‘Aye, aye, sir.’
‘Rannoch, the tars are boarding first, behind me. Detail someone to keep the boat hooked on, then as soon as we are aboard follow us onto the deck. Shoot anyone who looks like causing us trouble, but I want every weapon loaded as quick as possible, to be pointing over the larboard rail at those armed cutters coming our way. If you think you can hit anyone yourself, to discourage them, you have my permission to try.’
Markham felt his broad-brimmed hat go at the very second that the crack of the ball passed his ear. He ducked even when he knew, as an experienced soldier, that it was too late, to be handed his hat by Brownlee, who’d caught it, expertly, on the wing before it hit the water. He threw it into the bottom of the boat, and eased out both his pistol and his sword.
The side of the ship was now close, the sinking western sun sending shards of bright light out where it caught the gaudy paintwork. Markham began to raise himself into a crouch, from which he could spring for the side, now lined with a dozen heads, which barring the man on the wheel was probably every sailor on the ship.
His pistol was inaccurate at the best of times; with him unsteady its discharge did no more than drive a few heads away from the rail. But that gave him his gap, and as the barge crashed into the side of the Tarantine he leapt for the rail, screaming hoarsely, and swung his sword in a huge arc that would decapitate anyone who decided to reconsider their earlier withdrawal. The Tarantine had a low freeboard, and the barge had hit on the rise, either through luck or Brownlee’s skill. But he was wearing boots, and though he got one hand on the rail, he failed to get any purchase with his feet.
Two things saved him from either a drubbing or a pike in the chest, the most telling being the screeching Agamemnons. They first used their oars to sweep the rail, then followed that up with a mad barefoot rush, bayonets in their teeth, that took them up the ship’s side like squirrels, on to the deck. Occupied with that, no one had time to despatch the struggling officer. The second factor was the man below, even more vital, who got his hands under the scrabbling boots, and heaved Markham up with such force that he flew over the Tarantine’s side to land in a heap on the deck.
Markham started rolling as soon as he made contact with the planking, unaware if he was under threat, but sure that movement was safer than being stationary. His action nearly did for one of the Agamemnons, since his rolling body took the man’s legs away, leaving him at the mercy of the Frenchman he’d being grappling with. Ignoring the scarlet-coated figure at his feet, the man leant forward, club in hand, to brain the boarder. Markham’s sword swept up as the club swung, taking the crewman from underneath, at the point where his arm joined his breast, nearly severing the whole shoulder with the force of the blow. The club was dropped, and a British bayonet swept past Markham’s ear to finish the job.
The words ‘Bless you, you useless bugger,’ were just an accompaniment to the help he received in getting to his feet. Once up, Markham could pick his targets, jabbing forward with his sword to pin men struggling to overcome some Agamemnon. Behind him his lobsters were struggling aboard. The single gunshot came from Rannoch, and took out the man on the wheel, causing the Tarantine to suddenly jibe sideways as the way came off the rudder. The sail cracked and flapped wildly, as slowly and steadily the boarding party drove the defenders back. The deck was slippery with blood, and Markham could see that quite a few of the Agamemnons had wounds. But that did little to interfere with their relentless advance, as jabbing, punching and gouging, blood afire, they drove back their enemy.
The boom of the four-pounder cannon, if it was designed to aid the defender, had the opposite effect, driving from them any desire to sustain the fight. Their arms dropped just before their knees, as they pleaded to be allowed to live. The British sailors then performed a remarkable transformation, from blind bloodlust to jovial celebration in the twinkling of an eye, though taking care to remove any weapons from their enemies which might pose a threat. Brownlee had already taken the wheel, and got some way back on the ship, as the original crew were herded below.
Behind Markham, in strict obedience to his orders, Rannoch had lined up the Lobsters, and as his officer approached, was himself crouched down with his barrel pointing over the prow, taking careful aim on the leading cutter. In the bows of that, Markham could see three men struggling in the confined space to reload, a blue-coated officer calling instructions. At no more than a hundred yards, Rannoch’s shot did not kill him, as it would have almost certainly done on dry land. But it caught him in the upper thigh of his right leg, sending him spinning in amongst his boat crew.
The Highlander didn’t even linger long enough to see the effect of his shot. He was too busy reloading himself. He had his musket back over the ship’s rail in twenty seconds, squinting to take aim on the men in the bows of the second cutter. This was standing a little further off, prepared to take on the boats coming in from the British warships as well as aiding the assault on the now captured Tarantine. A quick glance over the stern established that the other two cargo ships had practically halted in the water, backing and filling, unsure whether to proceed or retreat. Behind him Rannoch kept up a steady fire, each shot accompanied by a curse as he missed whatever it was he’d aimed at.
‘Brownlee, can you put us about to threaten those other ships.’
‘I can, your honour,’ he replied, following that with another stream of concise instructions to secure the prisoners then man the sails. George Markham hadn’t spent much time on ships, but he had rarely seen a man handle responsibility better. The progress of the action was now his to command. Until he got them close enough to threaten another ship, Markham and his Lobsters were playing second fiddle.
That at least allowed the luxury of time to assess the situation. The sun was going, leaving him with no more than an hour of fading light. Nelson’s ships had beat out to sea, Diomede well ahead of Agamemnon. But even a totally inexperienced eye could see that they would never come round quickly enough on the other tack to close the entrance to Calvi anchorage. Their cutter and the crowded jolly boat were still pulling towards them, but faced, as they would be with at least one gunboat, he doubted that they could do much to aid him. In the French cutter that had fired the shot, the crew seemed more intent on tending to their wounded officer than continuing the action. So his task was simple, even if he was left to his own devices to undertake its execution.
‘Mr Brownlee, we must drive those ships away from the shore by whatever means we possess, and allow our frigates time to close the entrance to the anchorage. With night falling, what will they do?’
‘They must enter in daylight, your honour. Even with beacons well lit on the fortress, no captain would risk his ship on such a rocky shore in the dark.’
That reasoning must have made equal sense to them. Practically before Brownlee had finished speaking they brought their heads round and filled their sails on the steady northern breeze to close with the land. Markham smiled. He had possession of a third of the available re-supply, and with Brownlee at the wheel he thought he could double that. Without succour was a term to be decided by the French commander, but he doubted if one Tarantine carried enough of anything to materially alter the nature of the siege.
‘How we doing, your honour?’ asked Halsey, stood to close by, staring over the rail at the stationary cutters.
‘I doubt you’ll have to go back to the Royal Louis Battery, Halsey.’
Quinlan, the skinny Londoner spoke up, his voice full of venom. ‘Does that mean we’ll never have to suffer that effing priest again?’
‘Stuck up sod,’ added his best friend, Ettrick. ‘Though the Crapaud Colonel was a proper gent.’
Markham smiled and ignored them, addressing his calls to Brownlee. ‘We must make sure of one of them. If we try to take both we could fail. Get me alongside one by whatever means.’
Markham was suddenly tired and very thirsty. He lifted the ladle from the water butt by the companionway and drank greedily. But wh
atever else he felt, he was content. They had done well, better than he’d expected, and could look forward to completing an action that would make every naval officer jealous. It would certainly be one in the eye for those who saw fit to condescend to him.
Chapter three
The boom of the cannon, and the crack as the single mainmast split, seemed almost simultaneous. Slowly, agonisingly, it began to topple sideways, the rending of wood accompanied by the snapping of ropes through the warm evening air. It was hard to believe when Markham spun round to look, that the nearest cutter, a few seconds before intent on treating their officer’s condition, could have fired the shot.
But they had, a fact that was very obvious as the smoke cleared from the muzzle, and the glee of the man who’d aimed the piece spread to his companions. The officer Rannoch had hit, was sitting up again, bloody leg bandaged, pointing his sword, and seemingly encouraging his boat crew to repeat the exercise.
Brownlee was calling out commands again, his men rushing around, looking for axes to cut the debris clear. With the sail removed, Markham had no trouble in seeing the other Tarantines, their sails aloft straining on the wind as they sought to pass by him at a safe distance.
‘Yon cutter is closing in,’ called Rannoch. ‘They will be fashioning a shot for our hull next.’
The remark cleared Markham’s thinking, mainly because he knew the sergeant to be wrong. They would not hull the ship, though they might try to make the threat look real. That wounded officer, who’d probably directed the lucky shot that had taken away the mast, must have ordered his men to fire high deliberately. The last thing he wanted to see was any of the available supplies to the garrison slipping beneath the waves, even if in doing so it took some of the British besiegers with it.
The next shot hit the water and bounced into the straking well clear of the sea. With some of the force absorbed by the deflection, the ball was too weak to pierce the side, instead embedding itself in the wood, sending a shudder through the whole frame of the vessel. The broken mast was cut free almost at the same moment, which caused the Tarantine to keel over to the opposite side, throwing several of his Lobsters onto their knees.
The next cannon boom came from the second cutter, and was aimed at the other boats still trying to close the gap with the stranded boarding party. It hit close enough to send up a huge fountain of water, which drenched the men in the jolly boat. It was admirable the way that it didn’t deter them from coming on. In fact, they seemed to be increasing their efforts to come to his aid.
Markham knew that the men aboard were looking at him, awaiting clear orders. He was in an agony of indecision. On land he felt he would have acted quickly. But the sea was not his element, and the variations that were possible presented too much of a mystery. He shot down the companionway, just as much to get away from those stares, as to find out what kind of cargo the ship was carrying.
Hair awry, sword out, with blood on his face from the fighting on deck, his appearance in the glim from a single guttering lantern made the downcast prisoners, sat in a circle, recoil. The questions he asked fired off in rapid and fluent French, got a response before any of the speakers realised that silence would have served their country better.
The captain had been on the wheel, killed by a musket ball as the redcoats came aboard. All three ships were laden with flour and barrels of salted meats, food for the Calvi garrison. They knew nothing of negotiations to end the siege, their arrival seemingly fortuitous rather than planned. The information didn’t aid George Markham’s thinking very much. If anything the heat and stench in the cramped ’tween decks made it harder to draw cogent conclusions. But that changed as he hit the fresh air, and he observed the two other Tarantines had now drawn abreast, and were heading into the arc of safety created by the fortress guns.
Both cannons boomed again, the ball from the nearest flying uselessly overhead. The other was more telling, landing close enough to one of the frigate’s boats to make it change to a safer course. Yet Markham knew those sailors would come on, and wondered to what purpose; to support him in an action he couldn’t win. If the armed French cutter had wanted to sink the ship, they would have begun the process by now, and he would have been in no position to oppose it. Therefore it was obvious that they wanted both vessel and cargo, so his job was to deny them that.
‘Brownlee, is there any way to get the boats coming to our aid to sheer off?’
That threw the coxswain, who until now had answered every request put to him with heartening speed.
‘The next thing I need to know is how to sink this damned ship.’
‘Sink her?’
‘Yes. We’ll get everybody back in the barge, and smash a hole in her hull.’
‘That’ll take an age your honour. If you want her destroyed, best way is to torch the bugger. And the flames would stand as the signal you want to send to our boats.’
‘Lash off the wheel, Brownlee, then tell me how long you need to set your fires.’
‘Don’t take more’n a few minutes to torch a ship. All I need do is find a bit of turps or oil.’
‘Then get on with it. Set light to some of the damaged rigging first to signal our boats to haul off. Sergeant Rannoch! Sustained volley fire on each cutter in turn if you please.’
‘We will not hit much on this swell. That ball that hit the officer was luck.’
‘I just want them convinced we intend to make a fight for it. Brownlee and his men are going to start a fire in the holds. We will be back in the barge and well clear before it takes hold.’
‘What about the Crapaud prisoners, ’tween decks?’ called one of the sailors.
‘They will come with us.’
Any response was delayed by the discharge of Rannoch’s first salvo, which peppered the water around the French cutter, without doing any harm at all to the occupants.
‘That barge’ll be a mite crowded your honour. How the hell are we going to row back to Agamemnon with that number on board.’
The question stopped everyone for just a second, including the Lobsters reloading the muskets, as even the most feeble brain registered that so close to those armed cutters, there was no way they would get clear, and that they were sinking this ship before surrendering themselves into captivity.
‘Don’t harm so much as a hair on them Crapauds’ heads,’ said Brownlee to his men, as he hurried them back to their tasks. ‘Or it’ll be us that pays when they get us into their dungeons.’
There was nothing to go aloft on to set alight. What rigging remained was hanging loose, mostly over the side. Brownlee poured some oil onto a skein of tangled ropes, and taking the flint from the binnacle locker, set a spark to it. Dry from the high Mediterranean temperatures, it caught quickly, flaring up in seconds, brighter than expected in the gathering gloom.
‘Cutter is manning his oars, your honour,’ called Rannoch. That was followed immediately by a second salvo, at the tail of which came a high-pitched scream which echoed across the water, evidence that at least one ball had found it’s target.
‘I’ll wager he is,’ murmured Markham to himself. His attention was concentrated on the other British boats, and he was gratified to see the speed with which they responded to the fire, and put up their helms to head into an area of greater safety.
‘I have to get the Crapaud prisoners up on deck, your honour?’ said Brownlee.
‘Make it so.’ Markham replied, softly, before calling out to his own men. ‘Sergeant Rannoch, one more salvo to keep them at bay, then get the men into the barge.’
The volley followed within a second. So did the arrival of the French prisoners. They had smelled the first hint of smoke, and had no doubt guessed what the cursed rosbifs were up to. Nothing scared a sailor more than a shipboard fire, and these men were no exception. The first hint of what Brownlee was doing came up the companionway behind them, a whiff of a newly lit fire, and the oily fumes that it generated. The sailor wasn’t far behind.
‘Be blazing
end to end in ten minutes, your honour.’
‘Get your men into the barge. My Lobsters will follow you.’ Markham turned and stabbed with his sword, to cut away a piece of ragged white cloth from the back of the dead captain. ‘And Brownlee, you will need to hoist this. I don’t want our wounded friend yonder to take a shot at us, claiming it was too dark to see.’
‘He won’t be a happy man, an’ that’s no error.’
A Sous Lieutenant, he was not only angry, he was in great pain from the wound in his leg. That rendered his acceptance of Markham’s sword far from gracious. It was, like his men’s muskets, grabbed unceremoniously from his hand. This was followed by curt orders to the French sailors to take over the oars, and to keep an eye on those with whom they’d so recently traded places.
The other cutter had joined them, now that the frigate’s boats were out of sight in the darkness, and both took station on either side of Nelson’s barge to escort them in. Once clear of the burning wreckage, it was necessary to light torches in the bows, so that the captured rosbifs could be kept under observation. It was in that state that they rowed past the silent French warships, hats held firmly on to deflect the gobbets of spit that were aimed in their direction.
The party waiting for them on the quayside included more senior officers, soldiers rather than sailors. The introductions between the men of rank were formal and polite. Markham’s request that his men, both sailors and lobsters be treated with gentility was acknowledged, the instruction that it be so made forcibly to the French sergeant waiting to take them to a place of confinement.
‘You will accompany me, Lieutenant,’ said the senior officer, a colonel. ‘The general is anxious to meet you.’
Honour Be Damned Page 3
