“Michael burns the houses, sir, and takes the women and cattle. He’s the sworn enemy of the Mohammedans. That’s where the Vali is with the local army, sir. He went to head off Michael, but he guessed wrong. He went to Adalia, and that’s a week’s march away, sir.”
“I see.”
With Atropos lying in Marmorice Bay a pirate would never venture in, and the Mudir and his people were safe as long as she stayed there. The purpose of the Mudir’s visit was plain; he wanted to persuade Hornblower to stay until this Michael was at a safe distance again. It was a remarkable piece of good fortune; it was, thought Hornblower, ample compensation for the freak of fate which had left McCullum wounded in a duel. In the same way that in a long enough session the whist player found that the luck evened itself out, so it was with war. Good luck followed bad—and for Hornblower that was an astonishing admission, although he was ready enough to admit that bad luck followed good. But he must on no account show any pleasure.
“It’s a stroke of luck for us, sir,” said Turner.
“Please keep your conclusions to yourself, Mr. Turner,” said Hornblower bitingly.
The tone of his voice and Turner’s crestfallen expression puzzled the Mudir, who had not ceased to watch them closely. But he waited patiently for the unbelievers to make the next move.
“No,” said Hornblower decisively, “tell him I can’t do it.”
At Hornblower’s shake of the head the Mudir actually showed a little dismay even before Turner translated. He stroked his white beard and spoke again, choosing his words carefully.
“He’s offering to bribe us, sir,” said Turner. “Five lambs or kids far every day we stay here.”
“That’s better,” said Hornblower. “Tell him I’d rather have money.”
It was the Mudir’s turn to shake his head when he heard what Turner had to say. He looked, to Hornblower’s searching eye, like a man quite sincere.
“He says there isn’t any money, sir. The Vali took all there was when he was here last.”
“He has our twenty guineas, anyway. Tell him I want them back, and six lambs a day—no kids—and I’ll stay.”
That was how it was decided in the end. With Turner escorting the Mudir back in the launch Hornblower went forward to inspect the gunner’s work. It was nearly completed. A hundred odd feet of hose, carefully coiled, lay on the deck, and one end disappeared into a powder keg covered over with canvas which the gunner was smearing thickly with pitch. Hornblower stooped to examine what must be the weakest point, where the canvas cover of the keg was sewn round the hose.
“That’s as good as I can make it, sir,” said the gunner. “But it’s a mighty long length of hose.”
At a hundred feet below water the pressures were enormous. A minute, indetectable pinprick anywhere in the fabric and water would be forced in.
“We can try it,” said Hornblower. “The sooner the better.”
That was how it always was—“the sooner the better” might be found written on a naval officer’s heart like Queen Mary’s Calais. Man the gig, see that all necessary equipment was packed into it, herd the divers into the bows after their lastminute instructions from McCullum, and start off without a minute wasted. Drink coffee with a Turkish Mudir at one hour, and dabble in underwater explosives the next. If variety was the spice of life, thought Hornblower, his present existence must be an Oriental curry.
“Easy!” he ordered, and the gig drifted slowly up to the moored plank which marked the accessible point of the wreck underneath.
Looney knew his business. The canvascovered powder keg lay beside him; it was bound with line, and Looney took another short length of line, secured one end to the keg, passed the line round the mooring line of the buoy, and secured the other end to the keg again. He checked to see that the free end of the fusehose was properly fastened to the empty keg that was to buoy it up, and then gave a piping order to one of his colleagues, who stood up to take off his clothes. Looney laid hold of the powder keg, but it was too heavy for his spindly arms.
“Help him, you two,” said Hornblower to the two seamen nearest. “See that the line’s clear and see that the hose is clear, too.”
Under Looney’s direction the powder keg was lifted up and lowered over the side.
“Let go! Handsomely! Handsomely!” ordered Hornblower.
It was a tense moment—one more tense moment—to watch the powder keg sink below the choppy surface. By the line attached to it the seamen lowered it slowly down, the fusehose uncoiling after it as the keg sank. The loop of line which Looney had passed round the mooring line of the buoy made certain that the keg would sink to the right place.
“Bottom, sir,” said a seaman, as the lowering line went slack in his hands. Several feet of hose remained in the boat.
The diver was sitting on the opposite gunwale; he carried a sheath knife on a string round his naked waist, and he took in his hands the cannon ball that Looney gave him. Then he lowered himself over and vanished under the surface. They waited until he came up; they waited while the next diver went down and came up again, they waited while Looney took his turn too. Dive succeeded dive; apparently it was not too easy an operation to move the powder keg to exactly the right place under the break of the Speedwell’s poop. But presumably, down below the surface, the thing was achieved in the end. Looney came up from what seemed to be an extra long dive; he had to be helped over the gunwale and he lay gasping in the bows for some time recovering. Then at last he sat up and made to Hornblower the unmistakable gesture of handling flint and steel.
“Strike a light,” said Hornblower to Leadbitter. In all his life he had never properly acquired the knack of it.
Leadbitter opened the tinder box, and struck, and struck again. It did not take Leadbitter more than six times before he succeeded. He bent and blew the spark on the tinder into life, took the piece of slow match and caught the fire on it, blew that into life too, and looked to Hornblower for further orders.
“I’ll do it,” said Hornblower.
Leadbitter handed him the glowing match, and Hornblower sat with it in his hand for a second while he checked once more to see that all was ready. He was tingling with excitement.
“Stand by with the cask!” he said. “Leadbitter, have the stopper ready.”
There were four or five inches of quick match hanging out of the fusehose; Hornblower dabbed the glowing match upon it. A second’s hesitation and it took fire. Hornblower watched the spark run along the quick match and vanish down into the hose.
“Stopper it!” said Hornblower, and Leadbitter forced the wooden stopper into the end of the hose, grinding down upon the brittle ashes of the match.
At five seconds to the foot the fire was now, he hoped, travelling down the hose, down, down, far below the level of the sea. At the far end, next to the powder keg, there was a foot of slow match. That burned at five minutes to the foot; they had plenty of time—no need for feverish haste, however great the urge to hurry.
“Over with it!” said Hornblower, and Leadbitter picked up the empty cask and lowered it gently into the water. It floated there, holding up above the surface the stoppered end of the fusehose.
“Oars!” said Hornblower. “Give way!”
The gig swung away from the floating keg. The spark was still travelling along the quick match, Hornblower presumed; it would be some seconds yet before it even reached the slow match down there by the wreck of the Speedwell. He remembered to take the time by his watch.
“Take her back to the ship,” he ordered Leadbitter; he looked back to where the empty cask bobbed on the surface.
McCullum had said, “I advise you to keep clear of the explosion.” Apparently the explosion of a barrel of powder, even far down under the water, created a turmoil on the surface that would endanger the gig. Beside the ship they would be a quarter of a mile away; that should be safe enough. When the bowman hooked on to the main chains of the Atropos, Hornblower looked at his watch again. It was exactly five minutes since he had seen the spark passing into the end of the fusehose. The explosion could be expected at any time from now.