'There is a certain thickening,' said the duchess, 'but it does not matter what the Spaniards suspect as long as they do not suspect the truth.'
Momentary cessation of the need for action brought some embarrassment to Hornblower. To discuss with a woman her shift and stays — or the absence of them — was a strange thing to do.
A watery sun, still nearly level, was breaking through the mist and shining in his eyes. The mainsail cast a watery shadow on the deck. With every second the sun was growing brighter.
'Here it comes,' said Hunter.
The horizon ahead expanded rapidly, from a few yards to a hundred, from a hundred yards to half a mile. The sea was covered with ships. No less than six were in plain sight, four ships of the line and two big frigates, with the red-and-gold of Spain at their mastheads, and, what marked them even more obviously as Spaniards, huge wooden crosses hanging at their peaks.
'Wear ship again, Mr Hunter,' said Hornblower. 'Back into the fog.'
That was the one chance of safety. Those ships running down towards them were bound to ask questions, and they could not hope to avoid them all. Le Rêve spun around on her heel, but the fog-bank from which she had emerged was already attenuated, sucked up by the thirsty sun. They could see a drifting stretch of it ahead, but it was lazily rolling away from them at the same time as it was dwindling. The heavy sound of a cannon shot reached their ears, and close on their starboard quarter a ball threw up a fountain of water before plunging into the side of a wave just ahead. Hornblower looked round just in time to see the last of the puff of smoke from the bows of the frigate astern pursuing them.
'Starboard two points,' he said to the helmsman, trying to gauge at one and the same moment the frigate's course, the direction of the wind, the bearing of the other ships, and that of the thin last nucleus of that wisp of fog.
'Starboard two points,' said the helmsman.
'Fore and main sheets!' said Hunter.