by Needle, Jan
‘Quick, sir!’ cried Timothy. ‘Never mind your shoes! Just run up bank before they shoot you down!’
Nelson laughed. He could be an aggravating man.
‘They are not shooting, Tim,’ he said. ‘Have you not noticed yet?’
Another volley rattled out, but he was right. It was not aimed at them, or even near them, it was on the other side of the battery. And then came shouts and cheering, which anyone could hear was English.
‘It’s Mounsey!’ Despard cried from to their left. ‘It’s the Blues! He’s attacking the Dons from across the river!’
Sailors, soldiers, officers then crashed forward through the undergrowth to finish them, but they were too late it seemed. There was a burst of shooting from further upstream, and this time Tim had no doubt the whoops were Indians, not monkeys. They had lain in wait for the escapers, with the rifles Despard had issued the night before, and were howling with joy at the thought of Spanish slaves.
‘Surgeon!’ shouted someone. ‘Tim Hastie, here’s a man is shot! Over here! Over here!’
‘And another here!’ yelled someone else. ‘He’s got one in the stomach!’
More cries from near and far, more rushings to and fro. But each fallen man had comrades, and none seemed mortal hurt. Until Mounsey and his forward party were ferried to the island to join Nelson and his fellow officers. After hands were shaken and congratulations made, Mounsey addressed the captain anxiously.
‘Sir, I need to beg a favour of you. One of my fellows has been bit by a serpent and is sorely taken. Dr Dancer has given him his best, but had then to tend to many others in the hospital.’
‘Many others? Why, how were they hit? The Spaniards are on the run!’
‘The hospital is filling rapidly. Not ball or bullet, but the bloody flux. Not to speak too frank, sir, the tents are all knee deep in liquid shit. And the ague, sir, the recurring fever. Sixteen new cases in as many minutes; or not far off it, though.’
‘And the serpent bite? How could I help you there?’
Mounsey turned his eyes from Nelson to Hastie. Whose reputation had spread widely through the Blues.
‘I implore you, Captain. If perhaps your surgeon? I beg you, sir. This man is desperate ill.’
It flashed through Hastie’s mind that Nelson was heading that way too. Caked in filthy red mud, barefoot, his wig askew, his skin a strange translucent white, he was displaying the tremors that were a certain sign.
‘Sir.’ he said. ‘Captain Nelson. I think you must sit down. I think I must prepare a potion for—’
A glare of anger. Tim Hastie turned away.
‘I beg your pardon, sir. Captain Mounsey. Where is this man? Lead me to him, instantly.’
The soldier, when Tim came to him, had little time to live. He was lying on a pallet almost naked, but twisted like a broken rope. His body was no longer white but yellow, almost a vivid yellow, with black strings like channels proud beneath his skin, and strange fluids were emitting almost from his pores. His flesh was carved with furrows where he had clawed himself, the flesh below was pink and weeping.
‘What happened? Where did the serpent bite?’
It was in the eye. The snake had been hanging from a branch as the soldier had stumbled through the thicket. If he had seen it, he would probably have thought it was a creeper. His screams had ‘been enough to wake the dead,’ and had got louder, much, before diminishing.
The flesh was necrotising before Tim’s eyes. It was like nothing that he had ever seen, or expected to again. It was as if the flesh were dissolving.
Now he was there, nobody expected him to do anything. It was a token, that was all, it was his sad duty as a man of medicine. All around the soldier were other dying men, not one was injured, not even by a fang. The smell was like the bowels of the world. Or hell.
And Nelson, whom he’d left a mile away, was sickening. By Tim’s computation, they had reached the river entrance some twenty days before. By Tim’s observation, if not by Dr Moseley’s or by Dancer’s, the crisis had arrived.
Death was about to scythe them down.
Sixteen
But first, there was a fortress to be won. Not five miles from the battery they’d taken, according to the dozen Spaniards they had captured, lay the San Juan keep, with its surrounding huts and pens. Grateful at having been rescued from the Mosquito men – who had assumed that they were theirs by right of conquest – they held nothing back. And swore, also, that no one had escaped to give a warning.
Polson, cockahoop at the almost bloodless victory, was prepared to believe them, but Nelson and Despard indeed were not. When Tim Hastie returned – intent on making Nelson rest, and eat, and catch up on lost sleep if only for an hour – he was too late.
‘Gone?’ he asked of Mounsey (feeling sadly like a country booby). ‘Gone where? How? When?’
He did not really need to ask, but it was soon confirmed. A canoe with six stout native paddlers had set out to go upstream, against a current which would get stronger as it neared the rapids below the fort. Polson had cautioned them to wait until the morrow, which had made Nelson more determined. The only waiting he would do, he said, was when they were close enough to be shot. And then only so that he could assess the situation in full morning light.
‘But how was the captain?’ Hastie asked, trying hard to hide the anxiety in his voice. ‘He has not eaten for two days. He is very weak. He has all the symptoms of the recurrent ague.’ A thought hit him. ‘And did he even have his shoes?’
Nelson’s problem with eating enough was one he shared with many of the party. For days now they had relied on foraging by the Indians, and the captain – while not finicky – found some of the ‘rations’ hard to force down. Snake and iguana could be made acceptable, although he preferred not to see them being skinned or cooked, but other meals induced a certain nausea. His last expected ‘feast’ had been ruined for him when he had been led to a pot upon the fire to admire ‘a canny little stew,’ and found a mess of whole skinned monkeys bubbling.
More worrying, however, were the chills, the sweats, the shakings and the retching, which was dry and painful in the main, so that actual vomit would have been a great relief. As he got more ill, he got less and less inclined to take Tim’s advice, and more and more prone to snapping at him.
‘What is the matter, though?’ Despard asked Tim one evening, when Nelson had been too weak to stay out round the fire and talk. ‘We all get a go from time to time, malaria’s like that, but this is painful to watch. He is so thin, so small. Why does it affect him so very bad?’
‘He caught it when a child,’ Tim Hastie said. ‘He was in India, where he claims the mosquitos are the size of wrens. He has been bit again since we hit this coast, and got cold, and wet, and tired, too.’
‘Bah, mosquitos,’ Despard said. ‘Dr Dancer says they’re naught to do with it.’
‘Aye,’ said Timothy. ‘As does Dr Moseley, the surgeon general. But you note he did not join us here, don’t you?’
‘Bah!’ repeated Despard. ‘More comfortable to stay in Jamaica, and would not you do so if you had the power? Why bark yourself if you’ve got a dog? A good name, too! Dancer, dancing to his master’s tune.’
When Nelson returned next day, even Colonel Polson expressed concern at his condition. He did have his shoes on, but like all his clothes they were drab and broken, red and black with river mud.
‘Good heavens, sir!’ said Polson. ‘You look extremely…er. I beg you, sit you down. One will bring brandy. Tea.’
Nelson shook his head so violently he almost lost his balance. Tim Hastie moved beside him to offer support. That too was shaken off.
‘I assure you, gentlemen, I have never felt better in my life. We have seen a sight to fill a heart with joy. Up river. A fort ripe for taking down, a settlement of shacks that we can billet in, and fields of cattle begging to be slaughtered. Fruit and vegetables too. Goodbye scurvy!’
‘No hurry, though, no hurry!’ Polson boom
ed. ‘I have news, sir, great news! Major MacDonald has a division of the Royal Irish, and I have called them up to here by letter sent downstream. A day or two at most, I hope!’
Despard was dubious.
‘MacDonald is…well. A day or two sounds like all my-eye to me. How long did it take us to do the trip?’
‘Ah,’ said Polson, ‘but there is more, sir. Major Lawrie has at last arrived. Here, in this camp. He has more Mosquitos. Guides for us. They know the land like their very own. We will move with great dispatch.’
‘And where was he a month ago?’ said Nelson. Had his voice not been so weak it would have been sour. ‘I recall, sir, that then he was to provide us with many settlers, English, Scotch and Welsh, more slaves, more fighting negroes. He did not turn up at all.’
Hastie, with great determination, moved the captain to a shelter and a place to sit, and summoned up a drink and vermicelli. Nelson resisted weakly before giving in. But neither he nor Despard were much mollified.
‘There is a hurry, sir,’ said Despard, ‘and Captain Nelson has the right of it. If the Dons don’t know by now we’re here, I’ll eat my musket. What of the cannonade last evening? What of the small shot and the roaring? And one of them will certainly have run and spread the news. We must move at once.’
Polson was stubborn, but he was wilting under pressure. Major Lawrie, who for all his failings was a lively man, shortly added his enthusiasm, and promised his new Indians were devils for a fight. Finally it was decided they would wait until MacDonald’s soldiers were with them, then move ahead by water. Nelson, underneath a shelter, claimed the news had given him new life.
The afternoon was beautiful as the boats and pangas and canoes set off. A small garrison was left behind to guard the island stronghold, and the river was broad and easy enough to spread a sense of well-being and expectation of success. The officers found themselves discussing Governor Dalling’s original wild confidence of taking Grenada, cutting a canal to the Pacific, and ultimately ending Spanish power in America.
‘It seemed a dream to me,’ confided Polson. ‘I thought it worth a try, but…well, what a dream! A few stout men and ships, a push upriver, and we destroy the Donnish empire!’
Even Despard, a clear-eyed man indeed, did not pooh-pooh it. He spared a glance for Nelson, though. Nelson was suffering. His skin was white, with a greenish tinge. His hands were shaking visibly.
‘Bad cess to it!’ said Despard. ‘We have come so far, that I truly think we cannot fail!’
Nelson raised his eyes to the north and west. The river was wide, the sky was blue and pale. Except above the mountains. Above the mountains, clouds were gathering, grey white and deeper black.
‘Ask Major Lawrie,’ Nelson said. ‘He knows all about promising the world, then wasting time. He knows when the rains will start to fall. In earnest.’
There had been brief showers for some days now. Brief but sometimes violent. When the rains came, they turned the tropic world quite upside down. Even black men sometimes could not live in it.
It was Despard who tried to break the mood.
‘We’d better make the signal, Nelson sir,’ he said. ‘Colonel Polson, around that bend we’ll see the castle, and the castle will see us. Unless we plan to attack full on, immediately, we must pull in, and land our men, regroup.’
‘Attack full on,’ said Nelson. ‘Colonel, I promise you – it is the only way.’
This had been discussed though, until the time the boats set forth up the final stretch. Nelson and Despard had argued passionately that the fort should be stormed, and taken with the element of surprise. Even if the defenders had been warned, the speed and power would overwhelm them.
But Colonel Polson was a soldier. He wanted his main force on land. The fortress would be taken by the book. He was the commander.
Nelson said nothing more as the boats nosed to the bank. His teeth were chattering like castanets.
Seventeen
Although Lawrie did not know exactly when the rain would come – no man did, however many claimed to – he knew that when it fell it would fall like fury. On islands like Jamaica, the season could be wet. On the Mosquito Shore, it could be little short of unbelievable. Rainfall, in a few short weeks, could be measured in feet, not inches. Ten, twelve, feet could fall, and river banks would wash away, and men and animals would be ejected, rotting, out to sea. Despard and Nelson knew this, and tried to cajole the colonel into reason. But Polson was confident, and trusted in his God or Providence.
From the first setting out for the last few miles, however, the hardships piled against them. Polson favoured hacking a pathway up the river, arguing that boats would be blown out of the water as soon as they were seen. But however many Indians attacked it, the matted undergrowth always won. After several hours, they had hardly gone a mile.
The Indians, surly and disaffected by the white man’s perfidy – they had been threatened with hanging instead of slaves and plunder – no longer cared to do their unspoken duty of protection. Big cats prowled close and unwarned of, snakes went unreported until white soldiers almost walked on them.
Most terrible was when some men – desperate through heat and physical exhaustion – fell on springs and rivulets to slake their thirst. Nelson was one of the first to be blighted. Within a few scant hours of drinking from a stream, he was attacked by violent, racking pains in his belly, then started spouting vomit in thin, excruciating arcs. Then came the flux, the diarrhoea, the shaming floods of faeces.
It turned out later, when Lawrie questioned one of the more loyal Indians, that springs were often poisoned by the local natives, for fishing purposes. Signs had been left as usual – sometimes no more than a knotted bunch of creepers – but the Mosquitos had not cared to point out and interpret them.
Tim Hastie was beside himself, although within not many minutes he had joined his captain at ‘the squat and vomit.’ In camp, the first thing dug was always the ‘necessary house,’ a euphemism that a man from Liverpool had found ridiculous until he needed one. Now, such a place was undreamed of luxury. They shat where they fell, or where they stood. They often sicked up while they shat, into their stinking laps.
Hastie was strong, Nelson, by now, was weaker than a milk-fed child. His determination, however, was invincible. Tim tried to help him, but more usually was helped himself. Springs were no longer for drinking from, but for wading into and washing off the filth – never mind the leeches and the flies. The castle, when it came in sight, was strangely beautiful in the limpid air. Strangely, too, it had been newly painted white.
‘It is mocking us,’ Tim breathed. And Nelson growled: ‘Be not mocked.’
It was hours before the full force was up within attacking distance, and by then their spies and scouts had garnered many things. The governor, far from sitting in blissful ignorance of the approaching forces, had known since the downstream outpost had been overrun that the enemy was near. He had then despatched a message up the river, along with his wife and children. They were bound for safety in Granada.
‘Hellfire! Shit!’ said Colonel Polson. ‘They must have heard the guns when we stormed the islet. Despard! Can you not send canoes to cut them off?’
‘It’s not many miles further to the lake,’ Despard replied. ‘They are possibly two days ahead of us. If you order me, sir, I will waste my time and energy. But—’
‘Do not be flippant, sir! It ill becomes you. Then send men down to secure the cattle and the other livestock. Those huts must be their storerooms I suppose. Lay them to waste!’
‘I am sorry for it, sir,’ said another officer, ‘but I fear you are too late. I have had men out. The beasts are dead or done for.’
It was an Irish voice. Lieutenant Fahy, of the Royal Americans. He was an acknowledged master of bushland fighting. Polson glared at him.
‘Dead and done for? What sort of talk is that? What beasts?’
‘The beasts of the field,’ said Fahy, evenly. ‘The cattle for the garrison
. Before we got here most of them were slaughtered where they stood. Provisions for the leopards and the pumas, sir, and very welcome, to be sure.’
‘What, all of the beasts? But—’ Polson broke off, and forced a laugh. ‘Ah well, we’ll starve them out with ease, then. We’ll lay them siege immediately.’
‘Sir,’ said Nelson. His voice was strained, almost inaudible.
‘Sir,’ said Despard, taking over the lead. ‘We have no time for sieges. Captain Nelson and myself agreed it yesterday. The time has come to push home our advantage. The men are fired up for it. Even the natives are keen as mustard, I have made them more new hints. We must press onwards, assault them from the front. They will fall or run, sir. By God, I promise you!’
‘And what is this advantage you are wishing on?’ said Polson, acidly. ‘Name this advantage, Despard. They are in a fifty foot high fort, fully manned, with God alone knows how many guns. And—’
‘Near forty, sir,’ Lieutenant Fahy cut in. ‘Swivels, cannon, at least one mortar. And near a hundred soldiers with a fair good few trained gunners.’
‘So pah to your advantage!’ Polson snapped at Despard. ‘So if we attack they cut us down for practice! So we stay put, sir, and we starve them out!’
Fahy was smiling. He had a very Irish sense of humour, Tim Hastie thought.
‘Excepting, sir, begging your honour’s pardon—’
‘What?’
‘Excepting, sir, they’ve took some of the cattle inside with them. And some goats, sir. Not many, sir, but enough for…ah, let’s say a good few weeks. Sir.’
‘And the point is,’ Nelson said. ‘The point is, Colonel Polson…’
‘The point is,’ Despard continued strongly, ‘surprise works on men in the most…’
‘Surprising…’ Nelson breathed.
‘Ways!’ Despard was laughing. ‘The captain’s right, sir! We must attack them now. It’s the last thing in the world they’ll be expecting. They have no idea of our numbers, we have everything to our advantage. Good God, sir, our Mosquito men are slavering! Slaves and Spanish women!’
