A sudden flurry of rain heralded the arrival of a clear spell. Braced upon the heaving deck Hornblower set his glass to his eye; the Natividad was visible again, hull down now, across the tossing grey-flecked sea. She was hove-to as well, looking queerly lopsided in her partially dismasted condition. Hornblower’s glass could discover no sign of any immediate replacement of the missing spars; he thought it extremely probable that there was nothing left in the ship to serve as jury masts. In that case as soon as the Lydia could carry enough sail aft to enable her to beat to windward he would have the Natividad at his mercy — as long as the sea was not running high enough to make gunnery impossible.
He glowered round the horizon; at present there was no sign of the storm abating, and it was long past noon. With the coming of night he might lose the Natividad altogether, and nightfall would give his enemy a further respite in which to achieve repairs.
“How much longer, Mr Harrison?” he rasped.
“Not long now, sir. Nearly ready, sir.”
“You’ve had long enough and to spare for a simple piece of work like that. Keep the men moving, there.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
Hornblower knew that the men were cursing him under their breath; he did not know they admired him as well, as men will admire a hard master despite themselves.
Now it was the cook come to report to him — the cook and his mates had been the only men in the ship who could be spared for the grisly work allotted to them.
“All ready, sir,” he said.
Without a word Hornblower strode forward down the starboard side gangway, taking his prayer book from his pocket. The fourteen dead were there, shrouded in their hammocks, two to a grating, a roundshot sewn into the foot of each hammock. Homblower blew a long blast upon his silver whistle, and activity ceased on board while he read, compromising between haste and solemnity, the office for the burial of the dead at sea.
“We therefore commit their bodies to the deep —”
The cook and his mates tilted each grating in turn, and the bodies fell with sullen splashes overside while Hornblower read the concluding words of the service. As soon as the last words were said he blew his whistle again and all the bustle and activity recommenced. He grudged those few minutes taken from the work bitterly, but he knew that any unceremonious pitching overboard of the dead would be resented by his men, who set all the store by forms and ceremonies to be expected of the uneducated.
And now there was something else to plague him. Picking her way across the maindeck below him came Lady Barbara, the little negress clinging to her skirts.
“My orders were for you to stay below, ma’am,” he shouted to her. “This deck is no place for you.”
Lady Barbara looked round the seething deck and then tilted her chin to answer him.
“I can see that without having it pointed out to me,” she said, and then, softening her manner: “I have no intention of obstructing, Captain. I was going to shut myself in my cabin.”
“Your cabin?”
Hornblower laughed. Four broadsides from the Natividad had blasted their way through that cabin. The idea of Lady Barbara shutting herself up there struck him as being intensely funny. He laughed again, and then again, before checking himself in hurried mistrust as an abyss of hysteria opened itself before him. He controlled himself.
“There is no cabin left for you, ma’am. I regret that the only course open to you is to go back whence you have come. There is no other place in the ship that can accommodate you at present.”
Lady Barbara, looking up at him, thought of the cable tier she had just left. Pitch dark, with only room to sit hunched up on the slimy cable, rats squeaking and scampering over her legs; the ship pitching and rolling madly, and Hebe howling with fright beside her; the tremendous din of the guns, and the thunderous rumble of the gun trucks immediately over her head as the guns were run in and out; the tearing crash which had echoed through the ship when the mizzen mast fell; the ignorance of how the battle was progressing — at this very moment she was still unaware whether it had been lost or won or merely suspended: the stench of the bilge, the hunger and the thirst.