The Sultan's Daughter rb-7

by Dennis Wheatley

  ' Mon General, you may rely upon me,' replied Roger promptly. Then he took the despatch, saluted smartly and, with rage in his heart, marched from the room.

  Having given orders for a horse for himself, and a half-troop of Guides as escort, to be got ready at once, he hurried back to his lodging, still almost exploding with pent-up fury. He had long since come to the conclusion that the embraces of women were like olives out of a bottle; the first could be got only with difficulty but the rest came easily. From the moment he had been woken he had begun to look forward with intense delight to the second night that he would spend with Zanthe. Now that this mission had been thrust upon him it would be more than a week before he could hope to possess her again.

  Arrived at the house he called loudly for Marbois and, when the young Provencal came hurrying from the back premises, Roger gave him his orders in a succession of swift, staccato sentences. '1 have been ordered away on a mission. I expect to be away for at least a week. You will remain here and consider yourself as confined to barracks. In short, you will not leave the house. Have the servants buy anything the lady upstairs may ask for. But you will take up her meals yourself, and she is to be kept under lock and key. Neither the servants nor anyone else are to be allowed to communicate with her. If she asks you to take any message or letter for her you will accept it but not deliver it. Keep it until my return. Is that clear? '

  'Yes, Monsieur le Colonel,' replied Marbois, drawing himself up. 'I understand your wishes perfectly.'

  'Good,' said Roger. Then, thrusting some money to cover expenses into the young soldier's hand, he wheeled about and hurried back to headquarters.

  Even by taking the short cut from Rahmaniyeh across the desert, the journey from Cairo to Alexandria was the best part of a hundred and fifty miles. The roads were no more than tracks, the heat was almost unbearable and, as no remounts were available en route, the strength of the horses had to be husbanded. So, although Roger left Cairo on July 27th and made the best speed possible, it was not till the morning of August 1st that he reached Alexandria. He had rested his troop the previous night at Damanhur, and had done half of the last thirty miles before daylight; so after five days of most exhausting travel he was very tired. Even so, he decided to accomplish his mission that day, sleep the night in Alexandria and set off on his return journey early the following morning.

  After a talk with that tough veteran General Kleber, to give him the latest news, and having learned that the Fleet had not yet sailed, Roger secured a new mount and, in spite of the midday heat, rode on to Aboukir. There he found the line of three-deckers at anchor in a long, shallow bay with rocks and an island at its far end. A boat took him off to the mighty L'Orient and, when the Officer of the Watch had sent his name to the Admiral, Brueys at once received him.

  Having handed over his despatch Roger gave the Admiral Bonaparte's verbal message, upon which Brueys replied with a nod, 'I am well aware of the General-in-Chief's view of the matter. It was originally planned that I should take the Fleet into the harbour of Alexandria, where it would have been safe from attack; but it was found that the harbour mouth was too shallow for my largest ships to enter. He then urged me to make for Corfu. But what sort of a Frenchman would I have been to turn my back on him at such a time?

  ' We all know that he has unshakable faith in his star; but had things gone wrong and our Army been defeated, its plight, marooned here in a strange land without either reinforcements or supplies, would have been too terrible to think upon. I could not possibly reconcile myself to any other course than to remain here, so that, did the worst happen, I might take off what remained of the Army and so save it from complete destruction.'

  Roger smiled. * Pray accept my compliments on your decision, Monsieur I'Amiral. It was in the highest traditions of your Service, and thousands of us soldiers might well owe our lives to you. But now the Mamelukes have been signally defeated, their remnants scattered and the General-in-Chief is firmly established in Cairo; the situation is very different.'

  ' Indeed, yes; and I thank God for it. Yet we are desperately short of supplies, for we have been supplying General Kleber this past month instead of he us. We'll still have to secure a sufficiency of food and water, but once that it done I'll feel no scruples in setting sail for Malta. I see, though, Colonel, that you have obviously ridden hard and need rest and refreshment. It is just on our dinner hour. You must join us and afterwards I'll have a cabin prepared for you so that you can spend the night on board.'

  'I thank you, Admiral,' Roger replied. '1 should be most happy to dine, but I am promised to sup with General Kleber and intend to start back for Cairo in the cool of the early morning.'

  By now his appearance was very different from the gallant figure he had cut in Paris. His fine uniform had become sadly stained during the campaign and after his recent journey he looked like a scarecrow. He was covered with dust from head to foot, his hair was a bush and his face begrimed. But a marine was detailed to brush his clothes while he had a good wash and a quarter of an hour later, when he was conducted to the spacious stern cabin, he looked fairly presentable.

  With the Admiral now were Commodore Casabianca, the Captain of L'Orient, and a number of other officers. When Roger had been presented to those he had not met on the voyage out they sat down at the big oval table to dine. During the early part of the meal Brueys and the others asked him many questions about the campaign, and listened eagerly to his accounts of the desert march, the Battle of the Pyramids and fabulous Cairo. But soon after two o'clock this pleasant party was suddenly interrupted. The door burst open and a young Lieutenant tumbled into the room, shouting:

  ' Les Anglais! Monsieur I'AmiraU Les Anglais!' It then transpired that Nelson's Fleet had just been sighted and was bearing down upon them.

  Chairs were thrust back, and with Brueys leading, they all rushed up on deck. There a hundred eyes were glued to telescopes. Roger followed the Admiral up to the poop and shaded his eyes with his hand to cut out the glare of the brilliant sunlight. Even without a glass he could make out, just above the distant horizon, the tips of more topmasts than he could count. It was no false alarm. After his ten-week fruitless search back and forth across the length and breadth of the Mediterranean Nelson had, at last, run the enemy to earth.

  Roger stood there, cursing himself. If only he had started an hour earlier from Damanhur that morning. If only he had ridden straight on to Aboukir, instead of stopping in Alexandria to talk with Kleber. If only he had refused Brueys's invitation to dinner. Had he done any of those things he would be safely back on shore by now. But here he was, in the French flagship, with battle imminent; and, above all, a battle against his own countrymen. To ask to be put ashore now would look like rank cowardice. Yet he considered it, Perhaps it would not appear too bad if he said that it was imperative that he should rejoin the General-in-Chief with the least possible delay. But he was not taking back any despatch, so such an excuse for turning tail would not be looked on as valid. While his mind was still racked with awful indecision, Brueys settled the matter for him by saying:

  ' Of course, Colonel, you will now wish to remain with us, to share our dangers and our glory. I shall be happy to count you as a military member of my personal Staff.'

  The Battle of the Nile

  Rarely had Roger spent a more miserable afternoon. There had been no possible reply to Brueys other than 'I am honoured, Monsieur I'Amiral, and will do my utmost to be of service.' After that there was nothing for him, as a landlubber, to do but await the battle, and he had a horror of such desperate encounters.

  It was not that he lacked courage. At Sherborne he had several times fought George Gunston, the bully of the school, although each time he knew he would get a licking. He had fought duels with sword and pistol, taken part in many affrays and would not have hesitated to fight anyone on any grounds that justified a resort to weapons. It was the terribly impersonal nature of battles that he hated: to be one of a group of men firing at and b
eing fired at by another, without the faintest knowledge of the man you might wound or be wounded by; or to be cut in half by a bounding cannon ball, fired by an artilleryman whom you could not even see and who, if you had met him, might have proved to be the most charming fellow. Indeed although every Frenchman was technically his enemy, he counted many friends among them and there were several to whose rescue he would have gone at the peril of his life. He would have been the last man to suggest that his country should not go to war in defence of her liberty and rights, but that did not make the indiscriminate slaughter involved any the less horrifying to him.

  He had been lucky in the present campaign, as Bonaparte and his Staff had come under fire only during the brief skirmish at Chebreiss and had not even participated personally in the great Battle of the Pyramids. But now he was fated to spend several terrifying hours and, perhaps, meet his death in a head-on clash between some twenty thousand men, the majority of whom passionately hated each other's country and were thirsting for one another's blood.

  And it was not even as if it were to be a land battle. Roger would have defended a post to the last if he had been charged with doing so; but, as a general principle, he was a great believer in the old adage, ' He who fights and runs away lives to fight another day.' In a conflict on land one could at least add to the chance of survival by using judgment about when to lie down and when to stand up. If things went badly, it was generally possible, by keeping one's wits about one, to avoid getting mixed up with any mass of routed infantry that would attract the enemy's artillery fire or pursuing cavalry. It was also possible to sham dead and lie in a ditch until the coming of night enabled one to creep away from the battlefield.

  But none of these ruses to save oneself was possible in a naval battle. A man was just as liable to be wounded or killed whether he stood up or lay down. And it was not only the enemy's cannon balls that were to be feared. A falling mast or yard might shatter his head like an eggshell and, as the shot crashed through bulwarks and decks, great splinters of jagged wood, which could cause the most ghastly wounds, whizzed through the air to right, left and centre. Last but not least, if the ship he was in got the worst of the action there cculd be no galloping away from her, and it was pointless to lie in the scuppers pretending to be dead. If badly holed below the waterline she would sink, carrying him down with her to Davy Jones's Locker, or, if she had been set on fire, blow up. In either case there would be no morning after.

  Roger knew the composition of the French Fleet without having to run his eye down the line of ships. Apart from four frigates and other smaller craft, Brueys had L'Orient, the mightiest ship afloat, with one hundred and twenty guns, three eighties and nine seventy-fours. That made a total of over one thousand guns, in comparison with which the one hundred and seventy-four pieces of artillery that Bonaparte had brought for his land battles were a mere pittance. Roger thought it reasonable to assume that Nelson's Fleet carried about the same number as the French. That means that as soon as battle was joined some two thousand cannon would be blazing away as fast as men could load them. Even at only twenty rounds per gun, forty thousand murderous lumps of iron—not to mention innumerable bullets from muskets —would be flying in all directions; and he was in the flagship, to which it was certain that the enthusiastic British would give their very special attention.

  He would have felt even gloomier about his chances of survival could he have known of Nelson's declaration to his Captains, When we do come up with the enemy I'll not be content with victory. It must be annihilation.'

  During the afternoon there was nothing he could do but watch, while officers, marines and sailors bustled about the decks preparing for action. Had Brueys's Squadron been caught while transporting the Army, it could not possibly have driven off the enemy. Despite the Admiral's protests, such a mass of equipment —field guns, wagons, crates of saddles for the dismounted cavalry, officers' baggage, ammunition and other stores—had been stacked on the decks that it would have proved next to impossible for his ships to run out and fight their guns.

  In consequence, it had been decided that if the British came upon the armada the French should endeavour to close with and board them, as all Brueys's ships-of-the-line had at least three hundred and fifty troops packed like sardines in them; it was hoped that they, by sheer weight of numbers, would overwhelm the enemy.

  Now, there were no soldiers in the ships; but at least they had been disembarrassed of a great part of their strangling top-hamper, so they could have put to sea and met the British in a battle of manoeuvre. For some while Brueys discussed the possibility with his senior Captains; but the prevailing opinion was that they would do better to remain where they were because the seamanship of the men was so indifferent, and they had neither food nor water aboard for a cruise of more than a few hours.

  The northern end of Aboukir Bay, in which the French lay, ended in a hook, on the point of which stood a small castle. From the point a shoal ran out to Aboukir Island and some way beyond it. Brueys's ships were anchored in a long line behind this protection and, moreover, in the bay itself there were many other shoals and shallows. It was thought most unlikely, therefore, that Nelson would risk bringing his ships into such dangerous waters after dark and, although they had been steadily approaching all through the long, hot afternoon, they still had some distance to cover.

  Nevertheless, preparations for action went ahead. Bulkheads were taken down, cannon balls and powder charges brought up, buckets of water placed beside the guns, hoses coupled to pumps ready for fire-fighting, and all the supplies, crates, bales and boxes that remained on deck shifted to the landward sides of the ships because it was taken for granted that no sane Admiral would risk sending his ships into the shallows that lay between the French Fleet and the shore.

  As the British rounded the distant point it became possible to assess their strength accurately. There were eleven seventy-fours, one fifty-gun ship and a brig. Then, to the delight of the French, it was seen that one of the seventy-fours had gone aground on the hidden sandspit beyond Aboukir Island, thus making the odds—by this reduced to less than nine hundred guns against over a thousand—still further in their favour.

  At about five-thirty the British began to form line of battle, showing that, although twilight would soon be falling, they did intend to attack that night. Majestically, under full sail, they came on in an irregular line, Captain Sam Hood in Zealous and Captain Foley in Goliath striving to out-distance one another for the honour of being the first to enter the battle.

  Goliath won and, to Brueys's horror, came up on the inshore side of his vanguard, followed by four other British seventy-fours. Nelson and his leading Captains had swiftly realized that, as the French ships lay to the wind, there must be at least their own length of water deep enough to keep them afloat when, still at anchor, they swung with their sterns to the shore. Where one seventy-four could swing another could pass without running aground. As the guns of the French ships on the shoreward side lay under piles of impedimenta, they could not be fired.

  After firing a broadside into Guerrier, the ship at the head of the French line, Goliath overshot her and came to anchor opposite the second French ship, Conquerant. But Zealous anchored opposite Guerrier, while Orion, Theseus and Audacious sailed on, pouring broadsides into Guerrier and Conquerant as they passed, then concentrating their fire on the next in line; Spartiate, Aquilon and Peuple Souverain.

  Nelson's orders had been to attack the French van and centre, and now he came up in his flagship Vanguard with the remaining six British ships on the seaward side of the French line. Caught between two fires as the sun sank below the horizon, the five enemy ships first to be attacked suffered terrible damage.

  The French line was nearly two miles long, and L'Orient was stationed exactly in the centre of its thirteen ships; so little could be seen from her during the first part of the action except dense clouds of smoke. But by seven o'clock it was fully dark and every minute the smoke pall was stab
bed by the bright flashes from hundreds of guns. Slowly but inexorably, like a vast burning taper, the smoke and fire spread along the line as ship after ship came into action.

  Vanguard was the first ship to anchor outside the enemy line, and Nelson had her brought to within pistol shot of Spartiate, which was being attacked by Theseus on her other side. Even so, the flagship was hard pressed until Minotaur came up and drew the fire of Aquilon, which had also been engaging Vanguard. Meanwhile, losing station owing to the smoke and darkness, Majestic and Bellerophon had got too far ahead. The latter, finding herself opposite L'Orient, took on alone this mighty ship-of-war which had nearly double her own gun-power.

  Now, after some five hours of dread anticipation, Roger experienced all the horrors of a great naval battle. While the French Fleet had been convoying Bonaparte's Fleet of transports to Egypt, Brueys and a number of his senior officers had feared that, discipline being so bad, many of the pressed sailors might, if attacked, refuse to fight at all and seek a false security by hiding themselves below decks. But now those fears were proved ill-founded, largely perhaps because the men realized that their Admiral had a superiority in ships and an even larger superiority in guns and also because the victories of the Army on land had made them feel that they must not digrace the flag to which their comrades had brought so much glory.

  The seamen in all the French ships so far attacked had shown admirable courage, and those in L'Orient proved no exception. With shouts and cheers they laboured at the guns, greatly encouraged by the fact that their part in the battle appeared to be only a single-ship duel with a much inferior enemy. This eager handling of their guns, and L'Orient's weight of metal, soon began to tell. At the price of comparatively few casualties all three of Bellerophon s masts were shot away and, to the cheers of the French, she drifted, helpless, out of the battle.