“Very well.”
There were ceremonious speeches still to be made. Ortega’s bows were so polite that Buckland and Bush were constrained, though reluctantly, to stand and endeavour to return them. Hornblower tied the handkerchief round Ortega’s eyes again and led him out.
“What do you think about it?” said Buckland to Bush.
“I’d like to think it over, sir,” replied Bush.
Hornblower came in again while they were still considering the matter. He glanced at them both before addressing himself to Buckland.
“Will you be needing me again tonight, sir?”
“Oh, damn it, you’d better stay. You know more about these Dagoes than we do. What do you think about it?”
“He made some good arguments, sir.”
“I thought so too,” said Buckland with apparent relief.
“Can’t we turn the thumbscrews on them somehow, sir?” asked Bush.
Even if he could not make suggestions himself, he was too cautious to agree readily to a bargain offered by a foreigner, even such a tempting one as this.
“We can bring the ship up the bay,” said Buckland. “But the channel’s tricky. You saw that yesterday.”
Good God! it was still only yesterday that the Renown had tried to make her way in under the fire of red‑hot shot. Buckland had had a day of comparative peace, so that the mention of yesterday did not appear as strange to him.
“We’ll still be under the fire of the battery across the bay, even though we hold this one,” said Buckland.
“We ought to be able to run past it, sir,” protested Bush “We can keep over to this side.”
“And if we do run past? They’ve warped their ships right up the bay again. They draw six feet less of water than we do — and if they’ve got any sense they’ll lighten ’em so as to warp ’em farther over the shallows. Nice fools we’ll look if we come in an’ then find ’em out of range, an’ have to run out again under fire. That might stiffen ’em so that they wouldn’t agree to the terms that fellow just offered.”
Buckland was in a state of actual alarm at the thought of reporting two fruitless repulses.
“I can see that,” said Bush, depressed.
“If we agree,” said Buckland, warming to his subject, “the blacks’ll take over all this end of the island. This bay can’t be used by privateers then. The blacks’ll have no ships, and couldn’t man ’em if they had. We’ll have executed our orders. Don’t you agree, Mr Hornblower?”
Bush transferred his gaze. Hornblower had looked weary in the morning, and he had had almost no rest during the day. His face was drawn and his eyes were rimmed with red.
“We might still be able to — to put the thumbscrews on ’em, sir,” he said.
“How?”
“It’d be risky to take Renown into the upper end of the bay. But we might get at ’em from the peninsula here, all the same, sir, if you’d give the orders.”
“God bless my soul!” said Bush, the exclamation jerked out of him.
“What orders?” asked Buckland.
“If we could mount a gun on the upper end of the peninsula we’d have the far end of the bay under fire, sir. We wouldn’t need hot shot — we’d have all day to knock ’em to pieces however much they shifted their anchorage.”
“So we would, by George,” said Buckland. There was animation in his face. “Could you get one of these guns along there?”
“I’ve been thinking about it, sir, an’ I’m afraid we couldn’t. Not quickly, at least. Twenty‑four‑pounders. Two an’ a half tons each. Garrison carriages. We’ve no horses. We couldn’t move ’em with a hundred men over those gullies, four miles or more.”
“Then what the hell’s the use of talking about it?” demanded Buckland.
“We don’t have to drag a gun from here, sir,” said Hornblower. “We could use one from the ship. One of those long nine‑pounders we’ve got mounted as bow chasers. Those long guns have a range pretty nearly as good as these twenty-fours, sir.”
“But how do we get it there?”
Bush had a glimmering of the answer even before Hornblower replied.