Lieutenant Hornblower. C. S. Forester

“Tide’s still rising,” he said. “It’s an hour before high water. But I’m afraid we’re pretty hard aground.”

Bush could only look at him and swear, pouring out filth from his mouth as the only means of relieving his overwrought feelings.

“Steady there, Duff!” yelled Hornblower, looking away from him at a gun’s crew gathered round their gun. “Swab that out properly! D’ye want your hands blown off when you load?”

By the time Hornblower looked round at Bush again the latter had regained his self‑control.

“An hour to high water, you say?” he asked.

“Yes, sir. According to Carberry’s calculations.”

“God help us'”

“My shot’s just reaching the battery on that point, sir. If I can keep the embrasures swept I’ll slow their rate of fire even if I don’t silence them.”

Another crash as a shot struck home, and another.

“But the one across the channel’s out of range.”

“Yes,” said Hornblower.

The powder boys were running through all the bustle with fresh charges for the guns. And here was the messenger-midshipman threading his way through them.

“Mr Bush, sir! Will you please report to Mr Buckland, sir? And we’re aground, under fire, sir.”

“Shut your mouth. I leave you in charge here, Mr Hornblower.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

The sunlight on the quarterdeck was blinding. Buckland was standing hatless at the rail, trying to control the working of his features. There was a roar and a spluttering of steam as someone turned the jet of a hose on a fiery fragment lodged in the bulkhead. Dead men in the scuppers; wounded being carried off. A shot, or the splinters it had sent flying, must have killed the man at the wheel so that the ship, temporarily out of control, had run aground.

“We have to kedge off,” said Buckland.

“Aye aye, sir.”

That meant putting out an anchor and heaving in on the cable with the capstan to haul the ship off the mud by main force. Bush looked round him to confirm what he had gathered regarding the ship’s position from his restricted view below. Her bows were on the mud; she would have to be hauled off stern first. A shot howled close overhead, and Bush had to exert his self‑control not to jump.

“You’ll have to get a cable out aft through a stern port.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

“Roberts’ll take the stream anchor off in the launch.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

The fact that Buckland omitted the formal ‘Mister’ was significant of the strain he was undergoing and of the emergency of the occasion.

“I’ll take the men from my guns, sir,” said Bush.

“Very good.”

Now was the time for discipline and training to assert themselves; the Renown was fortunate in having a crew more than half composed of seasoned men drilled in the blockade of Brest. At Plymouth she had only been filled up with pressed men. What had merely been a drill, an evolution, when the Renown was one of the Channel Fleet, was now an operation on which the life of the ship depended, not something to be done perfunctorily in competition with the rest of the squadron. Bush gathered his guns’ crews around him and set about the task of rousing out a cable and getting it aft to a port, while overhead Roberts’ men were manning stay tackles and yard tackles to sway out the launch.

Down below the heat between the decks was greater even than above with the sun glaring down. The smoke from Hornblower’s guns was eddying thick under the beams; Hornblower was holding his hat in his hand and wiping his streaming face with his handkerchief. He nodded as Bush appeared; there was no need for Bush to explain the duty on which he was engaged. With the guns still thundering and the smoke still eddying, powder boys still running with fresh charges and fire parties bustling with their buckets, Bush’s men roused out the cable. The hundred fathoms of it weighed a trifle over a couple of tons; clear heads and skilled supervision were necessary to get the unwieldy cable laid out aft, but Bush was at his best doing work which called for single-minded attention to a single duty. He had it clear and faked down along the deck by the time the cutter was under the stern to receive the end, and then he watched the vast thing gradually snake out through the after port without a hitch. The launch came into his line of vision as he stood looking out, with the vast weight of the stream anchor dangling astern; it was a relief to know that the tricky business of getting the anchor into her had been successfully carried out. The second cutter carried the spring cable from the hawsehole. Roberts was in command; Bush heard him hail the cutter as the three boats drew off astern. There was a sudden jet of water among the boats; one or other, if not both, of the batteries ashore had shifted targets; a shot now into the launch would be a disaster, and one into a cutter would be a serious setback.

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