The Adventures of Roderick Random

The Floating Battery

The admiral ordered one of the captured Spanish men-of-war equipped with sixteen guns and manned by detachments from the fleet to bombard the town. The vessel was towed into the inner harbour at night and opened fire at dawn from within half a mile of the walls. After six hours under fire from thirty cannon, the crew was forced to set the ship ablaze and escape by boat. This action provoked widespread speculation, with critics suggesting the admiral either lacked strategic sense, was testing enemy strength, or was pursuing personal vendettas at the public’s expense. Defenders claimed insufficient water depth for larger ships, though pilots contradicted this assertion.

Economy of the Expedition

The expedition’s management extended to grim practices: commanders ordered dead bodies thrown overboard without burial or wrappings rather than face burial duties, leading to human remains floating in the harbour until consumed by sharks and birds. The onset of the wet season brought continuous rainfall from sunrise to sunset, followed by ceaseless thunder and lightning that provided enough illumination to read small print.

第三十四章

The epidemic of bilious fever that afflicted the crew proved devastating, claiming three-fourths of those it infected and turning their skin black with putrefaction; the narrator, feeling its symptoms approach, petitioned Captain Oakum to be moved from the pestilential cockpit to the middle deck for fresh air, only to be refused, yet he persisted in joining the soldiers’ hammocks until the malicious Crampley reported his disobedience and had him cast back into his original berth. A sympathetic sergeant, whose broken nose the narrator had once set, then offered the use of his own well-aired berth, and during his illness the narrator maintained his spirits by spurning all medicine while appearing to comply, even enduring the chaplain’s importunate attempts to extract an auricular confession before the fever reached its crisis; when he perceived a favourable moisture on his thigh, he induced a profuse sweat that restored him, though not before he had the satisfaction of duping the mourning Morgan with a counterfeit death and snapping at his fingers.