The Happy Return. C. S. Forester

The cable came steadily in, the ship’s boys with their nippers following it to the hatch-coamings and scuttling back immediately to take a fresh hold on cable and messenger. But the measured clank-clank of the capstan grew slower and slower and then came to a dead stop.

“Heave, you bastards! Heave!” bellowed Harrison. “Here, you fo’c’sle men, bear a hand! Now, heave!”

There were twenty more men thrusting at the bars now. Their added strength brought one more solemn clank from the capstan.

“Heave! Christ damn you, heave!”

Harrison’s cane was falling briskly first here and then there.

“Heave!”

A shudder ran through the ship, the capstan swung round so sharply that the hands at the bars fell in a tumbling heap to the deck.

“Messenger’s parted, sir,” hailed Gerard from the forecastle. “The anchor’s foul, I think, sir.”

“Hell fire!” said Hornblower to himself. He was certain that the woman in the hammock chair behind him was laughing at his predicament, with a foul anchor and the eyes of all Spanish America on him. But he was not going to abandon an anchor and cable to the Spaniards.

“Pass the small bower cable for a messenger,” he shouted.

That meant unbearably hot and unpleasant work for a score of men down in the cable tier rousing out the small bower cable and manhandling it up to the capstan. The calls and curses of the boatswain’s mates came echoing back to the quarterdeck — the warrant officers were as acutely conscious of the indignity of the ship’s position as was their captain. Hornblower could not pace the deck as he wished to do, for fear of meeting Lady Barbara’s eyes. He could only stand and fume, wiping the sweat with his handkerchief from his face and neck.

“Messenger’s ready, sir!” hailed Gerard.

“Put every man to the bars that there’s place for. Mr Harrison, see that they heave!”

“Aye aye, sir!”

Br-r-r-rm. Boom! Br-r-r-m. Boom! The drum rolled.

“Heave, you sons of bitches,” said Harrison, his cane going crack-crack-crack on the straining backs.

Clank! went the capstan. Clank-clank-clank. Hornblower felt the deck inclining a trifle under his feet. The strain was dragging down the ship’s bows, not bringing home the anchor.

“God —,” began Hornblower to himself, and then left the sentence uncompleted. Of the fifty-five oaths he had ready to employ not one was adequate to the occasion.

‘Avast heaving!’ he roared, and the sweating seamen eased their aching backs.

Hornblower tugged at his chin as though he wanted to pull it off. He would have to sail the anchor out of the ground — a delicate manoeuvre involving peril to masts and rigging, and which might end in a ridiculous fiasco. Up to the moment only a few knowing people in Panama could have gussed the ship’s predicament, but the moment sail was set telescopes would be trained upon her from the city walls and if the operation failed everyone would know and would be amused — and the Lydia might be delayed for hours repairing damage. But he was not going to abandon that anchor and cable.

He looked up at the vane at the masthead, and overside at the water; the wind was across the tide, which gave them a chance, at least. He issued his orders quietly, taking the utmost precaution to conceal his trepidation, and steadily keeping his back to Lady Barbara. The top-men raced aloft to set the fore topsail; with that and the driver he could get sternway upon the ship. Harrison stood by the capstan ready first to let the cable go with a run and then second to have it hove in like lightning when the ship came forward again. Bush had his men ready at the braces, and every idle hand was gathered round the capstan.

The cable roared out as the ship gathered sternway; Hornblower stood rooted to the quarterdeck feeling that he would give a week of his life for the chance to pace up and down without meeting Lady Barbara’s eyes. With narrowed eyes he watched the progress of the ship, his mind juggling with a dozen factors at once — the drag of the cable on the bows, the pressure of the wind on the driver and the backed fore topsail, the set of the tide, the increasing sternway, the amount of cable still to run out. He picked his moment.

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