Two more shots, both wasted—the shells exploded at the top of their trajectory, high, high up. Apparently those newfangled fuses were not quite reliable. Fountains spouted momentarily from the river surface as fragments rained into it. But the pirates must by now be fully aware of what the mortar implied.

“Give me that telescope, Gerard.”

He trained the instrument on the seam in the face of the cliff. He could see every detail now, the rough stone parapet, the waterfall at one end, but he could see no sign of the garrison. They were at the back of the cave or crouching behind the parapet.

“Fire another shot.”

Fifteen long seconds after the report. Then he saw fragments flying from under the overhang.

“Good shot!” he called, still watching. The shell must have fallen right into the cave. But as he uttered the words a dark figure appeared at the parapet, the arms swinging together. He saw the tiny black disc of the shell against the background of rock curving downwards and then a burst of smoke. Someone had seized the hot shell in his two hands and slung it over the parapet in the nick of time. A desperate deed.

“Pitch another shell there with a second’s less fuse and it will be all over,” he said, and then—“Wait.”

Surely those helpless people must surrender, and not stay to be massacred. What must he do to persuade them? He knew perfectly well.

“Send a white flag forward, My Lord?” asked Spendlove, voicing his thoughts.

“I was thinking about it,” said Hornblower.

It would be a dangerous mission. If the pirates were determined not to surrender they would not respect a flag of truce, and would fire on the bearer of it. There were a score of muskets and at least one rifle up there. Hornblower wanted neither to order someone forward nor to ask for a volunteer.

“I’ll do it, My Lord,” said Spendlove. “They know me.”

This was the price he had to pay, thought Hornblower, for his lofty position, for being an Admiral. He had to order his friends to their death. Yet on the other hand—

“Very well,” said Hornblower.

“Let’s have your shirt and your pike, my man,” said Spendlove.

A white shirt tied by the sleeves to a pikestaff made a fair white flag. As Spendlove went forward with it, through the cordon of red-coated marines, Hornblower was tempted to call him back. It was only unconditional surrender that could be offered, after all. He went as far as to open his mouth, but closed it again without saying the words he had in mind. Spendlove walked towards the river bank, stopping every few seconds to wave the flag. Through the telescope Hornblower could see nothing up in the cave. Then he saw a flash of metal, and a line of heads and shoulders over the parapet. A dozen muskets were taking aim at Spendlove. But Spendlove saw them too, and halted, with a wave of his flag. There were long seconds of tension, and then Spendlove turned his back upon the muskets and began to retrace his steps. As he did so there was a puff of smoke from the parapet; the rifleman had fired as soon as he had seen there was no chance of luring Spendlove within musket shot. Spendlove came walking back, trailing the pike and the shirt.

“He missed me, My Lord,” he said.

“Thank God,” said Hornblower. “Gunner, fire.”

The wind may have shifted a little, or the powder was not consistent. The shell burst in the air just below the level of the cave—so that the fuse must have been efficient—but some considerable distance from the cliff.

“Fire again,” said Hornblower.

There it was. A burst of smoke, a fountain of fragments, right in the cave. Horrible to think of what was happening there.

“Fire again.”

Another burst right in the cave.

“Fire again—No! Wait.”

Figures were appearing on the parapet—there had been some survivors, then, from those two bursts. Two figures—tiny dolls in the field of the telescope—seemed to hang in the air as they leaped. The telescope followed them down. One struck water in a fountain of spray. The other fell on the rocky shore, broken and horrible. He raised the telescope again. There was the ladder being thrown over from the parapet. There was a figure—and another figure—climbing down. Hornblower shut the telescope with a snap.

“Captain Seymour! Send a party forward to secure the prisoners.”

He did not have to see the horrors of the cave, the mutilated dead and the screaming wounded. He could see them in his mind’s eye when Seymour made his report of what he found when he ascended the ladder. It was done, finished. The wounded could be bandaged and carried down to the beach on litters to the death that awaited them, the unwounded driven along with them with their wrists bound. A courier could be sent off to the Governor to say that the pirate horde had been wiped out, so that the patrols could be called in and the militia sent home. He did not have to set eyes on the wretched people he had conquered. The excitement of the hunt was over. He had set himself a task to do, a problem to solve, just as he might work out a longitude from lunar observations, and he had achieved success. But the measure of that success could be expressed in hangings, in dead and in wounded, in that shattered, broken-backed figure lying on the rocks, and he had undertaken the task merely on a point of pride, to re-establish his self-esteem after the indignity of being kidnapped. It was no comfort to argue with himself—as he did—that what he had done would otherwise have been done by others, at great cost in disease and in economic disturbance. That only made him sneer at himself as a hair-splitting casuist. There were few occasions when Hornblower could do what was right in Hornblower’s eyes.

Yet there was some cynical pleasure to be derived from his lofty rank, to be able to leave all this after curt orders to Sefton and Seymour to bring the landing party back to the shore with the least delay and the shortest exposure to the night air, to go back on board and eat a comfortable dinner—even if it meant Fell’s rather boring company—and to sleep in a comfortable bed. And it was pleasant to find that Fell had already dined, so that he could eat his dinner merely in the company of his flag-lieutenant and his secretary. Nevertheless, there was one more unexpected crumpled petal in his roseleaf bed, and he discovered it, contrariwise, as a result of what he intended to be a kindly action.

“I shall have to add a further line to my remarks about you to Their Lordships, Spendlove,” he said. “It was a brave deed to go forward with that flag of truce.”

“Thank you, My Lord,” said Spendlove, who bent his gaze down on the tablecloth and drummed with his fingers before continuing, eyes still lowered in unusual nervousness. “Then perhaps Your Lordship will not be averse to putting in a word for me in another quarter?”

“Of course I will,” replied Hornblower in all innocence. “Where?”

“Thank you, My Lord. It was with this in mind that I did the little you have been kind enough to approve of. I would be deeply grateful if Your Lordship would go to the trouble of speaking well of me to Miss Lucy.”

Lucy! Hornblower had forgotten all about the girl. He quite failed to conceal his surprise, which was clearly apparent to Spendlove when he lifted his glance from the tablecloth.

“We jested about a wealthy marriage, My Lord,” said Spendlove. The elaborate care with which he was choosing his words proved how deep were his emotions. “I would not care if Miss Lucy had not a penny. My Lord, my affections are deeply engaged.”

“She is a very charming young woman,” said Hornblower, temporising desperately.

“My Lord, I love her,” burst out Spendlove, casting aside all restraint. “I love her dearly. At the ball I tried to interest her in myself, and I failed.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” said Hornblower.

“I could not but be aware of her admiration for you, My Lord. She spoke of Your Lordship repeatedly. I realised even then that one word from you would carry more weight than a long speech from me. If you would say that word, My Lord—”