Form Line Of Battle!

by Alexander Kent

  But if all failed in Cozar the Hyperion needed a good, level-headed man in command, no matter how temporary, and Quarme had proved that he was more than able to run the ship.

  Bellamy said anxiously, 'The horizon's clearing, sir.' He was dragging at his watch. 'God, this waiting!'

  It was certainly brighter. Bolitho could see the sloop's full upper deck and the black finger of her bowsprit against the paling sky beyond. But for the small ship's sluggish response to helm and wind it was hard to imagine that crammed below decks were all of Ashby's marines, as well as fifty of Hyperion's seamen, with another fifty uncomfortably hidden beneath a tarpaulin on the maindeck itself. It was fortunate that Bellamy was already sailing shorthanded, but nevertheless it took every piece of hold space as well as the berth deck to cram them inside the sloop's hull.

  The Chanticleer's own seamen were sitting or lounging around the bulwarks, saying little, and waiting to spread every stitch of canvas as soon as the order was given.

  Bolitho's mind strayed to the awful possibility of Quarme's failure to reach the rendezvous in time. All night the sloop had hurried on ahead, just in case some snooping fishing boat or coasting craft should see them sailing in company and kill the only possible chance of success before they had even started.

  He looked along the starboard battery of guns. The sloop was armed with eighteen tiny cannon, the whole broadside of which would hardly make a scar on that imposing fortress.

  'Ah!' Bellamy let out a gasp as the golden rim of sunlight lanced brightly over the edge of the sea.

  And there was the island. Maybe four miles clear, with its humped hills and the fortress square and black against the growing sunlight. Approaching from the west gave the island a different shape, Bolitho thought, but as he lifted his glass he could see the white breakers at the foot of the headland, and realised how tall and formidable the cliff looked by comparison.

  He shivered again and was instantly reminded of the months he had lain in his bed at Falmouth. Without effort he could picture the big grey house, the view of the anchorage and Pendennis Castle he had seen from his window between bouts of dizziness and oblivion. The house with its great dark portraits of all the past Bolithos who had lived and died by the sea. It was full of memories, but empty of warmth. For he was the last of the line, with no one to carry on the family tradition.

  He thought too of Nancy, his youngest sister. She had watched over him during his illness, and with Allday had nursed him through one agony after another. She adored him, he knew that well enough, and had tried to mother him whenever she got the chance.

  Bolitho studied the slow-moving clouds impassively. If he was to die this morning, Nancy would have the old house. She was married to a Falmouth farmer and landowner, a County man who lived only for blood sports and good fare. He also had a ready eye for Bolitho's house, and would be more than ready to move in.

  Allday whispered, 'Your sword, Captain.'

  Bolitho lifted his arms automatically and felt the firm clasp of the belt about his waist as Allday adjusted the buckle.

  Allday muttered, 'It's a mite loose from the last time you wore it, Captain.' He shook his head. 'You need some good Cornish lamb inside you!'

  'Don't fuss, damn you!' Bolitho dropped his hand and ran it over the worn hilt. He should have left the old sword hanging in his cabin aboard Hyperion. But the thought of leaving it to fall into someone else's hands, or worse, for it to go to Nancy's husband, was unbearable. That man would stick it on his wall amongst his fox masks and deer heads like one more shabby souvenir.

  He tried to recall exactly the moment when his father had given it to him, but he could no longer obtain a clear picture of the proud old man, with his single arm and thick greying hair.

  He lifted the sword a few inches in its scabbard and saw the razor-edged blade glimmer in the frail sunlight. It was old, but it was as true as ever. He snapped, it down and swung round as Bellamy muttered thankfully, `There she is, by God!'

  The Hyperion's hull was still deep in shadow, but her topsails and courses were clear and white in the sunlight, like those of a phantom ship. Even as he watched he saw the topgallants appear as if by magic, and the sudden lift of spray around her beakhead as the land breeze found her and heeled her slightly in a tired curtsy.

  Allday said, `She's altering course. She's seen us!'

  There was a sudden flash from the Hyperion's forecastle, followed within seconds by a dull bang. Everyone on the sloop's deck ducked with alarm 'as a ball screamed overhead and smashed hissing into the sea beyond.

  Bellamy gasped, 'I say, that was close!'

  Bolitho could feel the same cold excitement that he had known so often in the past, and felt a grin frozen to his face like a mask: 'It was meant to be! This has to look right!' He seized the outraged Bellamy's arm. `Come on then! Jump to it!'

  The lieutenant cupped his hands and yelled, `Hands aloft! Loose courses and foretops'll!' He ran to the opposite rail as his men broke into sudden acitivity. `Run up the colours, damn you!' But even he seemed surprised as the makeshift French flag broke from the gaff and whipped defiantly in the wind.

  The sloop was responding well, and caught in a lazy offshore swell she threw back the spray from her stem in great white streamers.

  The Chanticleer's only other officer joined in the confusion. 'Hands to quarters! Have the guns run out!'

  Bolitho watched the ports jerking open and the slim muzzles sniffing above. the creaming water alongside. There, lashed like some snub-nosed beast was the Hyperion's second carronade. It was already loaded and had been doubly checked while Bolitho had slept in his cramped chair.

  Such a weapon threw a giant sixty-eight-pound shot which burst on impact. It was crammed with grape, and at short range was murderous in its performance. Today it might be the margin between success and failure.

  Another twelve-pound ball whimpered overhead and threw a tall waterspout within half a cable of the sloop's bows.

  Bolitho turned as Rooke appeared beside him, his slight figure wrapped in a borrowed pea-jacket. Even like that he somehow looked smart and well turned out.

  Rooke said tightly, 'That'll be Mr. Pearse, the gunner. He'll fire each shot himself, if I'm not mistaken, sir.' He tightened his jaw as a third ball slammed hard alongside and deluged the sloop's own gunners with spray.

  'He certainly has a good eye.' Bellamy sounded anxious.

  Bolitho lifted his glass as a distant trumpet call echoed above the moan of rigging and hiss of spray. He saw the flag rising above the fortress, the gleam of sunlight on a telescope or weapon by the battery wall.

  He snapped, 'Alter course, Bellamy! Remember what I told you, and cut as close as you dare to the headland!'

  He left Bellamy to his work as the Hyperion changed her tack and swung round menacingly to run almost parallel with the sloop. She was a good mile away, but under her great press of canvas and with the wind under her stem she was moving fast and well. Any observer from the shore would certainly assume she was making a desperate effort to overreach the sloop and catch her before she could tack and enter the safety of the harbour.

  There was an echoing roar from the cliff, and they all heard the high-pitohed whine as the ball passed high overhead.

  Rooke said, 'I didn't see anything!'

  Bolitho bit his lip. Through his glass he had seen a hole appear right in the belly of the Hyperion's main course. It was a very good shot indeed.

  He said, 'At least they are concentrating on Quarme for the moment!' But the humour was only in his voice. In the growing light Hyperion held a kind of beauty which he found hard to explain. He could see the angry figurehead, the gleam of reflected water in her tall side, and felt something like pain as another gun fired from the battery to throw a waterspout right alongside the old ship's poop.

  That one could possibly have ricocheted into the hull timbers, he thought grimly. When he looked up at the fortress again he saw that there was still no furnace smoke above the ramparts
. But it would not take them long to fan the overnight embers awake, and then any such shot could turn the Hyperion into an inferno.

  Quarme was too close inshore. Maybe he had misjudged it, or perhaps he wanted it to look extra realistic.

  He heard Rooke snarl, 'Tell that fool to hide himself!'

  A pair of horny bare feet were protruding from beneath the spread tarpaulins, but they vanished with a yelp as a petty officer lashed out with his rattan.

  Bellamy was more concerned with his own ship than the Hyperion's danger. He was beside the wheel watching both binnacle and sails as the dark-sided headland crept out as if to meet the Chanticleer's bows head on.

  He dropped his hand. 'Braces therel Lively, you idle bastards!'

  Groaning and protesting the sloop quivered and then heeled over to the thrust of wind and rudder. One snag-toothed rock seemed almost to graze the hull as she surged around the headland to where the flat water of the harbour greeted her like a placid trap.

  Bolitho said quietly, 'Shorten sail now, Mr. Bellamy. And pass the word to the men below.' His hand against the sword hilt felt clammy with sweat.

  He turned to watch the Hyperion's shape shorten as she started to tack closer inshore. She too had reduced sail, and he held his breath as two more waterspouts lifted within feet of her side. The French were firing more rapidly now, and it seemed likely that they had acted just as he had anticipated by moving more of the guns to the seaward side of the battery.

  He swung round to face forward, unable to watch the Hyperion's dangerous manoeuvres. He saw that some of the sloop's men were clustered by the forecastle, watching the widening approaches of the harbour. He shouted angrily, 'Look astern, you idiots! If you were Frogs you'd be more afraid of the Hyperion than your own anchorage!'

  His words steadied them and helped to break the tension of his own thoughts.

  Rooke said, 'There's the landing place, sir!'

  Bolitho nodded. It was little more than a wooden pier below a rough, narrow road which twisted away between a great cleft in the hillside beyond. There were many figures already there, and he could just make out the muzzle of an old fieldpiece crouching between its two massive iron wheels.

  'Steady now, Mr. Bellamy.' He had to lick the dryness from his lips. 'Make for the anchorage beyond the pier. But when we are within a cable of the landing place get the sails off her and steer for the pier! You'll be in the lee of the hill by then, the ship's own way should take her in!'

  Bellamy tore his eyes from the bows. 'It won't do my timbers any good, sir!' But he grinned. 'My God, this is better than running the fleet mails!'

  Bolitho caught a glimpse of Inch, the Hyperion's horsefaced junior lieutenant, his head framed in an open hatch, and knew that the rest of the landing party were packed behind him like peas in a barrel. It must be worse for them, he thought vaguely. Crammed in the sloop's small hull in complete darkness, with nothing but fear and the sounds of gunfire to keep them company.

  He snapped, 'Wave to the soldiers on the pier!' Some of the sailors gaped at him. 'Wave! You've just escaped the bloody English!'

  He sounded so wild and angry that several of the men actually yelled with insane laughter and capered like madmen as the figures on the pier began to wave back.

  Bolitho wiped his forehead with his shirt sleeve and then said quietly, 'When you are ready, Mr. Bellamy.'

  When he glanced briefly astern the harbour mouth was already sealed by the outflung wedge of headland. Above it he could see the Hyperion's upper yards and felt an overwhelming relief as he realised that she was already going about and heading for the safety of the open sea.

  Then Bellamy barked, 'Now! Helm alee!'

  When he faced forward again, Bolitho saw that the bowsprit was pointing straight towards the cleft in the hillside. Very deliberately he drew his sword from its scabbard and began to walk towards the caironade.

  5

  SHORT AND SHARP

  With the sails whisked from her yards the Chanticleer continued to glide steadily towards the rough wooden pier where some thirty or so French soldiers had gathered to watch her approach. Slightly to one side of the chattering soldiers a disdainful, moustached officer sat stiffly on his horse, only his hands and feet moving to, calm his mount as the battery guns continued to fire after the invisible Hyperion.

  Then, as the sloop swung drunkenly towards them, the men nearest the water's edge seemed to realise that something was wrong. In the next few seconds everything happened at once.

  From right forward in the bows a whistle shrilled, and as the last gunport was raised and the carronade trundled into full view the deck tarpaulin was hauled aside, and from beneath it and from every hatch the sloop became alive with swarming seamen and marines.

  Too late the soldiers tried to press back towards the safety of the narrow road, but behind them there were others trying to push further forward on to the pier, and here and there a man still cheered and waved towards the sloop's topmasts and the flapping French flag.

  The carronade's roar was like a thunderclap. Penned in by the cliffs, the explosion was so great that it started several tiny avalanches of loose stones, whilst high against the sky hundreds of terrified seabirds wheeled and screamed in protest.

  The great ball cleaved through the packed troops and struck the iron-wheeled cannon beyond. There was another great flash, and as the smoke swirled back across the sloop's tilting deck Bolitho saw the soldiers falling and dying, their ranks carved apart in bright scarlet channels.

  He waved his sword. 'Fire!'

  This time it was the turn of the small deck guns. They were already loaded with canister, and as their whiplike cracks momentarily overcame the screams and terrified shouts on the shore the contents of their little muzzles sprayed across the remaining survivors, cutting them down like grass before a scythe.

  Bolitho hurled himself over the bulwark, his shoes skidding on blood and torn flesh, while at his back the seamen surged to follow, their eyes blank, as if dazed by the slaughter around them..

  Grapnels dug into the pier, and with a final lurching groan of protest the Chanticleer came to a halt, her deck trembling as marines and sailors tumbled ashore to be held and checked into some sort of order by their officers.

  A mere handful of Frenchmen were running back up the road, followed by musket shots from eager marines and jeers from the seamen who were armed mainly with pikes and

  cutlasses.

  Bolitho grabbed Ashby's arm. 'You know what to do! Keep your squads well apart. I want it to look as if you've got double the men available. Ashby was nodding violently, his face scarlet from shouting and running.

  It took a good deal more yelling to get the maddened marines to fall in on the road, their uniforms clashing with the grisly remains and writhing wounded about them.

  It was only then that Bolitho realised the French officer and 'his horse had somehow escaped the onslaught of grape and canister unscathed. A sailor ran to' catch the horse's bridle, but in one swift movement the officer raised his sabre and cut him down. The man fell without a sound, and something like a sigh rose from the motionless marines.

  There was a single pistol-shot, and dignified to the end, the French officer toppled from his saddle to lie beside the landing party's first casualty.

  Lieutenant Shanks handed the smoking pistol to his orderly. 'Reload,', be said curtly. Then to Ashby he added formally, 'I think you should take the horse, sir.'

  Ashby swung himself gratefully into the saddle and looked down at Bolitho. 'I will go along this road, sir. It should take about' twenty minutes to reach the fortress, I imagine: He twisted round to watch with detached professional interest as his first squad of marines broke off in a trot to disperse as scouts on either hillside, their coats shining in the scrub like ripe fruit.

  Two drummers and two fifers took up their positions at the head of the main force, and behind them Lieutenant inch with seventy seamen formed into some semblance of order.

  Ashby d
offed his hat. Seated on his captured horse he made a very soldierly figure, Bolitho thought.

  The marine roared, `Fix bayonets!'

  Bolitho turned his back to stare along the steep cliff towards the headland. From this point he could not even see the battery ramparts. His own party of seamen was waiting at the end of the pier with Rooke and a midshipman in charge.

  Ashby shouted, 'Right turn! By the left, quick march!

  It was like part of a crazy dream, Bolitho thought. Ashby on the grey horse at the head of his men. The glitter of bayonets and clink of equipment, and the steady thud of boots as they squelched indifferently through the bloody carnage left by the sloop's savage onslaught.

  And to add to the unreality the drums and fifes had broken into a jaunty march, The Gay Dragoon', and Bolitho found time to wonder how the bandsmen could remember the tune at a time like this.

  He walked stiffly across to Rooke. 'We must make a move right away.' He pointed down to the fallen rocks which lined the foot of the headland like a broken necklace. 'We will have to climb along there until we get beneath the battery. It is a good two cables, so we must be quick before the garrison recover their wits.'

  Rooke grimaced. 'When the Frogs see Ashby's army approaching their main gate they'll think the end of the world has come!'

  Bolitho nodded. 'I hope so. Otherwise we'll get more than loose stones dropped on our heads!'

  Slipping and gasping the line of seamen struggled along the base of the cliff. They could hear the big guns firing again, and Bolitho guessed that Quarme was approaching for another mock attack. By now the garrison would know of the landing, but there was little they could do but sit firm and wait for the assault. When, as Rooke had remarked, they saw Ashby's confident approach along the island's only road they should assume it was coming from that direction.

  Bolitho had studied every available item of information about the fortress, and prayed that there had been no outstanding changes in its general construction. The circular keep was surrounded by a great octagonal curtain wall in which there were deep gun embrasures at regular intervals. On the inland sides of the ramparts was a deep ditch crossed by a single bridge below the fortress gates. But to seaward, and above the cliff itself there was only the curtain wall. Whoever designed the fortifications had assumed it improbable that anyone would get past the harbour entrance, and if so would be equally unlikely to climb the one-hundredfoot cliff.