A faint black cloud was just visible between the schooner’s masts. It thinned again, and Bush could not be perfectly sure. The nearest gun bellowed out, and a chance flaw of wind blew the powder smoke about them as they stood together, blotting out their view of the schooner.
“Confound it all!” said Bush, moving about restlessly in search of a better viewpoint.
The other guns went off almost simultaneously and added to the smoke.
“Bring up fresh charges!” yelled Hornblower, with the smoke eddying round him. “See that you swab those guns out properly.”
The smoke eddied away, revealing the schooner, apparently unharmed, still creeping along the bay, and Bush cursed in his disappointment.
“The range is shortening and the guns are hot now,” said Hornblower; and then, louder, “Gun captains! Get your quoins in!”
He hurried off to supervise the adjustment of the guns’ elevation, and it was some seconds before he hailed again for hot shot to be brought up. In that time Bush noticed that the schooner’s boats, which had been pulling in company with the schooner, were turning to run alongside her. That could mean that the schooner’s captain was now sure that the flaws of wind would be sufficient to carry her round the point and safely to the mouth of the bay. The guns went off again in an irregular salvo, and Bush saw a trio of splashes rise from the water’s surface close to the near side of the schooner.
“Fresh charges!” yelled Hornblower.
And then Bush saw the schooner swing round, presenting her stern to the battery and heading straight for the shallows of the farther shore.
“What in hell —” said Bush to himself.
Then he saw a sudden fountain of black smoke appear spouting from the schooner’s deck, and while this sight was rejoicing him he saw the schooner’s booms swing over as she took the ground. She was afire and had been deliberately run ashore. The smoke was dense about her hull, and while he held her in his telescope he saw her big white mainsail above the smoke suddenly disintegrate and disappear — the flames had caught it and whisked it away into nothing. He took the telescope from his eye and looked round for Hornblower, who was standing on the parapet again. Powder and smoke had grimed his face, already dark with the growth of his beard, and his teeth showed strangely white as he grinned. The gunners were cheering, and the cheering was being echoed by the rest of the landing party in the fort.
Hornblower was gesticulating to make the gunners cease their noise so that he could be heard down in the fort as he countermanded his call for more shot.
“Belay that order, Saddler! Take those shot back, bearer men!”
He jumped down and approached Bush.
“That’s done it,” said the lamer.
“The first one, anyway.”
A great jet of smoke came from the burning wreck, reaching up and up from between her masts; the mainmast fell as they watched, and as it fell the report of the explosion came to their ears across the water; the fire had reached the schooner’s powder store, and when the smoke cleared a little they could see that she now lay on the shore in two halves, blown asunder in the middle. The foremast still stood for a moment on the forward half, but it fell as they watched it; bows and stern were blazing fiercely, while the boats with the crew rowed away across the shallows.
“A nasty sight,” said Hornblower.
But Bush could see nothing unpleasant about the sight of an enemy burning. He was exulting. “With half his men in the boats he didn’t have enough hands to spare to fight the fires when we hit him,” he said.
“Maybe a shot went through her deck and lodged in her hold,” said Hornblower.
The tone of his voice made Bush look quickly at him, for he was speaking thickly and harshly like a drunken man; but he could not be drunk, although the dirty hairy face and bloodshot eyes might well have suggested it. The man was fatigued. Then the dull expression of Hornblower’s face was replaced once more by a look of animation, and when he spoke his voice was natural again.