The French parted and they reached the ragged band of Sparrowhawks. Captain Pringle was with them, sword in his left hand, his right pressed to staunch the blood from a wound in his side. Half a dozen other sailors were still standing around him and most had wounds.
‘Good to see you,’ Pringle gasped, but had no breath to say any more. The enemy were just as weary, but they were still determined and there were at least two dozen of them clustered around the starboard side, panting as they prepared to renew the fight. Numbers were about even, or slightly in the enemy’s favour, but before Williams could call on them to surrender, the French raised a shout and came forward.
No one still had a loaded weapon, and the fight was a question of blades and clubbed muskets, of exhausted men clawing at each other with their last strength. Afterwards Williams could remember almost nothing of those last minutes, other than weariness and clumsy blows. He thrust with his sword, aiming at the face and eyes to drive his opponents back, and sometimes all he could do was bludgeon them with the blunted edge, or punch with the hilt. On land the side that felt itself losing always ran. On board a ship there was nowhere to go, and so they kept fighting, quarter neither asked for nor given, grunting because they were too tired and parched to shout, and slowly the French were pushed back. Only when there were three still standing did they drop their weapons.
Williams saw the men surrender and struggled to understand what it meant. The world had become a few feet of deck, of fighting, killing and moving on, with the stench of blood and death all around. Puzzled, he stared at the Frenchmen, and it was only the flood of utter exhaustion that stopped him from stepping forward and thrusting his blade into them one by one. Looking to either side, the officer could see that the others were in a similar state. As if lifting a great weight he pointed his sword down and rested the tip against the planking.
‘Prisoners,’ he said. The Frenchmen were wide eyed and it was a while before they nodded. ‘Prisoners,’ he repeated. He turned round and looked for someone to take charge. Captain Pringle was sitting on a grating, his back against the mast as an elderly sailor with deep black skin and grey hair peeled back his shirt. His blue jacket was already folded beside him, and the sailor worked with care. Even so the captain winced as his shirt was removed. The sailor stopped, his face concerned, but Pringle gave a weak smile and urged him on.
For the moment the captain was occupied. Williams spotted Corporal Milne, and then noticed that two fingers were missing from his left hand and another marine was bandaging the wound. Then he saw Dobson, tapping his clay pipe free of ashes, and looking weary.
‘Sergeant,’ he said. ‘Secure the prisoners. Make sure they are disarmed and then we can see to their wounded.’
Dobson looked surprised. Then he sighed, put his pipe away and looked around. ‘You! And you,’ he shouted at two marines in the voice of the eternal sergeant, ‘come with me.’
Williams made his way aft, stepping carefully to avoid the bodies strewn everywhere, most of them still moaning. He would need to get men to help them as soon as he could, but wanted to make sure that the ship was secure. To his relief a sailor was at the wheel, with Mr Prentice leaning against the capstan in front of him as a marine tightened a belt around his thigh to stop the blood flowing from a deep wound. Fewer than thirty British had boarded, including Captain Pringle’s party, and a quick count suggested a dozen had no serious injuries, while eight or nine more ought to be capable of some work. Treadwell was dead, along with one of the marines and a sailor who had come on board with the captain. The remainder were badly hurt and their chances would depend on getting them quickly to a surgeon. A rough count suggested that there were about fifty French, nine or ten dead, and three times that number badly wounded. Most of them must have been the crew of the vessel, presumably released from below when the soldiers boarded. Adding in the men from the gunboat, Williams could not understand how they had succeeded against those odds. The rules just seemed different at sea.
Milne reported, hand bandaged, and assured him that he was fit to work, so Williams set him and a couple of marines to caring for the wounded. After that he headed back to see Captain Pringle, who was still sitting as the sailor wound a clean piece of cloth around his waist, pulling it tight. Williams blinked as the sun came up on the horizon and that made no sense for surely it could not be dawn. Yet there the sun was, a great red ball in the east, and somehow the hours must have passed. He could not account for them. Battles were always strange in that way, and time could pass in a flash or crawl by at a snail’s pace, each moment crammed with activity, fear and exhilaration, but he had never known anything like this. Now they were past the headland, he could see that the sun was well above the waters and the light of day was obvious. In his memory the fight occurred wholly in darkness. He was too tired to solve the mystery.
‘Ah, Mr Williams,’ the captain said. ‘I have not yet thanked you sufficiently for your arrival. Things were becoming difficult.’
‘Happy to be of service, sir.’
‘Now,’ Pringle continued, getting to the matter in hand. ‘I see my coxswain is at the wheel. Good, Bennett is a splendid fellow. With the wind off the sea we must rely on the current to take us out of the channel. Once we are out, get Treadwell to hoist sail. It will take some effort, but we should be able to work her out into the bay and rejoin Topaze, Sparrowhawk and the other prizes.’
‘I regret to say that Mr Treadwell is dead.’
‘Ah.’ The captain seemed to have no more to say, so Williams gave him the full list of casualties.
‘Nasty business, but as far as I can tell we have taken half a dozen prizes and burned three or four more. That will give them something to think about.’
Williams nodded, too tired to think of anything to say. Men died and were maimed, and that was all there was to it. It did not help to brood, to twist argument in justification, or to wonder whether you might soon follow them. Such thoughts would come often enough unbidden, most of all in the small hours of sleepless nights to come, and there was no sense in dwelling on them now.
‘Treadwell did well, damned well,’ the captain said. ‘As did you, Mr Williams, damned well indeed.’ He drank from a flask proffered by the sailor. ‘Will you take some brandy?’
‘No thank you, sir,’ Williams said. ‘I do not really drink,’ he explained, not wanting to be thought ungrateful.
‘Really? William did say you were an extraordinary fellow.’ It was strange hearing Billy Pringle referred to in that way. ‘I dare say you will take a nip, won’t you, you rascal.’ This was to the sailor, who seemed a solemn man, but took the flask gratefully. ‘This is Caesar,’ Pringle continued, pleased to see Williams’ surprise. ‘John Julius Caesar to be precise, able seaman, and one of my best topmen.’ The sailor gave the flask back and raised a knuckle to his forehead. ‘Doesn’t say a lot, but there is no one I would prefer by my side in storm or battle.’
Williams was intrigued. The name was a curious one, and it was a pleasing thought for a man fascinated by the ancient past to know that he had just fought alongside ‘Julius Caesar’. He longed to hear the man’s story, wondering whether he had once been a slave. Williams’ mother was fond of abolitionist tracts and he had read many stories of escape from servitude, but it would have been a greater thrill to hear such a tale from a man’s own experience. The sailor stared blankly at the army officer, and concern for good manners restrained him from asking so personal a question.
Then there was a grinding sound and Williams was flung forward. A big man, he landed heavily against the wounded captain, so that Pringle hissed in pain and let out a string of blasphemies. The prize lurched to a halt, and Williams managed to get up. Pringle mastered himself, waved Caesar away when he tried to help and then looked around. For just a moment, Williams could see a lot of his younger brother in the older Edward.
‘Bugger,’ said Captain Pringle. ‘We’re aground.’
They were on the sandbank where it widened slightly just before it c
ame to an end. Last night the shallow draught of the boats had meant that none were troubled. The prizes ahead of them must either have seen the danger or simply had the luck to steer past.
Carried by Caesar to the stern rail, Pringle looked closely for some time.
‘We’re nearly over. Just the keel caught.’ He looked up at the sky. ‘Tide is nearly out – once it turns back we should float off in three or four hours, at least if we are lucky. That is assuming that the French let us wait around.’
‘Cavalry on shore, sir!’ Dobson shouted.
‘Least of our worries,’ Captain Pringle muttered. Williams joined the sergeant on the starboard rail and looked at the shore to their north. The beach was less than three hundred yards away. A few infantry skirmishers had been there for some time, popping away with the muskets even though no ball had yet hit anyone on board the ship. Behind them a half-squadron of hussars rode along the sand, the men gaudy in brown jackets and sky-blue trousers. At their head was an officer on a white horse. His uniform looked more that of an infantryman, save that the jacket was a rich green rather than the normal French blue. Williams wondered whether he was a German from one of the many states controlled by Napoleon.
‘Try a shot, sir?’ Mr Prentice suggested in his usual loud tones. The prize had gunports for five guns on each side, as well as two apiece at the bow and stern, but actually carried only half that number. The gunner was standing next to one of the two little four-pounders of the starboard broadside.
Williams looked at Pringle, who shook his head.
‘No time for that, at present,’ he said. ‘Mr Williams, would you be so good as to secure all the French prisoners below. Put them all forrard. Mr Prentice, get some men and move all of those four-pounders to the bow and secure them. We need to shift the weight forrard.’
It took ten minutes to move the prisoners below, the wounded carried by the others. A marine guard was placed at the hatchway. As Williams went back to see Pringle he paused for a moment to look at the French on shore. The green-coated officer had dismounted and was staring at them through his glass. Skirmishers still fired now and then, and he heard a ball pluck the shrouds above his head.
Pringle was sitting when he reached him, and looked very pale. Caesar and another tar were rigging up a block and tackle and fixing a sling under the muzzle and breech of one of the long six-pounders placed to fire to the rear.
‘It’s all about weight,’ the captain explained as Williams came up. ‘If we can ditch these stern chasers and shift the other guns forrard then that might just lift the keel off the sand.’ He watched approvingly as, with the help of four marines, the sailors hauled the black-painted barrel off its carriage. ‘That’s a good twenty-two hundredweight there.
‘There is no room for us all in the gig, let alone for the prisoners, so we cannot set fire to her and escape. Which means that we must get her off, or …’ He left the thought unfinished.
A sailor appeared, knuckled his forehead in salute, and Williams recognised young Clegg. He had not noticed the young topman was with them until now, but was pleased to see him. Pringle was less pleased by the sailor’s report.
‘No anchor on board, sir.’
‘Blast, that’s typical of the ruddy Frogs. Liberty to be bloody awful sailors if you ask me.’ The name Liberté was painted in peeling gold paint on the stern. Pringle had the master’s papers, but had not had any time to look through them. ‘Well done, Clegg. Now, lad, take a look at the mainsheets and check that they are sound. We need to be ready if the wind changes.’ Williams nodded to the sailor as he departed.
‘I wondered about putting out a kedge anchor and trying to warp her off,’ Pringle said to the redcoat officer. Williams understood the vague principle. If the anchor was towed by a small boat and then sunk further back, the cable could be attached and turned by the capstan so that the ship was pulled back towards the anchor. ‘But the useless bloody French aren’t bloody well carrying a spare bloody anchor,’ he added bitterly. ‘And of course we cut her cables when we brought her out. Don’t know why they had the anchors down when they were tied up in harbour, but the ways of godless revolutionaries are ever mysteries to good Christian folk.’
Williams failed to detect the irony so familiar from Billy Pringle in his older brother. Edward Pringle simply seemed angry.
‘Artillery, sir!’ It was Dobson once again who called the warning. Williams helped the captain over to look at the shore. This was far more serious. A team of eight horses – twice the number usual for so small a gun as a four-pounder – was being whipped along the beach. The hussars were further back, the men dismounted and holding their horses, and several of the latter stirred with interest as the drivers slewed round in a spray of sand. Gunners rode behind the green-painted gun carriage and limber. They were in dark blue, with tall red plumes and red epaulettes visible even at this distance. Williams guessed that these horse artillerymen had been summoned from some way away, and so had harnessed a double team to get there with a single gun as soon as possible. Springing from their horses with well-practised ease, the six gunners lifted the trails of the gun from the limber, ran it into position, hefted the barrel from the travelling to firing position, and began to load.
Prentice joined them, limping heavily and wincing if ever he let weight fall on his injured leg.
‘Guns stowed forrard, sir,’ he reported. ‘But I could get one ready and make their life difficult.’
Pringle shook his head. ‘We need to get her off.’ There was a splash from behind them as the barrel of the stern chaser was hoisted over the side and dropped. ‘Well done, lads,’ the captain called out.
‘Mr Prentice, how long would it take you to unspike a gun?’ Williams asked the gunner.
‘You are thinking of the ones in the battery?’
He nodded in answer. The battery they had attacked the previous night was around half a mile away, and they were well within range of its heavy guns.
‘Well, I did a decent job for the time,’ Prentice continued, ‘but nothing like sawing off the trunnions. With the right tools and a fair wind I could get one of them clear in an hour. Be two hours if I had to drill it and you never quite trust a gun after that, but the nails probably weren’t in hard enough for them to need to drill.’
‘So they should have them working again by now?’ Williams asked, for he was confident that the gunner’s guesses were sound.
‘Aye, if they’ve any idea at all of what they are doing.’
‘Which means they could be pounding us by now.’ Pringle clearly understood. ‘In an hour or two they could reduce us to so much matchwood, or burn us to the waterline if they are able to heat shot.’
‘And since they have not,’ Williams continued the thought, ‘they must want to take us back and be confident of doing so.’ As they spoke the gunners on shore had prepared the little cannon and now stepped back. The gun captain lowered his portfire to touch the slim tube of fine powder in the touch-hole – flintlocks and lanyards were too fragile for service with guns on land – and then gun and crew were all lost behind a cloud of dirty smoke. A ball hummed through the air, going high and wide.
‘We shall know if they fire only for our mast and rigging,’ Pringle said. ‘Well, that means we must hurry,’ he added, and then passed out. Williams caught him before he hit the deck.
‘Lay him down,’ he called to a couple of marines. ‘Keep him in the shade.’ The sun was becoming hot now. He saw a look of concern on Caesar’s face. ‘Keep at it. Get that other gun over the side. Clegg, you take five more men and tip the carriage after it.’ He pointed at the gap in the rail above the stairway. It looked to be wide enough for the gun carriage and as it was on wheels they could push it rather than hoist the thing over the side.
‘It’s made some difference,’ Prentice said, looking at the line of the deck, but his tone was doubtful. ‘Battery or no,’ he added, ‘if they have another gunboat they can stand off and kill or sink us as they please.’
‘I know,’ Williams said. ‘Is there any way we can protect the mast from their shot?’ The four-pounder fired again from the beach, and this time the ball struck the rail a few yards from them, flicked up long and horribly sharp splinters, and then skimmed at head height across the deck.
Prentice shook his head. ‘But it is hard to be so accurate at that range. It’s a small gun, so even a direct strike will not necessarily bring it down.’
‘Sir.’ Dobson stamped to attention. ‘Corporal Milne tells me there are bales of cotton in the aft hold. It won’t stop a shot, but better than nothing.’
Williams looked around and could see that most of the fit men were busy. ‘Good. Take Milne and two others – I have no more to spare – and start bringing them up. Stack them, lash them if you can, along this side.
‘Mr Prentice, the sailors in your party are to be ready to hoist sail. Do you have a good man to lead them?’
‘Clegg is good, sir, I’d like to take him.’
‘He’s young, isn’t he?’
‘All the best sailors are. You never really take to the life if you go to sea after you are twenty. He’s been afloat since he was a boy.’
‘Good, Clegg, then. Put him in charge. I’ll be able to give you more when the other gun has gone over the stern.’
‘Aye-aye, sir. And sir?’
‘Yes, Mr Prentice.’
‘The tide has turned. If only the wind shifts as well.’
‘Yes, Mr Prentice, I know.’
The four-pounder fired every two or three minutes. That was a slow rate of fire, and Williams guessed they were taking great care to lay each shot. The fifth one took the arm off a marine, and the ninth sent a shower of splinters into the face of a sailor. The twelfth was even more worrying, for it chipped the mast. Others went through the rigging, but only occasionally did any harm.
‘Lucky they haven’t any bar-shot,’ Mr Prentice shouted in Williams’ ear. Designed to slash through the ropework and spars of a ship, such ammunition was rarely carried by artillery on land. After a while they had thick cotton bales protecting the base of the mast and all along the starboard rail. When shot struck them it threw up a great puff of white dust and debris. The bale was either knocked down or punched through, but it helped to reduce the number of splinters.
Run Them Ashore Page 9