Victory at Sebastopol

by V. A. Stuart

  “Yes,” Phillip admitted. “It is.” He peered into the fog, conscious of an unreasonable feeling of resentment. It was time Burnaby wore ship, his mind registered and then saw that the duty watch were going silently to their stations. “Do I require to explain my reasons to you?” he demanded, turning to face his brother again.

  Graham’s smile vanished. “You do not have to, of course, but for all that I should like to hear them. I’m not Quinn, you know—you can rely on me to carry out your orders to the letter.”

  “Oh, for pity’s sake, I know that, Graham! But the responsibility for sounding and buoying the channel is mine. I cannot resign it to you, whether it is undertaken in this ship or aboard a captured enemy vessel. As to the brig …” Phillip sighed, his brief anger tempered by the realization that his brother was right, so far as the capture of the brig was concerned. Naval custom decreed that all such operations should be commanded by a senior Lieutenant, as Graham had reminded him. But if his plan proved a failure or if the crew of the Russian ship put up a strong resistance then that, too, would be his responsibility—his and his alone—and it went against the grain to send two boatloads of his men to face a danger which he himself did not share. Besides, he …

  “I understand,” Graham put in, before he could offer this as a reason. “But permit me, if you please, to lead the cuttingout party. I don’t imagine that there is likely to be much risk attached to it or that the crew of the brig will attempt to oppose our fellows, particularly if we succeed in taking them by surprise. All the same, Phillip, it is I who should incur what risk there is—not you. Would you have me fail in my duty?”

  “No, of course not. But devil take it, Graham, the brig may be armed to the teeth, you know! She may turn her guns on you and blow your boats out of the water before you’ve even had a chance to board her and—”

  “In that case, my dear Phillip, the Huntress will stand to lose her First Lieutenant,” Graham countered cheerfully. “But she will still have her Commander who, I don’t doubt, will blow the brig out of the water before proceeding to carry out his orders to sound and buoy the channel. Isn’t that so?” His smile returned and he put an arm about Phillip’s shoulders, eyeing him with affectionate mockery. “As the late unlamented Ambrose Quinn was wont, all too frequently, to remind you—you are new to command, sir. And command has certain disadvantages, does it not?”

  Phillip, recognizing defeat, ruefully echoed his brother’s smile. “Yes, it would appear to have,” he conceded and, when Graham hesitated, he said crisply, “Well, carry on—volunteer your boarding party and stand by to lower boats. We’ve delayed long enough.”

  “You mean that, Phillip?”

  “Of course I mean it. Young Grey had better command the second boat, I think, if you’re agreeable, and I’ll put O’Leary on the forward gun to cover you. We don’t want any firing obviously, if it can be avoided, but issue rifles to about a dozen reliable men and cutlasses to them all. If you need help, send up a red flare—I’ll have Cochrane standing by with the cutter.”

  “Aye, aye, sir,” Graham acknowledged and left the quarterdeck to volunteer his boats’ crews. Phillip sent for the acting gunner, O’Leary, and put him in charge of the forward Lancaster gun and, when the Huntress wore round, he again ascended the mainmast shrouds in the hope of obtaining an early sight of the brig. It was, however, Able-Seaman Williams who sighted her from the masthead, and his relief who—obedient to the order to preserve silence—came shinning breathlessly back to the deck to report her position to the master. Burnaby, with his usual skilful precision, brought the Huntress to, as Phillip had instructed, between her and the northern extremity of the bay and the boats were rapidly lowered, each with its complement of armed and eager seamen, to row across the short expanse of fog-enshrouded water now separating the two ships.

  Phillip watched, hiding his apprehension, until the fog swallowed them up and the muffled creak of oars faded into silence. Then, having given Anthony Cochrane his orders and seen the cutter lowered, he left the deck in old Burnaby’s capable hands and made his way forward to await the outcome from the vantage point of the forecastle, with O’Leary and the crew of the Lancaster.

  The huge gun, weighing close on five tons, had been run out on its pivoting slide-carriage and trained in the direction of the still unseen Russian brig, and Gunner O’Leary himself, lips parted in his familiar gap-toothed grin, stood close behind it, the trigger line looped about his right hand. He was gazing into the curtain of mist and swearing luridly and with hardly a pause as if, by the sheer force of his invective, to compel his target to reveal herself. Neither he nor the six men who composed the Lancaster’s crew heard their Commander’s approach; so intent were they all on their search for the brig that none turned or moved from his station, until a warning cough from one of the auxiliary powder-men brought O’Leary’s head round. His harsh injunction to the offending seaman to “cease his bloody plochering,” was bitten off short when he recognized the new arrival and he said apologetically, “Beg pardon, sorr—I’d no idea ’twas yourself.”

  “All right, Mr O’Leary, carry on,” Phillip bade him as he, too, stared vainly into the fog. The boats ought, by this time, to be more than half way across, he thought and, with difficulty, refrained from cursing the poor visibility as fluently as O’Leary had just done. “Are you able to make her out?” he asked, aware that it was unlikely.

  The gunner shook his head. “Divil a sign of her, sorr, for the past ten minutes. But I’ll have me sights on her the instant there’s the smallest clearance in the fog, don’t you worry. She’ll not get away from dis beauty.” He slapped the great iron gun barrel with a bony hand.

  “You are to hold your fire until I give the word,” Phillip reminded him. It had been partly in order to issue this reminder that he had come forward; he knew Gunner O’Leary’s enthusiasm for action and knew, too, the big, rawboned Irishman’s pride in his guns and in the crews he had so patiently worked up to their present high standard of efficiency to man them. The reminder probably wasn’t necessary but it was a precaution and, to make his wishes absolutely clear, he added sternly, “Even if you sight the brig and even if she should open fire on us, you understand? The threat of this gun should be quite enough so, if I order you to fire, put a shot across her … well overhead. I don’t want her damaged—I have other plans for her.”

  “Aye, aye, sorr,” O’Leary acknowledged dutifully but his expression was a trifle injured. Glimpsing his face as he turned, Phillip relented and offered a brief explanation of the purpose of the cutting-out party and was glad he had done so when he saw a delighted grin spread over the Irishman’s craggy countenance. “Now dat’s what I call a grand idea!”

  “You think so?”

  “B’Jaysus I do, sorr!” the gunner exclaimed, chuckling. “’Twill make them Roosians look the quare eejits, so it will, when we go steaming down the channel right under their noses, in one o’ their own ships!”

  Phillip found his enthusiasm oddly reassuring and some of his misgivings faded as O’Leary, with a wealth of picturesque detail, enlarged on the impending discomfiture of the guardians of the Yenikale channel. He had a weakness for O’Leary’s special brand of rugged Irish humour and resilient cheerfulness and, indeed, for the man himself. They had gone through a great deal together since the days when the onetime “Queen’s Hard Bargain” had acted as his orderly during the battle for Balaclava. In fact, he reminded himself, he owed his life to Joseph O’Leary and …

  “Sir—“The gun captain murmured a low-voiced warning and Phillip spun round, eyes and ears straining into the vaporous darkness. The brig must have had steam up, he realised, for suddenly he heard the throb of engines and then the threshing of water as her paddle-wheels started to rotate. She must have seen the boats or heard the splash of oars as they approached her, and was about to take refuge in flight. Probably she had slipped her cable; there had been no sound which might have betrayed her intention but obviously her Captain co
nsidered the loss of an anchor a small price to pay to avoid the capture of his ship.

  “Will I put a shot across her now, sorr?” O’Leary asked. Phillip shook his head. “No, wait for my order. Quiet, all of you!”

  He listened intently, in an effort to judge the brig’s position and the direction in which she was heading from the sound of her engines, but the fog distorted all sounds and, apart from the fact that she was further away than he had imagined, he learnt nothing. Pray heaven she did not fall foul of his own ship as she made her blind bid for escape, he thought, and started aft at a run, only to slow his pace to a dignified walk a moment later.

  Burnaby had the deck and he was the Huntress’s most capable and experienced watchkeeper; he would have heard the threshing paddle-wheels and would take what evasive action was necessary—or possible—without waiting for orders. And he had wit enough to know that the need for silence was past, so far as the brig was concerned, and that he could use the screw if he deemed it prudent to do so. Regaining the quarterdeck without giving the appearance of undue haste, Phillip found that, as he had confidently expected, the master was well in command of the situation. With men standing by the head braces and the helm amidships, he was taking what advantage the light breeze offered to make a stern board, steering by means of the topsails and head yards. Phillip joined him, making no comment beyond a nod of approval and then, as suddenly as they had started up, the brig’s paddle-wheels ceased churning.

  In the ensuing silence, both men crossed to the starboard side and Phillip, moving more briskly, was the first to discern the ghostly outline of their quarry, about two cables’ length distant and, still with way on her, heading north towards Akbourno and the protection of the shore batteries, as he had guessed she would.

  “Well, there she is, Mr Burnaby,” he observed, at pains to sound calm and unruffled. “But I’m damned if I can see either of our boats, can you? Unless—“He put the Dollond to his eye.

  “Beg pardon, sir—I can see one of them!” a boy’s excited voice announced from the rigging above his head. “Fast to her midships chains, sir, port side. And our fellows must have boarded her … I can only see one man in the boat, sir.”

  Recognizing Midshipman O’Hara’s piping treble, Phillip permitted himself a brief smile. The boy was right, he saw, as a small gust of wind opened a rift in the low-lying fog—one of the boats had secured alongside the brig’s port quarter. He could see no sign of the other but men were moving on the Russian’s upper deck and there were shouts and a muffled cheer, which … there was a vivid flash and his acknowledgement to O’Hara was drowned by the crash of a single gun.

  It was the only shot the brig got off and it whined harmlessly high above the Huntress’s masthead, to fall into the water well astern. Then the fog closed in about both ships once more—thicker and more impenetrable than ever, it seemed—and Phillip waited in an agony of impatience, listening to the subdued shouts and cries, his imagination conjuring up a picture of the hand-to-hand battle now being waged in the darkness aboard the enemy vessel. If only one boatload had managed to board her, they would be heavily outnumbered, he told himself, and cursed the fog which prevented him from seeing the second boat. It was, of course, possible that Graham had divided his small force and sent the young acting mate, Grey, to run in under the brig’s counter so as to enable both parties to board her simultaneously, but her sudden dash under engines might well have taken Grey by surprise, with the result that his boat had failed to reach its objective.

  If, instead of being secured to the brig’s starboard side, Grey’s boat had been left astern, then … Phillip glanced round at Burnaby, intending to order the screw lowered. There was nothing to be gained by silence now. The sound of the brig’s engines and certainly the discharge of her gun would have carried to the batteries and alerted the garrison at Ferrikale and he needed the speed and mobility his own engines could give him if he were to close her. However skilfully old Burnaby might back and fill, he could not be sure—in this apology for a breeze—that he was maintaining his station relative to the Russian ship. She had no sail set and might drift anywhere after slipping her cable. “Mr Burnaby,” he began and broke off, sick with relief, as a burst of cheering shattered the silence.

  The cheers were spasmodic and swiftly suppressed but they were unmistakably British cheers and the knot of young Officers gathered on the Huntress’s deck and in her lower rigging echoed them heartily, an example which was followed by the seamen. Phillip, too pleased by the outcome himself to play the martinet, turned a deaf ear to them and old Burnaby’s faded blue eyes were suspiciously bright as he murmured a heartfelt, “Thank God for that!”

  Two or three minutes later, Grey’s voice sounded across the intervening distance, distorted by the speaking trumpet he was using. “Huntress ahoy! Captain, sir—the First Lieutenant’s respects and I’m to tell you that the brig Constantine has struck to us.”

  His announcement was greeted by renewed cheers but this time Phillip, taking the speaking trumpet Burnaby held out to him, ordered them sharply to desist, and the young mate added, “We have six men wounded, sir.”

  “Seriously wounded, Mr Grey?”

  “Only one, sir—Ordinary-Seaman Wright. We also have fourteen or fifteen Russian wounded and about 35 prisoners. Mr Hazard asks if he may transfer them to the Huntress and I am to request you to come aboard as soon as convenient, sir.”

  Phillip frowned. Wright, he recalled, was one of Ambrose Quinn’s despised “counter-hoppers”—a twenty-year-old draper’s assistant from Clerkenwell, mustered as a waister. He gave permission for the transfer to be made, the wounded to be sent across first, added a quick, “Well done, all of you!” and then turned to the master. “Send the cutter to take off prisoners, Mr Burnaby, if you please, and call away my gig. And perhaps you’d pass the word to the assistant-surgeon to prepare for casualties.” He hoped fervently that Brown, the inexperienced ex-medical student—to whose care all these wounded men, British and Russian, must soon be entrusted—would prove equal to the task, and then thrust the fear that he might not firmly to the back of his mind. There was always O’Leary, who had spent so long in the Trojans’s sick bay with a crushed leg that, when it came to dealing with serious injuries, he had more experience than Brown. O’Leary, he knew, would volunteer his aid if Brown were unable to cope and at least poor young Brown had no false pride. He was well aware of his limitations and would ask for help, if he needed it.

  “You may have the forward pivot gun secured, Mr Burnaby,” Phillip said, when the master came to report that his gig had been lowered and Cochrane, in the twelve-oared cutter, was on his way to take off the crew of the brig. “Keep all the guns’ crews standing by their guns for the time being. I’m sure the engineers will be able to provide boiling water for cocoa by the time the wounded come aboard and …” he added a few detailed instructions as they descended to the entry port together. The master’s gnarled fingers went to the peak of his cap. “God go with you, sir,” he offered, his voice low. “And good luck!”

  “Thanks, Mr Burnaby,” Phillip answered. He could only hope that he had made the right decisions, he reflected wryly, as he stepped down into the waiting boat. The fog seemed thicker, in the gig, than it had from the Huntress’s quarterdeck and even the sharp-eyed Midshipman O’Hara, who was at the tiller, failed to see the pinnace approaching with its cargo of wounded, until the muffled splash of oars indicated its position. The boat was coming slowly towards them and Grey’s voice answered Phillip’s hail, sounding a trifle strained as he reported that the unfortunate Wright was in a bad way.

  “He’s not conscious, sir,” the mate added. “We’ve done what we could for him but I’m afraid his back’s broken.”

  Phillip listened in dismay. This was neither the time nor the place to enquire how the ex-draper’s assistant had received such an injury—Graham would report on it, in due course. Probably the lad had fallen, somewhere in the darkness of the brig’s deck, during the fi
ght for its possession. Or he might never have gained the deck—a slip, as he was attempting to board, could have sent him tumbling back into the boat again and if he had struck a thwart with sufficient force, then a fractured spine might be the least of his injuries. Pray heaven that O’Leary would know what to do for him, even if Brown did not … Grey called out something and, as he had before, Phillip thrust his doubts and fears to the back of his mind, aware that the time for self-reproach would also come later.

  It was still impossible to make out more than the hazy outline of the other boat but, squinting anxiously into the murk about him, he saw something else—a flat, wooden object floating on the surface of the water about twenty yards ahead and to starboard of his own boat. A piece of flotsam, he decided, and then looked again, puzzled by something about it that wasn’t usual. For one thing it was too smooth and regular in shape to be driftwood and for another what looked like a strand of wire trailed from it, as if … Grey’s boat emerged from the gloom and, before Phillip could shout a warning, its bows struck the strange floating object a glancing blow. The next instant there was a blinding flash, which lit the foggy darkness to blood-red clarity and was followed by the fearsome roar of an explosion.

  The pinnace disintegrated—oars, thwarts, and the stout timbers of which it was constructed went spinning skywards in a confused jumble of barely recognizable fragments, some of which returned to the surface of the water as brightly burning debris. There they flickered until the shock-waves from the explosion extinguished them, briefly illuminating the bobbing heads and white faces of four or five swimmers … four or five swimmers, from a boatload of twenty or more? Halfblinded, his ears still ringing from the blast, Phillip stared unbelievingly about him and then, as fingers grasped weakly at the gunwale of the gig, he leaned forward to drag the swimmer into the sternsheets beside him. He was a Russian, his head roughly bound in a bloodstained cloth, and he lay gasping on the bottom boards of the gig, unable to speak.