‘Would it not be better to recall the garrison? What about the town major?’
‘If we don’t act swiftly then we run the risk of every Bonapartiste in Le Havre throwing in his hand with them. The whole town might be taken!’
Peto thought it unlikely, but recognized the possibility — and therefore the necessity. ‘Very well, Captain Hervey,’ he replied grimly, ‘you shall have my marines,’ and he turned to make his way back to the quayside.
But he had no need, for his gig’s midshipman had come up. ‘I heard the firing, sir, and feared there might be trouble.’
Hervey smiled to himself. Right place, right time — he’ll do!
Peto, his hat removed in the heat of the afternoon (though he had kept it square during the action), simply raised his eyebrows, and even managed to look irritated by the blood on his white breeches. ‘Yes, yes, Mr Ranson, it is nothing. Be so good as to signal to Nisus and request Mr Locke to bring his men ashore — sharply if you please.’ The midshipman doubled away with the greatest enthusiasm, and Peto turned to Hervey, raising his eyebrows again. ‘His first time within earshot of French fire,’ he drawled; ‘it’s as well to behave with as much indifference as possible.’
Hervey was minded of Edward Lankester, though nothing of that patrician’s manner was at all studied. Even the way Lankester had ridden the length of the Sixth’s line in the closing hour at Waterloo, risking every tirailleur’s parting shot, was — he was sure — born of the most natural impulse. However, Peto’s bearing, studied or not, was as cool as ever he had seen. Did its impulse really matter?
But now he saw an even greater service that Nisus might render, for as he lay prone, snatching the odd glance up and down the street (and grateful he was too that he wore his second coat, for the cobbles had sharp edges), he tumbled at last to it — the apt line of fire. ‘Captain Peto, do you see your ship yonder?’ he called excitedly.
Peto, without thinking, looked back towards the roads where Nisus lay at anchor, and then quickly back at Hervey again, irritated. ‘Of course I see her, Captain Hervey; to what do your powers of observation lead?’
‘The gendarmerie is at the end of the street. It stands in direct line from her.’
Peto looked astonished. ‘You surely do not wish me to undertake a shore bombardment?’ he gasped.
‘Not a bombardment — a shot across their bow. Except it must needs be a shot into their bow.’
Peto looked even more astonished.
Hervey failed to understand.
‘Captain Hervey, how far is the gendarmerie from us?’
‘Sixty or seventy yards I should say,’ he replied.
‘And a further hundred or so to the quay. And by my reckoning Nisus stands three cables out — a total of seven hundred and fifty yards. Eight hundred perhaps.’
Hervey was yet more puzzled. ‘That is not an extreme range, sir?’
Peto raised his eyebrows a third time in as many minutes. ‘It is not an extreme range, sir, but the parabola is such that—’
‘Oh yes, Captain, I know the intricacy well,’ he interrupted, but somehow managing not to contrive offence. ‘If you aimed low, however, the ricochet could be to our advantage.’
Peto said nothing. Indeed, he looked aghast. And then he appeared to be contemplating the proposition. Slowly he warmed to it. ‘There is no guarantee of line, mind you. The shot is not tight in the barrel as with a rifle. It might fly wide.’
Hervey was silent. It was not his place to give a lesson in gunnery to a frigate captain, though he knew that, at a thousand yards, the shot could not be too far out of line if the gun were laid dead-centre on its target.
‘Very well, Captain Hervey, though heaven knows what shall be our fate if this is misdirected. I dare say a court martial awaits us both.’
‘Quite so, sir,’ smiled Hervey, taking another look round the corner.
Peto said he would go back to Nisus himself. ‘I suppose you are capable of the business ashore — mounted or dismounted. But I need to see that gun is laid truly.’
Hervey asked if he would leave his midshipman. ‘I shall need an officer with the cordon around the gendarmerie.’
Peto approved. ‘And shall we agree to fire on the place at a given time?’ he asked absently, brushing brick-dust from his seacoat.
‘I should prefer a signal,’ replied Hervey. ‘Something always seems to make a given time too early or too late as it approaches. Shall we say three powder flashes from this corner?’
‘Very well,’ said Peto, ‘three powder flashes it is. I shall make “Affirmative” when ready.’
‘And if the first shot is insufficient,’ added Hervey, ‘we shall await another; then you will see us rush the building.’
A quarter of an hour later Lieutenant Locke and thirty marines (even Peto would not leave his ship entirely without marines) came doubling along the side street to where Hervey and the midshipman were observing — the one with his telescope trained on Nisus for the ready signal, the other still prone and peering round the corner at the gendarmerie. The marines looked eager, bayonets already fixed, sweat running down their faces. There was no time for introductions or other pleasantries. Hervey quickly explained his intention, the lieutenant lying prone beside him to peer round the corner at their objective. ‘There’s no place for skirmishing. When the ball makes a breach we must rush it at once!’
Ranson’s telescope awaited the red flag with white cross that would signal his ship’s readiness. Suddenly he started. ‘Nisus makes “Affirmative”, sir!’ he called excitedly. ‘She is ready!’
‘Very well, then, Mr Ranson, please take charge of the watch I have sent to the rear of the gendarmerie. There are a dozen private men there, but I fear their serjeant is unsteady.’
The midshipman looked disappointed. He wanted to draw his sword and join the storming party. But a sharp look from Hervey sped him away to join the dozen infantrymen who were all that stood between the gendarmerie and its reinforcement. Hervey had retained the Cork man, however. His job was to make four powder flashes — three for the signal and one as reserve, for powder was never as reliable as supposed, even on a hot day, with not a drop of moisture in the air. However, before he signalled the frigate there was one more thing Hervey felt obliged to do. Taking a white silk square from the pocket of his coat, he tied it to the soldier’s bayonet. ‘Are you ready, Corporal McCarthy?’ he asked, not needing to explain for what.
‘Yes, sor,’ said the man resolutely. ‘I shall get an NCO’s funeral, then?’
‘I shall see to it myself,’ smiled Hervey, cheered not for the first time by an Irishman’s black humour. ‘Come then,’ and he marched boldly to the middle of the street with McCarthy by his side.
Musket at the high port so that the trucial white would be plain to all, the erstwhile corporal laughed as they advanced on the gendarmerie building. ‘Jasus, sor, but I hope them French is still willing to go by the rules!’
‘Officers of the Garde?’ replied Hervey reassuringly. ‘I should think honour is everything to them. We need have no fear.’
At that very moment a musket exploded not a dozen yards to their front, the ball flying a foot or so above their heads.
‘You was saying, sor?’
Before he could make reply a voice from within the gendarmerie commanded them to halt and state their business. Hervey looked about until one of the shutters opened further to reveal the moustaches of a colonel of the chasseurs à pied, a man with so great an air of indifference that he began wondering what they might know which he did not. In his best French, and with proper deference for rank, he explained that there could be no escape. ‘You have fought with great honour on the field of battle. I myself saw the gallant conduct of the Garde at the late battle in Belgium. And today you have fought with determination. But further resistance will be to no avail: the guns of one of His Majesty’s ships are at this very moment laid on you. I call upon you to lay down your arms.’
The shutter
opened full, and the colonel called out one word. ‘Merde!’
‘What’s that he says, sor?’ asked McCarthy, who had stood patiently but uncomprehendingly throughout Hervey’s peroration.
‘He does not wish to lay down his arms,’ he replied, bruised. ‘Come.’
They turned about and marched back with the same composure as they had advanced, the ringing of Hervey’s spurs on the cobbles seeming twice as loud, for all else was silence.
‘What was their answer?’ asked Lieutenant Locke.
Hervey, his pride not a little damaged, felt the need of paraphrase. ‘La Garde meurt mais ne se rend pas! Like Cambronne at Waterloo,’ he sighed. ‘Well, so shall it be if they insist. Are the flares ready, McCarthy?’ he called, seeing him light a portfire.
‘Yessor!’
Hervey drew in his breath and drew out his sabre. He could not remember the last time he had gone into action dismounted. He thought it wise to pull off his spurs. Then glancing once about to see his storming party were ready, he gave McCarthy the word. ‘Fire them!’
Private McCarthy put the portfire to the powder trails, and seconds later three flashes, one after another, told Nisus it was time.
Hervey hardly expected delay, for there was no swell for which to compensate in laying the gun, but even he was surprised by the frigate’s response. In an instant one of her eighteen-pounders belched a long tongue of flame, the report reaching them almost at once in the still air. But they saw the shot approaching even before hearing the discharge. It first flew higher than he expected, but then its falling trajectory became apparent, and it crashed into the very doors of the gendarmerie building — so accurate a piece of gunnery that for a second Hervey was speechless.
‘Charge!’
Up! Forward! Boots pounding on cobbles — slipping, sliding. It seemed so slow! As bad as plough, almost. But they made the breach before the French rallied — hardly a shot from any quarter. The double doors were no more, the jambs pulled in with the force of the roundshot. Hervey was through first, a fraction ahead of the big lieutenant of Marines. Inside was all dust and wreckage — more than expected, and a sight he hoped never to see again after Waterloo: broken bodies of fine French officers. Marines rushed past him to the rooms beyond, almost knocking him down. This was their business: close-quarter fighting, confined. And they were eager for it. Not for them long lines and squares, wheeling, fronting and volleying like the infantry. They held their muskets close instead of at high port, ready to thrust with the bayonet or swing the butt up to groin, gut or chin. Brute strength — brutal — brutish. They worked in pairs, with no commands, with the utmost violence, and without check. Forward, forward, forward — momentum was everything to Marines!
There was nothing for Hervey to do. He had led them in. He was a hindrance now. He turned for the breach, but a blow like a prizefighter’s knocked him flat on his back. The Waterloo stars and the dancing lights were back, and the blackness rolled in as a cloud. Like a wounded animal, writhing in hopeless rage, he blindly slashed this way and that with his sabre. It made no contact.
‘Are ye all right, sor?’
Sometimes a voice was as welcome for its tone as what it brought. ‘Yes,’ groaned Hervey; ‘I’m all right, thank you,’ cursing inaudibly in language fouler than even Joseph Edmonds might have been tempted to.
Private McCarthy helped him to his feet and out through the breach. ‘Have a care here, sor,’ he warned as they ducked the lintel — the same that Hervey had run full tilt into.
Outside, his wits were restored soon enough. The shako had taken some of the force, and spared him an open wound, but his pride bore a bruise much worse than his forehead. Then it was all shouting again — Allez! Allez! — and those officers who had not taken Cambronne’s words literally were bustled out at the point of steel.
Later, the town major and the mayor expressed fulsome gratitude, the mayor assuring them that Le Havre wanted no truck with what remained of Bonaparte’s ambition. ‘Do not be too dismayed at the 104th, Captain Hervey,’ said the major; ‘they are not a bad regiment. I stood close to them at Hougoumont, but they lost a good many of their best officers and NCOs there.’
Hervey did not doubt it, and felt meanly for having condemned them so roundly. The Line battalions had, after all, borne the brunt of Bonaparte’s onslaught all that day in June. Waterloo had changed things. He knew himself to be changed. The army was now divided into two distinct parts: those who had been there, and those who wished they had been. And to those who had been there, the world would never be the same again; for they each knew they had escaped death by the chance of the fall of shot or the line of a musket ball, and were determined either to enjoy their deliverance to the fullest or to learn why fortune had favoured them above other men.
* * *
Hervey returned to the Nisus at six o’clock with three carts in tow. On the first were two one-hundredweight sacks of bran and five more of barley. On the second, a much bigger waggon, was the best part of two tons of hay, and on the third the same of straw. Nisus had come alongside one of the wharves, and her crew, under the eagle eyes of her marines, now made light work of stowing the forage. They showed a pleasure in doing so, even, with more than one nod of respect sent Hervey’s way, for the assault on the gendarmerie had been retailed through the ship.
Peto shook his hand as he came aboard but allowed himself few words on the affair. Hervey expressed himself much taken by the skill and speed with which the carpenters had erected a most solid-looking stable for Jessye — with a roof that would carry rainwater over the side, and the gunport allowing for good circulation of air — adding that he had not imagined they would have it done so quickly. But Peto had resumed his former peremptory manner. ‘Great gods, Captain Hervey!’ he spluttered. ‘My carpenters are not country cabinetmakers: their business is with battle damage!’ And a short time later his sensibilities were even more severely assaulted by the arrival of Private Johnson and a travelling horsebox, for when the cochers let down the ramped door to the rear, and Johnson led out Jessye, her lack of blood was at once apparent. Neither was she on her toes — and her ears were flat. Indeed, the effects of her fortnight’s chill were all too evident, so that the contrast between what was expected to emerge from the box and what in reality did was all the more pronounced.
And to compound the affront to Peto’s notions of good and handsome order, Hervey’s groom now hailed Nisus’s quarterdeck, only just remembering to touch his shako peak: ‘Bloody ’ell, Mr ’Ervey! What was all that firin’?’
Peto looked askance. ‘Does he address you, sir — aide-de-camp to the Duke of Wellington?!’
Hervey shifted uneasily at the rail, making awful comparison in his mind with the captain’s steward. ‘Yes,’ he replied simply, ‘we have been together some time.’
‘Most singular indeed!’ concluded Peto, shaking his head as he turned for the other side of the deck.
Hervey glanced back to the quayside. So unmilitary a sight, indeed, was Johnson, and so unprepossessing did Jessye look, that he could find no reply.
He was blowing into her nose and pulling her ears as the marines’ commanding officer approached. ‘I took you for a dandy,’ the lieutenant laughed; ‘your horse tells me you are not!’
Hervey had not cared for the look of the lieutenant on the crossing to France, though he had seen him only at a distance, and his impression had not changed when he had come doubling along the street with his marines. His face — knocked-about and horribly scarred — was that of a pug rather than an officer. But how he could fight! He had gone at the breach with as much vigour — and even more strength — than Serjeant Armstrong would have. And his smile was not the sneer Hervey had first thought, but a warm, almost familiar one. ‘I will wager she could beat anything you have seen over two miles!’ smiled Hervey back.
‘I don’t doubt it for a minute. Why else would the Duke of Wellington’s aide-de-camp have such a hack?’
He was about to tr
y another riposte when the lieutenant laughed out loud. ‘You have scarce changed a jot since Shrewsbury, Matthew Hervey!’
He stared back blankly.
‘No, you do not recognize me! You were once my doul, but I was bonnier then. A Yankee frigate did for me — grape sweeping across the forecastle just as we boarded her. Lucky to keep my sight. Locke — Henry Locke, of Locke-hall in the county of Worcester.’
Hervey remembered — indeed he did. But a boy whose looks were the envy of his house at Shrewsbury. ‘My God,’ he started, before checking himself. ‘I mean… no, I should not have recognized you. But how very pleased I am to make your acquaintance again. What are you doing in His Majesty’s Marines?’
‘I might ask you the same manner of question. And I believe the answer to both is that we have been fighting the King’s enemies.’
‘Just so,’ laughed Hervey, ‘just so.’ He recalled him well enough now — a kindly senior to serve for a term, but no favourite of the masters’ common room, for sure. ‘I hardly saw you when first I came aboard at Chatham.’
‘No, I was ashore at musketry. We joined by cutter once she was under way.’
‘Ah,’ said Hervey, now comprehending; ‘I was being most handsomely entertained at your captain’s table by that time.’
‘No matter. But that was a famous action this afternoon. Are you recovered of your blow?’ he smiled.
‘Yes, thank you,’ he coughed (mortification was perhaps too strong a word for his condition).
‘The cannonade was your idea, I hazard?’
‘Yes, it seemed best,’ he replied lightly, relieved to be let off the subject of his collision with the lintel. But the affair of the gendarmerie could hardly be counted a great stratagem.
Locke’s expression indicated otherwise. ‘You are deuced lucky Nisus is a frigate: even a seventy-four would not have done.’
Hervey was puzzled. ‘How so?’
‘Hah! You should see those first-and second-rates at gunnery: they simply lay alongside the enemy and blast away — broadside after broadside. There’s no science in it: there’s hardly need. “Engage the enemy more closely”: that’s what an affair of big ships amounts to.’
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