‘Find me some clothes, mi angel,’ he said importantly, at her wide-eyed apprehension. ‘Tonight I’m about the work of the patriots.’
Looking at the impassive Charcas, she shivered. ‘Mi querido, you know what it is that-’
‘The clothes!’ Serrano demanded.
She returned with them, herself arrayed in a cape and hood.
‘Rafaela – you cannot possibly-’
‘I can go in places denied to a man. Will you stop me playing my part?’
The three hurried down the Calle Victoria to the mansion of Martin de Alzaga where they were hastily admitted.
‘Senor Charcas,’ the silver-haired man said softly. ‘Is it planned?’
‘I have word from Don Baltasar, now in amicable alliance with the royalists. It is … that you should proceed as planned.’
‘Ah,’ breathed Alzaga, ‘I shall start hiring tomorrow. And who are these?’ he added carefully.
‘Servants of the fatherland!’ Serrano said loudly, with a bow.
‘I see.’
Charcas allowed a thin smile to show. ‘Senor Alzaga is a rich man but he is dedicating his fortune to the glory of his country.’
‘And to his honour,’ Serrano blurted.
‘He is funding the construction of a secret tunnel, which will begin under the seminary of St Francis – and will end under the barrack rooms of the soldiers. Thirty-six barrels of gunpowder will put an end to them as they sleep.’
‘Wait for it … About turn!’ Sergeant Dodd’s effortless bellow echoed across the square to the lines of Royal Marines opposite. They stamped about crisply, their dress faultless. A few passers-by stopped to watch but most ignored them.
‘Companyyyyyy … halt!’ Dodd strode up and inspected them before reporting to Clinton with a quivering salute. The lieutenant acknowledged and, accompanied by Dodd, went over for an officer’s inspection. That complete, Dodd stood before the men while Clinton reported to Kydd, who had emerged from the fort.
He went up and down the ranks, here and there giving words of praise and encouragement. ‘A splendid body of men, Lieutenant. Carry on, please.’
The men marched off, Kydd receiving a magnificent salute from Dodd. The drill had been devised to give heart to the men, solid evidence that the world, while being out of joint, was still under discipline.
‘A dish of tea, William?’ Kydd offered.
Kydd’s room was cheerless and cold, a fire now a luxury, and the two kept their coats buttoned.
‘How goes it, then?’
Clinton paused before he answered. ‘I’d be to loo’ard of the truth should I say we’re improving our situation. Those on sentry-go are taunted daily and some even suffer rotten food thrown at them. They’re being tempted by offers of women and employment if they desert – but no chance of that with our chaps, sir.’
‘It’s asking much of ’em, I believe, to stand alone on those far posts in the city. If things begin to …’
‘They’ll do their duty, sir, never fear.’
‘If only those damnable reinforcements …’
They took their tea, the leaves used twice to eke them out, in silence. So close to the foreshore the miasma of rotting fish offal was always on the air, and the harsh cawing of a soaring condor sounded above the rumble of a passing cart.
‘And they’re changing – the people, I mean,’ Clinton said. ‘They’re now openly contemptuous, defiant, hard to handle as a crowd.’
The young man was maturing fast: only in his early twenties, his face was acquiring lines of care and his voice now had the practised calm of authority. He and the fine long-service Dodd were a shining credit to their service and Kydd wished he could express this – but it would never do to say it.
‘How are our Royal Blues bearing their lot? The short canny, I mean.’
Clinton gave a wry smile. ‘They say as how they’ve always held our reasty pork is to be preferred over foreign kickshaws.’
They were reduced to picking the bread – going through the last of the hard-tack for insect life – and buying up voyage-end stores from merchant ships, but in the absence of provisions from up-country there was little else. Kydd knew the older marines were making light of conditions for the sake of the younger men.
An aide interrupted: ‘Captain Kydd? General Beresford desires you should attend on him at convenience, sir.’
He rose, dreading what emergency it was this time.
Beresford sat moodily at his desk, twirling a quill, and looked up with a start when Kydd entered. ‘Ah, Kydd. There’s trouble afoot, I’m persuaded. One of our patrols found three stand of muskets in a house not far from here. Someone’s arming the mob and it has to be stopped.’
‘Have we any conceiving of how they’re entering, sir?’
‘No. I’ve doubled up on checkpoints into the city where we search everything – it must be by another route.’
‘By sea.’
‘It seems so,’ Beresford said flatly.
Kydd was at a loss to know how to prevent this with nearly all of his vessels blockading the far shore, but he replied, ‘I’ll do what I can, sir.’
Beresford nodded bleakly and Kydd took his leave.
It came to him as he made his way back to his office. Some thirty miles further down the coast there was a discreet landing place, Ensenada de Barragan, where in the past dutiable goods had been smuggled into the viceroyalty by that unofficial arrangement with the authorities.
But his little navy was now stretched out along the opposite coast, bar one ship in repair, Protector, and Hellard’s Stalwart, in only that morning, her captain and crew exhausted after days in action. Rather than drive them to sea once more, Kydd’s impulse was to spare them and do it himself.
‘I’m taking Stalwart away,’ he announced. ‘Muster the Protectors as her crew.’
They put out into driving rain from the north-west and squally, spiteful winds, which kicked up an uncomfortable short sea against the incoming tide, yet having the advantage that it was fair for Barragan.
Stalwart was plainly built with few comforts but a snug ‘mess-deck’ had been fashioned within the cargo hold. In the way of sailors, it had all the touches of home in a space that would be spurned in a London rookery – racks against the side for mess utensils, hooks to take the ditty bags that held each individual’s ready-use gear, mirrors and small ornaments, and forward a neat rectangular bin for stowed hammocks.
In accordance with Kydd’s own standing orders, they stopped on the way and boarded the larger flat-bottomed fishing boats, a form of deterrence against contraband that was proving remarkably effective.
Then, as the wan sun was lowering over the flat and bleak shore, they came up with the maze of channels and shoals that was their objective. Off the point there were four vessels – a sumaca, a lugger and two faluchos, local craft, two-masted with a lateen and jib. Even as Kydd watched sail was hoisted and they were rapidly off downwind.
‘A bad conscience,’ grinned Dougal, Stalwart’s master’s mate, who’d insisted on keeping an eye on his ship.
‘We’ll have that gaff higher,’ Kydd snapped. These could either be innocents wary of pirates or, indeed, those they were looking for, but either way he had to stop them to prove the case.
The chase was played well by the Spanish. Fairly quickly they separated, the larger sumaca heading for deeper water offshore and the two faluchos shying from Stalwart’s progress to each side, the smaller lugger with its three masts beating hard into the wind and away. ‘The sumaca,’ Kydd decided, and they headed after it out to sea.
It didn’t take long to discover that the bigger craft was making better speed, standing away in regular bursts of white until it was obvious they had lost the race. Kydd swore and turned to see where faluchos were. They had vanished.
It was impossible – but there was no sign of them. Feeling foolish, he called down the deck. ‘Stalwarts, ahoy! Any who saw where the faluchos went, sing out.’
‘S
aw ’em down sail an’ then go in a creek or some such,’ a young lad said diffidently, touching his cap.
He pointed out where it had happened. The area had once been a watering place for ships but had gradually silted, the dark grey mud now extending for miles with an offshore island entrapped in its creeping embrace. An old coastal fort was some miles inland, possibly connected through channels, but the evening was well advanced and there was nothing for it but to leave further investigation for the morning light.
Taking position off the creek the anchor went down in two fathoms, the weather easing with the onset of night, and as the darkness crept in they snugged down for the long hours until morning.
Kydd had served in the Caribbean in Seaflower, a tiny cutter. There, the threats had been many and diverse, and now his old instincts came back to assert themselves. While there was light to see, he had the two bow carronades loaded and primed and the arms chest of cutlasses and pistols open and handy. A pair of lookouts took position fore and aft. Satisfied, he went below – not to the rabbit hutch of a captain’s cabin but to the mess-deck with the soft light of its single oil lamp. The seamen looked up in surprise, then dismay. A post-captain, even in worn and faded sea rig, was a formidable being and now their stand-down time was set fair to be an awkward trial.
‘Stand fast the puffery – we’re all Stalwarts here,’ Kydd said easily, taking a stool at the corner of the small table. ‘What’s for scran, cuffin?’
Easing into a smile, Dougal slid across the bread barge, a wicker basket that held pre-broken hard tack and carefully sliced cheese. Kydd took a piece of the wood-hard and greyish cheese and helped himself to the dry biscuit, which he calmly tapped on the table. No weevils emerged and he tucked in with appreciation, feeling the disbelieving eyes of the three foremast hands on him.
‘We’ve the Dago biltong to follow,’ piped up Beekman, a South African midshipman originally brought aboard Diomede in Cape Town. He hesitantly offered some to Kydd.
‘Thank ’ee,’ he said, with a grin, and set to on the dried beef strips. These were not the spicy, toothsome morsels of Africa he’d enjoyed but they would have to do. With no galley fire in a craft so diminutive there could be no coffee or piping hot kai – cocoa stripped from a chocolate block – until they made port once more but there was a welcome mug of grog: Kydd had insisted that it be included in the rations.
As the evening drew on, the talk eddied back and forth over the age-old sailorly concerns of wind and weather, the quality of Buenos Aires as a step-ashore port, the prospects for action. Inevitably it turned to the immediate future, and Beekman asked, ‘Sir, if you please, things are in a pretty moil, you’ll agree. What will happen to us if- ?’
‘Don’t pay any mind to that, m’lad,’ Kydd said heartily. ‘We’ve one parcel of Spanish locked up on the north shore and we’ve just beaten the other. All we’ve to do is hold out until the reinforcements arrive.’
‘When’s that, then, sir?’ the young man said artlessly.
‘Who’s to say? Tomorrow, next week? On the way here the commodore sent dispatches from St Helena requesting ’em, which I saw with my own eyes. They’ll be here shortly, never fear.’
Knowing that the rest of the table were behind him, the midshipman persisted. ‘If’n Mr Liniers gets across and joins with the goochies, the Army’ll be hard pressed to hold ’em. And if we can’t get ships in close to give fire …’
Kydd nodded: these were no ignorant loobies and deserved an answer. ‘If things go against us, we retire,’ he said flatly. ‘Take the Army off and return to Cape Town. No heroic last stands. Clear?’
It seemed to satisfy and he stretched and yawned. ‘Well, I’m for my ’mick. I’ll take a turn about the uppers and then get my head down. Dougal, I’m to be called the instant there’s a change o’ weather or tide.’
‘Aye aye, sir.’
‘Goodnight, then,’ Kydd pronounced, and left for his customary sniff at the wind before sleep.
The weather had eased even further: there was nothing but a light offshore breeze and the pale dappling of wavelets. The moon was totally hidden behind low cloud that stretched in a sullen stillness in every direction, leaving a dull, uniform luminosity just sufficient to make out the low, scrubby shoreline.
He shivered. The thought came again that the sooner he was quit of this place the better. Then he paused for a moment, something subliminal touching his senses. The scene was blameless, a bird flapping on the sea the only disturbance, and nothing but a grey desolation of mud-flats and reeds.
Hairs prickled on his neck – there was something.
‘Keep a bright lookout, you men,’ he called, and stood for a space, listening intently. Nothing. Then something caught his eye along the shoreline to the left – he strained to see but couldn’t make out anything, then tried the old lookout’s ruse of looking off to one side to trick the eye into perceiving motion.
And then he saw. somewhere among the scruffy wooded inland, a barely perceptible spider-web-thin vertical line that moved. And, close by, another. He froze, trying to make sense of it. Then he had it.
‘Get below and turn up the hands!’ he barked. They tumbled up, confused and blinking.
‘Sir?’ Dougal said, with a bewildered look.
‘The Spanish. They’re in the channel under oars and mean to take us.’ Too long the stalker, they had not imagined themselves to be prey – Kydd mentally took off his hat to the audacious commander who had looked to turn the tables on them.
It was their masts he had seen, unavoidably above the level of the undergrowth as they made their way stealthily out to the open water. The question now was whether to open fire as soon as they were visible or keep quiet to lure them near and to destruction.
But there was a big risk. If these two had soldiers to swell their boarders the Stalwarts might easily be overwhelmed. And if they were resolutely handled they could press home their attack through Stalwart’s ‘broadside’, which consisted only of the two carronades and two swivels. After that they were defenceless, apart from their small arms.
This implied a single course of action: allow the Spanish to believe their surprise had been successful, then open up with everything that could fire in a single devastating blast of shot. In the night it might be terrifying enough to deter the onslaught or, at the very least, to gain them enough time to reload.
‘Silence fore ’n’ aft!’ Kydd snapped, and made his dispositions, having the men keep out of sight until his order. Each had a blade weapon and a brace of pistols with four muskets lying in the chest, while the oil lamp was suspended out of sight by rope yarns, ready to be lashed to the foremast as a fighting lantern for reloading the carronades.
There was little more he could do.
Water chuckled against the vessel’s side, the wind dropping yet more to a cold night zephyr bringing a stillness that carried every sound in breathless clarity. The distant betraying slither and clunk of unmuffled oars on the air became plain as the two faluchos emerged from the channel and came around. Kydd gave a conspiratorial grin at Dougal, lying on the deck next to him – that would never do in a professional cutting-out expedition.
It was a half-mile of hard pulling for them; they could have hoisted sail and done it in less time but the sudden pale glimmer of canvas would have been an immediate giveaway. Kydd was content to let them tire themselves, the better to dull their fighting ardour.
At two hundred yards he hissed, ‘Stand by!’
In the winter gloom men gripped their weapons, loosened pistols in readiness and tensed for the order.
‘Fire!’ Kydd roared.
The night was split apart by multiple flashes and concussion as ball, grape and musket fire hammered into the hapless faluchos, shrieks and shouts accompanying the mayhem. Slewing sideways the leader canted to one side, out of the fight, but the other stretched out frantically with the obvious intention of falling on Stalwart before her guns were reloaded.
The fighting lantern wa
s in place but to go through the motions with sponge, rammer and charge was asking a lot of men who were half blinded by gun-flash. Kydd felt a creeping anxiety as the enemy craft came in fast, broad on their beam. An officer was shouting encouragement and foreign-sounding cheers came floating over the water.
Kydd saw the white face of Beekman looking back at him from forward, waiting on his decision. A gentle puff of the night breeze came; they were at anchor, stemming the slight current and-
‘Get that mizzen hoisted!’ he bellowed, in sudden conviction.
Startled, men turned in incomprehension.
‘Now! Hoist the bugger!’ His voice cracked with the effort, but it lashed them into movement. Two seamen clambered aft and helped him raise the ponderous sail. It flapped twice, then bellied, and under the leverage of sail aft on the anchor forward, Stalwart obediently began swinging into the wind – bows on to the approaching enemy.
It had worked! Now the target they offered was reduced and, most important, under oars there was no easy coming in to board at an angle amidships; instead they must either grapple and come in over the bow by ones and twos or crab around to get alongside while under fire the whole time.
They chose the bows.
With three men on muskets and pistols and two reloading, Stalwart did what she could but a grapnel came sailing in and hauled the craft together, the other bowsprit spearing over their fore-deck until the two were awkwardly locked side by side. With a roar of triumph the enemy boarders crowded forward.
Throwing aside their empty pistols the defenders drew their cutlasses and, with bared teeth, dared them to try. The first two ran out on the bowsprit – if Stalwart had had pikes they would have been dead men – and with sword points extended they leaped down either side, then raced for the defenders.
Kydd had four men in a line across the wider part of the triangular fore-deck and the two closed with a vicious clash of steel. Dougal took one and Kydd the other but, behind, two more were jumping down and Kydd was aware of the set-faced petty officer beside him lunging forward to meet them, and a vague impression of their fourth giving savage blows to one side before he was swallowed in the confusion.
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