Chapter II
The quarterdeck was thronged with officers, all the four lieutenants, Crystal the master, Simmonds of the marines, Wood the purser, the midshipmen of the watch. The rigging swarmed with petty officers and ratings, and every glass in the ship appeared to be in use. Hornblower realized that a stern coldblooded disciplinarian would take exception to this perfectly natural behaviour, and so he did the same.
“What’s all this?” he snapped. “Has no one in this ship anything to do? Mr Wood, I’ll trouble you to send for the cooper and arrange with him for the filling of the water casks. Get the royals and stun’sails off her, Mr Gerard.”
The ship burst into activity again with the twittering of the pipes and Harrison’s bellowing of “All hands shorten sail” and the orders which Gerard called from the quarterdeck. Under plain sail the Lydia rolled smoothly over the quartering swell.
“I think I can see the smoke from the deck, sir, now,” said Gerard, apologetically raising the subject of land again to his captain. He proffered his glass and pointed forward. Low on the horizon, greyish under a wisp of white cloud, Hornblower could see something through the telescope which might be smoke.
“Ha‑h’m,” said Hornblower, as he had trained himself to say instead of something more conversational He went forward and began to climb the weather foremast shrouds. He was nothing of an athlete, and he felt a faint dislike for this task, but it had to be done — and he was uncomfortably aware that every idle eye on board was turned on him. Because of this he was morally compelled, although he was hampered by the telescope, to refrain from going through the lubbers’ hole and instead to make the difficult outward climb up the futtock shrouds. Nor could he pause for breath — not when there were midshipmen under his command who in their follow‑my‑leader games thought nothing of running without a stop from the hold to the main royal truck.
The climb hand over hand up the fore top gallant shrouds tried him severely; breathing heavily, he reached the fore top gallant masthead, and settled himself to point the telescope as steadily as his heaving chest and sudden nervousness would allow. Clay was sitting nonchalantly astride the yardarm fifteen feet away, but Hornblower ignored him. The slight corkscrew roll of the ship was sweeping him in a vast circle, up, forward, sideways, and down; at first he could only fix the distant mountains in snatches, but after a time he was able to keep them under fairly continuous observation. It was a strange landscape which the telescope revealed to him. There were the sharp peaks of several volcanoes; two very tall ones to larboard, a host of smaller ones both to starboard and to port. As he looked he saw a puff of grey steam emerge from one peak — not from the summit, but from a vent in the side — and ascend lazily to join the strip of white cloud which hung over it. Besides these cones there was a long mountain range of which the peaks appeared to be spurs, but the range itself seemed to be made up of a chain of old volcanoes, truncated and weathered down by the passage of centuries; that strip of coast must have been a hell’s kitchen when they were all in eruption together. The upper parts of the peaks and of the mountains were a warm grey — grey with a hint of pink — and lower he could see what looked like green cataracts which must be vegetation stretching up along gullies in the mountain sides. Hornblower noted the relative heights and positions of the volcanoes, and from these data he drew a map in his mind and compared it with the section of the chart which he also carried in his mind’s eye. There was no doubting their similarity.
“I thought I saw breakers just then, sir,” said Clay. Hornblower’s gaze changed direction from the tops of the peaks to their feet.
Here there was a solid belt of green, unbroken save where lesser volcanoes jutted out from it. Hornblower swept his glass along it, along the very edge of the horizon, and then back again. He thought he saw a tiny flash of white, sought for the place again, experienced a moment of doubt, and then saw it again — a speck of white which appeared and disappeared as he watched.