'Doubtless we soon will be,' said Quilhampton, 'Britannia contra mundum.'
'Now who's bleating about "we happy few"?' Mylchrist crowed.
'I think, gentlemen, it's time for sleep…' Hill tossed off his pot and rose. 'God grant we're out of this pestilential spot tomorrow morning.'
'Amen to that…'
Below his pacing figure the ship slept, exhausted with the seemingly endless exertions of the day. Only the anchor-watch were about, huddled in corners and beneath the boats to avoid the drizzle that hardened from time to time into heavy showers of torrential rain.
The night was black, the wind tugging at the ship and moaning in the lower rigging, rising periodically to a higher cadence as it shifted a point and freshened. But it always fell away again, never sustaining a promise of abandoned violence, though every time it rose, Drinkwater's heart beat faster in anticipation of fresh disaster. In such a state of mind, sleep was impossible.
So he walked his quarterdeck in the time-honoured tradition, between the mainmast and the carved taffrail, for no better reason than it seemed the only way to pass the time of anxiety and to be on hand if the worst of his fears came to pass. He was half-dead with fatigue, his brain had lost the power of coherent thought, yet was too active to permit sleep. In an unending kaleidoscope it reviewed a tumbling series of images, of monstrous black ships in the mighty combers of the Horn, of yawning caverns of water that threatened to suck him down into the bowels of hell, of the laughing mockery of the white-lady of his nightmare who, inexplicably and with a paralysing abruptness, changed into the dark and lovely vision of Doña Ana Maria. And even as he sank fantastically upon her white and ample breasts he found the scimitar smile of Rubalcava and the triumphant eyes of the Arguello brothers. Above these images the imperious shadow of Hortense Santhonax manipulated the wires of a marionette.
In all this waking, walking nightmare he paced the deck, his senses all but dead to anything beyond the fury of his hallucinating brain, his cloak wrapped round him, his eyes stark staring into the windy blackness of the night, until at last he slept, slumped against a quarterdeck carronade.
Lieutenant Quilhampton jumped into the shallows and splashed ashore followed by Sergeant Blixoe, four marines and the bowman of the cutter. As the boat was dragged onto the beach and Blixoe wandered off, following the scuff marks of the deserters' footprints in the sand, Quilhampton strode along the beach to the stove barge. He was joined by Marsden, the carpenter. Both of them stood for a moment looking at the split and holed planks in the side of the boat, the results of a few moments' work with a boarding axe.
'Tomahawk,' opined Marsden, laying the finger of a horny hand upon the splintered wood. 'I can patch it to get her back on board.' He patted the gunwhale of the boat.
'Very well…'
'I'll need a hand…'
Quilhampton called the cutter's crew over to assist and they lifted her gunwhale and braced her at a practical angle with foot-stretchers and bottom boards so that Marsden could plug the hole with a greased canvas patch covered with a lead tingle. While the work progressed, Quilhampton followed Blixoe up the beach.
The marine sergeant had orders not to proceed out of sight of the ship and Quilhampton followed him to the highest sand-dune in their vicinity.
'Bugger-all, sir,' said Blixoe, turning as Quilhampton came up with him.
'Did you really expect 'em to be in sight, Blixoe?' Quilhampton grinned despite himself, for the marine was itching to fire his musket and dispel the obloquy the returned Mount had heaped upon him. 'No scalps for you, Sergeant, I'm afraid.'
'One 'opes, sir, one 'opes,' Blixoe replied grimly, still searching the desolate locality like a hound sniffing the wind. 'What about there?' He pointed. Beyond the dunes stretched the fingers of an inlet, spreading northwards, cut off from the ocean by a long isthmus which culminated behind them in Punta de los Reyes. An Indian village, a miserable collection of adobe dwellings overhung by the wispy smoke of cooking fires, lay some miles to the northwards.
Quilhampton shook his head. 'No… do you ensure none of the fellows that came ashore with us run.'
Blixoe turned and they looked down at the huddle of men round the barge. The rest of Blixoe's men stood about, their stocks loosed in the sunshine that burned warm after the passing of the rain and wind, their loaded muskets at the port, the bayonets gleaming wickedly.
'No bloody fear of that, sir.'
They looked at the ship, silhouetted black against the sun's lambent reflection which danced upon the surface of the sea and was diffused by the watery mist that still lay a league offshore. Already the topgallant masts were aloft and they could see the foretopgallant yard being hoisted, its length slowly squaring against the line of the mast as the lifts were adjusted and its parrel was re-secured.
'Not long now,' Quilhampton remarked, a sense of relief pervading him. Their luck had held so far. A few more hours… nightfall perhaps, tomorrow morning at the latest, they would feel the deeps of the ocean beneath their keel.
'No, sir. We've been lucky.'
'Yes, damned lucky.'
'They say that leak, sir,' ventured Blixoe, taking advantage of Lieutenant Quilhampton's mellow mood, 'well, that it were caused deliberate, like…'
Quilhampton looked sharply at the sergeant, but the man was in profile, his bucket hat pulled down over his eyes as he stared at the Patrician anchored in her pool of sunshine.
'And what do you say, Mr Blixoe?'
Unperturbed, the marine shrugged his white woollen epaulettes. 'How should I know, sir?'
'I'll lay a guinea you've a theory of your own, though.'
Blixoe pulled the corners of his mouth down. 'I reckon we've all got theories, sir. Trouble is, the truth ain't much to do with theories, is it?' Blixoe turned and faced Quilhampton. 'Truth is, sir, that the men are at the end of their tethers. We lost a good prize and we know there's rich pickin's off the bloody Dagoes; there's men as knows the papist's ways, stuffin' their churches with gold and word has it that there is a church somewhere about this coast where they've the bones of some saint all laid out in a casket of jewelled gold… and what they're wondering is why, begging your pardon, sir, the Captain ain't batterin' down these bloody Spanish churches, sir… by way of an act of war, like? That's the truth of it, sir.' Blixoe paused, then added, 'If you'll pardon me for speaking freely…'
'Yes, of course, come, they seem to have finished down there…'
They could see the barge being dragged into the water. Men were scrambling into her, ready to pass her painter to the cutter. Quilhampton looked again at the ship. The foretopgallant yard was across.
And then he froze. The heat went out of the sun and his heart suddenly thudded in his chest. 'Look!'
Pointing with one hand he restrained Blixoe with the other. The marine paused and shaded his eyes against the glare. They were insubstantial at first, mere phantoms in the haze, but then their outlines hardened, the sharp, squared edges of topsails, the low hulls of men-of-war standing into the bay. There could be no doubt as to the purpose of their approach.
'Come on!' Slithering in the sand, Quilhampton began an awkward descent.
'Fire those bloody muskets, lads,' Blixoe called to his platoon and a ragged volley of alarm sounded flatly across Drake's Bay.
Chapter Thirteen
Rubalcava's Revenge
April-May 1808
'God's bones!'
Drinkwater swung round and stared at the beach as the sound of the volley echoed across the bay. He expected to see men running but on the contrary, they stood stock-still around the boats, every attitude suggesting they were as surprised as himself at the shots. Then he saw the tiny white figure of Quilhampton in his shirt-sleeves, running ungainly through the soft sand, his arms waving wildly and with the four marines stumbling after him.
'What the devil… ?'
'Deck there!'
They swung to the hail from the foremast where topmen sat astride the newly sent u
p topgallant yard.
'To seaward, sir!'
Drinkwater and the officers idle on the quarterdeck spun round, following the man's urgently outstretched arm.
'Bloody hell!'
'It's those Spanish brigs!'
'Jesus!'
The two brigs had broken through the vaporous tendrils of the mist and were suddenly recognised as the vessels they had seen last anchored under the shadow of Point Lobos, beneath the Commandante's Residence. They were standing into Drake's Bay, their yards braced and on slightly diverging courses. End-on, Drinkwater did not need glasses to see the bristling lines of cannon piercing their sides.
'Beat to quarters! Man the capstan!'
They had a spring upon their anchor cable; it lay slack in the water and, if they were quick, might give them a moment's advantage.
'Where's my coxswain?'
'Here, zur…'
'Sword and pistols, upon the instant! Gentlemen, arm yourselves… they will rush us!'
The deck of the Patrician presented a spectacle of disorder. Topmen descended from the foremast by the backstays, sliding down hand-over-hand. Officers and men ran, bumping into one another, as they scurried to their posts.
'Man the larboard broadside!'
Drinkwater saw Fraser, his sword drawn, his shirt-tail untucked from some strenuous endeavour at the base of the foremast, run below to command the battery in Quilhampton's absence. Amidships, Hill stood ready by the capstan, pushing spare waisters into place about the splayed bars, and then Tregembo was awkwardly hitching his sword-belt about his waist and Derrick was silently offering him his pistols.
He stuck one in his waistband and fisted the other. A thought struck him and he held it out to the solemn Quaker. 'Here, defend thyself, if no one else…'
Derrick shook his head and Drinkwater, his mind pressed, dismissed the man for a high-minded fool.
'Guns are bearing, sir,' squeaked Belchambers alongside him, sent by Fraser.
'Are they loaded, damn it?'
'Mr Fraser says to tell you they're loaded, sir, as best they can be… mixed shot and langridge…'
'Then run 'em out!'
The boy skittered off and Drinkwater took one last look about the deck. It was a chaos of flung-down hand-spikes, of uncoiled ropes and stoppered sails rolled in grey sausages of resistant canvas. Spars, half-secured and almost ready for hoisting, lay at drunken angles, like pitch-forks left against a hay-cart. But the men at the quarterdeck guns were kneeling ready, though their breasts heaved from their late exertions, and the dishevelled marines, in unprofessional oddities of dress, leaned upon the hammock nettings, their bayonets gleaming and their muskets levelled. They had not been utterly surprised and, as yet, the Spanish had not a single gun that could bear. Below his feet he felt the 24-pounders nimble out through their ports.
The brigs were close now, perhaps two cables away, and he could hear an angry buzz that came from a dense cluster of men about their twin fo'c's'les. They were dark with boarders, heaped like swarming bees.
'You lads there,' Drinkwater called to the quarterdeck guncaptains, 'mark their boarders,' he raised his voice, 'mark their boarders, fo'c's'le!' A wave of comprehension came from Midshipman Wickham forward. If those three carronades did their business, their spreading langridge would tear a bloody and ragged hole through that cluster of men.
As the noise from the brigs grew louder it seemed a grimmer silence settled upon the Patrician. Drinkwater pierced it. He would have to loose his cannon soon, or risk his enemies stretching ahead and astern of him, out of the lines of bearing of his guns.
'Stand by for boarders! Fire!'
The thunder of the cannon erupted in orange flames and the white obscurity of reeking powder smoke. The deck vibrated with the recoil of the heavy trucks and, as the smoke cleared, he could see the gun-crews leaping about their pieces as they reloaded. But, it was already too late. So close were the brigs that the most elevated gun had sent its shot no higher than man-height above their rails. Their masts and topsails, shivering now as they checked way to drive alongside, loomed above the shredding smoke and Drinkwater could see the white circles and interlacing and expanding ripples that showed more than half his shot had plunged harmlessly between, and far beyond, the Spaniards.
But there were bloody gaps in the clusters of men about the beakheads of the enemy, and there were dots in the water, some inert and some waving, where men died and shrove their souls in agony. He could hear the screams and a weird ululating cry as some unfortunate man spewed shock and horror and the dreadful pain of a mortal wound into the air.
It was a moment of the briefest pause. Below a fast-reloaded gun roared again, followed by another and another and then Drinkwater turned. The first brig crashed into the bowsprit, locking her own in a tangle of splitting wood and torn wreckage. He could see the smoke and stab of small arms and a few bold men beginning to scramble across the interlocked spars as the enemy brig, thus entangled, fell slowly off the wind and alongside the British frigate.
Aft, the second brig loomed close alongside. There was a sickening crash as her cathead struck the Patrician's quarter and the impact of the collision sent a second mighty tremble through the ship. A grappling iron struck the rail and its line was belayed, to be cut through by a marine; but another followed, and another, and the marine fell back, clutching his throat, shot through at close range by a pistol ball.
'Get your men on deck, Fraser!' Drinkwater roared below and swung round, his sword drawn, joining the hedge of bayonets and boarding pikes and cutlasses as the gunners abandoned their now useless pieces and fought to defend themselves.
The Spaniards poured over the rails, jumping like reckless monkeys from one ship to another, and Drinkwater knew that the Dons had emptied every stew and calaboose, every tavern and every vessel with men who had a mind to cut the bloody British intruders down to size. And, God, there were enough of them. If every waterfront idler, and every drunken mestizo in San Francisco had come, it did not explain the torrent of men that poured, cutting, slashing and stabbing their way across his quarterdeck.
He recognised the uniform of a provincial Spanish regiment, an officer leading a party of the brig's seamen, together with a ragged rabble of 'volunteers', a mixed rag-bag of races, half-drunk and verminous from the desperate look of them.
But as he fought for his life, he recognised something else, something that his heightened consciousness had half-expected. There were men from the Santa Monica, men in clear breach of their parole, and at their head, howling with the triumphant bellow of a conquistadore, was Don Jorge Meliton Rubalcava.
By the time Quilhampton reached the boats, the brigs were alongside Patrician. He splashed through the shallows and fell into the stern of the cutter.
'Leave the barge!' He ordered, panting with exertion, 'Oars! Come on, come on,' he chivvied, 'give way together!'
Shoving the tiller across the boat, he swung the cutter's bow round towards the noise and smoke of desperate battle.
Drinkwater was slithering in gore. His right forearm was cut and blood trickled from the graze of a pistol ball across his skull. He hacked and stabbed with his sword and the clubbed pistol in his left hand was sticky with gore. He was aware of beating off a savage attack, of flinging back the first impetuous rush of the Spaniards. He was aware too that Midshipman Wickham had reported from the fo'c's'le that they had succeeded in staving off the inrush of boarders forward. Slewed on their slides the heavy carronades had cut swathes of death through the enemy and dampened the ardour of their attack.
But Lieutenant Mylchrist had been carried below dangerously wounded, and Wickham feared another rush from the regrouping Spaniards. Drinkwater asked where the first lieutenant was, but lost Wickham's reply as he parried a pike thrust and cut savagely at a swarthy cheek, seeing the bright start of blood and the pain in the glaring eyes of a man.
'Mount, bayonets here!' he bawled and threw himself back into the fight as the Spaniards renewed their att
ack upon the heavily outnumbered British.
Fraser never got out of the gun-deck. From a boat towing alongside, or by sliding down the bumpkins of the after brig, men squeezed through a loose gun-port as Fraser obeyed Drinkwater's order to reinforce the upper deck with his gun-crews. This small intrusion quickly became a torrent as two, then three ports were opened. Dark, lithe men with short stabbing knives clenched in their teeth and wet from a partial ducking alongside, hauled themselves inboard to confront the gunners. The gun-crews were tired after days of exertion and the recent labour of hauling out their weapons and it seemed this influx of men was endless, a wildly diabolical manifestation rising from hell itself. They were small wiry, half-caste fellows, who wriggled between the guns and seemed utterly at home in the shadows of the gun-deck, as happy as the nocturnal pick-pockets, scavengers, footpads, pimps and thieves they were. They slipped easily inside the long guards of defenders with rammers and pikes, hamstringing and hobbling men who fell howling, only to be disembowelled and eviscerated by the gleaming knives that flashed dully in the semi-darkness.
His hanger flickering desperately, Lieutenant Fraser was fighting for his very life.
Mr Lallo motioned to Skeete and the loblolly boy dragged the twitching body of Lieutenant Mylchrist to one side. Already the pledget they had just secured was darkening with blood.
'Next!' Lallo wiped a reeking hand across his brow and took a pull at the rum bottle he kept propped against a futtock.
Derrick, the captain's Quaker clerk, heaved the next victim onto the canvas spread on the sea-chests. It was one of the topmen, a big, burly man whose legs were curiously drawn up in the foetal position. His eyes were staring wildly and his lips were rimed with dried spittle. The swaying lantern hooked above the operating 'table' threw dreadful shadows across his features, so that his face seemed to be working in convulsive spasms.
Skeete forced fingers into the man's mouth, prised open his jaw and, with the vicious ease of practice, thrust a damp pad of leather into the topman's gape. The jaws snapped like those of a predator.
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