by V. A. Stuart
It would be a useless gesture, Phillip knew, remembering the Fleet’s abortive attack on the stone-walled defences of Sebastopol Harbour, when great ships-of-the-line, mounting a hundred guns, had been driven out of action, their decks ablaze, their masts and rigging reduced to sprung and tangled wreckage. The small Constantine, with her two antiquated guns, could do nothing effective against Ferrikale’s casemated cannon, firing from behind the protection of their massive walls. It was doubtful whether, at this range, the brig’s guns could even hit—much less damage—the earthwork emplacements close to the shore.
There was one service she could perform, though, if Kirkoff had told the truth. He glanced down at the chart, still held in his enemy’s outstretched hands, took it from him and straightened slowly, conscious of pain that was not physical as he shook his head to Driver’s request.
A roundshot thumped against the hull; a charge of chain clattered through the upper rigging—both were spent and did little damage, but exploding shell fragments splashed like hail into the water ahead and abeam of the labouring brig. They were getting her range now, Phillip thought, his brain ice-cold, as he tried to calculate the odds against the Constantine ever reaching the destination he had planned for her. They were fantastically long odds but it would not matter if it were only her empty hulk which survived to drift on to its objective … hadn’t Kirkoff said that a ship’s keel would set off the buried sea-mine? Someone would have to remain at the wheel until the last possible moment, to keep her on course and … he swallowed hard, feeling the acid taste of bile rising from his stomach. Driver would have to take command of the cutter …
“Jackson,” he called. “Tell Mr Curtis to reduce speed to dead slow and then he’s to come on deck with his crew, leaving his engines running. Bo’sun’s Mate—pipe all hands on deck, if you please, and prepare to abandon ship. Man the cutter and take command of her and I want every man into her, including the prisoner. When you have your full complement aboard, cast off and steer for the Cheska Bank. The Huntress should be at the entrance to the Strait to pick you up but, if you need assistance from her, send up a rocket. Put two men—now— to bring the cutter alongside and secure her amidships. They’ll have to rig hauling tackle and do it fast—understand?”
“Sir?” Taken by surprise at the sheer unexpectedness of these orders, Driver stared at him, jaw dropping, and he snapped impatiently, “Look lively, my lad, for pity’s sake! There’s no time to be lost. And tell Trevelyan to put a lashing on the wheel before he leaves the deck.”
Jackson was already on his way to the engine-room and the boatswain’s mate managed a dutiful, “Aye, aye, sir,” his expression still bewildered. But he recovered himself and the pipe shrilled, clear and penetrating, above the background thunder of the Russian guns.
“All hands on deck!” he bawled. “Prepare to abandon ship!”
The order was instantly obeyed. The masthead look-out came shinning down from aloft with the speed and skill of long practice and Phillip gave him a quick, “Well done, Williams,” as he thudded on to the deck, to be joined by the two guns’ crews and, a few moments later, by Curtis and his sweating, oil-grimed stokers from the engine-room. The hauling tackle was rigged and, with half a dozen willing hands heaving on the lines and Driver and Jackson easing her round, the cutter was secured amidships.
“Abandon ship!” Phillip bade them. “Over the side with you and into the boat. Cast off when you’re loaded, Bo’sun’s Mate!”
A shell burst on the forecastle, emitting a shower of ominously glowing fragments and Thompson moved instinctively towards his abandoned gun but Phillip called him back.
“Where the devil do you think you’re going?”
“Ammunition, sir,” the gunner’s mate stammered. “I ought to …” he gulped. “What about you, sir? You’re coming with us, aren’t you?”
“I’ll join you, if I can,” Phillip told him. “But don’t delay for me—you’ll have a long pull. Carry on, Gunner’s Mate … and good luck. Get back to the Huntress if you have to swim for it!”
“I can’t swim, sir,” Thompson answered wryly. He hesitated, looked down at the cutter and asked, with a hint of anger, “Why, sir—in God’s name, why? She’s not your ship, you don’t have to go down with her. You—”
“Captain Kirkoff will tell you why, lad. Now jump to it, will you, or you’ll damned well have to swim.”
The boat was loaded, with Kirkoff in the sternsheets looking up at them, an odd expression on his bearded face. Thompson swung himself into the bows and the cutter cast off, to fall slowly astern, a small, dark shape on the moonlit water of the channel, its six pairs of oars moving in rhythmic unison as it headed for the Cheska Bank and, God willing, for safety.
Phillip checked the lashings on the deserted wheel and then went below to the engine-room. Amidst the lamp-lit dimness, deafened by the metallic clank of the engines and the hiss of steam, he could scarcely hear the guns and he smiled grimly to himself as he opened valves and, stripping to his shirtsleeves, shovelled coal inexpertly on to the glowing fires, knocking the furnace doors back into place with his shovel as each was replenished. He had taken a course of instruction on the marine steam engine before being appointed to the Trojan and he blessed this fact now, since at least he knew how to make the necessary adjustments to give him the increase in speed he wanted. The pressure gauge rose but the furnaces were voracious and would, he was aware, soon consume the coal he had fed them and the head of steam would start to drop. It could not be helped; he would probably have gained his objective before the engines lost power altogether and speed was essential now, if he were not to offer a sitting target to the fort’s gunners.
A thunderous crash from somewhere overhead sent him rushing back on deck, almost losing his footing as the brig shuddered under the impact of the roundshot pounding against her hull. The enemy gunners had got her range now and with a vengeance, he thought numbly, as he stumbled unsteadily across to the wheel, the sweat turning to ice on his weary body and the boom of the guns beating a merciless tattoo inside his head. There was a fire smouldering on the forecastle and a gaping hole in the deck planking, just behind the gun, offered mute evidence that Thompson’s spare ammunition must have exploded in the heat from the flames.
During his short absence in the engine-room, chainshot had wrought havoc with the brig’s upper rigging and was continuing to do so. As he stared in dismay at the chaotic tangle above him, the foretopmast stays were neatly carried away above the seizing, the mast broke at the cap and, after swaying drunkenly for a moment or two, went toppling over the side, taking futtock shrouds and jib-stay with it.
Phillip freed the wheel of its lashing and, his blistered hands closing about the worn spokes, he brought the ship’s head hard round to starboard, to take brief advantage of the shelter afforded by a low, tree-grown promontory jutting out from the shore. She was hulled twice on her exposed port quarter as she answered to her helm but, although she started to take in water, the paddle-wheels were thrusting her on with increased momentum and he took heart from this, the tangible result of his exhausting visit to the engine-room. A number of roundshot passed harmlessly overhead; one buried itself among the trees on the rocky promontory but, when he was compelled to emerge from its shelter, the gunners swiftly found the range again. Twist and turn as he would, they kept their sights fixed on her and, as she began to list and lose speed, Phillip’s hopes faded.
He had been mad to imagine that he could bring her through such a cannonade he told himself—as mad as Kirkoff had accused him of being. True, he had had the luck of the devil up till now but now the time of reckoning had come and, if he were to make his own escape, he would have to abandon the Constantine … run her ashore, so that she did not obstruct the channel, and abandon her. He peered ahead, half blinded by the smoke from the burning forecastle, and a bitter sense of failure stirred in him as he realized that he was within a scant two hundred yards of his objective. The artificial bank ran out from
the shore at an angle of 45°, according to Kirkoff’s chart … he should be able to see it from here. Leaving the wheel, he crossed the deck at a limping run and dragged himself up into the tattered mainmast shrouds.
Yes, there it was, marked by an irregular line of timber stakes, evidently driven in to hold in place the sunken stones and rubble of which the bank was composed. The stakes could be ship’s masts—one of them, at all events, rose high out of the water, casting a long shadow before it and could hardly be anything else, he realized, when he contrived to train his glass on it. So near, so damnably, tantalizingly near and yet the infernal thing might have been two hundred miles away … he sucked a painful breath into his lungs, fighting off a spasm of coughing, and staggered, bent almost double, back to the wheel. The Constantine barely had steerage way on her now but the current was carrying her down-channel, towards the bank at its edge … as well let her drift on to it—if she lasted that long—as run her ashore, he decided.
The spokes of the wheel spun through his hands; he set her head towards the bank and secured the lashing, seized by another spasm of coughing as he did so. Greedy tongues of flame were engulfing the quarterdeck, leaping this way and that as the littered mass of cordage caught alight, like demons in the bowels of hell. Phillip tottered aft, struggling for breath and it was borne on him suddenly that silence had fallen … a strange, eerie silence, broken only by the slow, irregular clatter of the brig’s failing paddles and the bubbling hiss of steam escaping from her flooded boilers.
The guns were no longer firing … he clung, gasping, to the rail, scarcely able to believe the evidence of his own dulled senses. But it was true—no rippling orange flashes pierced the curtain of black powder smoke which hung over the fort, no ragged thunder of cannon fire echoed across the intervening stretch of water to assault his tortured eardrums. The ghastly cannonade had ceased, although he could think of no logical reason why it should have done so, when the Constantine had been so clearly at their mercy, awaiting the coup de grâce, which a single gun could have delivered.
Unless … he stiffened involuntarily, the void that had been his mind starting to function again. The gunners knew the position of the artificial bank and of the charge buried within it—could they have decided to let their hideous sunken weapon do their work for them? It seemed a strange decision, on the face of it, but Kirkoff had said that the sunken explosives were new, the various means by which they were detonated the subject of experiment and even doubt on the part of the Yenikale engineers. Fifty of the things were still stored in the arsenal, waiting to be put into use until a reliable method of detonating them could be found and agreed upon … for God’s sake, that must be why the guns had ceased fire, there could be no other reason!
They were going to use the Constantine to test their infernal device. Battered and blazing, listing heavily, she could be of no value to them if they recaptured her and the gunners had had their target practice with her; now it was the turn of the engineers, some of whom—if he knew anything about them—would probably have ridden flat out from Yenikale in order to demand it.
He retreated before the flames, eyes streaming, hands over his face in an attempt to shield it from the heat. But, in contrast to his sweating body, his brain was suddenly ice-cold and he laughed his relief aloud, as he began to realize the implications underlying the enemy’s decision.
Dear heaven, they could not know, could not even suspect that they themselves would be under attack within a few hours! They could have no idea that their test would be made too late or that, however successful it might be, their fifty experimental sea-mines could not now be sunk in time to stop the Allied Azoff squadron steaming up the channel to lay siege to Yenikale.
Evidently they had attached no significance to the buoys he had laid out to mark the channel—either they had not observed them or had supposed them to have been laid by one of their own ships. And, because they had failed to notice the Constantine, when she had slipped past the fort on her outward journey through the fog, they were now—if he had read the signs aright and interpreted their motives correctly—preparing to let her destroy the last obstacle which remained to block the free passage of the channel. Apart, of course, from their guns, but Jack Lyons would be ready for those …
Phillip felt his heart thumping against his ribs. It seemed incredible but it was the only explanation that made any sense to him and he could see no reason to doubt it. In any case, if he was wrong, it made no difference—the result would be the same. Filled with a heady sense of exhilaration, he leaned over the rail, as far out as he could, in an effort to make sure that the brig was still on course. He would have to make his own bid for escape very soon, he knew; the deck was almost untenable, the heat and smoke overpowering, sapping his strength and robbing him of breath. And he would need his strength, because he looked like having to swim for it—the boats were riddled like collanders, if they weren’t smashed to pieces. Even supposing he could lower one, it wouldn’t keep him afloat for more than a few minutes, he told himself but, to his own surprise, he felt no undue anxiety. His feeling of excitement transcended fear and, as he passed a blackened hand over his eyes and glimpsed the raised line of stakes directly ahead, he found himself cheering with a wild abandon for which he would almost certainly have rebuked one of his seamen.
The stakes were very close—thirty or, at most, forty yards from the brig’s wallowing bows. She could not miss her objective now, even if her paddle-wheels clanked to a standstill, she must drift on to the submerged bank … nothing could stop her. She … the cheer died on his parched lips, to be replaced by a prayer, as the maintopmast came crashing down across the deck in front of him, in a welter of torn cordage and splintered wood. The flames licked at it hungrily and then it slid down the canting deck and, still held by stays and shrouds, hung suspended there until—as if in answer to his muttered prayer—the whole mass slipped slowly into the water.
The Constantine lost way but, miraculously, regained it and, her paddles still turning, she continued on course, as if, like the fireships of so many earlier naval battles, she knew her destiny and did not shrink from it.
Phillip experienced a pang as he left her, diving cleanly over the stern into the cool, moonlit water, which was balm to his scorched and aching body. Aware that, for his own self-preservation, he ought to put the greatest distance he could between himself and his doomed ship, he swam twenty yards and then, suddenly indifferent to whatever fate might be awaiting him on shore, he trod water, turning to look for her. She was a fearsome sight, from this level, bearing more resemblance to a flaming torch than to a ship but, curiously, her stern was almost untouched and her borrowed ensign flew proudly from its staff, smoke blackened yet lit to an uncanny radiance by the flames that were consuming her.
He resumed his swim, turning his back on her, unable to bring himself to watch her end. It came swiftly, long before he reached the shore, in the boom of a massive explosion, which echoed and re-echoed in his ears and left him in no doubt that the Constantine had gained her objective. A charge sufficient to blow a ship-of-the-line in half, Kirkoff had said and, fighting against the shock-waves which threatened to swamp him, he did not doubt the Russian Captain’s claim as to the force employed. A great spout of water rose into the air, hiding the little brig’s death throes behind a curtain of spray, but he knew that there would be nothing left of her and found himself wondering cynically whether the engineers from Yenikale—if they were, in fact, watching it—would be satisfied with the result of their experiment.
A mounted patrol, carrying lighted torches, galloped along the edge of the rocky foreshore as he neared it. They were spread out, evidently searching for him and, as the depth of the water decreased and he was able to stand upright, he could see that some of them had dismounted and were advancing towards him. It was useless to attempt to evade capture—he was too stiff, too exhausted, to go on swimming and to run from them would be to invite them to open fire on him.
As
it was, a few musket balls peppered the water about him but he ignored them and when he stumbled on to the rocks, swaying like a drunken man, the firing stopped. Shouts, excited and unintelligible, greeted his appearance but he had no means of knowing if these were addressed to him or were intended to bring more men down from the cliff top. He was partially deafened by the explosion and his eyes, unaccustomed to the semi-darkness of the shadowed beach, seemed unable to focus on distant objects, so he stood where he was and waited, chilled from his immersion in the water and shivering in his thin, damp shirt and dripping trousers. He could dimly recollect having kicked off his boots when he was in the water but could not remember where or when he had removed his jacket. The pistol he had worn, strapped about his wrist, had gone and so had his Dollond but he still had his watch—the elaborately engraved and crested watch that had belonged to Mademoiselle Sophie’s father and which she had given him in Odessa. His numb fingers felt for and found it in the pocket of his trousers but, when he opened it, he could not see its face in the darkness. The sky was lightening, though—the moon emerging from behind a cloud.
A voice yelled something in harsh tones which he did not understand but, taking it to be a command from the patrol to advance to meet them, he staggered a few paces up the beach, the watch still in his hand.
The shout was repeated and a horseman—a Cossack from his garb—who had led his horse down the cliff, leapt into the saddle and came charging recklessly over the rocks, his sabre flashing silver in the moonlight as he wrenched it from its scabbard. Phillip had expected no violence and was ill-prepared to ward off his assailant. He attempted to step aside, slipped on the loose shingle, and dropped to his knees. The sabre struck him a glancing blow across the shoulders and was raised again, as the Cossack jerked his small, shaggy horse to a standstill beside him. He lifted both hands to ward off the blade and felt it bite painfully into the muscles of his right forearm. Then a hand came out to wrench the watch from his grasp but he struggled instinctively to retain it and a second rider spurred to the aid of the first, bringing the butt of his pistol savagely down on his unprotected head.
