Tripping over a legless corpse, he was thrown against an overturned gun. Beyond it was a great rent in the bulwark, where the gunport had been. Heaving himself up, he lurched towards it. At that moment a thought struck him. Bonaparte's despatch!
During the five and a half months since he had left England he had been unable to send home a single report or piece of intelligence of any value. Perhaps even worse in Mr. Pitt's view, instead of carrying out his instructions to do anything he could to hamper Bonaparte's success and rise to power he had, in small ways, rendered him many useful services. Here was a chance to make good his apparent negligence and to serve his country to some purpose. It was very probable that in the despatch Bonaparte had not only described his occupation of Cairo but had also informed the Directors of his future intentions.
Swinging round, Roger stepped over the legless body, jumped another, slipped in a pool of blood, fell, picked himself up and made for the entrance under the poop that led to the dead Admiral's cabin. The passage was in darkness, except for the flickering light of the still-thundering guns. He groped his way along it and into the great stern cabin where, eight hours before, he had been laughing and talking with Brueys and his officers round the big dining table. It was bright as day inside the cabin, for the fire had already caught the woodwork of the stern galley outside the semi-circle of tall, sloping windows.
Adjacent to the big cabin was a smaller one that Brueys used as an office and in which he had received Roger. As Roger thrust open the door he heard a sudden movement, then saw that a terrified man was crouching in one of the far corners.
He was dressed as a civilian, so Roger guessed him to be either Brueys's secretary or a super-cargo. The one thing he could not afford was for a Frenchman to be able to identify him afterwards and state that he had made off with the despatch, and there was just a possibility that this man might survive the battle. His own life might be forfeit if he let the man live; so he pulled a pistol from his sash, intending to kill him.
' What . . . what are you about to do, monsieur? ' gasped the trembling wretch.
The idea of pistolling a defenceless man in cold blood went horribly against the grain with Roger and a way of making his theft appear a commendable action suddenly occurred to him. With a frown he said, ' For lurking here like a coward I ought to shoot you. But I fear L'Orient must soon surrender, so I have come here to prevent a despatch that I delivered to Admiral Brueys this afternoon from falling into the hands of the English.' Then, turning his pistol on the lock of a stout cabinet in which he had seen Brueys put the despatch, he fired it.
The lock was shattered and after a sharp pull the doors of the cabinet came open. Inside there were rows of pigeon-holes filled with papers. Roger soon recognized the despatch from its size and unbroken seals. Quickly he undid his tunic, thrust the despatch inside and, without another glance at the poor devil he had spared, left the cabin.
Out on the open deck the scene was even more ghastly than when he had left it, for during the past five minutes the fire on the poop had trebled in size and now had the mizzenmast, with its yards and gear, burning like a huge candle. The fierce light of the flames lit a much greater area of the ship and the writhing figures half obscured by smoke might well have been in Dante's Inferno. But Roger's only thought now was to save himself.
Noticing a rope that led out through a gap in the bulwarks, he grabbed it with both hands, gave a quick look to make certain there was no wreckage in the sea below the gap, then sat down, turned on his stomach and thrust himself outward. The rope, having been cut, was not secured to anything on board. In consequence instead of his being able, as he had hoped, to clamber down it, he went hurtling down, hit the bulge of the ship's side with a most frightful thump, bounced off it and landed with a great splash in the sea.
For what seemed an age he went down, down, down, until he thought that his lungs would burst. But at last he began to rise and surfaced, gasping and gulping. As soon as he had shaken the water from his eyes, he got his bearings. There, within twenty feet of him, towered the gargantuan L'Orient, many of her lower guns still belching fire and smoke, but her stern now ablaze. Turning, he struck out for the nearest British ship.
She was no great distance away, and he was a strong swimmer. In spite of being weighed down by his sodden clothes, he reached her after ten minutes of steady effort. But it was another matter to get aboard her. Had he had the voice of ten men and shouted himself hoarse he would still have been unable to make himself heard above the deafening thunder of the guns. Even if he had, her crew, giving every thought to their duties at their action stations, would not have left them to throw him a rope.
After swimming half round the ship he found himself facing her anchor chain. Gratefully, he grasped and clung to it, praying that, until some chance arose of his getting into the ship, he would not be hit by a stray bullet or flying piece of debris. Fortunately, as it was the height of summer, the sea was warm; so he stood no risk of having to let go the chain from numbed limbs and hands.
For the next half-hour, from sea-level, he watched the battle. The British ships continued to fire relentlessly on their foe. Fewer and fewer guns from L'Orient replied, and the whole of her stern became a raging furnace. Soon after ten it was evident that orders had been given to abandon ship, as those of her crew who still survived began to jump into the water. At ten-fifteen the flames reached her main magazine and she blew up. The explosion was so terrific that it was heard as far away as Alexandria. Masses of burning debris were shot hundreds of feet into the air, to descend on the decks of the British ships that had brought doom upon her, or to hiss fiercely in the water.
The blast and a great tidal wave wrenched Roger from his hold on the cable. He was again submerged and had to fight his way to the surface. When he came up it was pitch dark and utterly silent. The magnitude of the explosion had so shaken the combatants on both sides that they spontaneously ceased to serve the guns. It was not until nearly ten minutes later that a French ship resumed the battle by again opening fire.
Had L'Orient not blown up she would have proved the most valuable prize ever taken by the British, for in her hold she carried £600,000 in ingots of gold looted from the new Swiss and Roman Republics and, in addition, the huge treasure in gold and gems that Bonaparte had stolen from the Knights of Malta. These were to have been his treasure chest for the conquest of the East; so it was a shattering blow to him that the whole of this great wealth should have gone down with L'Orient to the bottom of Aboukir Bay.
But Roger was thinking only of his own survival. Swimming round and round in the darkness he again, at length, hit the anchor cable and clung on to it. Soon after, fires ignited by the flaming debris falling on to British ships, and a renewal of the firing, intermittently lit the scene.
Some three hundred of the survivors in L'Orient had jumped into the sea before she blew up; upon which Audacious, to the cable of which ship Roger later earned he had been clinging, put out several boats to pick up as many as they could. Seeing this, Roger swam to the nearest boat and, to his immense relief, was hauled aboard. A quarter of an hour later he and a number of others who had been rescued were hoisted in through the lower ports of Audacious, herded to one end of her tier deck and, under guard, kept there for the remainder of the night.
The battle continued sporadically until 3 a.m., and was resumed for a while after dawn. Vice-Admiral Villeneuve in his flagship, Guillaume Tell, one other ship-of-the-line, Genereux, and a frigate, made sail and got away. It was later said that they would not have escaped had Nelson not been temporarily incapacitated by his wound, and so unable to direct the later stages of the battle. As it was, despite Zealous's crippled state, gallant Sam Hood gave chase, but no other British ship was in a condition to support him; so he was recalled.