“Do that carefully if you ever want to see Pompey again,” said Hornblower.
He was shaking with excitement and mad with the fury of fighting, and it was the automatic, drilled part of him which was giving these level‑headed orders. His higher faculties were quite negatived by his lust for blood. He was seeing things through a pink mist — that was how he remembered it when he looked back upon it later. There was a sudden crash of glass. Someone had thrust a musket barrel through the big stern window of the galley’s after cabin. Luckily having thrust it through he had to recover himself to take aim. An irregular volley of pistols almost coincided with the report of the musket. Where the Spaniard’s bullet went no one knew; but the Spaniard fell back from the window.
“By God! That’s our way!” screamed Hornblower, and then, steadying himself, “Reload.”
As the bullets were being spat into the barrels he stood up. His unused pistols were still in his belt; his cutlass was at his side.
“Come aft, here,” he said to stroke oar; the jolly boat would stand no more weight in the bows than she had already. “And you, too.”
Hornblower poised himself on the thwarts, eyeing the grapnel line and the cabin window.
“Bring ’em after me one at a time, Jackson,” he said.
Then he braced himself and flung himself at the grapnel line. His feet grazed the water as the line sagged, but using all his clumsy strength his arms carried him upwards. Here was the shattered window at his side; he swung up his feet, kicked out a big remaining piece of the pane, and then shot his feet through and then the rest of himself. He came down on the deck of the cabin with a thud; it was dark in here compared with the blinding sun outside. As he got to his feet, he trod on something which gave out a cry of pain — the wounded Spaniard, evidently — and the hand with which he drew his cutlass was sticky with blood. Spanish blood. Rising, he hit his head a thunderous crash on the deck‑beams above, for the little cabin was very low, hardly more than five feet, and so severe was the blow that his senses almost left him. But before him was the cabin door and he reeled out through it, cutlass in hand. Over his head he heard a stamping of feet, and shots were fired behind him and above him — a further exchange, he presumed, between the jolly boat and the galley’s stern rail. The cabin door opened into a low half‑deck, and Hornblower reeled along it out into the sunshine again. He was on the tiny strip of maindeck at the break of the poop. Before him stretched the narrow gangway between the two sets of rowers; he could look down at these latter — two seas of bearded faces, mops of hair and lean sunburned bodies, swinging rhythmically back and forward to the beat of the oars.
That was all the impression he could form of them at the moment. At the far end of the gangway at the break of the forecastle stood the overseer with his whip; he was shouting words in rhythmic succession to the slaves — Spanish numbers, perhaps, to give them the time. There were three or four men on the forecastle; below them the half‑doors through the forecastle bulkhead were hooked open, through which Hornblower could see the two big guns illuminated by the light through the port holes out of which they were run almost at the water level. The guns’ crews were standing by the guns, but numerically they were far fewer than two twenty‑four pounders would demand. Hornblower remembered Wales’ estimate of no more than thirty for a galley’s crew. The men of one gun at least had been called aft to defend the poop against the jolly boat’s attack.
A step behind him made him leap with anxiety and he swung round with his cutlass ready to meet Jackson stumbling out of the half deck, cutlass in hand.
“Nigh on cracked my nut,” said Jackson.