| Болтон тяжело ступает по палубе, упиваясь грохотом бортовых залпов. |
| She was firing rapidly and well - Bolton was a good captain, although a badly educated man. | "Калигула" стрелял быстро и четко: Болтон -хороший капитан, хотя и плохо образованный человек. |
| The words | Слова |
| '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. | "Oderunt dum metuant" - "Пусть ненавидят, лишь бы боялись" - изречение императора Калигулы, выложенные золотыми буквами на корме его корабля, не значили для Болтона ничего, пока Хорнблауэр не перевел и не разъяснил смысл. |
| At this very moment, perhaps, those letters were being defaced and battered by the French shot. | Быть может, сейчас французские ядра бьют по этим самым буквам. |
| But the French squadron was firing back badly and irregularly. | Однако французские корабли стреляли плохо и нерегулярно. |
| 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. | Борта их не озарялись единым залпом, только случайными неравномерными вспышками. |
| In a night action like this, and after a sudden surprise, Hornblower would not have trusted even an English seaman with independent fire. | Пушки стреляют по одной - ночью, при внезапном нападении неприятеля, Хорнблауэр не доверил бы стрелять независимо даже британским канонирам. |
| He doubted if as many as one-tenth of the French guns were being properly served and pointed. | Интересно, какая часть расчетов целит как следует? Наверно, даже не каждый десятый. |
| 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. | Что до больших пушек на бастионах, они не только не помогали товарищам в заливе, но, скорее, вредили. |
| 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. | Стреляя в темноте на полмили, даже с твердой опоры и даже из большой пушки, рискуешь попасть как в чужих, так и в своих. |
| 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. | Адмирал Мартин хорошо сделал, что, презрев навигационные опасности, послал Лейтона именно в такую безлунную ночь. |
| 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. |