by Wilbur Smith
Hal heard the officer call softly in Dutch, ‘Keep your spacing. Do not bunch up!’ There could be no doubt now whose troops these were. The Dutchman’s back was still turned, and Hal had a moment’s respite to think. I must reach the camp to warn my father, but there is not enough time to find a way round. I will have to fight my way through the enemy ranks. He drew the sword from its scabbard and rose on one knee, then paused as a thought struck him with force. We are outnumbered on land and on the water. This time there are no fireships to drive off the Buzzard and the Dutch frigate. The battle may go hard for us.
Using the point of his sword, he scratched a hole in the soft, loamy soil at the base of the wild fig. Then he slipped the ring from his finger and the locket with the miniature of his mother from his pocket and dropped them into the hole. After that he lifted the seal of the Nautonnier from his neck and laid it on top of his other treasures. He swept the loose soil back over them, and tamped it down with the flat of his hand.
It had taken him only a minute but when he started to his feet the Dutch officer had disappeared into the forest ahead. Hal crept forward, guided to his quarry by the rustle and crackle of the undergrowth. Without their officers these men will not fight so well, he thought. If I can take this one I will quench some of the fire in their bellies. He slowed as he drew closer to the man he was stalking, and came up behind the Dutchman as he pushed his way through the undergrowth, the noise of his progress masking the fainter sounds of Hal’s approach.
The Dutchman was sweating in dark wet patches down the back of his serge coat. By his epaulettes Hal realized that he was a lieutenant in the Company’s army. He was thin and lanky, with angry red pustules studding the back of his scrawny neck. He carried his bared sword in his right hand. He had not bathed for many days and smelt like a wild boar.
‘On guard, Mijnheer!’ Hal challenged him in Dutch, for he could not run him through the back. The lieutenant spun round to face him, lifting his blade into the guard.
His eyes were pale blue, and they flew wide with shock and fright as he found Hal so close behind him. He was not much older than Hal, and his face blanched with terror, emphasizing the rash of purple acne that covered his chin.
Hal thrust and their blades rasped as they crossed. He recovered swiftly, but with that first light touch he had assessed his adversary. The Dutchman was slow and his wrist lacked the snap and power of a practised swordsman. His father’s words rang in his ears. ‘Fight from the first stroke. Do not wait until you are angry.’ And he gave his heart over to a cold, murderous rage to kill. ‘Ha!’ he grunted, and feinted high, aiming the point at the Dutchman’s eyes but balanced for his parry. The lieutenant was slow to counter, and Hal knew he could risk the flying attack that Daniel had taught him against such a foe. He could go for the quick kill.
His wrist tempered to steel by hours with Aboli on the practice deck, he caught up the Dutchman’s blade, and whirled it with a stirring motion that threw the point off the line of defence. He had created an opening, but to exploit it with the flying attack he must open his own guard and place himself in full jeopardy of the Dutchman’s natural riposte – suicide in the face of a skilled opponent.
He committed himself, throwing his weight forward over his left foot, and sped his point in through the other man’s guard. The riposte came too late, and Hal’s steel spiked through the sweat-stained serge cloth. It glanced off a rib and then found the gap between them. Despite the days he had spent with a sword in his hand this was Hal’s first kill with the cold steel, and he was unprepared for the sensation of his blade running through human flesh.
It was a soggy, dead feeling, which smothered the speed of his thrust. Lieutenant Maatzuyker gasped and dropped his own sword as Hal’s point stopped at last against his spine. He clutched at Hal’s razor-sharp blade with bare hands. It slashed his palms to the bone, severing the sinews in a quick flush of bright blood. His fingers opened nervelessly, and he sank to his knees staring up into Hal’s face with watery blue eyes, as though he were about to burst into tears.
Hal stood over him, and tugged at the sapphire pommel of the Neptune sword, but the Toledo blade clung fast in the wet flesh. Maatzuyker gasped in agony and held up his mutilated hands in appeal.
‘I am sorry,’ Hal whispered in horror, and heaved again on his sword hilt. This time Maatzuyker opened his mouth wide and whimpered. The blade had passed through his right lung, and a sudden gout of blood burst through his pale lips, poured down his coat front and splashed Hal’s boots.
‘Oh God!’ Hal muttered, as Maatzuyker toppled backwards with the blade between his ribs. For a moment, he stood helplessly, watching the other man choke on and drown in his own blood. Then, close behind him, came a wild shout from the bushes.
A green-jacketed soldier had spotted him. A musket boomed, the pellets rattled into the foliage above Hal’s head and sang off the tree trunk beside him. He was galvanized. All along he had known what he must do but, until that moment, he had not been able to bring himself to do it. Now he placed his booted heel firmly on Maatzuyker’s heaving chest and leaned back against the resistance of the trapped blade. He tugged once and then again with all his weight behind it. Reluctantly the blade slid out until suddenly it came free and Hal reeled backwards.
Instantly he recovered his balance and leapt over Maatzuyker’s body just as another musket shot crashed out and the pellets hissed past his head. The soldier who had fired was fumbling with his powder flask as he tried to reload and Hal ran straight at him. The musketeer looked up in fright, then dropped his empty weapon and turned his back to run.
Hal would not use the point again but slashed at the man’s neck, just below his ear. The razor edge cut to the bone, and the side of his neck opened like a grinning red mouth. The man dropped without a sound. But all around him the bushes were alive with green-jacketed figures. Hal realized there must be hundreds of them. This was not a raiding party but a small army attacking the encampment.
He heard shouts of alarm and anger, and now a constant barrage of musket fire, much of it wild and undirected, but some slashing into the undergrowth close on either side of him as he ran with all his speed and strength. In the midst of the uproar Hal recognized, by its power and authority, one stentorian voice.
‘Get that man!’ it bellowed in Dutch. ‘Don’t let him get away! I want that one.’ Hal glanced in the direction from which it was coming, and almost tripped with the shock of seeing Cornelius Schreuder racing through the trees to head him off. His hat and wig flew from his head, but the ribbons and sash of his rank were gold. His shaven head gleamed like an eggshell. His moustaches were scored heavily across his face. For such a big man, he was fast on his feet, but fear made Hal faster.
‘I want you!’ Schreuder yelled. ‘This time you will not get away.’
Hal put on a burst of speed and, within thirty flying paces, had forged ahead to see the stockade of the encampment through the trees. It was deserted and he realized that his father and every other man would have been decoyed away to the lagoon’s edge by the heavy fire of the two warships, and that they must be manning the culverins in the emplacements.
‘To arms!’ he screamed as he ran, with Schreuder pounding along only ten paces behind him. ‘Rally to me, the Resolution. In your rear!’
As he burst into camp he saw, with huge relief, Big Daniel and a dozen seamen responding to his call, rushing back from the beach to support him. Immediately Hal rounded on the Dutchman.
‘Come, then,’ he said, and went on guard. But Schreuder came up short as he saw the Resolution’s men bearing down on him and realized that he had outrun his own troops, had left them without a leader, and was now outnumbered twelve to one.
‘Again you are lucky, puppy,’ he snarled at Hal. ‘But before this day ends, you and I will speak again.’
Thirty paces behind Hal, Big Daniel pulled up short and lifted the musket he carried. He aimed at Schreuder but, as the lock snapped, the Colonel ducked and spun on
his heels, the shot went wide and he bounded back into the forest, shouting to rally his attacking musketeers as they came swarming forward through the trees.
‘Master Daniel,’ Hal panted, ‘the Dutchman leads a strong force. The forest is full of men.’
‘How many?’
‘A hundred or more. There!’ He pointed as the first of the attackers came running and dodging towards them, stopping to fire and reload their muskets, then running forward again.
‘What’s worse, there are two warships in the bay,’ Daniel told him. ‘One is the Gull but the other is a Dutch frigate.’
‘I saw them from the hill.’ Hal had recovered his breath. ‘We are outgunned in front and outnumbered in the rear. We cannot stand here. They will be on us in a minute. Back to the beach.’
The coloured troops behind them clamoured like a pack of hounds as Hal turned and led his men back at a run. Ball and shot thrummed and whistled around them, kicking up spurts of damp earth at their heels, speeding them on their way.
Through the trees he could see the piled earth of the gun emplacements and the drifting bank of gunsmoke. He could make out the heads of his own gunners as they reloaded the culverins. Out in the lagoon the stately Dutch frigate bore down on the shore, wreathed in her own powder smoke. As Hal watched, she put her helm over, bringing her broadside to bear, and again her gunports bloomed with great flashes of flame. Seconds later the thunder of the cannonade and the blast of howling grape shot swept over them.
Hal flinched in the turmoil of disrupted air, his eardrums singing. Whole trees crashed down, and branches and leaves rained upon them. Directly in front of him he saw one of the culverins hit squarely, and hurled off its train. The bodies of two of the Resolution’s sailors were sent spinning high into the air.
‘Father, where are you?’ Hal tried to make himself heard in the pandemonium but then, through it all, he heard Sir Francis’s voice.
‘Stand to your guns, lads. Aim at the Dutchmen’s ports. Give those cheese-heads out there some of our good English cheer.’
Hal leapt down into the gunpit beside his father, seized his arm and shook it urgently.
‘Where have you been, boy?’ Sir Francis glanced at him, but when he saw the blood on his clothing he did not wait for an answer. Instead he grunted, ‘Take command of the guns on the left flank. Direct your fire—’
Hal interrupted, in a breathless rush, ‘The enemy ships are only creating a diversion, Father. The real danger is in our rear. The forest is full of Dutch soldiers, hundreds of them.’ He pointed back with his blood-stained blade. ‘They’ll be on us in a minute.’
Sir Francis did not hesitate. ‘Go down the line of guns. Order every second culverin to be swung round and loaded with grape. The front guns continue to engage the ships, but hold your fire with the back guns until the attack in our rear is point-blank. I will give the order to fire. Now, go!’ As Hal scrambled out of the pit, Sir Francis turned to Big Daniel. ‘Take these men of yours, and any other loafers you can find, go back and slow the enemy advance in our rear.’
Hal raced down the line, pausing beside each gunpit to shout his orders and then running on. The sound of the barrage and the answering fire from the beach was deafening and confusing. He reeled and almost went sprawling to the ground as another broadside from the black frigate swept over him like the devil-winds of a typhoon, smashing through the forest and ploughing the earth around him. He shook his head to clear it and ran on, hurdling a fallen tree-trunk.
As he passed each emplacement and alerted the gunners, they began to train the culverins around, aiming them back into the forest. Back there they could already hear musket fire and angry shouts as Big Daniel and his small band of seamen charged into the advancing hordes that poured from the forest.
Hal reached the gunpit at the end of the line and jumped down beside Aboli, who was captaining the team of gunners there. Aboli thrust his burning match into the touch hole. The culverin leapt and thundered. As the stinking smoke swirled back over them, Aboli grinned at Hal, his dark face stained even darker with soot and his eyes bloodshot with smoke. ‘Ah! I thought you might never pull your root out of the sugar field in time to join the fight. I feared I might have to come up to the cave, and prise you loose with an iron bar.’
‘You will grin less happily with a musket ball in your tail feathers,’ Hal told him grimly. ‘We are surrounded. The woods behind us are full of Dutchmen. Daniel is holding them, but not for much longer. There are hundreds of them. Train this piece around and load with grape.’ While they reloaded, Hal went on giving his orders. ‘We’ll have time for only one shot, then we’ll charge them in the smoke,’ he said as he tamped down the charge with the long ramrod. As he pulled it out, a sailor lifted the heavy canvas bag filled with lead shot, and forced it down the muzzle. Hal drove it down to sit upon the powder charge. Then they ducked behind the parapet on both sides of the gun, keeping clear of the area where the train would recoil, and stared past the stockade into the forest beyond. They could hear the ring of steel on steel and the wild shouts as Daniel’s men charged then fell back before the countercharge of the green-jackets. Musket fire hammered steadily as Schreuder’s men reloaded and ran forward to fire again.
Now they caught glimpses through the trees of their own seamen coming back. Daniel towered above the others: he was carrying a wounded man over one shoulder and swinging a cutlass in his other hand. The green-jackets were pressing him and his party hard.
‘Ready now!’ Hal grated at the seamen around him, and they crouched below the parapet and fingered their pikes and cutlasses. ‘Aboli, don’t fire until Daniel is out of the line.’
Suddenly Daniel threw down his burden, and turned back. He raced into the thick of the enemy, and scattered them with a great swipes of his cutlass. Then he ran to the wounded seaman, slung him over his shoulder and came on again towards where Hal crouched.
Hal glanced down the line of gunpits. Although the forward-pointing cannon were still banging away at the ships in the lagoon, every second culverin was directed into the forest, waiting for the moment to loose a storm of shot into the lines of attacking infantry.
‘At such short range the shot will not spread, and they are keeping their spaces,’ Aboli muttered.
‘Schreuder has them well under control,’ Hal agreed grimly. ‘We can’t hope to bring too many down with a single volley.’
‘Schreuder!’ Aboli’s eyes narrowed. ‘You did not tell me it was him.’
‘There he is!’ Hal pointed at the tall wigless figure striding towards them through the trees. His sash glittered and his moustache bristled as he urged his musketeers forward.
Aboli grunted, ‘That one is the devil. We’ll have trouble from him.’ He thrust an iron bar under the culverin and turned it round a few degrees, trying to bring the sights to bear on the colonel.
‘Stand still,’ he urged, ‘for just long enough to give me a shot.’ But Schreuder was moving up and down the ranks of his men, waving them on. He was so close now that his voice carried to Hal as he snapped at his men, ‘Keep your line! Keep the advance going. Steady now, hold your fire!’
His control over them was apparent in the determined but measured advance. They must have been aware of the line of waiting guns, but they came forward without wavering, holding their fire, not wasting the one fair shot they carried in their muskets.
They were close enough for Hal to make out their individual features. He knew that the Company recruited most of its troops in its eastern colonies, and this was apparent in the Asiatic faces of many of the advancing soldiers. Their eyes were dark and almond-shaped and their skins a deep amber.
Suddenly Hal realized that the broadsides from the two warships had ceased and snatched a glance over his shoulder. He saw that both the black frigate and the Gull had anchored a cable’s length or so off the beach. Their guns were silent, and Hal realized that Cumbrae and the frigate captain must have arranged with Schreuder a code of signals. They had cease
d firing for fear of hitting their own men.
That gives us a breathing space, he thought, and looked ahead again.
He saw that Daniel’s band was much depleted: they had lost half their number, and the survivors were clearly exhausted by their foray and the fierce skirmishing. Their gait was erratic – many could barely drag themselves along. Their shirts were sodden with sweat and the blood from their wounds. One at a time they stumbled up and flopped over the parapet to lie panting in the bottom of the pit.
Daniel alone was indefatigable. He passed the wounded man over the parapet to the gunners and, so murderous was his mood, would have turned back and rushed at the enemy once more had not Hal stopped him. ‘Get back here, you great ox! Let us soften them up with a little grape shot. Then you can have at them again.’
Aboli was still trying to line up the barrel on Schreuder’s elusive shape. ‘He is worth fifty of the others,’ he muttered to himself, in his own language. Hal, though, was no longer paying him any heed, but trying anxiously to catch a glimpse of his father in the furthest emplacement, and take a lead from him.
‘By God, he’s letting them get too close!’ he fretted. ‘A longer shot would give the grape a chance to spread, but I’ll not open fire before he gives the order.’
Then he heard Schreuder’s voice again: ‘Front rank! Prepare to fire!’ Fifty men dropped obediently to their knees, right in front of the parapet, and grounded the butts of their muskets.
‘Ready now, men!’ Hal called softly to the sailors crowded around him. He had realized why his father had delayed the salvo of culverin until this moment: he had been waiting for the attackers to discharge their muskets, and then he would have them at a fleeting disadvantage as they tried to reload.
‘Steady now!’ Hal repeated. ‘Wait for their volley!’