Lieutenant Hornblower h-2

by Cecil Scott Forester

  “Mr. Bush, sir?”

  This was Wellard, his voice more under command this time.

  “Here I am.”

  “Mr. Hornblower sent me back again, sir. There’s another gully ahead, crossing the path. An’ we’ve come across some cattle, sir. Asleep on the hill. We disturbed ‘em, and they’re wandering about.”

  “Thank you, I understand,” said Bush.

  Bush had the lowest opinion of the ordinary man and the subordinary man who constituted the great bulk of his command. He knew perfectly well that if they were to blunder into cattle along this path they would think they were meeting the enemy. There would be excitement and noise, even if there was no shooting.

  “Tell Mr. Hornblower I am going to halt for fifteen minutes.”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  A rest and opportunity to close up the column were desirable for the weary men in any case, as long as there was time to spare. And during the rest the men could be personally and individually warned about the possibility of encountering cattle. Bush knew that merely to pass the word back down the column would be unsatisfactory, actually unsafe, with these tired and slowwitted men. He gave the order and the column came to a halt, of course with sleepy men bumping into the men in front of them with a clatter and a murmur thee the whispered curses of the petty officers with difficulty suppressed. While the warning was being circulated among the men lying in the grass another trouble was reported to Bush by a petty officer.

  “Seaman Black, sir. ‘E’s drunk.”

  “Drunk?”

  “’E must ‘ave ‘ad sperrits in ‘is canteen, sir. You can smell it on ‘is breff. Dunno ‘ow ‘e got it, sir.”

  With a hundred and eighty seamen and marines under his command one man at least was likely to be drunk. The ability of the British sailor to get hold of liquor and his readiness to overindulge in it were part of his physical makeup, like his ears or his eyes.

  “Where is he now?”

  “’E made a noise, sir, so I clipped ‘im on the ear’ole an’ ‘e’s quiet now, sir.”

  There was much left untold in that brief sentence, as Bush could guess, but he had no reason to make further inquiry while he thought of what to do.

  “Choose a steady seaman and leave him with Black when we go on.”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  So the landing party was the weaker now by the loss of the services not only of the drunken Black but of the man who must be left behind to keep him out of mischief. But it was lucky that there were not more stragglers than there had been up to now.

  As the column moved forward again Hornblower’s unmistakable gangling figure showed up ahead, silhouetted against the faint moonlight. He fell into step beside Bush and made his report.

  “I’ve sighted the fort, sir.”

  “You have?”

  “Yes, sir. A mile ahead from here, or thereabouts, there’s another gully. The fort’s beyond that. You can see it against the moon. Maybe half a mile beyond, maybe less. I’ve left Wellard and Saddler at the gully with orders to halt the advance there.”

  “Thank you.”

  Bush plodded on over the uneven surface. Now despite his fatigue he was growing tense again, as the tiger having scented his prey braces his muscles for the spring. Bush was a fighting man, and the thought of action close ahead acted as a stimulant to him. Two hours to sunrise; time and to spare.

  “Half a mile from the gully to the fort?” he asked.

  “Less than that, I should say, sir.”

  “Very well. I’ll halt there and wait for daylight.”

  “Yes, sir. May I go on to join my division?”

  “You may, Mr. Hornblower.”

  Bush and Whiting were holding down the pace of the march to a slow methodical step, adapted to the capacity of the slowest and clumsiest man in the column; Bush at this moment was checking himself from lengthening his stride under the spur of the prospect of action. Hornblower went plunging ahead; Bush could see his awkward gait but found himself approving of his subordinate’s overflowing energy. He began to discuss with Whiting plans for the final assault.

  There was a petty officer waiting for them at the approach to the gully. Bush passed the word back for the column to be ready to halt, and then halted it. He went forward to reconnoitre; with Whiting and Hornblower beside him he stared forward at the square silhouette of the fort against the sky. It even seemed possible to see the dark line of the flagpole. Now his tenseness was eased; the scowl that had been on his face in the last stages of the advance had softened into an expression of good humour, which was wasted in the circumstances.

  The arrangements were quickly made, the orders whispered back and forth, the final warnings given. It was the most dangerous moment so far, as the men had to be moved up into the gully and deployed ready for a rush. One whisper from Whiting called for more than a moment’s cogitation from Bush.

  “Shall I give permission for the men to load, sir?”

  “No,” answered Bush at length. “Cold steel.”

  It would be too much of a risk to allow all those muskets to be loaded in the dark. There would not only be the noise of the ramrods, but there was also the danger of some fool pulling a trigger. Hornblower went off to the left, Whiting with his marines to the right, and Bush lay down in the midst of his division in the centre. His legs ached with their unaccustomed exercise, and as he lay his head was inclined to swim with fatigue and lack of sleep. He roused himself and sat up so as to bring himself under control again. Except for his weariness he did not find the waiting period troublesome to him; years of life at sea with its uncounted eventless watches, and years of war with its endless periods of boredom, had inured him to waiting. Some of the seamen actually slept as they lay in the rocky gully; more than once Bush heard snores begin, abruptly cut off by the nudges of the snorers’ neighbours.

  Now there, at last, right ahead, beyond the fort—was the sky a little paler? Or was it merely that the moon had climbed above the cloud? All round about save there the sky was like purple velvet, still spangled with stars. But there—there—undoubtedly there was a pallor in the sky which had not been there before. Bush stirred and felt again at the uncomfortable pistols in his belt. They were at halfcock; he must remember to pull the hammers back. On the horizon there was a suspicion, the merest suggestion, of a redness mingled with the purple of the sky.

  “Pass the word down the line,” said Bush. “Prepare to attack.”

  He waited for the word to pass, but in less time than was possible for it to have reached the ends of the line there were sounds and disturbances in the gully. The damned fools who were always to be found in any body of men had started to rise as soon as the word had reached them, probably without even bothering to pass the word on themselves. But the example would be infectious, at least; beginning at the wings, and coming back to the centre where Bush was, a double ripple of men rising to their feet went along the line. Bush rose too. He drew his sword, balanced it in his hand, and when he was satisfied with his grip he drew a pistol with his left hand and pulled back the hammer. Over on the right there was a sudden clatter of metal; the marines were fixing their bayonets. Bush could see the faces now of the men to right and to left of him.

  “Forward!” he said, and the line came surging up out of the gully. “Steady, there!”

  He said the last words almost loudly; sooner or later the hotheads in the line would start to run, and later would be better than sooner. He wanted his men to reach the fort in a single wave, not in a succession of breathless individuals. Out on the left he heard Hornblower’s voice saying “Steady” as well. The noise of the advance must reach the fort now, must attract the attention even of sleepy, careless Spanish sentries. Soon a sentry would call for his sergeant, the sergeant would come to see, would hesitate a moment, and then give the alarm. The fort bulked square in front of Bush, still shadowy black against the newly red sky; he simply could not restrain himself from quickening his step, and the line came h
urrying forward along with him. Then someone raised a shout, then the other hotheads shouted, and the whole line started to run, Bush running with them.

  Like magic, they were at the edge of the ditch, a sixfoot scarp, almost vertical, cut in the limestone.

  “Come on!” shouted Bush.

  Even with his sword and his pistol in his hands he was able to precipitate himself down the scarp, turning his back to the fort and clinging to the edge with his elbows before allowing himself to drop. The bottom of the dry ditch was slippery and irregular, but he plunged across it to the opposite scarp. Yelling men clustered along it, hauling themselves up.

  “Give me a hoist!” shouted Bush to the men on either side of him, and they put their shoulders to his thighs and almost threw him up bodily. He found himself on his face, lying on the narrow shelf above the ditch at the foot of the ramparts. A few yards along a seaman was already trying to fling his grapnel up to the top. It came thundering down, missing Bush by no more than a yard, but the seaman without a glance at him snatched it back, poised himself again, and flung the grapnel up the ramparts. It caught, and the seaman, setting his feet against the ramparts and grasping the line with his hands, began to climb like a madman. Before he was half way up another seaman had grabbed the line and started to scale the ramparts after him, and a yelling crowd of excited men gathered round contending for the next place. Farther along the foot of the ramparts another grapnel had caught and another crowd of yelling men were gathered about the line. Now there was musketry fire; a good many loud reports, and a whiff of powder smoke came to Bush’s nostrils in sharp contrast with the pure night air that he had been breathing.

  Round on the other face of the fort on his right the marines would be trying to burst in through the embrasures of the guns; Bush turned to his left to see what could be done there. Almost instantly he found his reward; here was the sally port into the fort—a wide wooden door bound with iron, sheltered in the angle of the small projecting bastion at the corner of the fort. Two idiots of seamen were firing their muskets up at the heads that were beginning to show above—not a thought for the door. The average seaman was not fit to be trusted with a musket. Bush raised his voice so that it pealed like a trumpet above the din.

  “Axemen here! Axemen! Axemen!”

  There were still plenty of men down in the ditch who had not yet had time to scale the scarp; one of them, waving an axe, plunged through the crowd and began to climb up. But Silk, the immensely powerful bosun’s mate who commanded a section of seamen in Bush’s division, came running along the shelf and grabbed the axe. He began to hew at the door, with tremendous methodical blows, gathering his body together and then flinging the axehead into the wood with all the strength in his body. Another axeman arrived, elbowed Bush aside, and started to hack at the door as well, but he was neither as accomplished nor as powerful. The thunder of their blows resounded in the angle. The ironbarred wicket in the door opened, with a gleam of steel beyond the bars. Bush pointed his pistol and fired. Silk’s axe drove clean through the door, and he wrenched the blade free; then, changing his aim, he began to swing the axe in a horizontal arc at the middle part of the door. Three mighty blows and he paused to direct the other axeman where to strike. Silk struck again and again; then he put down the axe, set his fingers in the jagged hole that had opened, his foot against the door, and with one frightful muscletearing effort he rent away a whole section of the door. There was a beam across the gap he had opened; Silk’s axe crashed on to it and through it—and again. With a hoarse shout Silk plunged, axe in hand, through the jagged hole.

  “Come along, men!” yelled Bush, at the top of his lungs, and plunged through after him.

  This was the open courtyard of the fort. Bush stumbled over a dead man and looked up to see a group of men before him, in their shirts, or naked; coffeecoloured faces with long disordered moustaches; men with cutlasses and pistols. Silk flung himself upon them like a maniac, the axe swinging. A Spaniard fell under the axe; Bush saw a severed finger fall to the ground as the axe crashed through the Spaniard’s ineffectual guard. Pistols banged and smoke eddied about as Bush rushed forward too. There were other men swarming after him. Bush’s sword clashed against a cutlass and then the group turned and fled. Bush swung with his sword at a naked shoulder fleeing before him, and saw a red wound open in the flesh and heard the man scream. The man he was pursuing vanished somewhere, like a wraith, and Bush, hurrying on to find other enemies, met a redcoated marine, hatless, his hair wild and his eyes blazing, yelling like a fiend. Bush actually had to parry the bayonetthrust the marine made at him.

  “Steady, you fool!” shouted Bush, only conscious after the words had passed his lips that they were spoken at the top of his voice.

  There was a hint of recognition in the marine’s mad eyes, and he turned aside, his bayonet at the charge, and rushed on. There were other marines in the background; they must have made their way in through the embrasures. They were all yelling, all drunk with fighting. And here was another rush of seamen, swarming down from the ramparts they had scaled. On the far side there were wooden buildings; his men were swarming round them and shots and screams were echoing from them. Those must be the barracks and storehouses, and the garrison must have fled there for shelter from the fury of the stormers.

  Whiting appeared, his scarlet tunic filthy, his sword dangling from his wrist. His eyes were bleary and cloudy.

  “Call ‘em off,” said Bush, grasping at his own sanity with a desperate effort.

  It took Whiting a moment to recognise him and to understand the order.

  “Yes, sir,” he said.

  A fresh flood of seamen came pouring into view beyond the buildings; Hornblower’s division had found its way into the fort on the far side, evidently. Bush looked round him and called to a group of his own men who appeared at that moment.

  “Follow me,” he said, and pushed on.

  A ramp with an easy slope led up the side of the ramparts. A dead man lay there, half way up, but Bush gave the corpse no more attention than it deserved. At the top was the main battery, six huge guns pointing through the embrasures. And beyond was the sky, all bloodyred with the dawn. A third of the way up to the zenith reached the significant colour, but even while Bush halted to look at it a golden gleam of sun showed through the clouds on the horizon, and the red began to fade perceptibly; blue sky and white clouds and blazing golden sun took its place. That was the measure of the time the assault had taken; only a few minutes from the earliest dawn to tropical sunrise. Bush stood and grasped this astonishing fact—it could have been late afternoon as far as his own sensations went.

  Here from the gun platform the whole view of the bay opened up. There was the opposite shore; the shallows where the Renown had grounded (was it only yesterday?), the rolling country lifting immediately into the hills of that side, with the sharply defined shape of the other battery at the foot of the point. To the left the peninsula dropped sharply in a series of jagged headlands, stretching like fingers out into the blue, blue ocean; farther round still was the sapphire surface of Scotchman’s Bay, and there, with her backed mizzen topsail catching brilliantly the rising sun, lay the Renown. At that distance she looked like a lovely toy; Bush caught his breath at the sight of her, not because of the beauty of the scene but with relief. The sight of the ship, and the associated memories which the sight called up in his mind, brought his sanity flooding back; there were a thousand things to be done now.

  Hornblower appeared up the other ramp; he looked like a scarecrow with his disordered clothes. He held sword in one hand and pistol in the other, just as did Bush. Beside him Wellard swung a cutlass singularly large for him, and at his heels were a score or more of seamen still under discipline their muskets, with bayonets fixed, held before them ready for action.

  “Morning, sir,” said Hornblower. His battered cocked hat was still on his head for him to touch it, and he made a move to do so, checking himself at the realization that his sword was in
his hand.

  “Good morning ‘ said Bush automatically.

  “Congratulations, sir ‘ said Hornblower. His face was white, and the smile on his lips was like the grin of a corpse. His beard sprouted over his lips and chin.

  “Thank you,” said Bush.

  Hornblower pushed his pistol into his belt and then sheathed his sword.

  “I’ve taken possession of all that side, sir,” he went on, with a gesture behind him. “Shall I carry on?”

  “Yes, carry on, Mr. Hornblower.”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  This time Hornblower could touch his hat. He gave a rapid order posting a petty officer and men over the guns.

  “You see, sir,” said Hornblower, pointing, “a few got away.”

  Bush looked down the precipitous hillside that fell to the bay and could see a few figures down there.

  “Not enough to trouble us,” he said; his mind was just beginning to work smoothly now.

  “No, sir. I’ve forty prisoners under guard at the main gate. I can see Whiting’s collecting the rest. I’ll go on now, sir, if I may.

  “Very well, Mr. Hornblower.”

  Somebody at least had kept a clear head during the fury of the assault. Bush went on down the farther ramp. A petty officer and a couple of seamen stood there on guard; they came to attention as Bush appeared.

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “This yere’s the magazine, zur,” said the petty officer—Ambrose, captain of the foretop, who had never lost the broad Devon acquired in his childhood, despite his years in the navy. “We’m guarding of it.”

  “Mr. Hornblower’s orders?”

  “Iss, zur.”

  A forlorn party of prisoners were squatting by the main gate. Hornblower had reported the presence of them. But there were guards he had said nothing about: a sentry at the well; guards at the gate; Woolton, the steadiest petty officer of them all, at a long wooden building beside the gate, and six men with him.