A gallant attempt, but doomed to failure as soon as begun; he actually cleared the headland, but the wind blew his bows round again, and, bows first, the ship plunged right at the long jagged line of the Devil’s Teeth. Hornblower, the commandant, and everyone, hurried across the headland to look down at the final act of the tragedy. With tremendous speed, driving straight before the wind, she raced at the reef. A roller picked her up as she neared it and seemed to increase her speed. Then she struck, and vanished from sight for a second as the roller burst into spray all about her. When the spray cleared she lay there transformed. Her three masts had all gone with the shock, and it was only a black hull which emerged from the white foam. Her speed and the roller behind her had carried her almost over the reef — doubtless tearing her bottom out — and she hung by her stern, which stood out clear of the water, while her bows were just submerged in the comparatively still water in the lee of the reef.
There were men still alive on her. Hornblower could see them crouching for shelter under the break of her poop. Another Atlantic roller came surging up, and exploded on the Devil’s Teeth, wrapping the wreck round with spray. But yet she emerged again, black against the creaming foam. She had cleared the reef sufficiently far to find shelter for most of her length in the lee of the thing that had destroyed her. Hornblower could see those living creatures crouching on her deck. They had a little longer to live — they might live five minutes, perhaps, if they were lucky. Five hours if they were not.
All round him the Spaniards were shouting maledictions. Women were weeping; some of the men were shaking their fists with rage at the British frigate, which, well satisfied with the destruction of her victim, had rounded‑to in time and was now clawing out to sea again under storm canvas. It was horrible to see those poor devils down there die. If some larger wave than usual, bursting on the reef, did not lift the stern of the wreck clear so that she sank, she would still break up for the survivors to be whirled away with the fragments. And, if it took a long time for her to break up, the wretched men sheltering there would not be able to endure the constant beating of the cold spray upon them. Something should be done to save them, but no boat could round the headland and weather the Devil’s Teeth to reach the wreck. That was so obvious as not to call for a second thought. But . . . Hornblower’s thoughts began to race as he started to work on the alternatives. The commandant on his horse was speaking vehemently to a Spanish naval officer, clearly on the same subject, and the naval officer was spreading his hands and saying that any attempt would be hopeless. And yet . . . For two years Hornblower had been a prisoner; all his pent‑up restlessness was seeking an outlet, and after two years of the misery of confinement he did not care whether he lived or died. He went up to the commandant and broke into the argument.
“Sir,” he said, “let me try to save them. Perhaps from the little bay there. . . . Perhaps some of the fishermen would come with me.”
The commandant looked at the officer and the officer shrugged his shoulders.
“What do you suggest, sir?” asked the commandant of Hornblower.
“We might carry a boat across the headland from the dockyard,” said Hornblower, struggling to word his ideas in Spanish, “but we must be quick — quick!”
He pointed to the wreck, and force was added to his words by the sight of a roller bursting over the Devil’s Teeth.
“How would you carry a boat?” asked the commandant.
To shout his plan in English against that wind would have been a strain; to do so in Spanish was beyond him.
“I can show you at the dockyard, sir,” he yelled. “I cannot explain. But we must hurry!”