Back on the quarterdeck, Pellew looked through his glass at the hazy horizon; he could make out from here by now what had first been reported from the masthead.
'They're heading straight for us,' he said.
The two galleys were on their way from Cadiz, presumably a fast horseman from the lookout point at Tarifa had brought them the news of this golden opportunity, of the flat calm and the scattered and helpless convoy. This was the moment for galleys to justify their continued existence. They could capture and at least burn, although they could not hope to carry off, the unfortunate merchant ships, while the Indefatigable lay helpless hardly out of cannon's range. Pellew looked round at the two merchant ships and the three brigs; one of them was within half a mile of him and might be covered by his gunfire, but the others — a mile and a half, two miles away — had no such protection.
'Pistols and cutlasses, my lads!' he said to the men pouring up from overside. 'Clap onto that stay tackle now. Smartly with that carronade, Mr Cutler!'
The Indefatigable had been in too many expeditions where minutes counted to waste any time over these preparations. The boats' crews seized their arms, the six-pounder carronades were lowered into the bows of the cutter and longboat, and soon the boats, crowded with armed men, and provisioned against sudden emergency, were pulling away to meet the galleys.
'What the devil d'you think you're doing, Mr Hornblower?'
Pellew had just caught sight of Hornblower in the act of swinging out of the jolly boat which was his special charge. He wondered what his midshipman thought he could achieve against a war-galley with a twelve-foot boat and a crew of six.
'We can pull to one of the convoy and reinforce the crew, sir,' said Hornblower.
'Oh, very well then, carry on. I'll trust to your good sense, even though that's a broken reed.'
'Good on you, sir!' said Jackson ecstatically, as the jolly boat shoved off from the frigate. 'Good on you! No one else wouldn't never have thought of that.'