CHAPTER V
Freeman bent over the tallow that armed the bottom of the lead; a seaman held a lantern at his shoulder so as to let the light fall upon it. The master’s mate and midshipman of the watch completed the group, a vignette of blackness and light in the massive darkness all around. Freeman was not hasty in reaching his decision; he peered at the sample brought up from the bottom of the sea first from one angle and then from another. He sniffed at it; he applied a forefinger to it and then carried the finger to his tongue.
“Sand and black shell,” he mused to himself.
Hornblower held back from the group; this was something Freeman could do better than he, although it would be nearly blasphemy to say so in public, seeing that he was a captain and Freeman a mere lieutenant.
“Maybe we’re off Antifer,” said Freeman at length. He looked out of the light into the darkness towards where Hornblower was standing.
“Lay her on the other tack, if you please, Mr. Freeman. And keep the lead going.”
Creeping about in the night off the treacherous Normandy coast was a nervous business, even though in the past twenty-four hours the wind had moderated to nothing more than a strong breeze. But Freeman knew what he was about; a dozen years spent in handling vessels in the soundings round the fringes of Europe had given him knowledge and insight obtainable in no other way. Hornblower had to trust Freeman’s judgment; he himself with compass and lead and chart might do a good workmanlike job, but to rate himself above Freeman as a Channel pilot would be ridiculous. ‘Maybe’, Freeman had said; but Hornblower could value that ‘maybe’ at its true worth. Freeman was confident about it. The Porta Coeli was off Cape Antifer, then, a trifle farther to leeward than he wished to be when dawn should come. He still had no plan in his head about how to deal with the Flame when he met her; there was no way round, as far as he could see, the simple geometrical difficulty that the mutineers, with Le Havre open to them on one side and Caen on the other, could not be cut off from taking refuge with the French if they wished to; for that matter, there were a dozen other inlets on the coast, all heavily protected by batteries, where the Flame could find a refuge. And any forcing of the matter might result easily enough in Chadwick being hoisted up to his yardarm, to dangle there as a dead man — the most horrible and dangerous incident in the history of the Navy since the murder of Pigott. But contact had to be made with the mutineers — that was clearly the first thing to do — and there was at least no harm in trying to make that contact at a point as advantageous as possible. Some miracle might happen; he must try and put himself across the course of wandering miracles. What was that Barbara had said to him once? ‘The lucky man is he who knows how much to leave to chance.’ Barbara had too good an opinion of him, even after all this time, but there was truth in what she said.
The Porta Coeli went smartly about, and reached to the north westward, close-hauled to the southwesterly wind.
“The tide starts to make about now, Sir Horatio,” said Freeman, beside him.
“Thank you.”
That was an additional bit of data in the problem of the morrow which was not yet fully revealed to him. War was as unlike spherical trigonometry as anything could be, thought Horablower, grinning at the inconsequence of his thoughts. Often one approached a problem in war without knowing what it was one wanted to achieve, to prove, or construct, and without even knowing fully what means were available for doing it. War was generally a matter of slipshod, makeshift, hit-or-miss extemporisation. Even if it were not murderous and wasteful it would still be no trade for a man who enjoyed logic. Yet maybe he was taking too flattering a view of himself; maybe some other officer — Cochrane, say, or Lidyard — would, if in his position, already have a plan worked out for dealing with the mutineers, a plan that could not fail to bring satisfactory results.