That tremendous pulsation of artillery which he could hear could mean only one thing. The fleet must have come gliding into the bay in the darkness, and now he could hear the rolling of its broadsides as it battered the anchored ships. There was a great naval battle in progress within half a mile of him, and he could see nothing of it. It was utterly maddening. He tried to light his candle, but his trembling fingers could do nothing with his flint and steel. He dashed the tinder-box to the floor, and, fumbling in the darkness, he dragged on his coat and trousers and shoes and then beat upon the door madly with his fists. The sentry outside was Italian, he knew, and he spoke no Italian — only fluent Spanish and bad French.
“Officier! Officier!” he shouted, and then he heard the sentry call for the sergeant of the guard, and the measured step of the sergeant as he came up. The clatter of the garrison’s falling in under arms had already died away.
“What do you want?” asked the sergeant’s voice — at least so Hornblower fancied, for he could not understand what was said.
“Officier! Officier!” roared Hornblower, beating still on the heavy door. The artillery was still rolling terrifically outside. Hornblower went on pounding on the door even until he heard the key in the lock. The door swung open and he blinked at the light of a torch which shone into his eyes. A young subaltern in a neat white uniform stood there between the sergeant and the sentry.
“Qu’est-ce-que monsieur désire?” he asked — he at least understood French, even if he spoke it badly. Hornblower fumbled to express himself in an unfamiliar tongue.
“I want to see!” he stammered. “I want to see the battle! Let me go on to the walls.”
The young officer shook his head reluctantly; like the other officers of the garrison, he felt a kindly feeling towards the English captain who — so rumour said — was so shortly to be conducted to Paris and shot.
“It is forbidden,” he said.
“I will not escape,” said Hornblower; desperate excitement was loosening his tongue now. “Word of honour — I swear it! Come with me, but let me see! I want to see!”
The officer hesitated.
“I cannot leave my post here,” he said.
“Then let me go alone. I swear I will stay on the walls. I will not try to escape.”
“Word of honour?” asked the subaltern.
“Word of honour. Thank you, sir.”
The subaltern stood aside, and Hornblower dashed out of his room, down the short corridor to the courtyard, and up the ramp which led to the seaward bastion. As he reached it, the forty-two-pounder mounted there went off with a deafening roar, and the long tongue of orange flame nearly blinded him. In the darkness the bitter powder smoke engulfed him. Nobody in the groups bending over the guns noticed him, and he ran down the steep staircase to the curtain wall, where, away from the guns, he could see without being blinded.
Rosas Bay was all a-sparkle with gun flashes. Then, five times in regular succession, came the brilliant red glow of a broadside, and each glow lit up a stately ship gliding in rigid line ahead past the anchored French ships. The Pluto was there; Hornblower saw her three decks, her ensign at the peak, her admiral’s flag at the mizzen, her topsails set and her other canvas furled. Leighton would be there, walking his quarterdeck — thinking of Barbara, perhaps. And that next astern was the Caligula. Bolton would be stumping about her deck revelling in the crash of her broadsides. She was firing rapidly and well — Bolton was a good captain, although a badly educated man. The words ‘Oderint dum metuant’ — the Caesar Caligula’s maxim — picked out in letters of gold across the Caligula’s stern had meant nothing to Bolton until Hornblower translated and explained them to him. At this very moment, perhaps, those letters were being defaced and battered by the French shot.
But the French squadron was firing back badly and irregularly. There was no sudden glow of broadsides where they lay anchored, but only an irregular and intermittent sparkle as the guns were loosed off anyhow. In a night action like this, and after a sudden surprise, Hornblower would not have trusted even an English seaman with independent fire. He doubted if as many as one-tenth of the French guns were being properly served and pointed. As for the heavy guns pealing away beside him from the fortress, he was quite certain they were doing no good to the French cause and possibly some harm. Firing at half a mile in the darkness, even from a steady platform and with large calibre guns, they were as likely to hit friend as foe. It had well repaid Admiral Martin to send in Leighton and his ships in the moonless hours of the night, risking all the navigational perils of the bay.