“Grenada in sight, My Lord.”
“Very well.”
Now they were entering the waters where they could really expect to meet Daring; now the direction of the wind was of more importance than ever. It was blowing from the northeast, now, and that was helpful. It extinguished the very faint possibility that Daring might pass to the northward of Tobago instead of through the Tobago Channel.
“Daring’s, bound to make the same landfall, My Lord,” said Gerard, “and by daylight if she can.”
“We can hope for it, at least,” said Hornblower.
If Daring had been as long out of sight of land as had Crab, in the fluky winds and unpredictable currents of the Caribbean, her captain would certainly take all precautions in his approach.
“I think, Mr Harcourt,” said Hornblower, “that we can safely hold our course for Point Galera.”
“Aye aye, My Lord.”
Now was the worst period of waiting, of wondering whether the whole voyage might not prove to be a fool’s errand, patrolling, beating up to within sight of Trinidad and then going about and reaching past Tobago again towards Grenada. Waiting was bad; if the voyage should not turn out to be a fool’s errand it meant something that Hornblower, and Hornblower alone, knew to be worse. Gerard raised the question again.
“How do you propose to stop him, My Lord?”
“There may be means,” answered Hornblower, trying to keep the harshness out of his voice that would betray his anxiety.
It was on a blue and gold, blazing day, with Crab ghosting along before only the faintest breeze, that the masthead lookout hailed the deck with the news of the sighting.
“Sail ho! Dead to loo’ard, sir!”
A sail might be anything, but at long intervals, as Crab crept closer, the successive reports made it more and more likely that the strange sail was Daring. Three masts – even that first supplementary report made it reasonably sure, for not many big ships plied out into the South Atlantic from the Caribbean. All sail set, even skysails, and stu’ns’ls to the royals. That did not mean quite so much.
“She looks like an American, sir!”
The skysails had already hinted strongly in the same direction. Then Harcourt went up to the mainmast head with his own glass, and came down again with his eyes shining with excitement.
“That’s Daring, My Lord. I’m sure of it.”
Ten miles apart they lay, on the brilliant blue of the sea with the brilliant blue of the sky above them, and on the far horizon a smudge of land. Crab had won her race by twenty-five hours. Daring was ‘boxing the compass’, swinging idly in all directions under her pyramids of sails in the absence of all wind; Crab carried her way for a while longer, and then she, too, fell motionless under the blazing sun. All eyes turned on the Admiral standing stiffly with his hands locked behind him gazing at the distant white rectangles that indicated where lay his fate. The schooner’s big mainsail flapped idly, flapped again, and then the boom began to swing over.
“Hands to the sheets!” yelled Harcourt.
The air was so light that they could not even feel it on their sweating faces, but it sufficed to push the booms out, and a moment later the helmsman could feel the rudder take hold just enough to give him control. With Crab’s bowsprit pointed straight at Daring the breath of wind was coming in over the starboard quarter, almost dead astern, almost dead foul for Daring if ever it should reach her, but she was still becalmed. The breath of wind increased until they could feel it, until they could hear under the bows the music of the schooner’s progress through the water, and then it died away abruptly, leaving Crab to wallow on the swell. Then it breathed again, over the port quarter this time, and then it drew farther aft, so that the topsails were braced square and the foresail could be hauled over to the port side and Crab ran wing-and-wing for ten blessed minutes until the wind dropped again, to a dead, flaming calm. They could see Daring catch a wind, see her trim her sails, but only momentarily, only long enough to reveal her intentions before she lay once more helpless. Despite her vast sail area her greater dead weight made her less susceptible to these very faint airs.