“We can gain four days on her to San Antonio, My Lord,” he said. “That means we’ll be three days ahead of her there.”
Three days should be just enough start for Crab in the long, long race down the length of the Caribbean.
“Could we call at Kingston on our way, My Lord?” asked Gerard.
It was tempting to consider it, but Hornblower shook his head. It would be no use calling at headquarters, telling the news, possibly picking up reinforcements, if Daring slipped past them as they were doing so.
“It would take too long to work in,” he said. “Even if we had the sea breeze. And there would be delay while we were there. We’ve nothing to spare as it is.”
“I suppose not, My Lord,” agreed Gerard, grudgingly. He was playing the part of the staff officer, whose duty it was to be critical of any suggested plan. “Then what do we do when we meet her?”
Hornblower met Gerard’s eyes with a steady glance; Gerard was asking the question that had been already asked and left unanswered.
“I am forming plans to meet that situation,” said Hornblower, and there was a rasping tone in his voice which forbade Gerard to press the matter.
“There’s not more than twenty miles of navigable water in the Tobago Channel, My Lord,” said Harcourt, still busy with his dividers.
“Then she can hardly pass us unobserved even by night,” said Hornblower. “I think, gentlemen, that we are acting on the best possible plan. Perhaps the only possible plan.”
“Yes, My Lord,” said Harcourt; his imagination was hard at work. “If Boney once gets loose again -”
He could not go on. He could not face that appalling possibility.
“We have to see to it that he does not, gentlemen. And now that we have done all that we can it would be sensible if we took some rest. I don’t think any one of us has had any sleep for a considerable time.”
That was true. Now that he had made up his mind upon a course of action, now that he was committed to it, for good or ill, Hornblower felt his eyelids drooping and sleep overcoming him. He lay down on his cot after his officers had left him. With the wind on the port beam and the cot against the bulkhead to starboard he could relax completely with no fear of rolling out. He closed his eyes. Already he had begun to form the answer to the question Gerard had asked. The answer was a hideous one, something horrible to contemplate. But it seemed to be inevitable. He had his duty to do, and now he could be sure that he was doing it to the best of his ability. With his conscience clear, with a reassuring certainty that he was using the best of his judgment, the inevitability of the rest of the future reinforced his need for sleep. He slept until dawn; he even dozed for a few minutes after that, before he began to think clearly enough again in the daylight for that horrible thought to begin to nag at him again.
That was how the Crab began her historic race to the Tobago Channel, over a distance nearly as great as the Atlantic is wide, with the brave trade wind laying her over as she thrashed along. All hands on board knew that she was engaged in a race, for in a little ship like Crab nothing could be kept secret; and all hands entered into the spirit of the race with the enthusiasm to be expected of them. Sympathetic eyes were turned towards the lonely figure of the Admiral standing braced on the tiny quarterdeck with the wind singing round him. Everyone knew the chances he was taking; everyone thought that he deserved to win, and no one could guess at his real torment over the certainty that was crystallising in his mind that this was the end of his career, whether he should win the race or lose it.
No one on board begrudged the constant labour involved in getting every yard of speed out of Crab, the continual hauling in and letting out of the sheets as the sails were trimmed to the least variation of the wind, the lightening and urgent shortening of canvas at the last possible moment as squalls came hurtling down upon them, the instant resetting as the squalls passed on their way. All hands constituted themselves as unofficial lookouts; there was really no need for the Admiral to have offered a golden guinea to the man who should first sight Daring – there was always the chance of an encounter even before reaching the Tobago Channel. Nobody minded wet shirts and wet beds as the spray burst over Crab’s bows in dazzling rainbows and found its way below through the deck as the over-driven schooner worked her seams open in the heavy swell. The hourly casting of the log, the daily calculation of the ship’s run, were eagerly anticipated by men who usually displayed all the fatalistic indifference towards these matters of the hardened sailor.