‘Sacré Bleu! That must be it!’ said Albert at last.
‘What is, sir?’ queried the coxswain.
‘The English! They haven’t taken the ship, because that is not what they are here for,’ said Albert. ‘Even if they captured her, they could never bring her out. The entrance is too closely guarded.’
‘Then what are they doing, sir?’
‘That,’ said Albert, grimly, ‘is what we need to find out.’
Over the water came the faint sound of a whistle, trilling out what sounded like a signal. It was soon taken up by another, louder one, repeating the call. The Centaure’s boats had barely covered a quarter of the way, but even at this distance it seemed to Albert as if the intensity of the fighting had changed. A few more shots rang out, accompanied by some shouts of derision. Then the ship fell silent.
‘What now?’ muttered Albert, straining to see ahead.
A new light appeared in the night, brighter than the others, shining through an open gun port near the stern, like the eye of a demon. Soon it was joined by a second light in the port beside it, and the mast and rigging of the sloop appeared, lit from beneath. Moments later the first flames began to lick up the mizzen mast, and as the blaze grew, the bay filled with yellow light.
‘Fire! Of course!’ exclaimed Albert. ‘An attack to draw our crew away, while a determined man with a tinder box does the rest. They cannot cut their ship out, so they destroy her.’
‘Boats on the water, sir,’ said the coxswain, pointing. ‘Three of them, over there.’
The Peregrine was soon fully ablaze, sending a whirling column of sparks high into the night. Against the fire, the silhouettes of the Griffin’s boats stood out, like black insects as their oars worked backwards and forwards. Albert looked at the sloop and felt rage in his heart. The crew had abandoned any attempt to quell the blaze. Some of the luckier ones had managed to launch a boat. The less fortunate were starting to throw themselves over the side to escape the inferno. He watched as one desperate sailor did so with his clothes ablaze.
He tightened his grip on the sword scabbard he held in front of him. ‘Pick up the pace! Faster!’ he yelled at the rowers. ‘None of those bastards escape us, understand?’ There was a growl from the crew and the launch surged forwards.
Albert’s boat had almost caught up with the Centaure’s longboat when the Peregrine exploded. They were fortunate to be farther away than the Griffin’s boats had been, although the surge that swept out of the dark was powerful enough to set the big launch pitching and tossing and water slopped in over the side.
‘Marines! Get bailing,’ ordered Albert. ‘Use your hats, if you need to. The rest of you, keep rowing.’
‘Lieutenant,’ called the voice of Senard, from the dark longboat alongside. ‘Have you sight of the enemy? I was looking at that ship when the damn magazine went up, and I am blind to all else. Are they making for the harbour entrance?’
Albert peered into the dark, and saw a little tell-tale swirl of wake on the starlit water ahead. ‘No, sir,’ he reported. ‘They are making for the island.’
‘The Isle of Pigs?’ queried Senard. ‘What on earth can be there for them? Are you quite certain?’
‘Perfectly so, sir,’ said his colleague.
‘Strange, but no matter. They may be seeking to hug the shore, and pass our gun boats in that way. You had best lead the way.’
With their crews still fresh, the French set off in pursuit of the three boats ahead. Albert soon realised that his launch was swifter than the longboat, and he began to open a lead. No matter, I have enough men on board to deal with the enemy, he told himself, as he urged his crew on. Lieutenant Senard was mistaken about the enemy’s intention. If anything, their course was taking them towards the far end of the island, and away from the entrance to Pointe-à-Pitre.
The little glimpse of wake he was following grew steadily into dark shapes on the water as the French boat drew nearer. Then they vanished once more, merging into the greater dark of the forest-covered island that loomed ahead. Albert strained from side to side, trying to see through the thicket of muskets held by the soldiers in the boat. Eventually he rose to his feet, balancing precariously.
‘Where have they gone?’ he muttered, staring ahead. The beach was white sand. Surely boats would show against that?
‘Over there, sir,’ said the coxswain, pointing. Then he saw them, clustered around the far end of the island. There was white water, breaking against a reef of some kind, in the midst of which he could see dark figures in the shallows, hauling a boat through the surf.
‘Is there a passage to the west of the island?’ he demanded.
‘None that I have ever heard of, sir,’ replied the coxswain.
Albert thought for a moment, and then he pointed the way ahead. ‘Land on the beach over there. Quickly! The enemy is escaping!’
A rock appeared to one side of the boat, as the water shelved towards the shore. The sound of hushed orders and the collective grunts of the British sailors dragging their boats through the shallows sounded in the night, seemingly from just ahead. Now the beach appeared, silent and abandoned, backed by dark forest. The white sand was strewn with a tide line of debris.
‘Easy there,’ ordered the coxswain, and the launch ran up into the shallows with a jolt that threw many of the men backwards.
‘Come on!’ yelled Albert, leading the way over the side. Then he heard an order in English, shockingly close.
‘Marines will stand,’ barked the voice. The line of debris got to its feet, and resolved into a solid wall of men, not ten yards from the boat.
‘Mon Dieu!’ exclaimed the coxswain.
‘Present arms,’ said the voice. Starlight glistened on a row of muskets as they were levelled at the boat, each one tipped with a long bayonet. The calm authority of the marines was in sharp contrast with the surprised crew of the launch. Some who had left the boat tried to scramble back in. Others began to push it back out to sea, while the majority remained seated inside, open mouthed.
‘Fire!’ ordered the voice, and a volley crashed out, a chain of brilliant light in the darkness. Men tumbled down around Albert in the packed launch. The coxswain beside him spun backwards, falling half out, his head and shoulders trailing in the water. After the first shocked silence, the wounded began screaming in pain.
‘All of you! Get out of the boat!’ Albert yelled, coming to life at last. ‘Sergeant, get your men in hand! Form a firing line!’
‘The sergeant is down, sir,’ reported a soldier who was supporting a wounded man. Albert could just make out the stripes on his arm.
‘Marines will advance!’ ordered the voice. The soldiers came striding down the beach towards them, still in a close order line and Albert’s command dissolved into blind panic. Some men fled along the shallows, flinging away their weapons as they went. Others waded out to sea. Those who remained were in no position to resist the remorseless wall as they charged home. Albert ripped out his sword, just in time to parry a savage bayonet thrust. As his sword jarred and slid down the barrel, he was defenceless to avoid the bayonet of the next marine in the line. He felt agony, deep in his gut, and he staggered back from the blow, sinking to his knees.
‘Marines will fall back,’ ordered the voice, in its remorseless, calm, matter-of-fact way and he saw the officer at last. He was no more than a few feet from where Albert knelt, an upright figure, gesturing with the long sword in his hand. The soldiers were vanishing back into the dark as quickly as they had appeared, leaving a pile of French dead and wounded in the shallows around the abandoned boat.
Then the white sand of the beach rushed up to meet him, and Albert lay at peace, feeling strangely calm. He could no longer feel the wound in his stomach. Instead he was on a tropical beach, beneath the stars, with water lapping against his legs. But where the water had been warm at first, it was growing steadily colder, until he could barely feel his legs as the chill spread. But at least his head seemed fine at last, pillo
wed on the soft sand. He felt tired, after his long night. Why did I drink so much, he muttered, as he closed his eyes and let the tropical breeze waft him to sleep.
Chapter 8 A Flag of Truce
The follow day the Griffin was patrolling off Guadeloupe, standing in towards the coast on a long, sliding run across the dazzling blue water, as if about to attack Pointe-à-Pitre once more. She had been sailing across this same stretch of sea since dawn. Just as she neared the point where a long-range shot from the battery on the Isle of Pigs might reach her, she came up into the wind. Amid a welter of flapping canvas, she slowly turned about, flaunting her big naval ensign, before coming onto the other tack and sailing out to sea once more. Each time she turned, the guns of the French battery had opened fire, cloaking the island in smoke, and raising fountains of water from the sea. None were closer than a hundred yards to the frigate’s side, and as she gathered way again, the battery fell into brooding silence.
Unconcerned with the sound of gunfire, or the manoeuvring of his ship, Clay sat with his clerk, working at his report on the previous night’s events. Normally his dispatches were coldly factual, dashed off with the minimum of fuss, but this time he was making more of an effort. The bloody mutiny on board the Peregrine had been greeted with outrage by the news sheets and journals back home, which meant that news of her destruction would be widely reprinted. Time for some care and attention, he told himself. The skylight above his head was open to its fullest extent, as was the line of window lights that ran across the rear of the cabin, allowing the warm sea breeze in to ruffle his shirt sleeves and tug at the various officers’ reports strewn across his desk.
‘Read me back the first part again, Mr Allen,’ he said. ‘Where I explain why we destroyed the Peregrine.’
The clerk scratched at his wig with the top of his pencil until he found the relevant passage and cleared his throat.
‘… having concluded the defences of Pointe-à-Pitre to be of too formidable a character to permit the cutting-out of His Majesty’s former ship Peregrine, and mindful of the import placed in my instructions on the aforementioned ship not remaining at the disposal of the enemy, I resolved on the vessel’s destruction.’
‘Hmmm, I suppose that will answer,’ said the captain. ‘What must we attend to next?’
‘We have covered Mr Blake’s account of the general assault, together with Mr Russell’s report on the fire,’ said Allen, running a finger down his rough draft.
‘Yes, that was most illuminating,’ said Clay, smiling across the desk.
‘Do you think so, sir?’ said the clerk. ‘I thought it set down very ill, although I understand the young gentleman has scorched his writing hand.’
‘No, I was making a pun. His report on the fire was very illuminating … oh, no matter.’
‘Ha ha. Very droll, sir,’ said the clerk, his face impassive. ‘Although, if I might be so bold, I would urge the avoidance of levity in such a serious report.’
‘Good God, man, I was not going to put that in!’ exclaimed his captain. ‘Now, we must have reached Lieutenant Macpherson’s part.’
‘Quite so, sir,’ said Allen.
Clay lifted up the inkwell that held the marine officer’s report in place, just as a gust of wind whistled into the cabin, and the page was off before he could grab it. With a sigh, Allen rose to his feet and recovered it from the base of the bulkhead, where it had come to rest beneath the portrait of Lydia Clay.
‘My thanks, Mr Allen,’ said his chastened captain. He scanned through the document, to refresh his memory, and then began to dictate.
‘The enemy having been fully roused, our assault party found their retreat challenged by two large ship’s boats of the enemy. These attempted to land on the Isle of Pigs, from where they hoped to frustrate the escape of our people. I am pleased to inform you that this landing was foiled in the most handsome manner by Lieutenant Thomas Macpherson, together with the detachment of marines he has the honour to command. They gallantly attacked the French as they disembarked, putting the enemy to flight, which permitted the party to withdraw in good order with no further loss. How does that sound?’
‘Tolerably well drafted, sir,’ conceded Allen, scanning through what he had written. Then he looked up towards the skylight. ‘Was that a hail from the masthead?’
‘It was,’ agreed Clay. ‘We had best press on. End with ‘… I regret to inform you of the loss of …’ – Clay glanced at the sheet supplied to him by Corbett, the ship’s surgeon – ‘… of six men killed, thirteen wounded and one missing as per the attached list. I beg to remain … etc, etc.’
‘Etc, etc,’ echoed Allen. ‘I shall draw it up directly, sir.’
‘If you please, although I daresay I shall want to change it further.’
Allen leant over the desk to gather up all the various papers, just as there was a knock at the cabin door.
‘Come in!’ called Clay, and as his clerk departed, Midshipman Todd entered smartly.
‘Mr Preston’s compliments, and a schooner is coming out from Pointe-à-Pitre, sir,’ the youngster reported.
‘Only a schooner?’ queried Clay. ‘Not that deuced big ship of the line?’
‘No, sir,’ replied Todd. ‘They are all still busy setting up their masts. Mr Harrison says he could have rigged the Sovereign of the Seas in the time it has taken them.’
‘The longer the better,’ said Clay. ‘I take it there is still no sign of the admiral with the Stirling?’
‘No, sir. Nothing yet.’
‘Thank you, Mr Todd,’ said Clay. ‘Kindly tell Mr Preston that I will be on deck directly.’
‘Aye aye, sir,’ replied the midshipman.
With his neckcloth and coat back in place, Clay ran up the aft ladderway and out onto the quarterdeck. The frigate was approaching the land once more, crossing the bay towards the cane fields and lush slopes of Guadeloupe. The schooner had just slid from between the Isle of Pigs and the fortress on the cliffs. She was a smaller craft than the Saint Joseph they had encountered a few days back, but her fore-and-aft rig was almost identical. From her main mast flew a faded French tricolour, with something else fluttering above it.
‘Kindly have the ship hove to, Mr Preston,’ he ordered.
‘Aye aye, sir.’
The frigate came up into the wind, blocking the route towards the open sea, and showing her long row of gun ports towards the harbour entrance. Unperturbed, the schooner turned around the end of the island, and headed directly towards them.
‘She comes on very bold, does she not, sir,’ said Taylor. ‘Surely she cannot mean to fight us?’
‘I doubt that, sir,’ said Preston, who was examining her through his telescope. ‘She lacks even wooden cannon to challenge us with.’
‘What do you make of her colours, Mr Preston?’ asked Clay.
‘It looks to be a flag of truce, sir,’ said the officer of the watch. ‘But surely she can’t be a warship?’
‘Perhaps it is a ruse to permit her to close with us, sir,’ said Taylor. ‘She could have a hold crowded with boarders, or perhaps she is a fireship, come to pay us back in our own coin. With your permission I’ll turn up the watch below.’
‘She rides very high in the water, for a ship packed with men,’ said Clay. ‘But it will do no harm to have the guns manned. Tell her to stay under our lee, Mr Preston.’
‘Aye aye, sir.’
In spite of Taylor’s fears, the approaching ship seemed innocent enough as she drew nearer. Search as they might, they failed to detect the twinkle of weapons from beneath her hatch covers, or any trails of smoke drifting away downwind. Instead they could see that she was in the same battered state as all the local schooners they had encountered. The dark blue paintwork on her hull was patched in places and worn away altogether in others. Her bleached sails were thin and old, and her crew seemed unconcerned by the pair of eighteen-pounders directed towards them, as she came up into the wind close by the Griffin. Most of her crew were black with
a sprinkle of Europeans among them. Many were dressed in ragged clothes, but beside the binnacle stood a more smartly dressed man, in a long grey coat over pale yellow britches. He raised his hat politely towards Clay, revealing a head of curly auburn hair, and then picked up a speaking trumpet from the becket in front of him.
‘May I have your permission to come aboard, Captain?’ he asked, in heavily accented but perfectly understandable English.
‘You can come across, in a single boat with an unarmed crew,’ replied Clay. ‘No ceremony, if you please,’ he added, in an aside to Preston.
‘Aye aye, sir.’
‘What do you make of their quartermaster?’ asked Taylor, who had continued to examine the schooner. ‘I would wager my commission he was once in the navy.’
Clay looked at the seaman. He was a big, thickset man, wearing high-waisted trousers and a checked shirt. He stood with his back to the frigate, as if reluctant for his face to be seen, but that only served to highlight the thick braid of dark hair that reached down between his shoulders. The sleeves of his shirt were hitched clear of bulging forearms that were blue with tattoos.
‘He certainly has that look, I grant you,’ said Clay. He focused his telescope towards Pointe-à-Pitre, searching for any clues as to why this ship had come. The tricolour continued to flutter above the battery, its colours brilliant against the green trees behind it. Deeper into the inlet the foremast of a substantial warship reared up above the island, looking strangely unbalanced without a main or mizzen in place behind it. A swarm of tiny figures were working aloft, swinging up a big yard, thickened by its closely furled sail. Otherwise all seemed normal. There was no sign of any other vessel passing down the deep-water channel behind the island. Clay closed his telescope, cupped a hand next to his mouth and yelled up to the frigate’s lookout.
Larcum Mudge (Alexander Clay Series Book 8) Page 13