Larcum Mudge (Alexander Clay Series Book 8)

by Philip K Allan

  ‘One in the morning,’ he muttered to himself, as he settled in the stern sheets of the cutter. ‘Kindly follow Mr Preston’s launch, Sedgwick.’

  ‘Aye aye, sir,’ said the coxswain. ‘Shove us off there, lads.’

  The boat slid down into the water as the last of the crew clambered over the sides and took their places, and the attack party set off into the harbour.

  They hugged the western side of the inlet, as far from any watchers in Pointe-à-Pitre as possible. Here the shore was sparsely populated, with only the occasional light up on the hillside. Where land met water there was a low cliff, fringed with trailing creepers. In the deep shadow at its foot, the line of boats was almost invisible as it crept along. Sedgwick found himself straining forwards, as he tried to follow the faint wake of the launch ahead.

  ‘Bow, ship yer oar and keep an eye out for rocks,’ he ordered, in a faint whisper.

  The boats stole on, deeper and deeper into the inlet. A tiny cove opened off to one side, where starlight flashed on a cascade of water tumbling noisily down to a little beach.

  ‘Around the next headland, ain’t it, sir,’ breathed Sedgwick to the officer beside him.

  ‘That’s right,’ murmured Russell, tightening his grip on his sword at the thought. The line of boats pressed on, turning about the narrow point and opening up the rest of the inlet. A mile farther up Sedgwick could see the huge bulk of the ship of the line. She was bow on to them, her sides spreading wide, before angling back again. Her lower masts were like the thick columns of a temple, each capped with a fighting top, but strangely truncated without any upper masts above them.

  ‘That fecker must be broad as a first rate,’ muttered O’Malley, peering over his shoulder as he rowed.

  ‘Quiet in the boat!’ urged Russell. ‘She is no concern of ours this night.’

  The cutter continued to turn, entering a sheltered bay. Anchored in its heart was a much smaller ship. Lamps hung in her rigging, and more light spilt out from her hull and the windows that ran across her stern.

  ‘She don’t seem prepared to resist us, sir,’ marvelled Sedgwick. ‘Every gun port must be agape to catch the sea breeze!’

  ‘Why would she be fearful, anchored in the heart of a fortified port with an eighty-gunner for company?’ commented Andrews, from beside him.

  ‘And she is truly the Peregrine?’ asked Russell.

  ‘Oh aye, that be her, right enough, sir,’ confirmed the sailor.

  ‘Easy all,’ whispered Sedgwick, and the cutter drew up beside the other two pools of dark on the water.

  ‘Mr Preston, are you ready?’ came the voice of Blake from one.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ replied the other.

  ‘Mr Russell?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ confirmed the midshipman.

  ‘Starboard forechains for us,’ continues Blake, ‘larboard for you, Mr Preston. See that both our assaults are truly set before you make your move, Mr Russell.’

  ‘Aye aye, sir.’

  With a glimmer of starlight on water, the two shadows vanished, their courses diverging, leaving the cutter crew resting on their oars. Time dragged for the waiting sailors.

  ‘Surely they must have reached her by now?’ muttered Russell. Then something, a flash of white on the calm surface, as an oar stroke was missed. Moments later a challenge rang out, followed by the thump of a boat against an oak side.

  ‘One guinea, two guineas, three guineas,’ intoned Russell.

  A pistol flashed, startling bright after so much dark, followed by the bang of a shot, and then a ragged cheer from beneath the forechains of the ship.

  ‘Twenty guineas, twenty-one guineas,’ continued the midshipman.

  The sound of fighting rolled across the water towards them. Shouts of fear and rage, the clash of steel on steel, the banging of more pistols, up on the forecastle of the Peregrine.

  ‘Fifty guineas, fifty-one guineas.’

  The second boat arrived on the far side of the sloop, unleashing more attackers. Orders were shouted in French and fresh sounds rang out. The crash of a grating being dropped in haste on the deck, the rumble of feet thundering up a ladderway.

  ‘Ninety-nine guineas, one hundred and time!’ said Russell. ‘Lay us under her counter, Sedgwick.’

  ‘Aye aye, sir.’

  The boat shot off, impelled forward by the tense crew.

  ‘Row steady there!’ urged Sedgwick. ‘It ain’t no blooming race.’

  The boat settled into a longer stroke, sweeping forward towards the ship. In the glow of the lamps hung from her rigging her whole forecastle was a swirling melee of struggling figures. At the other end of the Peregrine, all seemed quiet.

  ‘Ease off, there,’ whispered Sedgwick. The cutter slid through the dark water towards her stern. They had almost reached the ship when a head appeared over the rail, muttered a curse and in the faint light a musket was levelled at them. For a moment Russell thought the weapon was pointing straight at him. It crashed out with a flash of blinding light, and then the cutter was under the shelter of the sloop’s counter, with her weed-covered rudder just beside them. Sedgwick leaned heavily against him as the boat came to a halt.

  ‘What are you doing!’ whispered the midshipman.

  ‘It ain’t me, sir,’ protested the coxswain. ‘It’s Andrews! He’s been shot!’

  ‘He can’t have been!’ exclaimed Russell. ‘We need him! Is he alive?’ In answer Sedgwick hauled the boatswain’s mate into the light shining down from the stern windows above their heads. His open eyes stared towards the heavens, white and lifeless.

  ‘Damnation!’ exclaimed Russell. ‘What the bloody hell are we to do now! He is the only one who knows his way around the Peregrine!’

  Chapter 7 HMS Peregrine

  While Midshipman Russell was transfixed by the stiffening corpse of Andrews, the crew of the cutter rested on their oars, waiting for the next order. The stern of the ship rose like a damp wall beside them, curving over their heads to form the counter, protecting them from above. As they waited there in the dark, other sounds came to them. Clashes and cries from the fight on the forecastle, echoing through the ship. The distant sound of a drum from the fort across the water, as the guard was called out. The clang of a church bell sounding the alarm in Pointe-à-Pitre. Beside Russell, Sedgwick stirred in his place.

  ‘We can’t be a waiting here all night, sir,’ he whispered. ‘It be a shame about Andrews, an’ all, but we got to get on. Maybe this sloop will prove much the same as the old Rush. You and me served on her, as did some of the others.’

  ‘You’re right, Sedgwick,’ said Russell, coming back to the present. ‘Search the lower counter for a port, men. Andrews said we should find one close to the water.’

  ‘Larboard side search, the rest hold us steady,’ supplemented the coxswain. ‘Oars flat on the surface.’

  ‘There be something here, sir,’ announced the voice of Trevan. ‘Hard by the rudder.’ A hollow sound rang out as he banged his fist against the cover.

  ‘Good work!’ enthused the midshipman. ‘Prise it open with one of the crowbars.’ Grunts and oaths sounded from near the bow for a moment, and the cutter surged and knocked against the sloop.

  ‘She be bolted pretty tight, sir,’ announced the Cornishman, through gritted teeth.

  ‘Here, you get that side, and I’ll get this,’ said the voice of Evans, a massive presence as he rose up, kneeling on the thwart, and clattered another crowbar into place. ‘When I says three, give it some bleeding brawn. One, two and three.’ The straining oak cover groaned as the two men heaved.

  ‘Shift, you bleeder!’ urged Evans. At last there was a loud crack, the port lid swung open and orange light poured down onto the wildly rocking boat. The bright square vanished as Evans wormed his head and shoulders through it.

  ‘Wardroom, sir,’ came his muffled report. ‘Looks to be empty. Shall I nip through, like?’

  ‘No, I shall lead,’ said Russell, making his way up to the broken lid. ‘T
revan and O’Brien, wait here with the cutter. The rest of you follow me.’

  Standing on the thwarts, the midshipman could push his whole upper body into the cabin beyond. It was a modest-sized space, lit by two oil lamps that swung from the beams overhead. At the far end was the thick trunk of the mizzen mast as it passed through on its way to the keel. To either side were canvas partitions, the nearest of which had its flap open. Through it he could see a cot suspended over a sea chest, with an officer’s coat hanging on a peg beside it. Everywhere he looked there were signs of hasty departure. A nightshirt lay crumpled on the deck. A scatter of cards spread across the table, together with several half-filled glasses. A chair knocked over and left where it lay. He pulled himself up through the port, and the other sailors followed him.

  ‘Evans and Mudge, come with me,’ he ordered. ‘The rest of you check the mattresses in the officer’s cabins. If they’re straw-filled, bring them along.’

  The three men approached the single door in the bulkhead that led out from the wardroom into the rest of the ship. Russell was just leaning forward to place his ear against it, when the brass handle began to turn. He stopped in alarm, and the door swung away from him to reveal a portly man with a thin black moustache. His eyes opened wide with horror.

  ‘Mon Dieu …!’ he started to shout.

  ‘No you bleeding don’t!’ said Evans, pushing past the midshipman and smashing his fist into the man’s face. He was not set properly, so the blow only stunned the Frenchman, but this left him in no position to dodge the thrust from Mudge’s cutlass as it ran him through. By the time that Russell had ripped out his own sword out, the fight was over.

  ‘Well done, men,’ said the midshipman, stepping over the body and advancing onto the lower deck. There were more doors here, to right and left, and then the ship opened out. Rows of hammocks lined both sides, while beneath them were more signs of a hasty departure. A shoe lay on its side under the nearest one, next to the discarded scabbard of a cutlass. The sound of fighting from the front of the ship echoed down through the grating overhead.

  ‘What we be looking for, sir?’ asked Mudge.

  ‘A way down to the orlop deck,’ said Russell.

  ‘I reckon there’s sure to be one hard by the main mast, sir,’ said Evans, advancing towards the thick column. ‘Here we bleeding go!’

  Russell looked behind him as O’Malley came struggling through the door of the wardroom, dragging a mattress behind him.

  ‘Ah, splendid,’ said the midshipman. ‘Bring that along with you.’

  ‘Is it a fecking kip we’re after having?’ the Irishman muttered to Sedgwick, as the coxswain joined him with a second one. The pair set off after the others, manhandling their mattresses around the mast and down the steeply pitched steps to the deck below.

  The orlop was a close, forbidding space, full of dark passageways that led off in different directions. The deck height was a bare five feet, and large openings gaped in the floor, through which could be glimpsed the curved tops of huge barrels packed into the hold beneath them. Russell unhooked a lamp that hung at the bottom of the ladderway, and peered about him.

  ‘Close to the aft magazine but not too close,’ he muttered to himself. He advanced uncertainly down one opening and then turned to beckon the others to follow. ‘Come on lads, this way.’

  The short section of corridor between bulkheads ended in an open area, lined with more doors and the dark entrances of two more passageways. The atmosphere down here was close and musty, full of rank odours rising from the bilges beneath them. Through two levels of deck, the sound of their fellow Griffins fighting on the forecastle was faint. Then came a loud boom, accompanied by the rumble of gun trucks on oak from overhead. The sailors looked at each other in the glow of their lamp.

  ‘That was a fecking cannon, or I ain’t never heard one,’ exclaimed O’Malley.

  ‘Summoning help, I daresay, sir,’ added Sedgwick. ‘Best get a shift on.’

  ‘This place will serve well,’ said the midshipman. ‘Cut open those mattresses, and pile the straw up here. Evans, Mudge, open up some of these doors and see what you can find that will burn.’

  With frantic urgency, the two men set to with their crowbars, levering open doors and peering in. ‘Sail room, sir,’ reported Mudge, from the shattered frame of the first opening. ‘Ain’t sure as musty canvas be what we’re after.’

  ‘Here we bleeding go!’ exclaimed Evans from the next room. ‘Carpenter’s store, sir!’

  ‘Excellent!’ enthused Russell. ‘You men, get some lumber piled up on all this straw.’

  While Evans and Mudge investigated further, the others pulled out odd pieces of wood, building their pile of straw into what was becoming a considerable pyre, heaped up against the bulkhead.

  ‘That will do nicely,’ said the officer. ‘Set your combustibles deep in among the kindling, and let us get this lit.’

  Every member of the cutter crew had a lanyard around his neck from which a bulky package of oilskin hung. They all slipped them off, tore them open and pulled out the contents. Each one contained a tar-soaked rag, wrapped tight around a bundle of slow match. The kneeling men thrust them deep into the straw, while Russell crouched down and lit his length of slow match from the lantern. He passed the lamp to Sedgwick, and whirled the end of the match into spluttering life. A trail of grey smoke curled up from the glowing end, and the smell of burning sulphur filled the air. Then the young officer went around the perimeter of the pile, lighting each package in turn. Hungry yellow flames blossomed up, and spread quickly among the straw.

  ‘More lumber, lads,’ urged Russell, stepping back from the blaze. Further planks and beams were dragged from the wood store and thrown on. In response the flames rose higher, licking along the lengths of wood, and sending clouds of acrid smoke catching at the men’s throats. More wood was piled on, and the sailors began to pull their neckcloths up over their mouths and noses. They were forced to step back as the fire spread, lines of little flames running out along the walls as the bulkhead began to catch. The heat was growing intense, forcing them to duck low to escape the hot smoke that was filling the upper part of the space. Then the figure of Evans appeared, doubled over a small but heavy-looking keg he was clutching to his chest.

  ‘Mind yer backs!’ he warned, before hurling the barrel into the heart of the blaze. At first it sat there, a dark shape among all the red flame, like the egg of a phoenix in the midst its fiery nest.

  ‘What was that, Big Sam?’ asked Sedgwick.

  ‘Something I found back there, in the boatswain’s store,’ said the Londoner. ‘I think it might be lamp oil.’

  ‘Lamp oil!’ exclaimed the coxswain, the eyes above his mask swelling with horror. ‘Everyone! Get back!’

  As the barrel staves burned and twisted, the oil poured out, instantly trebling the intensity of the blaze. The blast of heat was unbearable, forcing the sailors to flee. Sedgwick held his arms up to protect his face, and felt the agony of them scorching, and his nostrils filled with the smell of burning hair. The fire had become a volcano of yellow light, with bright tongues rushing out over the deckhead above the men like the branches of a flaming tree.

  ‘We’ve got to get out, sir!’ he yelled to Russell, dropping to his knees to escape the flames and smoke.

  ‘How?’ protested the officer, pointing to the way they had come, now engulfed in flame.

  ‘This way!’ shouted Evans. ‘I saw another passage beyond the boatswain’s store.’ The men started to crawl after the big Londoner, when another voice cut through the bang and roar of the fire.

  ‘No! Stop! You’ll all perish. ’Tis a dead end! Follow astern of me!’

  After a moment of hesitation, the men turned to follow Mudge, as he led them to the other side of the sloop. Hard against the inner skin was a narrow passage, no more than two feet wide, that ran behind the store rooms. Without hesitation, he crawled into it and vanished from sight.

  ‘How the bleeding hell am I
going to fit down there?’ coughed Evans.

  ‘With your fat arse aflame, I daresay you’ll find a way,’ yelled O’Malley, diving in after Mudge and wriggling through like a snake. Pursued by the heat and flames of the fire, the rest scrambled through. Even the big Londoner managed it, with Sedgwick and Mudge pulling him by the arms. Then they all stumbled after Russell, until the ladderway they had come down appeared through the smoke. They dashed up it to arrive, coughing and retching, back on the relative calm of the lower deck.

  ‘How the fecking …’ began O’Malley.

  ‘Silence!’ snapped Russell. ‘Back to the cutter, men! Before those flames reach the aft magazine. Go swiftly, now!’

  While the sailors ran back into the wardroom and tumbled out through the broken port, Russell stood by the column of hot smoke that was pouring up the steps from the deck below. It was thick and dark now, with the odd glowing ember whirling upwards in its heart. Beside him stood Sedgwick, waiting for the young officer. The midshipman pulled out his whistle from around his neck, and put it to his trembling lips. The first trill was faint and uncertain, but as he regained his breath, he was able to blow it properly. Three blasts, a pause, then three more. On the third repetition, the faint sound of an answer came from the forecastle.

  ‘Good, we can depart now,’ he said. In response Sedgwick whipped out his pistol and fired it at the grating in the deck above them. There was a loud thump, and a face appeared, pressed against one of the square openings.

  ‘He’ll be smoked like a kipper, presently,’ said Russell, giggling with relief after so much strain. Sedgwick took his arm and guided him towards the wardroom. ‘We’ve got to go, sir,’ he urged. ‘Afore that powder blows us back to the barky without call for rowing. You may not be able to feel it through your boots, but this deck be growing mighty hot underfoot.’

  *****

  As soon as Russell and Sedgwick turned their backs on the hatchway, the first flames appeared around its rim from the deck below. The coxswain glanced back over his shoulder to see the column of rising smoke swell with glowing light. He slammed the wardroom door shut against the pursuing fire, and raced across to follow the midshipman out of the open port and down into the waiting boat.