“Run the guns in!” bellowed Fell. “Stand by to wear ship! Clear away the bow chasers, there!”
It might be just possible that the schooner would pass within range of the bow chasers, but to take a shot at her, at long range and on that heaving sea, would be a chancy business. Should they score a hit, it might as likely take effect in the hull, among the wretched slaves, as on the spars or rigging. Hornblower was prepared to restrain Fell from firing.
The guns were run in, and after another minute’s examination of the situation Fell ordered the helm to be put a-starboard and the ship laid right before the wind. Hornblower through his telescope could see the schooner lying right over with the wind abeam, so far over that she, as she heaved, presented a streak of copper to his view, pinkish against the blue of the sea. Clearly she was drawing across the frigate’s bows, as Fell tacitly acknowledged when he ordered a further turn of two points to port. Thanks to her two knots superiority in speed and thanks also to her superior handiness and weatherliness the Estrella was literally making a circle round the Clorinda.
“She’s built for speed, My Lord,” said Spendlove from behind his telescope.
So was Clorinda, but with a difference. Clorinda was a fighting ship, built to carry seventy tons of artillery, with forty tons of powder and shot in her magazines. It was no shame to her that she should be outsailed and outmanoeuvred by such a vessel as the Estrella.
“I fancy she’ll make for San Juan, Sir Thomas,” said Hornblower.
Fell’s face bore an expression of helpless fury as he turned to his Admiral; it was with an obvious effort that he restrained himself from pouring out his rage, presumably in a torrent of blasphemy.
“It’s – it’s -” he spluttered.
“It’s enough to madden a saint,” said Hornblower.
Clorinda had been ideally stationed, twenty miles to windward of San Juan; Estrella had run practically into her arms, so to speak, and had yet dodged neatly round her and had won for herself a clear run to the port.
“I’ll see him damned, My Lord!” said Fell. “Quartermaster!”
There was now the long run ahead to San Juan, one point off the wind, in what was practically a race with an even start. Fell laid a course for San Juan; it was obvious that Estrella, comfortably out of range on the starboard beam, was heading for the same point. Both ships had the wind practically abeam; this long run would be a final test of the sailing qualities of the two ships, as though they were a couple of yachts completing a triangular course in a race in the Solent. Hornblower reminded himself that earlier this morning he had compared the present voyage with a yachting excursion. But the expression in Fell’s face showed that his flag-captain by no means looked on it in the same light. Fell was in the deadliest earnest, and not from any philanthropic feelings about slavery, either. It was the head money he wanted.
“About that breakfast, My Lord?” said Gerard.
An officer was touching his hat to Fell with the request that it might be considered noon.
“Make it so,” said Fell. The welcome cry of “Up spirits” rang through the ship.
“Breakfast, My Lord?” asked Gerard again.
“Let’s wait and see how we do on this course,” said Hornblower. He saw something of dismay in Gerard’s face and laughed. “It’s a question of your breakfast, I fancy, as well as mine. You’ve had nothing this morning?”
“No, My Lord.”
“I starve my young men, I see,” said Hornblower, looking from Gerard to Spendlove; but the latter’s expression was peculiarly unchanging, and Hornblower remembered all he knew about him. “I’ll wager a guinea that Spendlove hasn’t spent the morning fasting.”
The suggestion was answered by a wide grin.
“I am no sailor, My Lord,” said Spendlove. “But I have learned one thing while I have been at sea, and that is to snatch at any meal that makes its appearance. Fairy gold vanishes no faster than the opportunity of eating food at sea.”