The Commodore

He awoke to Clausewitz’s arm on his shoulder, and pieced himself back into the Hornblower who was aiding in the defence of Riga like a man fitting together a jigsaw puzzle.

“An hour before dawn,” said Clausewitz, still only a vague shadow in the brooding darkness.

Hornblower sat up: he was stiff, and had grown cold under the inadequate cover of his cloak. The landing force, if all had gone well, must be creeping up the bay now. It was too dark to see anything as he peered over the parapet of the gallery. Another shadow loomed up at his elbow and thrust something scalding hot into his hand—a glass of tea. He sipped it gratefully, feeling its warmth penetrate into his i

“Possibly patrols with a fit of nerves,” said Clausewitz, but the firing showed no signs of dying down. Instead, it grew in violence. There was a great spearhead of flame down below, pointing towards an irregular mass of flashes, where apparently a column was meeting a line. The flashes flared up and died away with the ragged volleys; soon ca

“Thank God for that!” said Hornblower, but he kept the words to himself.

The landing party had reached their station a little ahead of their time, and somebody, English or Russian, had sensibly decided to launch the flank attack immediately upon seeing the firing ashore. Clausewitz turned and rapped out an order which sent an aide-de-camp hurrying down the stairs. At almost the same moment a messenger came ru

“The enemy is in strong force, apparently intending to make a surprise attack. He might save two days if it were successful.”

A fresh tumult broke out down below; the landing party had encountered their first opposition, and the invisible landscape towards the shore was spangled with a new pattern of flashes. There was a desperate battle going on, where attackers and counter-attackers and the flank attack drove together; there was a faint light begi

“Shevstoff has stormed the battery guarding the shore,” said Clausewitz, exultantly.

Shevstoff was the general commanding the landing party. If he had stormed the battery the boats’ crews would be able to effect an unmolested retreat, while the arrival of a messenger from him here in Daugavgriva meant that he was in full touch with the defenders, and presumably his force had executed its orders and fallen on the flank of the French position. The firing seemed to be dying away, even though the smoke still blended with the low ground-mist of autumn and kept everything concealed.

“Kladoff is in the approaches,” went on Clausewitz. “His workmen are breaking down the parapets.”

The firing increased again, although now there was so much light that no flashes were visible. A frightful death-struggle was apparently going on, so desperate that the arrival of the Governor in the gallery attracted little attention from the group straining to see through the fog and smoke.

Essen gathered the details with a few quick questions to Clausewitz, and then he turned to Hornblower.

“I would have been here an hour ago,” he said, “but I was detained by the arrival of despatches.”

Essen’s massive countenance was gloomy; he took Hornblower’s arm and drew him out of earshot of the junior staff officers.

“Bad news?” asked Hornblower.

“Yes. The worst. We have been beaten in a great battle outside Moscow, and Bonaparte is in the city.”

That was the worst of news indeed. Hornblower could foresee a future time when he supposed that battle would rank along with Marengo and Austerlitz and Jena, as a smashing victory which laid a nation low, and the entry into Moscow would rank with the occupation of Vie

“We shall fight it out here all the same,” he said.

“Yes,” said Essen, “my men will fight to the last. So will my officers.”

There was almost a grin on his face as he jerked his head towards Clausewitz; that was a man who had his neck in a noose if ever a man had, fighting against his own country. Hornblower remembered Wellesley’s hint to him that his squadron might well serve as a refuge for the Russian Court. His ships would be jammed with refugees fleeing from this, the last continental country in arms against Bonaparte.

The mist and smoke were thi

“Ha!” said Essen, pointing.

Portions of the approaches were in plain view, and here and there were jagged gaps in the parapets.

“Kladoff has carried out his orders, sir,” said Clausewitz.

Until those gaps were repaired, one by one, starting with the gap nearest the first parallel, no one would be able to reach the head of the sap, and certainly no strong force could use the approaches. Another two days had been won, decided Hornblower, gauging the amount of destruction with his eye—experience had brought him facility already in appreciating siege operations. There was still heavy firing going on as the rear-guard covered the retreat of the sallying forces to the ramparts. Essen balanced his huge telescope on the shoulder of his aide-de-camp and pointed it down at the scene. Hornblower was looking through his own glass; the big barges which had brought the landing party were lying deserted on the beach, and the boats which were conveying back his crews which had ma

“See there, Commodore!” said Essen.

Hornblower’s glass revealed to him in a flash the thing to which Essen had wanted to call his attention. Isolated infantrymen from the besiegers were ranging over no-man’s-land on their way back to their own trenches and—Hornblower saw it done—they bayoneted the Russian wounded who lay heaped in their path. Perhaps it was only to be expected, in this long and bloody siege, that bitterness and ferocity should be engendered on this scale, especially among Bonaparte’s hordes who had wandered over Europe for years now, since boyhood, living on what they could gather from the countryside with the musket and bayonet as the only court of appeal. Essen was white with anger, and Hornblower tried to share his rage, but he found it difficult. That kind of atrocity was what he had come to expect. He was perfectly prepared to go on killing Bonaparte’s soldiers and sailors, but he would not flatter himself that he was executing justice by killing one man because some other man had murdered his wounded allies.