"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.
Hornblower choked with emotion and excitement as his imagination called up the details of what would be going on in the English ships — the leadsman chanting the soundings with disciplined steadiness, the heave of the ship to the deafening crash of the broadside, the battle lanterns glowing dimly in the smoke of the lower decks, the squeal and rattle of the gun trucks as the guns were run up again, the steady orders of the officers in charge of sections of guns, the quiet voice of the captain addressing the helmsmen.
He leaned far over the parapet in the darkness, peering down into the bay.
A whiff of wood smoke came to his nostrils, sharply distinct from the acrid powder smoke which was drifting by from the guns.
They had lit the furnaces for heating shot, but the commandant would be a fool if he allowed his guns to fire red-hot shot in these conditions.
French ships were as inflammable as English ones, and just as likely to be hit in a close battle like this.
Then his grip tightened on the stonework of the parapet, and he stared and stared again with aching eyes towards what had attracted his notice. It was the tiniest, most subdued little red glow in the distance.
The English had brought in fire ships in the wake of their fighting squadron.
A squadron at anchor like this was the best possible target for a fire ship, and Martin had planned his attack well in sending in his ships of the line first to clear away guard boats and beat down the French fire and occupy the attention of the crews.
The red glow suddenly increased, grew brighter and brighter still, revealing the hull and masts and rigging of a small brig; still brighter it grew as the few daring spirits who remained on board flung open hatches and gunports to increase the draught.
The tongues of flame which soared up were visible even to Hornblower on the ramparts, and they revealed to him, too, the form of the Turenne alongside her — the one French ship which had emerged from the previous battle with all her masts.
Whoever the young officer in command of the fire ship might be, he was a man with a cool head and determined will, thus to select the most profitable target of all.
Hornblower saw points of fire begin to ascend the rigging of the Turenne until she was outlined in red like some set-piece in a firework display.
Sudden jets of flame showed where powder charges on her deck were taking fire; and then the whole set-piece suddenly swung round and began to drift before the gentle wind as the burnt cables gave way.
A mast fell in an upward torrent of sparks, strangely reflected in the black water all round.
At once the sparkle of gunfire in the other French ships began to die away as the crews were called from their guns to deal with the drifting menace, and a slow movement of the shadowy forms lit by the flames revealed that their cables had been cut by officers terrified of death by fire.
Then suddenly Hornblower's attention was distracted to a point closer in to shore, where the abandoned wreck of the Sutherland lay beached.
There, too, a red glow could be seen, growing and spreading momentarily.
Some daring party from the British squadron had boarded her and set her on fire, too, determined not to leave even so poor a trophy in the hands of the French.
Farther out in the bay three red dots of light were soaring upwards slowly, and Hornblower gulped in sudden nervousness lest an English ship should have caught fire as well, but he realized next moment that it was only a signal — three vertical red lanterns — which was apparently the prearranged recall, for with their appearance the firing abruptly ceased.
The blazing wrecks lit up now the whole of this corner of the bay with a lurid red in whose light could be distinctly seen the other French ships, drifting without masts or anchors towards the shore.
Next came a blinding flash and a stunning explosion as the magazine of the Turenne took fire.
For several seconds after the twenty tons of gunpowder had exploded Hornblower's eyes could not see nor his mind think; the blast of it had shaken him, like a child in the hands of an angry nurse, even where he stood.
He became aware that daylight was creeping into the bay, revealing the ramparts of Rosas in hard outlines, and dulling the flames from the wreck of the Sutherland.