The Commodore. C. S. Forester

“Anything to keep you happy,” he said.

Hornblower’s barge followed the Governor’s pulling-boat along the channel through the ice; Hornblower sat with the Governor in the stern of the Russian boat. There was a chill wind blowing, and the skies were grey.

“We shall have more snow,” said Essen, looking up at the clouds. “God help the French.”

In the absence of any sunshine there was a mortal chill in the air. Hornblower thought of the French marching over the desolate plains of Russia, and was sorry for them. And the snow came indeed, that afternoon, sweeping over river and village, making white innocuous mounds of the battered parapets and the shattered guns and the graves which were scattered through the village. It was already prematurely dark when the ever-patient Russian grenadiers lined the trenches and then sallied forth upon the enemy’s lines. They were not more than half-way across no-man’s-land before the guns began to fire upon them, stabbing the falling snow with their bright orange flashes.

“No sign of any retreat there,” was Clausewitz’s comment as he watched the fierce struggle from the gallery of the church beside Essen and Hornblower.

And if confirmation was needed the attacking party could supply it when it came drifting back in the darkness, decimated. The besiegers had met their sally with spirit; they had had patrols out in no-man’s-land, and the trenches were adequately guarded. In retaliation, the besiegers opened fire with their breaching batteries; the ground shook to the rumble of the discharges, and the black night was stabbed again by the flames of the guns. It was impossible to maintain good aim or elevation in the darkness; it was only a short time before the shots were flying wild, all over the village, so that the defenders as far back as the Dwina river had to keep low in their trenches. Shells were coming over, too, curving in high arcs from the mortar batteries which the besiegers had established in their second parallel. They fell and burst here, there, and everywhere, one every two or three minutes, in fountains of fragments and flame, save when chance guided them into deeper snow which extinguished the fuses.

“They have plenty of ammunition to waste,” grumbled Essen, shivering in his cloak.

“Perhaps they plan a counter-assault in the darkness,” said Clausewitz. “I have kept the trenches fully manned in case they try it.”

Immediately under Hornblower’s gaze there was a battery of four heavy pieces, firing regular salvoes at short intervals. He noted the four bursts of flame over and over again, so that when there was a longer interval he was surprised first by the absence of sound and then by its unexpected coming. The flashes endured their brief moment, to be succeeded again by night, but Hornblower found himself wondering what difference there had been between this salvo and the last, apart from the longer interval which had preceded it. One flash — the right-hand one — had not been as distinct as the other three, longer and yet intense. Some error in loading, perhaps. Then came the next salvo, and only three flashes; the right-hand gun had not fired. Maybe it had ‘unbushed’ itself — blown out its vent fitting, as guns sometimes did. Another long interval, and then another salvo — two sharp flashes, and one longer one. The next salvo only two guns fired, and Hornblower realized what had been going on. He plucked at Essen’s sleeve.

“They are destroying their guns over there,” he said. “They are firing some shots at us while at each salvo they fire a shot against the trunnions of one of the guns. There were four guns over there, Your Excellency. Now — see — there are only two.”

“Possibly,” admitted Essen, staring into the darkness.

“The firing is dying away,” agreed Clausewitz, “but perhaps they are only growing tired of wasting ammunition.”

There was only one flash from the battery next time, and there was something clearly odd about it.

“The last gun in the battery,” commented Essen. “Probably they burst it by overloading.”

He trained his telescope in the darkness.

“Look over there at their main camps,” he added. “Watch those fires. They seem to be burning brightly, but —”

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