Scareship_Issue8

anchored on the Rock’s upper slopes. 15 I watched our men climb
down the hulls and begin to fire. Although I could see the tiny
puffs of smoke from their guns, the distance was so great that I
could not hear them.
A glance across the water told me that the ships of our
naval fleet were now loading troops in longboats, but they were not
firing their cannon for fear of hitting our men on the Rock.
“The dance is about to begin!” cried my captain excitedly,
likewise absorbed in the double spectacle.
Those were his last words.
As I turned to my left, I saw a man standing beside a
cannon and holding a fuse.
Closing my eyes, I heard an appalling crash, then shrieks
and groans. I opened my eyes, surprised to find myself alive. I was
surrounded by dead and dying. My captain lay at my feet, his head
shattered by a cannon ball. His blood saturated my uniform. Of my
company only six men and I remained standing.
There was a moment of stupefaction. The colonel, raising
his hat on the point of his sword, was the first to scale the
earthworks, shouting “Vive le Roi!” 16 We followed him instantly.
What happened next I remember only dimly. We fought
our way through the scrub that covered the slopes, amid smoke so
dense that we could not see each other. I must have struck, for my
sabre was bloody. At last I heard shouts of “Victory!” As the wind
blew the smoke out to sea, I saw that the ground around me was
littered with corpses. The sound of intermittent firing reached us
from the settlements far below, 17 while clusters of our men stood
15
Mérimée was either ignorant of the actual workings of a hot air balloon, or,
more likely, is describing the events as they would have been interpreted by an
individual of the late eighteenth century.
16
Presumably Louis XVI. In the published tale, the cry becomes “Vive
l’Empereur!”
17
Gibraltar’s houses and garrison stretched along the base of the Rock.
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