by V. A. Stuart
“Leave him to me, sir,” Jackson answered with relish. “I’ll see he’s not given the chance.”
Thompson reported promptly. “Sir,” he began, “I’m sorry I …” whatever apology he had intended to make was drowned by the roar of a gun, heralded by a bright orange flash from the enemy steamer’s deck. It was a warning shot, aimed well over the Constantine’s bows and—like the signal—its meaning was plain. The Russian Captain was calling on the brig to heave-to and explain herself but, presumably because he still supposed her to be under the command of a compatriot, he waited even longer than he might have done for her to comply with his demand.
Phillip watched the roundshot ricochet across the flat, moonlit surface of the water. She was using a long range gun, his mind registered, loaded with shot, not shell … Lord, if only he had the Huntress now, with her sixty-eight-pounder Lancaster, he would make short work of her! For a moment, anxiety possessed him and he found himself regretting the absence of Gunner O’Leary, whose uncanny skill and accuracy with any gun might have turned the scales in his favour. But he had left O’Leary aboard the Huntress to tend the wounded and bolster the confidence of poor, incompetent young Brown and it was no use, at this late stage, wishing that he had not done so. He had Thompson, who was a good man by any standards, even if he lacked O’Leary’s artistry, and he would have to do the best he could with the Russian thirty-two-pounder.
“It’ll be a stern chase, won’t it, sir?” Thompson suggested. “Do you wish me to lay the after-gun?”
Phillip nodded. “Yes—relieve Driver, if you please, and hold your fire until I give the order.”
“Hold our fire, sir? Even if she fires on us?”
“That’s right,” Phillip confirmed. “So long as we don’t return her fire, her Commander may go on thinking we’re one of theirs—or have a few doubts on that score, anyway. I want to keep him guessing, in the hope that he’ll decide not to follow us into the channel. But if he does come after us, we’ll have to stop him … he mustn’t be allowed to get back to the fort or our buoys will be gone by morning. Tell your gun’s crew that … it may make it easier for them to wait, if they know why they’re waiting. There’s always the chance that her Commander may run her on to that bomb we missed just now, before he sights our buoys, but it’s a pretty slim chance, I’m afraid.”
“With respect, sir, I reckon it’s a better than even chance,” Thompson asserted. “That’s what I was starting to tell you. Those bombs are just about invisible in this light, not like the buoys. I never saw the one we missed until we were almost on top of it—I’d have sung out a lot sooner if I had, believe me, sir. And Ellis thought he spotted a second, about thirty feet astern of mine, though he couldn’t be quite certain. All the same”—he gestured to the gunboat, which was following the Constantine’s course at top speed, like a bloodhound in pursuit of a breast-high scent—“she’ll be for it if she holds her present course. I’d take a bet on it, sir.”
“I hope you’re right,” Phillip said, with more conviction than he felt. “Tell your gun’s crew that, too—it’ll give them something to think about while they’re waiting to bring their gun into action.”
“Aye, aye, sir. I’ll make a book on whether she scores a hit or a miss.” Thompson was smiling to himself as he made his way aft.
A second shot from their pursuer whined overhead, to splash into the water a bare twenty feet from the Constantine’s starboard quarter and Captain Kirkoff, emerging from the quarterdeck hatchway between his two escorts, winced visibly as his eyes followed its flight.
“What is this madness?” he demanded of Phillip.
“No madness, sir. One of your gun-vessels has opened fire on us. Our replies to her signals failed to satisfy her. That is why I sent for you. I—”
“Then she will blow my ship to pieces!” Kirkoff said bitterly. He, too, glanced at the ensign and scowling, held out his hand. “Your glass, Captain.” Phillip yielded his Dollond and walked with him to the rail. “That is the Tarkhan,” the Russian informed him. “She mounts six guns, of the canon-obusier type which, you may recall, a squadron of the Imperial Navy under Admiral Nachimoff used to some effect at Sinope. He destroyed a Turkish fleet and the harbour defences.”
“I recall the occasion, sir,” Phillip admitted coldly. The gunboat fired again, two shots in swift succession, which straddled the straining brig. Her gunners were well practised, he was forced to concede; her shooting could not have been more accurate. She signalled once more, as if in a final attempt to restore her errant sister to sanity and Captain Kirkoff snapped the Dollond shut.
“She is ordering you to heave-to,” he said, with a return to his former arrogance. “You have no choice but to obey, Captain … unless you are anxious to die.”
Phillip picked up the discarded signal lamp and offered it to him. “You have a choice, sir,” he suggested. “Make a signal she will understand—make your number.”
“You offer me such a choice?” The Russian took a menacing pace towards him as if to knock the lamp from his hand and Higgins, alarmed, leapt forward, rifle levelled at his prisoner’s chest. Disdainfully Kirkoff raised both arms in a gesture of surrender. “And if I refuse, Captain,” he enquired mockingly. “You will, no doubt—since you have so little regard for the usages of civilized warfare—order this cretin to shoot me?”
He had spoken in French and his tone was deliberately provocative but Phillip kept his temper.
“No, sir,” he returned quietly. “I shall leave your fate in the hands of your countrymen and their canons-obusiers. I have no intention of heaving-to and you will remain with me on the quarterdeck, if you please. Higgins!”
“Sir!” Higgins obediently stood back, rifle grounded, his expression carefully blank. Jackson grasped the Russian’s shoulder and, with an impeccable, “If you please, sir,” led him away. The trio had scarcely reached the port side of the quarterdeck when a shell from the Tarkhan burst six feet above the deck, sending a shower of lethal fragments to shatter the quarter-boat and the davits from which it was suspended and tear splinters from the deck planking. Kirkoff came abruptly to a standstill, his bearded face stiffening in dismay.
“My signal lamp is at your disposal, Captain,” Phillip called after him.
“You are a madman!” Kirkoff accused. “You have no chance … heave-to, in the name of heaven! You …” his voice trailed off into a strangled gasp of horror as, clear across the intervening distance, came the reverberating crash of an explosion. It was followed, seconds later, by another and a great tongue of flame soared up the Tarkhan’s starboard side, leaping across her upper deck where, Phillip could only suppose, it met some piled ammunition or a reserve of powder which exploded almost simultaneously. He kept his glass trained on the stricken gunboat, the cheers of his own men ringing in his ears.
Thompson had been right, he thought, conscious of more pity than elation as he stared into the clouds of black smoke now rising into the night sky—the Russian ship had run on to both bombs and they had done more damage than he had imagined they were capable of inflicting. They hadn’t stopped her, she was still moving at full speed through the water, her paddles churning, but she was ablaze, the wind of her passing fanning the flames which leap-frogged across the dry timber of her planking. There were men fighting the blaze and, as he watched, he saw others run to the rails to fling cases of ammunition overboard … she would not fire on him again for some considerable time, he told himself, and shook his head almost angrily to Thompson’s shouted request for permission to bring his gun into action.
CHAPTER FIVE
The fort’s upper guns belatedly opened fire and, to Phillip’s shocked surprise, pumped two shells into the now stationary Tarkhan before realizing their error and sending a few ragged salvoes of chain and roundshot in the wake of the fleeing Constantine. But they had delayed too long and, although one or two of their roundshot came unpleasantly close, she emerged unscathed from the barrage, which ceased when the range bec
ame extreme.
Phillip’s tautly stretched nerves relaxed a little, as he conned her carefully back into the newly-buoyed channel. No doubt more horsemen would be sent galloping overland to Ferrikale with warning of her coming, he told himself. The fort Commander, having recovered from his initial bewilderment, might call up another gunboat to search for the mysterious brig, flying the Imperial Russian ensign, yet behaving as if she were an enemy but … that would take time and time was on his side now. Within a few hours, this channel would be swarming with Allied ships; British, French, and Turkish troops—due to land at Kamiesch at first light—would be marching towards Kertch and Yenikale, and the coastal forts would be under attack from both land and sea.
He smothered a weary yawn, wishing that he could drop anchor here to await the coming of the Sea of Azoff flotilla, instead of running the gauntlet of the Ferrikale batteries a second time. But there were still two of Kirkoff’s accursed bombs lying unmarked and unaccounted for—the two that he and Thompson had failed to sight, close to the channel entrance. With the sickening spectacle of the blazing Tarkhan fresh in his mind, he knew that he could not leave them where they were if there was even an outside chance of being able to find and destroy them.
It would be an outside chance, he reminded himself. Thompson had said that the evil things were almost invisible in this light and … he unrolled the Russian chart, in order to check the position of the last of the red-ink circles and confirm what his memory had told him. The bombs, if they hadn’t drifted, lay on the western side of the channel, well within range of the Ferrikale guns … perhaps a boat could slip in unnoticed, while the gunners’ attention was focused on the Constantine. A boat, with muffled oars and a man in the bows, who knew exactly what he was looking for … damn it, it was either that or wait for the dawn.
He crossed slowly to the starboard rail, rubbed the sleep from his tired eyes and, taking out his glass, searched the landward side of the channel for any evidence of unusual activity. Seeing nothing, apart from the lights of Ferrikale itself, still some two and a half miles away, he was about to order a reduction in speed when a hail from the masthead stopped him in his tracks.
“Flashing light signal, sir!” the look-out warned. “Fine on the port bow and distant … over a mile, I’d say, sir.”
“Repeat the signal,” Phillip answered. “When you can read it.” He bent to pick up the signal lamp and, from the port side of the quarterdeck, Captain Kirkoff watched his approach with narrowed, speculative eyes.
“They are signalling from the Cheska Bank, Captain Hazard,” he said. “Do you wish to know for what reason?”
Phillip shrugged. He did not offer the Dollond this time but instead raised it to his own eye. The salt marshes of the Cheska Bank ran from the north-eastern extremity of the Taman Peninsula to form the eastern boundary of the Strait, a curving, flat expanse of land, between two and three miles in width, extending for seven miles southwards from Cape Kamenai. It was on this desolate spit of land that the enemy had recently constructed the three earthwork batteries whose purpose, he was aware, was to guard the deep water channel normally used by their own ships. These batteries—of which the principal, sited opposite the ferry station at Yenikale, was designed to cross fire with the fort—had taken no part in the earlier action and had not opened fire on him when the fort had done so. Mainly for this reason, he had dismissed the possibility of their intervening from his calculations but now … he trained his glass on the distant light, automatically counting the flashes. The message was a lengthy one and, although he could not pretend to understand it, either from his own or the masthead look-out’s version of the varying flashes of which it was composed, he experienced no surprise when Kirkoff announced, a note of triumph in his gutteral voice, “Warning has been sent to Ferrikale concerning my ship, Captain.”
Phillip lowered his glass, shut it with studied deliberation and replaced it in his breast pocket. He said nothing, conscious of so intense a dislike for his prisoner that he could not trust himself to reply to the taunt.
“The gunners have been ordered to sink her!” Kirkoff spat the words at him, shaking off Higgins’s restraining hand. “They will do so, unless you hand her over to me, Captain Hazard. To go on is to cause unnecessary loss of life. You cannot hope to pass Ferrikale.”
He was probably right, Phillip thought dully. He ordered the engines to dead slow, aware that he was only playing for time now … and that time was on his side no longer. The guns of Ferrikale were waiting for the little Constantine; there was nowhere he could hide her, to await the arrival of the Sea of Azoff squadron. If he anchored here, a gunboat would be sent in search of him and the alternative to surrender would be, as Kirkoff had reminded him, unnecessary loss of life. It was possible that he could save his crew—there was the cutter, they might slip by in that, if they crossed the deep water channel and hugged the shadows along the edge of the Cheska Bank. The cutter would make a difficult target for heavy calibre guns and might not be seen at all, although … he looked up at the star-bright sky and cursed it silently and with bitterness.
There was a risk, of course, but his men would undoubtedly prefer that to the certainty of capture and …
From behind him, Driver asked quietly, “Will I haul down the enemy ens’n, sir, and hoist our own?”
His tone, for all its quietness, was not that of a man contemplating surrender and Phillip’s indecision was suddenly at an end. They would finish what they had come to do, he thought, by heaven they would! They would find and destroy those foul bombs and be damned to Kirkoff, who would have the Tarkhan on his conscience but no British ship to even the score … and then they would take to the cutter, if their luck held. Aware that he was grinning like an idiot, he nodded to Driver. “Yes,” he said. “By all means hoist our colours, Bo’sun’s Mate. We’ve worn the enemy’s for long enough.”
A cheer went up from the men as they watched the Russian flag hauled down and it was redoubled when Driver broke out the White Ensign. Captain Kirkoff listened to them in ludicrous astonishment and then demanded sullenly to be taken below.
“I regret, sir, that I cannot accede to your request,” Phillip told him, with icy firmness. “There are still two of those infernal machines of yours in this channel and I intend to get rid of them. You witnessed their effect on one of your own ships and so, alas, did I. They are hideous weapons, sir, against which no ship can defend herself and, if you genuinely wish to avoid unnecessary loss of life, then perhaps you’ll assist me to find them.”
Kirkoff glared at him in resentful silence for a moment and then, prompted by the boom of a cannon from Ferrikale, he observed almost apologetically, “The bombs which struck the Tarkhan had drifted, Captain Hazard—I could not have anticipated that, they were not secured.”
“No,” Phillip conceded. He turned to watch a hail of shot spatter the water a hundred yards ahead of the Constantine and the Russian Captain, following the direction of his gaze, spread his hands in a gesture of resignation.
“Give me the chart,” he invited thickly. Unrolling it, he jabbed at the red-inked circles with a blunt forefinger. “The explosive devices you seek are here, where they are marked on my chart and they cannot have drifted from their position which, as you can see, lies less than a quarter of a mile from the shore batteries. You cannot destroy them without losing this ship.”
“Not even by gunfire, Captain?”
Captain Kirkoff shook his head. He was very pale but he spoke with a calm and logical certainty that, of itself, carried conviction. “These are not floating bombs, they are a different type from the others—larger and more deadly. They are buried in an artificial bank and are detonated by galvanic cells, which can only be set off when a ship’s keel strikes them. You cannot reach them with gunfire and you cannot see them.”
There was another salvo from the fort and Phillip drew in his breath sharply as he assessed the shortening range, but he gave no order to reduce speed and Kirkoff went on, a bitt
er edge to his voice, “I did not design them, Captain Hazard, and I did not place them in position—that was done by army engineers under cover of darkness and from a boat. But you are right … they are hideous weapons. They contain a charge sufficient to blow a ship-of-the-line in half and there are fifty more of them in the arsenal at Yenikale, ready to be placed in the channel.”
“Ready?” Phillip echoed, his throat suddenly constricted. Dear God, this was worse than he had imagined—a quarter of that number could destroy Jack Lyons’s entire flotilla. “They’re not in the channel yet, Captain?” he asked urgently.
Captain Kirkoff shook his head. He launched into technical details and added, “It is a lengthy and dangerous task. Few volunteers could be found to place them in position and our naval Commanders were—and are—opposed to their use. Most of us held that they would constitute a danger to our own ships, even when their positions were marked on our charts, you understand. There is an alternative method of exploding the charges, by means of connecting wires from the forts but …” he shrugged. “It was tried and found unreliable, so the combustibles remain in the arsenal.”
Could he believe this man, Phillip wondered, a part of his mind shying from the possibility that he could not—dare he believe him? Kirkoff was an enemy; he had behaved as an enemy throughout his captivity on board the Constantine but now, for no explicable reason, he appeared to be telling the truth and his own inclination was not to doubt him. Besides, had he not sounded and buoyed the channel up as far as Yenikale and found neither artificial obstructions nor buried explosives, save for the two which were marked on Kirkoff’s chart and which, on his own admission, had drifted?
“Sir …” it was Driver, his eyes bright with the light of battle. “Permission to open fire on the fort, sir?”
