“The first one, anyway.”
A great jet of smoke came from the burning wreck, reaching up and up from between her masts; the mainmast fell as they watched, and as it fell the report of the explosion came to their ears across the water; the fire had reached the schooner’s powder store, and when the smoke cleared a little they could see that she now lay on the shore in two halves, blown asunder in the middle. The foremast still stood for a moment on the forward half, but it fell as they watched it; bows and stern were blazing fiercely, while the boats with the crew rowed away across the shallows.
“A nasty sight,” said Hornblower.
But Bush could see nothing unpleasant about the sight of an enemy burning. He was exulting. “With half his men in the boats he didn’t have enough hands to spare to fight the fires when we hit him,” he said.
“Maybe a shot went through her deck and lodged in her hold,” said Hornblower.
The tone of his voice made Bush look quickly at him, for he was speaking thickly and harshly like a drunken man; but he could not be drunk, although the dirty hairy face and bloodshot eyes might well have suggested it. The man was fatigued. Then the dull expression of Hornblower’s face was replaced once more by a look of animation, and when he spoke his voice was natural again.
“Here comes the next,” he said. “She must be nearly in range.”
The second schooner, also with her boats in attendance, was coming down the channel, her sails set. Hornblower turned back to the guns.
“D’you see the next ship to aim at?” he called; and received a fierce roar of agreement, before he turned round to hail Saddler. “Bring up those shot, bearer men.”
The procession of bearers with the glowing shot came up the ramp again—frightfully hot shot; the heat as each one went by—twentyfour pounds of whitehot iron—was like the passage of a wave. The routine of rolling the fiendish things into the gun muzzles proceeded. There were some loud remarks from the men at the guns, and one of the shot fell with a thump on the stone floor of the battery, and lay there glowing. Two other guns were still not loaded.