Six days’ water on board now; twelve at half-rations. The gloom of the night was no more gloomy than his thoughts. It was five weeks since he had last been able to send a letter to Maria, and it was six weeks since he had last heard from her, six weeks of westerly gales and westerly tempests. Anything might have happened to her or to the child, and she would be thinking that anything might have happened to the Hotspur or to him.
A more irregular wave than usual, roaring out of the darkness, burst upon Hotspur’s weather bow. Hornblower felt her sudden sluggishness, her inertia, beneath his feet. That wave must have flooded the waist to a depth of a yard or more, fifty or sixty tons of water piled up on her deck. She lay like something dead for a moment. Then she rolled, slightly at first, and then more freely; the sound of the cataracts of water pouring across could be clearly heard despite the gale. She freed herself as the water cascaded out through the overworked scuppers, and she came sluggishly back to life, to leap once more in her mad career from wave crest to trough. A blow like that could well be her death; some time she might not rise to it; some time her deck might be burst in. Another wave beat on her bow like the hammer of a mad giant, and another after that.
Next day was worse, the worst day that Hotspur had experienced in all these wild weeks. Some slight shift in the wind, or the increase in its strength, had worked up the waves to a pitch that was particularly unsuited to Hotspur’s idiosyncrasies. The waist was flooded most of the time now, so that she laboured heavily without relief, each wave catching her before she could free herself. That meant that the pumps were at work three hours out of every four, so that even with petty officers and idlers and waisters and marines all doing their share, every hand was engaged on the toilsome labour for twelve hours a day.
Bush’s glance was more direct even than usual when he came to make his report.
“We’re still sighting Naiad now and then, sir, but not a chance of signals being read.”
This was the day when by Captain Chambers’s orders they were free to run for harbour.
“Yes. I don’t think we can bear away in this wind and sea.”
Bush’s expression revealed a mental struggle. Hotspur’s powers of resistance to the present battering were not unlimited, but on the other hand to turn tail and run would be an operation of extreme danger.
“Has Huffnell reported to you yet, sir?”
“Yes,” said Hornblower
There were nine hundred-gallon casks of freshwater left down below, which had been standing in the bottom tier for a hundred days. And now one of them had proved to be contaminated with seawater and was hardly drinkable. The others might perhaps be even less so.
“Thank you, Mr Bush,” said Hornblower, terminating the interview. “We’ll remain hove-to for today at least.”
Surely a wind of this force must moderate soon, even though Hornblower had a premonition that it would not.
Nor did it. The slow dawn of the new day found Hotspur still labouring under the dark clouds, the waves still as wild, the wind still as insane. The time had come for the final decision, as Hornblower well knew as he came out on deck in his clammy clothes. He knew the dangers, and he had spent a large part of the night preparing his mind to deal with them.
“Mr Bush, we’ll get her before the wind.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
Before she could come before the wind she would have to present her vulnerable side to the waves. There would be seconds during which she could be rolled over on to her beam ends, beaten down under the waves, pounded into a wreck.
“Mr Cargill!”
This was going to be a moment far more dangerous than being chased by the Loire, and Cargill would have to be trusted to carry out a similar duty as on a tense occasion then. Face close to face, Hornblower shouted his instructions.