| Martin, the vice-admiral with the Toulon blockading squadron, would see to it that Leighton did not make a hash of this attack, powerful as might be the guns of Rosas. | Как ни мощны пушки Росаса, Мартин, вице-адмирал, возглавляющий блокаду Тулона, проследит, чтоб Лейтон не сел в лужу. |
| He looked along the ramparts at the massive twenty-four-pounders mounted there. | Хорнблауэр перенес взор на крепостной вал с громадами двадцатичетырехфунтовок. |
| The bastions at the angles carried forty-two-pounders - colossal pieces. | На угловых бастионах стоят и вовсе исполины -сорокадвухфунтовые пушки. |
| He leaned over the parapet and looked down; it was a sheer drop from there of twenty-five feet to the bottom of the ditch, and along the bottom of the ditch itself ran a line of stout palisades, which no besieging army could damage until he had sapped right up to the lip of the ditch. | Он перегнулся через парапет и поглядел вниз; уступ высотой в двадцать пять футов, затем ров, а по дну рва вьется крепкий частокол, который не прорвать иначе, как подойдя вплотную. |
| No hurried, extemporized attack could carry the citadel of Rosas. | С налету Росас не взять. |
| A score of sentries paced the ramparts, even as did he; in the opposite face he could see the massive gates with the portcullis down, where a hundred men of the grand guard were always ready to beat back any surprise attack which might elude the vigilance of the twenty sentinels. | Десятка два часовых, подобно самому Хорнблауэру, расхаживали по стене, напротив высились массивные ворота с крытой галереей, на которой укрывались еще человек сто, готовые отразить атаку, если ее не заметят первые двадцать. |
| Down there, in the body of the place, a company of infantry was being put through its drill - the shrill words of command were clearly audible to him up here. | Во дворе под стеной маршировало пехотное подразделение - до Хорнблауэра отчетливо долетали итальянские команды. |
| It was Italian which was being spoken; Bonaparte had attempted his conquest of Catalonia mainly with the foreign auxiliaries of his empire, Italians, Neapolitans, Germans, Swiss, Poles. | Бонапарт завоевывает Каталонию силами своих сателлитов - здесь воюют итальянцы, неаполитанцы, немцы, швейцарцы, поляки. |
| The uniforms of the infantry down there were as ragged as the lines they were forming; the men were in tatters, and even the tatters were not homogeneous - the men wore white or blue or grey or brown according to the resources of the depots which had originally sent them out. |
