Victory at Sebastopol

by V. A. Stuart

  Somehow, when he had urged the others to take refuge in the doctor’s room, this woman must have eluded him, he thought bitterly, wishing her in perdition rather than where she was, although his heart applauded her selfless courage. The Tunisians stared at her open mouthed, momentarily taken aback by her sudden appearance and he bundled her unceremoniously behind him.

  “For God’s sake!” he whispered in English. “Hide yourself! Back to the ward!” She understood the urgency in his voice, if not the words, and attempted to obey him but it was too late.

  “So you have women here—women, as well as pigs of Russians!” Faruk Bey snarled at him.

  His men took up the cry. Like the wolf pack to which, a few moments before, he had compared them, they came surging towards him with the Bey at their head, flanked by two of his Officers with drawn swords, and Phillip was compelled to retreat into the ward to avoid being knocked over. From somewhere in the distance he heard the faint skirl of Highland pipes and the tramp of marching feet but they, too, his mind registered despairingly, were too late … the hospital would be a shambles if he waited until the British advance guard arrived.

  Several muskets exploded in the confined space of the corridor outside and one ball struck the vaulted ceiling high above his head but there were too many men milling about there to permit of accurate shooting and he paid the would-be marksmen no heed. He kept his pistol levelled at Faruk Bey’s close-cropped head, holding it steadily just beyond the reach of his henchmen’s swords and said uncompromisingly, “I shall not hesitate to use this, if you compel me to, sir.”

  “Against an ally, Commander? And in defence of those who are our mutual enemies?”

  “In defence of wounded and helpless enemies. It is not a British custom to slaughter wounded after a battle, or to make war on women.” Phillip controlled his rising temper but the strain was becoming well-nigh unendurable and he could feel the sweat pouring off him, as the foul stench of the ward once again threatened to choke him. One of the wounded Russians, evidently aware of the danger he was in, made an abortive attempt to get to his feet and Faruk shouted something to the Officer beside him, who turned with a grin to obey him. The curved scimitar he carried was razor-sharp and it descended with the force of a guillotine on the back of the wounded man’s neck. The Russian dropped with a strangled cry, his head not quite severed from his falling body and as his assailant prepared to complete his grisly task, Phillip took careful aim and fired from a range of six feet. The ball took the Tunisian squarely in the chest and he collapsed in a crumpled heap beside his victim.

  “You have killed him!” Faruk Bey exclaimed, backing away. He was visibly shaken and Phillip, the empty pistol smoking in his hand, seized upon his momentary advantage to drive the whole mob of them, step by step, back towards the door of the ward. For how long he could have held them he was never to know; just as he was beginning to doubt his ability to do so, the corridor was filled with scarlet uniforms, and a party of Marines, with bayonets fixed, drove a purposeful way through their shrinking ranks. Sick with relief, he let the pistol fall, the roof of the cellar whirling about his head in crazy circles as he stumbled to meet his deliverers. From what seemed a long way away he heard a voice, which he dimly recognized as that of Faruk Bey, screaming in execrable English to the Marines to arrest him.

  “He is a pig of a Russian spy, claiming that he is an English Officer! Do your duty—arrest him—he has in cold blood killed one of my men!”

  Before he could say a word in his own defence, a rifle butt struck him on the side of the head and he slipped, almost gratefully, into oblivion …

  * * *

  “Phillip … Phillip, old man, can you hear me?” Phillip stirred weakly. He recognized the voice but it was too much of an effort, just then, to acknowledge it. “Phillip, I shall have to go very soon. We’re entering the Sea of Azoff, with my father’s flag about to be hoisted aboard the Miranda, but I want to speak to you before I leave. You—”

  “Hold on, sir,” a second voice requested. “The poor chap’s pretty far gone.” Someone lifted him, a hand supporting his shoulders and a cup was held to his lips. He sipped gratefully and felt the strong spirit course through his weary body, giving it new life. Brandy, he thought, brandy … and opened his eyes, to see Jack Lyons bending anxiously over him.

  “That’s better,” Lyons approved. “How are you feeling, Phillip?” He gestured to the man who was with him. “Give him some more of that brandy, Doctor. It seems to be helping … and my God, he’s earned it, if anyone has!”

  Assisted by the Miranda’s surgeon, Phillip sat up. His head swam for a moment or two and then his vision cleared a little. He was in the room in which he had spent the night, he realized—Dr Bozenko’s room—but now it was cold, because the stove had gone out. “What about the women, Jack?” he asked thickly, scarcely recognizing his own voice. “The ones who were here? I locked them in because they—”

  “You need not explain why you locked them up, my dear Phillip,” Captain Lyons put in grimly. “That mob of Turkish and Arab cut-throats would have given them short shrift if you hadn’t. I’ve seen some evidence of what they did in the town before we got here. Don’t worry about your Good Samaritans—not a hair of their heads was harmed, and I’ve just sent them back to their homes under guard.”

  “How long have you been here?” Phillip asked.

  “A few hours. I anchored within sight of the fort—and out of range of the batteries—last night. We didn’t realize the enemy had evacuated the place … I wish to heaven we had! There was a tremendous explosion when they blew up the magazine, of course, but I expected them to leave troops here, to defend the fort, so we waited until daylight to make sure. Sir George Brown was held up at Kertch and my orders were to wait until his troops were on the way …” Lyons supplied a few details and added, smiling, “But now, as perhaps you didn’t hear me trying to tell you earlier—the Sea of Azoff squadron is about to gain its objective.”

  “I heard,” Phillip admitted. “And the Admiral is going in with you?”

  “Yes, he is—and Admiral Bruat too, with Sedaiges. They’ll both rejoin their own flagships tomorrow, I think, and leave us to carry out our orders.” There was a note of deep satisfaction in Jack Lyons’s pleasant voice. “They’ve both waited long enough—and worked hard enough—for this moment, haven’t they? And it will shorten the war, Phillip, I’m convinced of that. Sebastopol will fall, once the supply routes from the Sea of Azoff are cut … the only pity is that we could not embark on this expedition three weeks ago. However”—he laid an affectionate hand on Phillip’s shoulder—“I must not keep the Admirals waiting, but I wanted a word with you, my dear fellow, before I left. I wanted to thank you, of course, for the splendid job you made of buoying the channel for us, and for clearing it of those infernal machines the enemy had waiting for our ships. If you—”

  “Jack …” memory returned and Phillip interrupted apologetically, “Forgive me but my men, my prize-crew from the Constantine … did they get back all right?”

  “Yes, indeed—the Huntress and the Snake picked them up, just north of the Yujnaia Spit. They’d had a long pull but there were no casualties, apart from those you incurred earlier, when you took the brig. And your poor little mid, of course.”

  O’Hara, Phillip thought, feeling a knife twist in his heart. “You heard what happened?” he asked painfully.

  “Your brother made a full report.” Jack Lyons rose. “I’m sorry, Phillip, I shall have to leave you. I—er …” he avoided Phillip’s eye. “The Huntress is with my squadron, under your brother’s command, and—”

  Sensing from his manner that all was not well, Phillip asked, his throat tight, “Am I not to rejoin her, Jack? Is that what you are trying to tell me?”

  Jack Lyons inclined his head regretfully. “Yes,” he admitted, “I’m extremely sorry to say it is—you’re being sent to Therapia, Phillip. Partly on medical grounds”—he exchanged a glance with the surgeon, who no
dded his confirmation—“that arm of yours isn’t in too healthy a state, I’m afraid. But the surgeon thinks there may be a chance of saving it, with proper care, which you’ll get, of course, at the naval hospital at Therapia.”

  “I see.” Well, he could accept that, Phillip thought—indeed, he had half-expected it, and anything was better than losing the arm but … he looked up into the face of his boyhood friend and said flatly, “There’s another reason, is there not?”

  Jack Lyons smiled. “Yes, there is … but don’t worry about it, for heaven’s sake. I’m sure it will blow over, if you stay out of circulation for a few weeks, Phillip. A complaint has been made against you, through official channels, by the Commander of the brig you captured.” Phillip drew in his breath sharply. Kirkoff, of course—Kirkoff had lodged the complaint, as he had threatened he would—oh, damn Kirkoff to hell! “I see you know from whom it has come,” Jack observed. Again he laid a friendly, comforting hand on Phillip’s shoulder. “The fellow’s temper, understandably in the circumstances, is a trifle frayed but he’ll probably forget the whole thing, given time—or early exchange and repatriation, which I shall suggest to my father as a possible solution.” He sighed, his smile fading. “The unspeakable Faruk Bey is, alas, less likely to forget, I’m afraid—he, too, has lodged a complaint against you and—”

  “Faruk Bey! Oh, for God’s sake, Jack! You said yourself that he was no better than a cut-throat and—”

  “And I shall go on saying that, my dear Phillip,” Lyons asserted. “His accusations cannot possibly be substantiated, they are wildly improbable. Unhappily, however, he did not make them to me or I’d have told him, in no uncertain terms, what he could do with them! The man you shot was his brother—or so he claims—and he ran, yelling blue murder, to General D’Autemarre. The French are, at the moment, rather sore because of the behaviour of their Colonial troops in Kertch and, almost certainly for this reason, the General has passed on Faruk’s complaint—also officially—to my father.”

  “Then”—Phillip could hardly believe his ears—“there may have to be an inquiry?”

  “It’s possible,” Jack Lyons admitted. “And I thought I should warn you. But don’t worry about it—the result will be a foregone conclusion and I’ll back you to the hilt. I also intend to recommend you for a decoration. That’s to say if—“there was a knock on the door and he broke off as a midshipman came, cap in hand, to deliver a message from the Admiral. “My summons, Phillip,” he said, unable to keep the excitement from his voice. “I’ll have to leave you now. But good luck, my dear chap, and God go with you.”

  “And with you!” Phillip called after him. His brief anger died and, when Surgeon Corbett called a stretcher party in and took his leave, he decided to follow Jack Lyons’s advice and refrain from worrying about the possible result of the complaints which had been made against him. There was little to be gained by brooding over them and, in any case, his arm was of more immediate concern to him than a court of inquiry into his conduct, which might be held sometime in the future.

  The 36-hour passage to Therapia in a crowded transport proved something of an ordeal. He ran a high temperature and suffered considerable pain, for which the over-worked medical staff could do little, apart from suggesting immediate amputation. Phillip rejected this with an obstinacy that aroused their resentment and he was heartily glad when, at the end of a nightmare voyage, he was transferred to the Palace Hospital and, 24 hours later, from there to the comparative comfort and spaciousness of the hospital ship Bombay.

  Good food, excellent nursing, and skilful medical care wrought, between them, a steady improvement in his health although, once again, he had to use all the powers of persuasion he possessed in order to escape the drastic cure the surgeons repeatedly urged upon him.

  “Delay may cost you your life, Commander Hazard,” he was warned, when the arm refused to heal and his temperature soared to dangerous heights, but he had recovered the use of his hand and fingers and, when feeling slowly and agonizingly began to return to the arm itself, the surgeons admitted that his gamble had been justified.

  Mortality from post-amputation shock and infection was high, even in the wards of the well-staffed Bombay, and higher still in the hospital on shore, and Phillip’s gradual recovery was hailed as something of a miracle when, a fortnight after his arrival, he was finally pronounced out of danger.

  The chaplain, the Rev. Mackenzie, who had prayed daily at his bedside, exchanged his prayer book for the newspapers and, in response to his eager request, read aloud the reports which told of Jack Lyons’s successful operations in the Sea of Azoff. And these had been brilliantly successful, Phillip learnt with delight. In the first four days, the squadron had seized nearly two hundred fifty ships carrying provisions for the enemy forces in the Crimea; Arabat had been shelled, its magazines blown up; and stores of corn and flour at Berdiansk and Genitchi—amounting to nearly four months’ rations for one hundred thousand men—set on fire.

  Vast stocks of coal, found abandoned at Kertch, were being put to good use by the British and French fleets; over a hundred guns had been captured; six war steamers had been sunk or scuttled by their own crews. Boat parties from the Miranda, Swallow, and Wrangler had blown up a further seventy transport and cargo vessels at their moorings, despite the threatening presence of a force of close on a thousand Cossacks.

  By 2nd June, Captain Moore, cruising in the Highflyer, reported that the enemy were preparing to evacuate Anapa and Soujak—their last remaining strongholds on the coast of Circassia—which were reputed to be garrisoned by upwards of seven thousand troops. By the 5th, they had gone, leaving the two forts in the jubiliant hands of Serfir Pasha and his guerrillas, to whom Rear-Admiral Houston Stewart paid a visit a week later, in his flagship Hannibal.

  The Admiral’s wife was staying at Therapia, as a guest of the Ambassador, Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, and it was from her that Phillip obtained this last item of news. Mrs Houston Stewart had become a regular visitor to the naval hospital and she took to reading him extracts from her husband’s letters, for which reason Phillip welcomed her visits with increasing eagerness. His eagerness was soon succeeded by impatience to return to the scene of action but, despite his pleas to be allowed to rejoin his ship, the doctors would not hear of it. Day followed empty day and he lay fuming in enforced idleness, forbidden to leave his bed, his only distraction the news his visitors brought him which, by its very nature, added to his restlessness.

  A letter from Graham gave a graphic account of the operations against Taganrog, Marioupol, and Geisk, in which his own Huntress had taken an active part. The squadron, skilfully commanded by Jack Lyons—having shelled military targets in all three towns—had again sent boat parties ashore and, in the face of determined opposition by a force of some thirty-five hundred cavalry and infantry, had succeeded in destroying guns, munitions and more vast stores of grain intended for the Crimea.

  “It was pretty hot while it lasted,” his brother wrote. “But we are now in complete control of the Azoff Sea, from Arabat to the Gulf of Taganrog, and the Don River barges come to an abrupt halt at the river mouth. Not bad for a campaign of barely three weeks’ duration, is it?

  “I hear a strong rumour that both Admirals intend to return to Sebastopol very soon and that Jack Lyons—who has covered himself with glory—will return with them, which suggests that great things may be brewing there very shortly. Sir George Brown is also to return to the siege on 15th, leaving only five hundred British troops to ‘stiffen’ the Turkish garrison at Yenikale and the French, too, are said to be leaving only a token force.

  “Our orders are to remain here, to continue operations on a somewhat reduced scale, under the command of Sherard Osborn. If I were you, I would endeavour—as Jack Lyons is doing—to rejoin the Admiral’s flag, because that is where the action is going to be. There’s talk of another naval attack on the harbour defences and a big land-based assault on Sebastopol itself. Here it is virtually over, I f
ear, although it’s possible that I am mistaken … but I am not, I assure you, offering you this advice solely because I shall be reluctant to hand back your command to you. Every member of your ship’s company will be eager to welcome you back …”

  The letter ended with many anxious enquiries as to his health, which added considerably to Phillip’s frustration, and there was a postscript, which he had to read twice before he really took it in. “Do not be surprised,” Graham warned, “if you receive a visit from Miss Moray. I heard from her recently, to inform me that she had returned to Constantinople as chaperone to the two daughters of a Mrs Mark Pendleton and, needless to say, I replied at once, telling her of your circumstances and whereabouts, so I feel sure she will get in touch with you, before long.”

  Catriona Moray, Phillip thought, pleased … indeed, it would be good to see Catriona again. He left word with the kindly Mrs Mackenzie that, should Miss Moray enquire for him, he was anxious to see her and, on the first day that he was allowed to dress and sit up in a chair, Catriona presented herself. To his chagrin, she was not alone; she brought her charges with her—two pretty but excessively pert young girls of sixteen and seventeen—and they set themselves coquettishly to the task of entertaining the invalid, so that he was able to exchange only a few words with her in private, and even these were mainly concerned with his brother Graham and Catriona’s correspondence with him.

  She promised, however, to repeat her visit as soon as this could be arranged with her employers. The Pendletons were, it seemed, a wealthy family. They had travelled to Constantinople by chartered steamship, with a number of friends, and Mr Mark Pendleton had now hired a yacht, with a Turkish crew, in which he proposed to sail to Balaclava in order to tour the battlefields of the Crimea and visit various high-ranking friends and relatives in the British Expeditionary Force. Phillip was faintly shocked by the idea that wealthly non-combatants should consider such a tour desirable and Catriona, reading his thoughts, explained wryly, “It is the latest fashion—the modish thing to do these days. The newspapers often publish advertisements for steamer trips to the theatre of war.”