Accordingly, Hastings was made captain of the fort garrison, which consisted of twenty boatmen from Kranidi, who knew about as much of artillery as of astronomy, and he surveyed his men with some amusement, and spoke pithily:
"We are to make Nauplia as full of holes as a net and as hot as hell," he said. "Train the guns, if you know what that means. You do not? I will teach you."
There were half a dozen 32-pounders and three 68-pounders of seven-inch bore. The fort was an old Venetian work, tottery and unstable as Reuben, commanded by the guns of Nauplia; and Hastings, surveying it, turned to Hane.
"From the town I could engage to knock this place into biscuits in ten minutes by a stop-watch," he said.
Hane laughed.
"We shall knock it to bits ourselves in not much longer with the concussion of our own guns if the Turks don't hit us," he said. "I would as soon sail across the Bay of Biscay in a paper boat."
Jourdain's combustible balls were made to be fired from the smaller guns, and the two spent a sulphurous morning. They made good shooting with them, and it is true that they discharged immense volumes of smoke when they struck, but there seemed no truth in the proverb that where there is smoke there is also fire. Jourdain had manufactured some twenty of them, and in an hour they had used them all up. The breeze was blowing from the town, and volumes of vile-smelling vapor were wafted on it. Hane was a man of few and pointed words.
"So here is the last of the Froggy's stink-pots," was all his comment when the last of the shells was fired.
But the Greeks were in raptures of delight. It seemed impossible that so magnificent a firework should be ineffective, and they strongly recommended a repetition of the display; but Hastings meant business, and, after some parley, was allowed to make another attempt, not with the "stink-pots," but with ordinary shot from the 68-pounders; for the 32-pounders were, so he believed, of too light a calibre to be effective at the distance.
Next day the heavier cannonade went on. The Turks returned the fire with vigor, but without much success, and, as Hastings had anticipated, the chief risk was from the concussion of their own artillery, which dangerously shook the faulty and ill-built walls. After the first day it was found impossible to fire the bigger guns, and the 32-pounders, with their light shells, were soon seen to be useless; Hastings, however, kept up the cannonade for two days more, partly to give practice to the untrained gunners, partly because he was of a nature that groans to be doing nothing.