At dawn she was there, and the earliest hint of daylight found her nosing her way cautiously towards the beach, from which even here, with the wind in the wrong direction, could be heard the thunderous beat of the surf.

“That’s the dagos’ victuallingship, I’ll lay a guinea,” said Bush with his glass to his eye.

It was a small brig, hull down and hove to, over on the horizon.

“Yes,” said Hornblower—the speech deserved no more ample rejoinder. He was much too occupied looking through his own glass at the craggy beach of rock on which the Spaniards had seen fit to place twentythousand men. It was just a grey fragment, one single ridge projecting like a tooth from the blue Mediterranean, its steep slopes unrelieved by any trace of green. Around its foot the rollers broke into white fountains of spray—Hornblower could see the waves reaching 20 or 30 feet up the cliffs as they beat upon them—save in the centre where a long flurry of foam revealed the landing beach and all its dangers. It was a wicked enough place.

“Can’t blame the dagos for not landing stores here in an easterly wind,” said Bush, and this time he received no answer at all.

“Hoist out the longboat,” Hornblower rasped; when approaching a difficult task he would take out no insurance by minor politeness for his subordinates’ sympathy in the event of failure.

The bos’un’s mates twittered on their pipes while Harrison, the bos’un, repeated the order in his resounding bellow. The tackles were manned and the longboat was swung up from her chocks and hoisted overside. The longboat’s crew stood fending her off as the Sutherland surged in the choppy sea.

“I’m going in her, Mr Bush,” said Hornblower briefly.

He took hold of one of the falls and lowered himself down; his unathletic figure dangled in ungainly fashion while the longboat’s crew fell over each other in their haste to protect his fall. It was a source of continual inward disturbance to Hornblower that the poorest topman in his whole ship was better on a rope than he was himself. He managed just well enough, and with only a small loss of dignity, with a 3foot drop as a result of his not quite correctly estimating the relative movements of the ship and the boat. Somebody picked up his hat and gave it to him and he clapped it on his head again.