Hornblower found Bush beside him.
“Natividad’s feeling our fire, sir,” he roared through the racket. “She’s firing very wild. Look at that, sir.”
Of the broadside fired only one or two shots struck home. Half a dozen plunged together into the sea astern of the Lydia so that the spray from the fountains which they struck up splashed round them on the quarterdeck. Hornblower nodded happily. This was his justification for closing to that range and for running the risks involved in the approach. To maintain a rapid fire, well aimed, amid the din and the smoke and the losses and the confusion of a naval battle called for discipline and practice of a sort that he knew the Natividad’s crew could not boast.
He looked down through the smoke at the Lydia’s main deck. The inexperienced eye, observing the hurry and bustle of the boys with the cartridge buckets, the mad efforts of the gun crews, the dead and the wounded, the darkness and the din, might well think it a scene of confusion, but Hornblower knew better. Everything that was being done there, every single action, was part of the scheme worked out by Hornblower seven months before when he commissioned the Lydia, and grained into the minds of all on board during the long and painful drills since. He could see Gerard standing by the mainmast, looking almost saintly in his ecstasy — gunnery was as much Gerard’s ruling passion as women; he could see the midshipmen and other warrant officers each by his subdivision of guns, each looking to Gerard for his orders and keeping his guns working rhythmically, the loaders with their rammers, the cleaners with their sponges, the gun captains crouching over the breeches, right hands raised.
The port side battery was already depleted of most of its men; there were only two men to a gun there, standing idle yet ready to spring into action if a shift of the fight should bring their guns to bear. The remainder were on duty round the ship — replacing casualties on the starboard side, manning the pumps, whose doleful clanking continued steadily through the fearful din, resting on their oars in the cutter, hard at work aloft repairing damages. Hornblower found time to be thankful that he had been granted seven months in which to bring his crew into its present state of training and discipline.
Something — the concussion of the guns, a faint breath of air, or the send of the sea — was causing the Lydia to turn away a trifle from her enemy. Hornblower could see that the guns were having to be trained round farther and farther so that the rate of firing was being slowed down. He raced forward, running out along the bowsprit until he was over the cutter where Hooker and his men sat staring at the fight.
“Mr Hooker, bring her head round two points to starboard.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
The men bent to their oars and headed their boat towards the Natividad; the tow-rope tightened while another badly aimed broadside tore the water all round them into foam. Tugging and straining at the oars they would work the ship round in time. Hornblower left them and ran back to the quarterdeck. There was a white-faced ship’s boy seeking him there.
“Mr Howell sent me, sir. Starboard side chain pump’s knocked all to pieces.”
“Yes?” Hornblower knew that Howell the ship’s carpenter would not merely send a message of despair.
“He’s rigging another one, sir, but it will be an hour before it works, sir. He told me to tell you the water’s gaining a little, sir.”
“Ha-h’m,” said Hornblower. The infant addressing him grew round-eyed and confidential now that the first strangeness of speaking to his captain had worn off.
“There was fourteen men all knocked into smash at the pump, sir. ‘Orrible, sir.”
“Very good. Run back to Mr Howell and tell him the captain is sure he will do his best to get the new pump rigged.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
The boy dived down to the maindeck, and Hornblower watched him running forward, dodging the hurrying individuals in the crowded space there. He had to explain himself to the marine sentry at the fore hatchway — no one could go below without being able to show that it was his duty which was calling him there. Hornblower felt as if the message Howell had sent did not matter at all. It called for no decision on his part. All there was to do was to go on fighting, whether the ship was sinking under their feet or not. There was a comfort in being free of all responsibility in this way.