The Commodore. C. S. Forester

“Deck, there! If you please, sir, there’s a bit of smoke in sight now, right up the bay. Can’t see more than that, sir, but it’s black smoke and might be from a burning ship.”

Bush, measuring with his eye the dwindling distance between the ship and the boom, was giving orders to brace up and work a trifle farther out to sea again, and the two sloops conformed to the Nonsuch’s movements. Hornblower wondered whether or not he had put too much trust in young Mound with the bomb-ketches. Mound had an important rendezvous for next morning; with the Moth and the Harvey he was out of sight below the horizon. So far the garrison of Elbing had seen only the three British ships, and did not know of the existence of the ketches. That was well — as long as Mound carried out his orders correctly. Or a gale might blow up, or a shift of the wind might raise too much of a surf for the project Hornblower had in mind. Hornblower felt anxiety surge upon him. He had to force himself to relax, to appear composed. He permitted himself to walk the deck, but slowed down his nervous strides to a casual saunter.

“Deck, there! There’s more smoke inshore, sir. I can see two lots of it, as if there were two ships on fire now.”

Bush had just given orders to back the main-topsail again, and as the ship hove-to he came across to Hornblower.

“It looks as if Vickery had caught something, doesn’t it, sir?” he said, smiling.

“Let’s hope so,” answered Hornblower.

There was no sign of any anxiety in Bush’s expression; his craggy face denoted nothing more than fierce satisfaction at the thought of Vickery loose amid the coasting trade. His sublime confidence began to reassure Hornblower until the latter suddenly realized that Bush was not really paying consideration to circumstances. Bush knew that Hornblower had planned this attack, and that was enough for him. In that case he could imagine no possibility of failure, and Hornblower found it profoundly irritating that this should be the case.

“Deck, there! There’s two small sail heading across the bay close-hauled for the town. And I can’t be sure yet, sir, but I think the second one is our cutter.”

“Our cutter it is, sir!” yelled another voice. Every idle hand in the ship was perched by now at the mast-heads.

“That’ll be Montgomery,” said Bush. He had fitted the toe of his wooden leg into the ring-bolt of the aftermost carronade tackle so that he could stand without effort on the gently heaving deck.

“She’s caught her, sir!” yelled the voice from the mast-head. “Our cutter’s caught her!”

“That’s one lot of beef and bread that Boney won’t get,” said Bush.

Very heavy destruction of the coastal shipping in the Haff might be some compensation for the loss of 150 prime seamen. But it would be hard to convince Their Lordships of the Admiralty of that, if there was no certain evidence of the destruction.

“Deck, there! The two sail are parting company. Our cutter’s going off before the wind. The other has her mains’l brailed up, I think, sir. Looks to me as if —”

The lieutenant’s report terminated abruptly in mid-sentence.

“There she goes!” yelled another voice, and at the same moment there came a cheer from everyone aloft.

“She’s blown up!” shouted the lieutenant, forgetting in his excitement even to add ‘sir’ to his words when addressing his Commodore. “There’s a pillar of smoke as high as a mountain! You can see it from the deck, I think.”

They certainly could — a mushroom-topped pillar of smoke, black and heavy, apparent as it reached above the horizon. It lasted a perceptible time before the wind blew it into strange ragged shapes and then dispersed it utterly.

“That wasn’t beef and bread, by God!” said Bush, pounding his left palm with his right fist. “That was powder! A barge-load of powder! Fifty tons of powder, by God!”

“Mast-head! What of the cutter?”

“She’s all right, sir. Doesn’t look as if the explosion harmed her. She’s hull-down from here already, sir.”

“Off after another one, please God,” said Bush.

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