Lords of the Nile

by Jonathan Spencer

  ‘Sar’nt Cook…’ said Wayland. ‘Thanks be to God…’

  ‘You hit bad, sir…?’

  ‘Nothing, it’s—’ He gasped in pain and clenched his eyes shut – then remembered. ‘A man, in black… like that fellow, that Derrien, you once said. Masson, he called him.’

  Cook sank down heavily next to him, puffing hard. ‘Where’d he go, sir?’

  ‘Down there, Cookie,’ said Handley. ‘Bastard shot our boy then run off down the slope to the beach, sharpish.’

  Ghostly robes flying white in the darkness, the Beni Qassim rushed past, Nelsoun Amir! and more shots clattered against the fort walls. One rider wheeled his mount, thudding to a halt. He jumped down and joined them, pistol in hand, his beard dark in the moonlight. It was Joseph Hammer.

  ‘Gentlemen, I suggest you depart before more of our friends arrive.’

  Wayland struggled upright. ‘The major?’

  ‘Jaysus shite, sir,’ muttered De Lisle. ‘Beggin’ your pardon. But you’d never believe it.’

  Cook pointed at the raging fury on the shuddering waves before them. ‘Major reckoned that Derrien would head for the Orient. That’s where he’d be right now, sir. In the thick of it.’

  Wayland looked out at Aboukir Bay, the battle so close yet so remote. He was seized with a renewed strength. ‘Very well… Dr Porter—’ He tried to push himself upright but collapsed, gasping. ‘Jonsen and Whittaker over there, hit badly, and I – I broke a rib I believe, but can still breathe…’

  Porter jumped in beside him first. ‘As y’say, sir…’ He bent to examine him as best he could, the light flashing off his spectacles. ‘Looks good sir, a small ball, went through your waistcoat padding here, but it’s not in the wound.’ He smiled brightly. ‘Must’ve bounced peculiar, off the bone – so I’ll put a wad in til after…’

  Wayland took a shaky breath. ‘Very good – You and the others get Jonsen and Whittaker up and about, as we’re damn well not leaving them here… Kite, you and Handley go pinch us a boat and we shall go in, all of us,’ he said, looking out at the bay. ‘We’ll watch the water, try to find the major, and Captain De la Vega. Agreed?’

  Kite nodded. ‘Aye, sir. Never give up the boat, eh?’

  There was a unanimous aye, and Underhill helped Cook to his feet. ‘If you’re up to it, y’old goat…’

  ‘My lad’s down there, mate,’ grunted Cook. ‘You just try an’ stop me.’

  * * *

  Sérieuse settled in the water and began to sink, her rigging collapsing, masts toppling, the yards swinging, tearing herself apart. Hazzard slowed his mount, slipping forward onto the horse’s neck, something dying inside.

  Someone snatched at the reins and hands pulled Hazzard to the ground where he rolled in the wet sand, not caring anymore, the pain in his back and shoulders lancing into him, burning a deep fire, let me burn, let me burn, the guns roaring and flashing in the darkness, each impact battering him, condemning him.

  Pettifer was first on the scene, Warnock and De la Vega joining him, pistols drawn, men running with the horse, one riding away, others shouting after him.

  ‘Survivors…’ gasped Hazzard, as if it were something he had forgotten, matter of habit, sinking ship, hope, always hope, getting to his feet. ‘Must look for survivors…’

  A hand grabbed at De la Vega, calling out for help, ‘Officier! Officier! What must we do!’ De la Vega spun him round, a pistol to his chin, his eyes staring, his hands out, stammering, ‘Non non! Suis de Capitaine Du Petit-Thouars Du Petit…!’ He wore the tailcoat and slouch hat and cockade of a petty officer.

  Hazzard lurched over to them. ‘Were you for Sérieuse? Quel vaisseau?’ What ship!

  ‘Spartiate – I gather more crew…’ He backed away, taking in the tattered remnants of Hazzard’s coat and robe – it was blackened, stained, cut and torn, the scarlet still bright in the gloom, Warnock and Pettifer in the remains of their dark Maaza galabeyyah. ‘Which ship are you…?’

  De la Vega’s French was fast and staccato, ‘Capitaine de l’infanterie de marine! De la République Batave!’ snapped De la Vega, then waving a hand at Warnock and Pettifer, ‘And our Turkish gunners from Malta! We were attacked by Bédoux, merde alors!’

  Hazzard hardly noticed, watching Sérieuse. The frigate began to break up, sinking slowly into the bay, a roar as the waters burst around her, the holds flooding, bulwarks collapsing. ‘Were there women on Sérieuse?’ Hazzard had spoken in English, then caught himself, ‘Prisonnières?’

  ‘Comment? How can I know?’

  De la Vega cocked the pistol and Hazzard shook him, weak, an angry drunk in a tavern. ‘Think! Répondez! Answer me!’

  ‘Sais pas, Capitaine, sais pas! I do not know! The crew, the gunners, loaders, and the women, to the admiral on l’Orient!’

  ‘Orient?’ Hazzard was suddenly more alert, awoken from a fog. ‘You are sure…’

  ‘Oui oui, je vous promis! It is true! At the demand of le grand amiral Brueys!’

  The flagship.

  When it had been impossible to send them ashore, Brueys had ordered them brought to the safest place he could think of: the Orient, 120 guns.

  ‘Ho there!’ called Pettifer. ‘Hard a-nor’east!’ his arm going out, pointing. ‘That’s him, eh, Knocky? You got im, sir!’

  Hazzard looked out at the bay, the boats, cutters and tenders heaving into the heart of the battle. There, among the boats making their way into the flashing blasts, was a familiar figure.

  Derrien.

  In the prow of a boat, screaming at the oarsmen to pull faster. It was Derrien without question, heading from the wreckage of Sérieuse to the Orient.

  ‘He knows… she’s there. He must know!’

  Hope.

  ‘Boat! Give me a boat, by Christ above…!’ Hazzard staggered, legs weak, unable to connect properly with the stony beach, running for a boat in the surf, anything, De la Vega calling after him, the petty officer following, helping, ‘Là-bas!’ Over there!

  Boat.

  A cutter, a swaying lantern fixed to the stern, men gathered round, shoving it into the breaking surf. Hazzard waved at them, ‘Attendez! Suis officier! Capitaine St Juste 30e Infanterie de marine… Vite, pour l’Orient!’

  The coxswain saluted. ‘D’accord! We go to the Orient and the Tonnant, Capitaine!’

  They hit the surf at a run, twelve of them, French, Levantines, Arabs, gunners, sailors, any who would come. Pettifer and Warnock pulled Hazzard along, get ’im in, get ’im in! De la Vega took the tiller from the coxswain, ‘Tirez, mes vieux! Pull, amigos!’

  The swell fought them as they rowed, the thud of cannon-blasts louder, buffeting their ears. Hazzard stood up amidships, riding the swell, the blasts drawing closer, spray flying, the French in the boat looking up at him as he shouted, ‘Derrien!’

  The figure in black further ahead whipped round and looked. When he recognised Hazzard he rose up and raged, ‘Non!’ his cry cutting across the waves, roaring at the oarsmen to row faster, faster!

  With every stroke of the oars the battle grew louder, the crash of shattering wood, the savage cries of British gunners cheering every hit. The men in the boat flinched with each blast, the night split by the flashes of the cannon, ever brighter, more blinding, more deafening. Hazzard stared at Orient, at Derrien.

  De la Vega cried out, ‘Men in the water, amigo! Starboard!’

  Hazzard saw them over the starboard gunwale, struggling to keep their heads above the surface, some calling, hands aloft. ‘We can take eight or ten!’ called De la Vega. ‘But no more!’

  Hazzard watched Derrien pulling away still further, ‘After him!’ as Pettifer and Warnock dragged the men aboard, the long cutter tipping and swaying, the fear on their faces bright, one sobbing, one clawing to get in, their terror at once personal and universal. ‘Pull,’ called Hazzard, watching Derrien. ‘Tirez! Pull harder…’

  Other boats rowed furiously, the swell heaving with the roll of the great ships, the flash of fire
dazzling on its surface, splinters chopping the waves into a boiling spray with every deafening explosion.

  Nelson’s Vanguard streaked in towards the centre to engage the Peuple Souverain on the far side, taking fire from Spartiate and Aquilon, its bows bursting with hits, HMS Audacious, Minotaur and Defence following in her wake. Hazzard saw HMS Bellerophon make a lone charge at the Orient, dousing sail to slow herself, guns flashing, trying to screen Nelson and Vanguard, the water churning all around. Hazzard thought of the hot-headed Captain Darby. Just as HMS Orion had done with Sérieuse, Orient fired a single broadside and Darby’s Billy Ruffian rocked with the impacts, her mainmast crashing, tearing the foremast with it. Defiantly, she returned fire before drifting on her anchor chain, crippled.

  ‘Díos mio,’ said De la Vega, crossing himself, ‘this is the inferno…’

  ‘Sir! Orion dead ahead!’ called Pettifer. ‘It’s Sir James!’ HMS Orion was moving down the landward side of the line to batter both the Peuple Souverain and Franklin – and their overloaded cutter was directly in her path.

  ‘Cesár,’ called Hazzard, ‘make for Orient!’

  There was no sign of Derrien’s boat. It had vanished, somewhere ahead of the Orion. The battleships’ broadsides were smouldering mountains above them, the Peuple Souverain dropping her anchors, the rattle of chain sharp against the endless blasts of shot. Orion’s churning bow-wave roared and lifted them, the cutter tipping to starboard, every man tumbling atop another, Hazzard calling, faster, heave, the oars wild and swinging, and they rolled back, swept up by the wake and thrown against Franklin’s hull, the oars crushing hands and arms, some crying out, some toppling overboard. With Orion blotting out the lights from the bay beyond, Hazzard saw Derrien’s boat further down the line by the French flagship – but Derrien had gone. Hazzard took up one of the oars himself. They had moments before Sir James Saumarez attacked the Franklin.

  ‘Pull! Pull for Orient!’

  The waves lifted them and they were thrown down into the boat again, just as HMS Orion opened fire. They clapped their hands over their ears, some shouting against the roar as the air burst all around them, the blasting percussion maddening, thudding through their bodies as they rowed, screaming to each other, the broadside of Orion bright with flashes of fire and clouds of stinging smoke. A blazing cutter emerged from the French line, its contents engulfed in flame, bobbing and dancing on the waves, its light flickering against Orion and Franklin, cries from the decks above, Fend off, fend off! De la Vega shouted and Hazzard turned and looked up: the Orient towered above them, lines dropped for the crews to scramble aboard.

  Then they were out, hands scrabbling at the hanging lines trailing in the water, the only safety in the storm the largest target on the sea. Some of them had begun to climb when Sir James Saumarez resumed fire not twenty yards off.

  ‘Get down!’ Hazzard and De la Vega pulled a pair of French sailors back into the cutter and they dropped flat for cover, just as the rounds burst on the nearby Franklin’s portside. Orient was riddled with fragments and splinters, cannon-rounds crashing into Franklin’s hull, staving in her gun-ports, flinging the massive chained shutters whirling into the night.

  When the first salvo subsided, the men in the cutter hurled themselves at the ship’s side. A hatch on the middle gundeck opened and they called up, ‘Canonniers!’ A rope net was thrown out. Hazzard seized the ladder. Scarcely able to breathe, he pulled himself out of the cutter.

  ‘Marines, to me…’

  Hazzard swung, a dead weight, and struck the broadside, the net shaking with frantically climbing men, two falling past him, and then De la Vega and Pettifer took his elbows and heaved him upwards. He missed his footing, a boot sliding through a rung, and had to pull himself up, Warnock catching hold of him.

  ‘Sir!’

  Hazzard took his hand and made the last yard to the hatch door, the French sailors dragging them in, Vite alors! Vite! just as Orion ran out her reloaded guns once again. Hazzard dived on them all, ‘Get down!’

  The volley blasted the Franklin, and the ship shuddered, debris exploding from the hull waists, the deck alive with running men. It was a crazed warren of wreckage and fallen cargo blocking access to the portside guns, which sat cold and silent. On the starboard side, gunners loaded and fired heavy 24-pounders while barefoot boys clambered over crates and casks to reach the cannon with ammunition, the blast of impacts shaking every inch of the ship’s frame, deafening, blotting out their calls, Munition…! Vite! Poudre, plus de poudre alors!

  Hazzard could see right through the gundeck and its open ports to the approaching British ships now coming to duel with the giant flagship, rounds shrieking through the darkness straight for them.

  The marines threw themselves to the planks as the first rounds struck home on the starboard bow. A gun-crew flew backwards as the oak exploded all around them with a flash of light and a cloud of splinters, the gun-carriage swinging, the cannon jammed in its port, a boy crushed beneath it. A shout went up, Assistance! Au secours! Hazzard pushed himself up, a young French sailor weeping, a gash by his ear, his face twisted in sobs.

  Hazzard dropped to one knee, up, get up, and saw De la Vega. ‘Cesár! Aft – the staterooms…!’

  They pushed their way through the rubble and knots of running men, De la Vega finding the stairs to the upper decks. ‘Aquí! This way! Venga!’

  Captain Benjamin Hallowell’s HMS Swiftsure had moved into the centre of the battle, and now stood off Orient’s starboard bow, astern of the Franklin, and opened a raking fire. The bows of Orient thudded with round-shot, crashing through the lower and middle decks into the forward holds. Within moments, HMS Alexander bore down on her from astern. Next in line behind Orient, Du Petit Thouars in the Tonnant tried to return fire, but Alexander headed straight for the ever-widening gap between Tonnant’s bows and the stern of Brueys’ flagship. Orient was now bracketed by two British ships raking her from both forward and astern. The poopdeck of Orient heaved with explosions, her rails and mizzenstays flying to pieces, rigging and yards raining down on the quarterdeck from above.

  Hazzard looked across the decks. Gun-crews raced to reload, firing at will, Swiftsure and Alexander looming over the fo’c’sle and stern, sails blooming white, cannons blazing, Alexander’s tops filled with red-coated marines maintaining a ceaseless covering fire on the Orient’s decks. The dead were everywhere, sailors dragging the wounded into shelter, musket rounds peppering the decks, men falling from the rigging, young ensigns shouting to their crews, Fire, fire! Hazzard saw two officers standing at the quarterdeck, shouting up at the rigging hands, then vanishing in a cannon-blast, their bodies swept away by an unseen hand as Alexander and Swiftsure bombarded Orient relentlessly.

  ‘To the stern…’ gasped Hazzard. ‘Day-room or Great Cabin…’ He moved aft over a fallen spar to the wardroom passage, his memory of Orient now a blur with the Ville de Paris, Brueys become St Vincent, thoughts of his Uncle Thomas: Not to disappoint the good rector of St Jude’s.

  Once inside they found shattered panels, smashed bulwarks and doors hanging at all angles swinging from twisted hinges, sailors crowding the stairs, boys carrying men below in hammocks, wounded screaming, crates and gunpowder passing upwards. Another explosion and glass and wood blew in from astern with more cries as Alexander struck another blow and Hazzard dropped low. De la Vega surveyed the scene. ‘Madre…’

  They pushed through the rubble of the passages. Above, a ceiling sagged, its beams broken, its supporting post gone, the cool air of the night blowing in through smashed stern lights somewhere further aft. Bodies lay half buried in the ruins, and desperate gunners tried to clear the gun-ports of the dead. Some saw them and called, Aidez-nous alors! Help us!

  Another salvo of gunfire blew in from starboard and they threw themselves down, the fragments and splinters flying. Hazzard knew they had little time. Once Nelson was in position, they would all blaze away. When that happened, there would be no pause, no rest from the barrage.


  Ahead, the smashed bulwark gave onto another cabin, a stateroom. A broken desk, a bed up-ended on a shattered frame, castors spinning idly. The smoke had become a fog lit only by the flashes from outside and a single lantern somewhere before them. Another salvo struck, a thunderous repetitive thudding on the broadside and the ship shuddered. Hazzard stumbled onward, hopeless, guessing, ‘Sarah!’ If she weren’t here then he would try the holds where last they met.

  As he rounded a corner in the dark passage, Hazzard saw a woman crouched in a corner, huddled over a small barefooted boy in tattered trousers, miniature naval coat, smudged face, no more than twelve.

  ‘Sarah,’ he choked, then saw it was not her, but another. ‘Jeanne?’

  She was shaking, holding the boy tight. She saw Hazzard but did not move, her bright eyes darting quickly left and right. More rounds began to pummel the broadsides and she screamed, crushing the child to her. They shoved the debris aside to reach her – but a young ensign stepped into view and raised a pistol.

  ‘H-Halte…!’ he cried.

  ‘Down!’ Hazzard threw himself to one side as a bullet cracked into the panelling over his head. He shouted back at the ensign in French, ‘Fool! To your station at once!’

  ‘But – I was ordered—’

  ‘William!’

  It was Sarah’s voice, a muffled shriek, almost incomprehensible, and Hazzard lunged forward, ‘Sarah!’ – just as the ensign was hurled away by another blast, and Masson stepped into the doorway, a pistol in hand. He was scarcely recognisable, his curled wig gone, a bloody shirt and waistcoat blackened from fire, his face marred by a jagged wound from temple to jaw, one eye a purple mass of gnarled tissue.

  A cluster of 32-pound cannon rounds hit the hull below and the floor collapsed in the far corner, a beam giving way, and Masson screamed, clapping his hands over his ears. Whimpering, he got to his feet and aimed wild.

  Warnock called out, ‘Sir! Mine!’ and fired a snap-shot, the ball smashing through the remains of the doorframe, the splinters and ricochet hitting Masson in the hip. He cried out in pain and fell, the lantern suddenly blotted out as the ship heeled to port and they staggered. Hazzard made his way to Jeanne, the stifling air thudding, crashing in his head, God God God enough! He reached the doorway and took Jeanne’s outstretched hand, the boy holding out his arms. ‘Jeanne…’