Killigrew’s Run

by Jonathan Lunn

  As Uren advanced on Molineaux, the petty officer turned the musket on him, bringing him up short.

  ‘I’m taking command,’ said Molineaux. ‘Hughes, run below and fetch the pill-roller.’

  ‘You!’ Bullivant exclaimed laughingly as Hughes hurried down the after hatch. ‘You’re nothing but a blackamoor. You’re in no position to give anyone orders.’

  ‘This is a naval operation,’ Molineaux told him. ‘And I may only be a petty officer, but I’m still the senior man on watch. And I say we run that cable.’

  ‘And I say it’s madness,’ said Bullivant. ‘I outrank you… I’m a colonel of yeomanry, that outranks a petty officer any day of the week…’

  Molineaux told him what he could do with his yeomanry in no uncertain terms.

  Charlton emerged on deck. ‘What’s going on here?’

  ‘Mr Charlton! Be so good as to order your man to put down that musket and surrender himself. He’s a mutineer!’

  ‘Is this true, Molineaux?’

  ‘I ain’t disobeyed any orders from a naval officer, sir. With Mr Killigrew sick, you’re in charge.’

  ‘Then I order you to put down that musket at once, Molineaux.’

  ‘Hear me out, sir. Lord Bullivant and Cap’n Thornton want to drop anchor and surrender to the Russki paddle-sloop when it catches us.’

  ‘Whereas this fool thinks we should try to run the battery at Vitsand Sound,’ said Bullivant. ‘Really, Mr Charlton! If you cannot control the men under your command, then I suggest you surrender command to me. I am colonel of the East Rutland Yeomanry.’

  ‘Stand down, Molineaux,’ said Charlton. ‘That’s an order.’

  ‘Molineaux’s right, Mr Charlton,’ said Mackenzie. ‘We have to run that battery somehow.’

  ‘Be quiet, Mackenzie!’ Thornton said angrily.

  ‘Damn it, sir, do ye no’ see? We canna surrender to the Russians. They’ll blow us out of the water as soon as we’re within range! They want us deid; that’s why we had to escape in the first place.’

  ‘Nonsense!’ said Bullivant. ‘They wouldn’t dare kill me! I’m a peer of the realm.’

  ‘Not this realm, yer lordship,’ Endicott reminded him. ‘With all due respect, Mr Charlton, Wes is right: it’s a slim chance we can get through that cable before the Russki gunners wake up, like, but at least it’s a chance. If we drop anchor, the paddle-sloop will just blow us out of the water.’

  Fraught with anguish, Charlton looked at Hughes and Iles. ‘What do you chaps think?’

  ‘Damn your eyes, Charlton!’ exploded Bullivant. ‘This isn’t a democracy, man! Order your men to desist from this madness, before we’re all killed.’

  ‘We’re with Wes, sir,’ said Hughes, and Iles nodded.

  ‘Your choice, sir,’ said Molineaux. ‘A slim chance, or no chance at all. What’s it to be?’

  ‘Oh, this isn’t fair!’ Charlton protested petulantly. ‘I’m an apothecary, not a damned executive officer! What do I know about batteries and paddle-sloops?’ He took off his cap and ran his fingers through his hah in agitation. ‘A slim chance, you say?’

  ‘Better than no chance at all, sir.’

  ‘Carry on, Molineaux. I just hope you know what you’re doing…’

  ‘You’re going to be guided by the advice of a blackamoor?’ Bullivant spluttered incredulously.

  ‘He’s a good man, my lord. He’s got years of experience.’

  ‘You little bloody fool! You’re going to get us all killed!’

  Charlton turned to Molineaux. ‘By God, man, you’d better be right about this!’

  Molineaux grinned. ‘Cheer up, sir. If I’m wrong, in a few minutes it won’t matter much either way.’

  The assistant surgeon did not look comforted by the thought.

  * * *

  Starshina Chernyovsky and his men left their ponies tied up in the trees fifty yards back from the shore. They crept down through the undergrowth to where the tree line overlooked the rocks. Below, the east end of the chain cable was securely embedded in a concrete block. On the opposite shore, the Cossacks could see the artillery battery in the moonlight, a little over two hundred yards away.

  Chernyovsky glanced up the inlet to his right. There was no sign of the Milenion yet, but it could not be long now.

  Ordering his men to stay out of sight, he strode down on to the beach and waved a hand over his head to signal the battery. Someone returned his signal by waving a lantern from side to side: the man he had sent down the opposite side of the inlet had reached the battery. The signal indicated that the battery commander had agreed to Chernyovsky’s plan: waiting until the yacht arrived, they would pretend to be asleep while the escaping English sent a boat ashore to try to break the cable. Chernyovsky and his men would wait until the Englishmen were ashore and out of the boat before he signalled his men to open fire. Exposed on the moonlit shore, they would be cut down without mercy, and the rattle of musketry would be the signal for the battery to open fire on the Milenion herself.

  Chernyovsky’s only fear was that the Atalanta would overhaul the yacht before she reached the cable.

  He retreated into the undergrowth to where his men lay in ambush, and made himself comfortable amongst the bracken. Unslinging his carbine, he checked it was primed and loaded, and sighted down its length to the shore below. ‘Carbines on half-cock,’ he told his men. ‘No one fires before I give the order.’

  * * *

  As the Milenion rounded the next headland in the inlet’s indented coast, Molineaux could see the pontoons supporting the chain cable in the moonlight, a third of a mile off, broad on the starboard beam. On the right-hand side of the inlet, the battery commanding the narrows was dark and silent. With any luck, he thought, the gunners would all be fast asleep and the yacht could slip past unnoticed. But first, they had to break that bloody chain cable.

  They coasted into the channel between Odensö and the mainland on the east side of the inlet, furled the sails and dropped anchor out of sight of the battery. They were only a few hundred yards around the coast of Odensö from the east end of the cable, just hidden around the northern tip of the island.

  The gig was already hoisted in the davits. ‘Away the gig,’ ordered Molineaux, hefting his musket on one shoulder.

  ‘Wish you’d let us come with you, like,’ said Endicott.

  Molineaux shook his head. ‘I need you, Red, and Ben to stay on board with the pill-roller to make sure his lordship doesn’t try to sail off without us.’

  Endicott looked about the deck. ‘Where is his nibs, anyroad?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ admitted Molineaux. Bullivant had gone below with Thornton shortly after their confrontation. ‘Out of our hair for now, that’s all that matters. Mr Uren! Perhaps you’d be so kind as to come with me, Burgess, O’Leary and Yorath?’

  ‘Stay where you are, Uren!’ commanded Bullivant.

  ‘Oh Christ,’ muttered Molineaux, and turned in time to see Bullivant emerge from the after hatch with a double-barrelled shotgun in his hands.

  ‘My lord!’ exclaimed Charlton. ‘I must protest!’

  ‘I’ve had enough of this foolishness,’ said Bullivant. ‘I’m taking command now. Tell the blackamoor to put down his musket, unless he wants his ugly head blown off.’

  ‘Do as he says, Molineaux,’ Charlton said quietly.

  ‘But, sir…!’

  ‘That’s an order, damn you!’

  Beaten – for now – the petty officer unslung the musket and lowered it to the deck. He knew that Bullivant was resolved to surrender himself. Well, that was no skin off Molineaux’s nose, but he’d rot in hell before he’d let himself be taken by the Russians. He measured the distance from where he stood to the bulwark, hoping that Endicott, Hughes and Iles would have sense enough to follow him. But running would mean leaving Killigrew for the Russians, and he was damned if he was going to do that.

  ‘What do you propose we do, my lord?’ asked Charlton.

  ‘Nothing
at all,’ Bullivant said smugly. ‘We’re going to wait here until the Atalanta gets here – can’t be long now – and then surrender ourselves. I’m sure the Russians will be lenient.’

  ‘I wish I shared your confidence, my lord,’ said a familiar voice. Molineaux’s heart leaped when he saw Killigrew climbing up out of the after hatch. ‘And please don’t tell me I’m supposed to be in bed,’ he added to Charlton.

  ‘Nothing was further from my mind, sir,’ the assistant surgeon assured him with relief.

  ‘You stay out of this, Killigrew,’ said Bullivant. ‘I’m in command now.’

  ‘Really?’ The commander squared up to him, and with a movement like lightning snatched the shotgun from Bullivant’s hands. ‘I’m resuming command. One more word out of you, my lord, and I’ll have you locked in one of the cabins until we’re safe.’

  ‘You wouldn’t dare!’

  ‘That’s three words,’ said Killigrew. ‘Hughes! Be so good as to escort his lordship below.’

  Hughes grinned. ‘My pleasure, sir.’ He advanced on the viscount.

  ‘You lay one hand on me, my man, and I shall have you flogged to within an inch of your life!’

  ‘Better to be flogged within an inch of my life than shot an inch beyond it.’ Hughes tried to take Bullivant by the arm. The viscount sidestepped and tried to strike him across the face, but Hughes caught him by the wrist before the blow landed. Spinning Bullivant around, he twisted his arm up into the small of his back.

  ‘Arrggghhhh! Damn you, Killigrew! I’ll have you hanged for this!’

  ‘Look!’ Endicott pointed above the trees on the mainland to the north of the channel.

  Everyone turned to see a great black plume of cloud rising up behind the trees, silhouetted against the purple night sky.

  ‘The Atalanta,’ Bullivant surmised with a smile, taking pleasure in Killigrew’s defeat even if it meant his own capture. ‘She’ll be here any moment. You’ve run out of time, Killigrew.’

  Molineaux felt his heart sink. The paddle-sloop could only be minutes away. There was no time left to break the chain cable, no way they could fight back, nothing they could do but wait for the Russians to come and take them.

  ‘We’re not beaten yet.’ Killigrew looked around in desperation, and saw the channel ahead.

  ‘Odensö Channel,’ said Thornton. ‘There’s no escape that way: it’s a dead end.’

  Killigrew ignored him. ‘Up the gig! Molineaux, Endicott and Iles – heave up the anchor. Loose the sails, Mr Uren! Carry on, Hughes.’

  ‘Aye, aye, sir.’ The Welshman marched Bullivant to the after hatch.

  The three Ramillies weighed anchor, while the boatswain and the Milenions unfurled the sails.

  ‘Two points to port, Yorath,’ said Killigrew.

  ‘Two points it is, sir,’ the sailor responded, as smartly as any bluejacket.

  With the wind off the starboard beam, the Milenion gathered way and plunged deeper into the narrowing channel.

  ‘For God’s sake, Killigrew!’ protested Thornton. ‘You’re wasting your time! This channel’s a dead end. You’ll do no more than buy us a few more minutes.’

  ‘Scylla and Charybdis, Captain Thornton,’ said Killigrew. ‘If there’s one thing I learned from Captain Keppel, it’s this: when faced with a choice between two evils, always look for a third: it may be the least of the three.’

  * * *

  ‘Stop her,’ Lazarenko ordered as the Atalanta approached the chain cable. The deck ceased throbbing and the paddle-wheels churned to a halt. In the silence that followed, the only sound to be heard was the dripping of water from the paddles and the gentle slop of the waves against the sloop’s hull.

  ‘Well?’ demanded Nekrasoff. ‘Where the devil is the Milenion?’

  Lazarenko was at a loss. ‘I don’t understand it, sir. She hasn’t had time to get past the chain cable, and if she doubled back we’d’ve seen her, even in this light.’

  ‘Well, she must’ve gone somewhere,’ sniffed Nekrasoff. ‘Yachts don’t simply vanish into thin air.’

  On the shore a hundred yards away, a tall figure that could only be Chernyovsky had emerged from the trees and was waving to the paddle-sloop. Lazarenko took the speaking trumpet from the binnacle to address him.

  ‘Have you seen the Milenion?’

  Chernyovsky shook his head, and cupped his hands around his mouth to bellow back: ‘Haven’t you?’

  Nekrasoff snatched the speaking trumpet from Lazarenko. ‘How long have you been here?’

  ‘Over half an hour!’

  ‘There’s no way on earth the Milenion could have come so far in two hours,’ muttered Lazarenko. ‘It simply isn’t possible. Besides, the cable chain is still intact, that’s plain to see.’

  ‘Then we must have passed her!’ insisted Nekrasoff. ‘What about that inlet a few hundred yards back, to the left?’

  ‘The Odensö Channel? It’s a dead end: there’s a low bridge two-thirds of a mile down it.’

  ‘Does Killigrew know that?’

  ‘He must do. He was captured on Odensö yesterday; Chernyovsky and his men would have taken him across that bridge on the way to Ekenäs. Maybe he thinks if he hides in the channel until we’ve gone past, he’ll fool us into thinking he’s already got past the chain cable somehow.’

  ‘What kind of a fool does he take us for?’ snorted Nekrasoff.

  ‘He must be up that channel,’ said Lazarenko. ‘There’s nowhere else he can have gone.’

  ‘Then we’ve got him trapped!’ Nekrasoff said triumphantly. ‘Take us after him, Lazarenko.’

  ‘Yes, sir. Michmani Gavrilik! Order Inzhener Nikolaishvili to turn astern, half.’

  Nekrasoff raised the speaking trumpet to his lips once more. ‘Starshina Chernyovsky! We think they must have sailed the Milenion up the Odensö Channel. Take your men and ride through the forest to head him off at the bridge.’

  On the shore, the Cossack saluted and strode back into the woods, calling out to his men.

  The Atalanta’s engines started up once more, and the paddle-sloop backed up the inlet until it had passed the mouth of the channel. ‘Stop her!’ ordered Lazarenko. ‘Starboard the helm, Beregovoi! Turn ahead full!’

  The Atalanta nosed her way into the channel.

  Nekrasoff produced a cigarette, tapped it twice against his cigarette case, and lit it. ‘To use an English idiom, Lieutenant, I think we’ve finally run our quarry to ground.’

  * * *

  ‘By the mark, four!’ Charlie Ogilby called from the chains, reeling in the lead line. As soon as he had gathered it all in, he swung it around and around and let go again. The lead plopped into the water and sank to the depths, as the Milenion glided over it. ‘Less a quarter, four!’

  ‘The channel’s growing shallower,’ observed Thornton.

  ‘What’s our draught?’ asked Killigrew.

  ‘Eleven feet.’

  ‘Plenty of room.’ Killigrew tried to sound blasé. He was more concerned about the width of the channel. The deeper into it they sailed, the narrower it became. With less than forty feet on either side of the hull – less, when one took the shallows into account – there was no room to tack from side to side; all they needed was for the waterway to turn more than four points to windward, and they would be unable to proceed. For now they were clipping along at a comfortable two knots, close-hauled with the wind off the starboard bow. Sailing close to the wind off a leeward shore was dangerous enough; sailing close to the wind with a leeward shore to one side and a windward shore to the other, well… Killigrew would not have tried it except in extremis. Since they had no choice, he tried to look relaxed, as if he did this sort of thing every morning before breakfast.

  ‘And a half, three!’ called Ogilby.

  ‘Maybe we should put a reef or two in the sails,’ suggested Mackenzie. ‘With the shadows from these trees, we can hardly see where we’re going. If there’s an obstacle ahead, we’ll no’ have much time to avoid it. Or much r
oom, for that matter.’

  ‘Molineaux knows what he’s doing,’ said Killigrew. Molineaux had replaced Yorath at the helm as soon as they had run out of room to turn the schooner: in the seventeen years Killigrew had been at sea, he had never known a steadier hand at the wheel than the petty officer’s. ‘Keep her full, Molineaux.’

  ‘Aye, aye, sir.’ The petty officer came off the wind a little – not that he had much choice in the matter, given the restrictions of the channel – to keep their speed up, sailing as close to the left-hand side as he dared, using his own instincts to gauge the depths of the water as much as Ogilby’s cries from the chains.

  ‘And a quarter, three!’

  ‘Damn it, man!’ insisted Thornton. ‘We’re going too fast! That bridge can’t be far off… if we’re not careful, we’ll run slap-bang into it!’

  ‘That’s the general idea,’ agreed Killigrew.

  Thornton stared at him in the gloom. ‘Oh, sweet Jesus! You’re serious, aren’t you?’

  ‘It’s the only way out of here. My men and I crossed that bridge earlier today… yesterday, I mean…’ had it really been only twelve hours since Chernyovsky and his Cossacks had captured them on Odensö? ‘It’s pretty old and rickety. With any luck we’ll go straight through it.’

  ‘You trust to luck too much for my taste, Mr Killigrew.’

  ‘I don’t have much choice. Right now it’s one of the few weapons we have in our arsenal.’

  ‘By the mark, three… bridge coming up, Mr Killigrew!’

  ‘Very good. You’d best come in-board, Ogilby.’ Killigrew peered ahead, but he could make out little in the shadows cast by the moonlight on the trees. ‘You see it, Molineaux?’ he asked anxiously.

  ‘Aye, aye, sir. Clear as day.’ That was another good reason for having the petty officer at the helm at a time like this: his night vision was phenomenal, doubtless honed by his adolescent years as a burglar.

  ‘How far off?’

  ‘A hundred yards from the prow and closing fast, sir.’

  Killigrew strained his eyes against the darkness, but saw nothing. He was convinced that Molineaux had misjudged the distance in the poor light…