to fight now to the last gasp. But the glass revealed something different, something he had to look at a second time before he could trust his swimming brain and his weary eye. Félicité had filled away. With every sail drawing she was reaching towards the sunset. She had turned tail and was flying for the horizon away from the pest which had plagued all the spirit out of her in nine continuous hours of battle.
The hands saw it, they saw her go, and someone raised a cheer which ran raggedly along the deck. There were grins and smiles which revealed teeth strangely white against the powder blackened faces. Bush came up from the waist, powder blackened like the others.
“Sir!” he said. “I don’t know how to congratulate you.”
“Thank you, Mr Bush. You can keep your eye on Wise. There’s the two spare stuns’l booms – fish the main yard with those.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
Despite the blackening of his features, despite the fatigue that even Bush could not conceal, there was that curious expression in Bush’s face again, inquiring, admiring, surprised. He was bursting with things that he wanted to say. It called for an obvious effort of will on Bush’s part to turn away without saying them; Hornblower fired a parting shot at Bush’s receding back.