Obviously the reply was not a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’. Basse offered a lengthy explanation.
‘He says that Sweden only wants to be at peace with all the world,’ said Braun.
‘Tell him that that means neutrality, then, and neutrality has obligations as well as privileges. There is a ship-of-war under French colours there. She must be warned that her presence in Swedish waters can only be tolerated for a limited time, and I must be informed of what the time-limit is.’
Basse’s heavy face showed considerable embarrassment at Braun’s translation of Hornblower’s demand. He worked his hands violently as he made his reply.
‘He says he cannot violate the laws of international amity,’ said Braun.
‘Say that that is exactly what he is doing. That ship cannot be allowed to use a Swedish port as a base of operations. She must be warned to leave, and if she will not, then she must be taken over and a guard put in her to make sure she does not slip away.’
Basse positively wrung his hands as Braun spoke to him, but any reply he was going to make was cut short by Bush’s salute to Hornblower.
‘The French flag of truce is alongside, sir. Shall I allow them to send someone on board?’
‘Oh yes,’ said Hornblower testily.
The new figure that came in through the entry-port was even more decorative than Basse, although a much smaller man. Across his blue coat lay the watered red silk ribbon of the Legion of Honour, and its star glittered on his breast. He, too, swept off his hat in an elaborate bow.
‘The Count Joseph Dumoulin,’ he said, speaking French, ‘Consul-General in Swedish Pomerania of His Imperial and Royal Majesty Napoleon, Emperor of the French, King of Italy, Protector of the Confederation of the Rhine, Mediator of the Swiss Republic.’
‘Captain Hornblower,’ said Hornblower. He was suddenly excessively cautious, because his government had never recognised those resounding titles which Dumoulin had just reeled off. In the eyes of King George and his ministers, Napoleon, Emperor of the French, was merely General Bonaparte in his personal capacity, and Chief of the French Government in his official one. More than once British officers had found themselves in serious trouble for putting their names to documents – cartels and the like – which bore even incidental references to the Empire.
‘Is there anyone who can speak French?’ asked Dumoulin politely. ‘I regret bitterly my complete inability to speak English.’
‘You can address yourself to me, sir,’ said Hornblower, ‘and I should be glad of an explanation of your presence in this ship.’
‘You speak admirable French, sir,’ said Dumoulin. ‘Ah, of course I remember. You are the Captain Hornblower who made the sensational escape from France a year ago. It is a great pleasure to meet a gentleman of such renown.’
He bowed again. It gave Hornblower a queer self-conscious pleasure to find that his reputation had preceded him even into this obscure corner of the Baltic, but it irritated him at the same time, as having nothing to do with the urgent matter in hand.
‘Thank you,’ he said, ‘but I am still waiting for an explanation of why I have the honour of this visit.’
‘I am here to support M. le Baron in his statement of the belligerent position of Swedish Pomerania.’
Braun interpreted, and Basse’s embarrassment perceptibly increased.
‘Boat with English colours alongside, sir,’ interrupted Bush.
The man who came on board was immensely fat, and dressed in a sober black civilian suit.
‘Hauptmann,’ he said, bending himself at the waist; he spoke English with a thick German accent. ‘His Britannic Majesty’s consular agent at Stralsund.’
‘What can I do for you, Mr Hauptmann?’ asked Hornblower, trying not to allow himself to grow bewildered.
‘I have come,’ said Hauptmann – actually what he said was ‘I haf gome’ – ‘to help explain to you the position here in Swedish Pomerania.’
‘I see no need for explanation,’ said Hornblower. ‘If Sweden is neutral, then that privateer must be either forced to leave or taken into custody. If Sweden is a belligerent, then my hands are free and I can take whatever steps I think proper.’
He looked round at his audience. Braun began to translate into Swedish.
‘What was it you said, Captain?’ asked Dumoulin.
Desperately Hornblower plunged into a French translation, and the curse of Babel descended upon the Nonsuch. Everyone tried to speak at once; translation clashed with expostulation. Clearly, what Basse wanted was the best of both worlds, to make both France and England believe Sweden was friendly. What Dumoulin wanted was to make sure that Blanchefleur would be enabled to continue her depredations among British shipping. Hornblower looked at Hauptmann.
‘Come with me for a minute, please,’ said Hauptmann. He put his fat hand on Hornblower’s shrinking arm and led him across the quarterdeck out of earshot.
‘You are a young man,’ said Hauptmann, ‘and I know you naval officers. You are all headstrong. You must be guided by my advice. Do nothing in a hurry, sir. The international situation here is tense, very tense indeed. A false move may mean ruin. An insult to Sweden might mean war, actual war, instead of pretending war. You must be careful what you do.’
‘I am always careful,’ snapped Hornblower, ‘but do you expect me to allow that privateer to behave as if this were Brest or Toulon?’
Braun came over to them.
‘Baron Basse asks me to say to you, sir, that Bonaparte has two hundred thousand men on the borders of Pomerania. He wants me to say that one cannot offend the master of an army that size.’
‘That bears out what I say, Captain,’ said Hauptmann.
Here came Dumoulin, and Basse after him – no one would trust any one of his colleagues to be alone with the British captain for a moment. Hornblower’s tactical instinct came to his rescue; the best defensive is a vigorous local offensive. He turned on Hauptmann.
‘May I ask, sir, how His Majesty maintains a consular agent in a port whose neutrality is in doubt?’
‘It is necessary because of the need for licences to trade.’
‘Are you accredited to the Swedish Government by His Majesty?’
‘No, sir. I am accredited by His Bavarian Majesty.’
‘His Bavarian Majesty?’
‘I am a subject of His Bavarian Majesty.’
‘Who happens to be at war with His Britannic Majesty,’ said Hornblower dryly. The whole tangle of Baltic politics, of hole-and-corner hostilities and neutralities, was utterly beyond unravelling. Hornblower listened to everyone’s pleas and expostulations until he could bear it no longer; his impatience grew at length apparent to his anxious interviewers.
‘I can form no conclusion at present, gentlemen,’ said Hornblower. ‘I must have time to think over the information you have given me. Baron Basse, as representative of a governor-general, I fancy you are entitled to a seventeen-gun salute on leaving this ship?’
The salutes echoed over the yellow-green water as the officials went over the side. Seventeen guns for Baron Basse. Eleven for Dumoulin, the Consul-General. Hauptmann, as a mere consular agent, rated only five, the smallest salute noticed in naval ceremonial. Hornblower stood at the salute as Hauptmann went down into his boat, and then sprang into activity again.
‘Signal for the captains of Moth, Harvey, and Clam to come on board,’ he ordered abruptly.
The bomb-vessels and the cutter were within easy signalling distance now; there were three hours of daylight left, and over there the spars of the French privateer still showed over the sand-dunes of Hiddensoe as though to taunt him.
IX
Hornblower swung himself up over the side of the Harvey where Lieutenant Mound stood at attention to welcome him with his two boatswain’s mates twittering their pipes. The bang of a gun, coming unexpectedly and not a yard from him, made him jump. As the Commodore was shifting his broad pendant from one ship to another (there it was breaking out at the lofty ma
sthead of the Harvey) it was the correct moment for another salute, which they were firing off with one of the four six-pounders which Harvey carried aft.
‘Belay that nonsense,’ said Hornblower.
Then he felt suddenly guilty. He had publicly described the Navy’s beloved ceremonial as nonsense – just as extraordinary, he had applied the term to a compliment which ought to have delighted him as it was only the second time he had received it. But discipline had not apparently suffered, although young Mound was grinning broadly as he gave the order to cease firing.
‘Square away and let’s get going, Mr Mound,’ said Hornblower.
As the Harvey filled her sails and headed diagonally for the shore with Moth close astern, Hornblower looked round him. This was a new experience for him; in twenty years of service he had never seen action in a bomb-vessel. Above him towered the enormous mainmast (they had made a good job of replacing the spar shot away in the Sound) which had to make up in the amount of canvas it carried for the absence of a foremast. The mizzenmast, stepped far aft, was better proportioned to the diminutive vessel. The prodigious forestay necessary for the security of the mainmast was an iron chain, curiously incongruous amid the hempen rigging. The waist of the ketch was forward – that was the absurd but only way of describing her design – and there, on either side of her midline, were the two huge mortars which accounted for her quaint build. Hornblower knew that they were bedded upon a solid mass of oak against her kelson; under the direction of a gunner’s mate four hands were laying out the immense thirteen-inch shells which the mortars fired. The bos’un’s mate with another party had passed a cable out from a starboard gun-port, and, having carried it forward, were securing it to the anchor hanging at the cathead. That was the ‘spring’; Hornblower had often attached a spring to his cable as a practice evolution, but had never used one in action before. Close beside him in the port-side main-chains a hand was heaving the lead; Hornblower thought to himself that nine-tenths of the time he had spent in the Baltic the lead had been going, and presumably that would be the case for the rest of this commission.
‘And a half three!’ called the leadsman. These bomb-ketches drew less than nine feet.
Over there Raven was preparing to kedge off the shoal on which she was aground. Hornblower could see the cable, black against the water. She had already cleared away the raffle of her wrecked foretopmast. Clam was creeping out beyond her; Hornblower wondered if her gypsy-looking captain had fully grasped the complex instructions given him.
Mound was standing beside him, conning the ship. He was the only commissioned officer; a midshipman and two master’s mates kept watches, and the two latter were standing wide-legged aft measuring with sextants the vertical angle subtended by Blanchefleur’s spars. Hornblower could sense through the vessel an atmosphere of light-heartedness, only to be expected when the captain was only twenty years old. Discipline was bound to be easier in these small craft – Hornblower had often heard crabbed captains of vast seniority bewailing the fact.
‘Quarter less three!’ called the leadsman.
Seventeen feet of water.
‘We are within range now, sir,’ said Mound.
‘Those mortars of yours are more accurate when firing at less than extreme range, though, aren’t they?’
‘Yes, sir. And I would prefer to have a little to spare, too, in case they can shift anchorage.’
‘Leave yourself plenty of room to swing, though. We know nothing of these shoals.’
‘Aye aye, sir.’
Mound swung round for a final glance at the tactical situation; at the spars of the Blanchefleur above the dunes where she was anchored far up the lagoon, the battery at the end of the spit, Clam taking up a position where she could see up the lagoon from a point just out of range of the battery, and Lotus waiting beyond the entrance to cut off escape in case by any miracle the Blanchefleur should be able to claw her way out to windward and make a fresh attempt to reach Stralsund. Mound kept on reaching for his trouser pockets and then hastily refraining from putting his hands in, when he remembered the Commodore was beside him – an odd gesture, and he did it every few seconds.
‘For God’s sake, man,’ said Hornblower, ‘put your hands in your pockets and leave off fidgeting.’
‘Aye aye, sir,’ said Mound, a little startled. He plunged his hands in gratefully, and hunched his shoulders into a comfortable slouch, pleasantly relaxed. He took one more look round before calling to the midshipman standing by the cathead forward.
‘Mr Jones. Let go!’
The anchor cable roared out briefly as the crew of the ketch raced aloft to get in the canvas.
The Harvey swung slowly round until she rode bows upwind, pointing nearly straight at the invisible Blanchefleur. The Moth, Hornblower saw, anchored nearly abreast of her sister ship.
Mound moved with a deceptive appearance of leisureliness about the business of opening fire. He took a series of bearings to make sure that the anchor was holding. At a word from him a seaman tied a white rag to the ‘spring’ where it lay on the deck as it passed forward to the capstan, and Mound fished in his pocket, brought out a piece of chalk, and marked a scale on the deck beside the rag.
‘Mr Jones,’ he said, ‘take a turn on the capstan.’
Four men at the capstan turned it easily. The white rag crept along the deck as the spring was wound in. The spring passed out through an after gun-port and was attached to the anchor far forward; pulling on it pulled the stern of the vessel round so that she lay at an angle to the wind, and the amount of the angle was roughly indicated by the movement of the white rag against the scale chalked on the deck.
‘Carry on, Mr Jones,’ said Mound, taking a rough bearing of the Blanchefleur’s spars. The capstan clanked as the men at the bars spun it round.
‘Steady!’ called Mound, and they stopped.
‘One more pawl,’ said Mound, sighting very carefully now for Blanchefleur’s mainmast.
Clank! went the capstan as the men momentarily threw their weight on the bars.
‘One more!’
Clank!
‘I think that’s right, sir,’ said Mound. The Harvey’s centre line was pointing straight at Blanchefleur. ‘Of course the cables stretch and the anchor may drag a little, but it’s easy enough to maintain a constant bearing by paying out or taking in on the spring.’
‘So I understand,’ said Hornblower.
He was familiar with the theory of the bomb-vessel; actually he was intensely interested in and excited at the prospect of the approaching demonstration. Ever since, at a desperate moment, he had tried to hit a small boat at long range with a six-pounder shot from the Witch of Endor, Hornblower had been conscious that naval gunnery was an art which should be improved if it were possible. At present it was chancy, literally hit-or-miss. Mortar-fire from a bomb-vessel was the uttermost refinement of naval gunnery, brought to a high degree of perfection, although it was only a bastard offshoot. The high trajectory and the low muzzle velocity of the projectile, and the avoidance of the disturbing factor of irregularities in the bore of the gun, made it possible to drop the shell with amazing accuracy.
‘If you’ll excuse me, sir,’ said Mound, ‘I’ll go forrard. I like to cut my fuses myself.’
‘I’ll come with you,’ said Hornblower.
The two mortars were like big cauldrons in the eyes of the bomb-ketch.
‘Eleven hundred yards,’ said Mound. ‘We’ll try a pound and three-quarters of powder, Mr Jones.’
‘Aye aye, sir.’
The powder was made up in cartridges of a pound, half a pound, and a quarter of a pound. The midshipman tore open one of each size, and poured the contents into the starboard-side mortar, and pressed it home with an enormous wad of felt. Mound had a measuring rule in his hand, and was looking up at the sky in a calculating way. Then he bent over one of the big shells, and with a pair of scissors he cut the fuse with profound care.
‘One and eleven sixteenths, sir,’ h
e said, apologetically. ‘Don’t know why I decided on that. The fuse burns at different speeds according to the weather, and that seems right for now. Of course we don’t want the shell to burst in the air, but if you have too long a fuse some Frog may get to it and put it out before it bursts.’
‘Naturally,’ said Hornblower.
The big shell was lifted up and placed in the muzzle of the mortar; a few inches down the bore narrowed abruptly, leaving a distinct step inside, on which the bold belt round the shell rested with reassuring solidity. The curve of the thirteen-inch shell, with the fuse protruding, was just level with the rim of the muzzle.
‘Hoist the red swallowtail,’ called Mound, raising his voice to reach the ears of the master’s mate aft.
Hornblower turned and looked through his glass at Clam, anchored in the shallows a couple of miles away. It was under his personal supervision that this code of signals had been arranged, and he felt a keen anxiety that it should function correctly. Signals might easily be misunderstood. A red swallowtail mounted to the Clam’s peak.
‘Signal acknowledged, sir,’ called the master’s mate.
Mound took hold of the smouldering linstock, and applied it to the fuse of the shell. After a moment the fuse took fire, spluttering feebly.
‘One, two, three, four, five,’ counted Mound, slowly, while the fuse still spluttered. Apparently he left himself a five-second margin in case the fuse burnt unsatisfactorily and had to be relit.
Then he pressed the linstock into the touch-hole of the mortar, and it went off with a roar. Standing immediately behind the mortar, Hornblower could see the shell rise, its course marked by the spark of the burning fuse. Up and up it went, higher and higher, and then it disappeared as it began its downward flight at right angles now to the line of sight. They waited, and they waited, and nothing more happened.
‘Miss,’ said Mound. ‘Haul down the red swallowtail.’
‘White pendant from Clam, sir,’ called the master’s mate.
‘That means “range too great”,’ said Mound. ‘A pound and a half of powder this time, please, Mr Jones.’