“You ought to be below, Lady Barbara,” he said.
“Oh no, Captain. This is too delicious after the heat we have been enduring.”
A shower of spray came rattling over the bulwarks and wetted them both.
“It is your health, ma’am, about which I am anxious.”
“If salt water was harmful sailors would die young.”
Her cheeks were bright as if she had been using cosmetics. Hornblower could refuse her nothing, even though he bitterly remembered how last evening she had sat in the shadow of the mizzen rigging talking so animatedly to Gerard that no one else had been able to profit by her society.
“Then you can stay on deck, ma’am, since you wish it, unless this gale increases — and I fancy it will.”
“Thank you, Captain,” she replied. There was a look in her eye which seemed to indicate that the question as to what would happen if the gale increased was not nearly as decided as the captain appeared to think — but like her great brother she crossed no bridges until she came to them.
Hornblower turned away; he would clearly have liked to have stayed there talking, with the spray pattering about them, but his duty was with his ship. As he reached the wheel there came a hail from the masthead.
“Sail ho! Deck, there, a sail right ahead. Looks like Natividad, sir.”
Hornblower gazed up. The lookout was clinging to his perch, being swung round and round in dizzy circles as the ship pitched and swooped over the waves.
“Up you go, Knyvett,” he snapped to the midshipman beside him. “Take a glass with you and tell me what you can see.” He knew that he himself would be of no use as a lookout in that wild weather — he was ashamed of it, but he had to admit it to himself. Soon Knyvett’s boyish voice came calling down to him through the gale.
“She’s the Natividad, sir. I can see the cut of her tops’ls.”
“How’s she heading?”
“On the starboard tack, sir, same course as us. Her masts are in one line. Now she’s altering course, sir. She’s wearing round. She must have seen us, sir. Now she’s on the port tack, sir, heading up to wind’ard of us, close hauled, sir.”
“Oh, is she,” said Hornblower to himself, grimly. It was an unusual experience to have a Spanish ship face about and challenge action — but he remembered that she was a Spanish ship no longer. He would not allow her to get the weather gauge of him, come what might.
“Man the braces, there!” he shouted, and then to the man at the wheel: “Port your helm. And mark ye, fellow, keep her as near the wind as she’ll lie. Mr Bush, beat to quarters, if you please, and clear for action.”
As the drum rolled and the hands came pouring up he remembered the woman aft by the taffrail, and his stolid fatalism changed to anxiety.
“Your place is below, Lady Barbara,” he said. “Take your maid with you. You must stay in the cockpit until the action is over — no, not the cockpit. Go to the cable tier.”
“Captain —,” she began, but Hornblower was not in the mood for argument — if indeed she had argument in mind.
“Mr Clay!” he rasped. “Conduct her ladyship and her maid to the cable tier. See that she is safe before you leave her. Those are my orders, Mr Clay. Ha-h’m.”
A cowardly way out, perhaps, to throw on Clay the responsibility of seeing his orders carried out. He knew it, but he was angry with the woman because of the sick feeling of worry which she was occasioning him. She left him, nevertheless, with a smile and a wave of the hand, Clay trotting before her.
For several minutes the ship was a turmoil of industry as the men went through the well-learned drill. The guns were run out, the decks sanded, the horses rigged to the pumps, the fires extinguished, the bulkheads torn down. The Natividad could be seen from the deck now, sailing on the opposite tack towards her, obviously clawing her hardest up to windward to get the weather gauge. Hornblower looked up at the sails to mark the least shiver.