“What’s that? Oh yes, get a rest while you can, Mr Hornblower.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
Bush picked his way down the steep path to the landing stage at Buckland’s heels, and took his seat beside him in the stern sheets of the gig.
“I can’t make that fellow Hornblower out,” said Buckland a little peevishly on one occasion as they rowed back to the anchored Renown.
“He’s a good officer, sir,” answered Bush, but he spoke a little absently. Already in his mind he was tackling the problem of hoisting a long nine‑pounder up a cliff, and he was sorting out mentally the necessary equipment, and planning the necessary orders. Two heavy anchors — not merely boat grapnels — to anchor the buoy solidly. The thwarts of the launch had better be shored up to bear the weight of the gun. Travelling blocks. Slings — for the final hoist it might be safer to suspend the gun by its cascabel and trunnions.
Bush was not of the mental type that takes pleasure in theoretical exercises. To plan a campaign; to put himself mentally in the position of the enemy and think along alien lines; to devise unexpected expedients; all this was beyond his capacity. But to deal with a definite concrete problem, a simple matter of ropes and tackles and breaking strains, pure seamanship — he had a lifetime of experience to reinforce his natural bent in that direction.
Chapter XIII
“Take the strain,” said Bush, standing on the cliff’s edge and looking far, far down to where the launch floated moored to the buoy and with an anchor astern to keep her steady. Black against the Atlantic blue two ropes came down from over his head, curving slightly but almost vertical, down to the buoy. A poet might have seen something dramatic and beautiful in those spider lines cleaving the air, but Bush merely saw a couple of ropes, and the white flag down in the launch signalling that all was clear for hoisting. The blocks creaked as the men pulled in on the slack.
“Now, handsomely,” said Bush. This work was too important to be delegated to Mr Midshipman James, standing beside him. “Hoist away. Handsomely.”
The creaking took on a different tone as the weight came on the blocks. The curves of the ropes altered, appeared almost deformed, as the gun began to rise from its cradle on the thwarts. The shallow, lovely catenaries changed to a harsher, more angular figure. Bush had his telescope to his eye and could see the gun stir and move, and slowly — that was what Bush meant by ‘handsomely’ in the language of the sea — it began to upend itself, to dangle from the traveller, to rise clear of the launch; hanging, just as Bush had visualized it, from the slings through its cascabel and round its trunnions. It was safe enough — if those slings were to give way or to slip, the gun would crash through the bottom of the launch. The line about its muzzle restrained it from swinging too violently.
“Hoist away,” said Bush again, and the traveller began to mount the rope with the gun pendant below it. This was the next ticklish moment, when the pull came most transversely. But everything held fast.
“Hoist away.”
Now the gun was mounting up the rope. Beyond the launch’s stern it dipped, with the stretching of the cable and the straightening of the curve, until its muzzle was almost in the sea. But the hoisting proceeded steadily, and it rose clear of the water, up, up, up. The sheaves hummed rhythmically in the blocks as the hands hove on the line. The sun shone on the men from its level position in the glowing east, stretching out their shadows and those of the trees to incredible lengths over the irregular plateau.
“Easy, there!” said Bush. “Belay!”
The gun had reached the cliff edge.
“Move that cat’s cradle over this way a couple of feet. Now, sway in. Lower. Good. Cast off those lines.”
The gun lay, eight feet of dull bronze, upon the cat’s cradle that had been spread to receive it. This was a small area of stout rope‑netting, from which diverged, knotted thickly to the central portion, a score or more of individual lines, each laid out separately on the ground.