If their Arctic ordeal had left him weak in body, in spirit he felt stronger than ever. Having faced death in that cold, lifeless land, he had determined that henceforth he would squeeze every last drop of enjoyment out of the remainder of his life. In his hurry to get HMS Ramillies ready to go to sea, Crichton had taken on more than his fair share of Queen’s hard bargains, yet when they showed a lack of seamanship that would have tested the patience of a saint, Killigrew could laugh it off and upbraid them with a joke, refusing to blight a single moment with bitterness or anger. Now he viewed the insanity of the world – and of the Royal Navy in particular – with a smile; not the twisted sneer of a man who only laughed at any mortal thing so that he might not cry, but the hearty chuckle of one who could always see the funny side. It should have been intensely infuriating, but it was a smile that was infectious.
So far the campaign had been a dull one: the Baltic fleet had sailed from Portsmouth five months earlier, before Britain and France had even declared war on Russia in support of the Turks, who had been fighting the Russian aggressors for nearly a year now. News of the declaration of war had reached the fleet when it had been anchored in Køge Bay off Copenhagen. Since then the Ramillies had been largely confined to blockade work, discouraging the ships of the Russian navy from emerging from behind their maritime fortresses, while smaller vessels – paddle-sloops and frigates – had garnered all the glory of raiding defenceless Finnish ports and burning merchant barques and fishing boats.
He returned on deck to find Neville’s marines assembled in the ship’s waist, pipeclayed crossbelts showing pale against their red coatees, Brunswick rifled muskets slung from their shoulders, black shakoes making them look taller than they were – and even bareheaded none of them could walk beneath an average door without ducking. Killigrew had ordered the armourer to break open a box of grenades, and two of the marines were given haversacks stuffed with the gunpowder-packed orbs to carry.
In their pusser’s slops, the pinnace’s crew were a marked contrast to the parade-ground-smart marines: all wore the traditional blue jackets and bell-bottomed trousers that passed for a uniform on board HMS Ramillies, but there all attempts at standardisation ended: some wore bonnets, others had tied their neckerchiefs over their heads as bandannas, giving them a distinctly piratical look that was emphasised by the wide variety of weapons they carried: muskets, cutlasses, tomahawks and boarding pikes. They were short, squat men, for the most part, as if generations of natural selection had produced a breed of seaman well suited to living in the cramped ’tween-decks of a man o’ war, shoulders broaded by pulling on oars and pushing on capstan bars, knuckles hardened by brawls in every tavern from Portsmouth to Dunedin.
The pinnace was lowered from the davits and Killigrew and the crew shinned down the lifelines. The commander sat down in the stern sheets while the crew took up their oars and moved the boat to the foot of the accommodation ladder, where Lieutenant Neville and his men descended, taking their places on the thwarts between the oarsmen, with a minimum of swearing about clod-hopping jollies from the seamen – the marines returning the compliments with their own jibes about tars.
Another Russian gun boomed, and this time the round shot smashed through the bulwark, throwing large splinters of wood in all directions. From the pinnace, Killigrew could not see if anyone on deck was hurt, but it was a reminder – as if one were needed – that time was not on their side.
‘Shove off!’ he ordered. ‘Out oars and give way with a will!’
The bow man pushed the pinnace’s prow out from the Ramillies’ side and the oarsmen put their backs into it, taking their stroke from the starboard after-oar. Killigrew had already picked out a rocky cove on the shore, sheltered by an escarpment from the view of the fort, and he ordered the coxswain at the tiller to make for it.
As the pinnace moved across the water, at least one of the Russian guns tried to drop a round shot on it, which suited Killigrew just fine: the shot did not even come close enough to drench the boat with spray, and every shot fired at the pinnace was one less fired at the Ramillies herself; and the gun crew would waste time realigning the gun on the ship once the pinnace had reached the safety of the shore.
It was less than fifty yards from the ship to the cove, and with a dozen strong backs heaving at the oars they covered it in next to no time. As soon as Killigrew felt the pinnace’s keel scrape over the shingle bottom, he vaulted over the side and waded up through the chill water on to the rocky shore. The seamen and the marines went after him, leaving the coxswain and the bow oarsman behind to make sure the pinnace was secure before following.
Crouching low, Killigrew scrunched across the pebbly shore, picking his way between boulders until he came to the escarpment. Turning to face the men coming up behind him, he motioned for them to stay back and stay low, before scrambling up the slope to peer over the crest towards the fort. The four guns that could be brought to bear were still firing intermittently at the Ramillies, sending round shot flying over the heads of the men on the shore with a sound like canvas ripping.
He glanced back towards the ship. Lieutenant Masterson had succeeded in anchoring a hawser to a huge boulder further down the shore, and although the high bulwark hid the deck from Killigrew’s sight, he could imagine the hands heaving at the capstan bars, trying to drag the ship’s stern round to bring her broadside to bear on the fort. Not fast enough, though: even as he watched, a shot slammed into the ship’s side, punching a hole through the timbers. He thought of the splinters of wood flying across the lower deck, doing far more damage to life and limb than the shot itself; and if the shot was red-hot, and it lodged in the timbers… but the fire-control parties would be on stand-by, ready to rush pails of water to any blaze as soon as it was discovered. A lucky shot through the magazine, however… best not to think about it. Killigrew consoled himself with the thought that the Russians did not seem to be enjoying many ‘lucky’ shots: three out of every four shots from the fort still missed the hull altogether, and at that range too… shocking-bad gunnery. The Ramillies’ ten-inch bow chaser, by comparison, was firing fast and accurately, but in vain: the shells continued to burst harmlessly against the fort’s granite face.
Killigrew lifted his head above the level of the escarpment, and something stung him on the cheek in the same instant that a musket shot sounded between the cacophony of booming cannon and bursting shells. His first fleeting thought – that he had been shot – was dismissed when he realised that a bullet had struck one of the rocks close to his head. In any case, he quickly withdrew below the crest of the escarpment. Perhaps the shot had been lucky, but if so it was the kind of luck that came from having a sharp eye and a rifled musket.
‘There’s claret on your dial, sir,’ said Molineaux, in the low voice he might have used to advise the commander that his flies were undone. Killigrew raised a gloved hand to where the splinter of stone had stung his cheek, and it came away with a few drops of blood smeared over the fingertips, black against the white kid leather. He cursed: it was hardly life threatening, but getting blood off leather was the devil’s own job and the marine who kept his rig looking respectable would not thank him for it in the morning.
‘What do we do, sir?’ asked Lieutenant Neville, young enough to have a head full of dreams of glory and empty of common sense. ‘Charge ’em?’
‘Do that, and we’ll carpet the ground between here and the fort with our dead,’ Killigrew warned him. ‘They’ve got sharpshooters on the roof. You and your men keep your heads down on this side; I’ll lead the bluejackets round the back and see if we can’t find a way inside there. Aikman, pass that bag of tricks to Molineaux.’
‘Very good, sir.’ The marine handed the haversack to the petty officer, and looked very relieved to be rid of its weight.
‘Bluejackets to me!’ ordered Killigrew. ‘Keep your heads down, your mouths shut, your eyes and ears open, and follow me!’
As the marines crept to the crest of the escarpment and b
egan a desultory fire on the fort, Killigrew led the bluejackets round to the right, following the shore to begin with. He had seen the lie of the land from the upper deck of the Ramillies, including a shadow that ran perpendicular to the channel, to the north: not a gully as such, but ground sufficiently dead to give them cover to within fifty yards of the fort.
‘This is it,’ he told Molineaux and the other seamen with him when they reached the beginning of the ditch. ‘From here on in we crawl. Make sure everyone’s musket is at half-cock, Cox’n, and bring up the rear to make sure no one gets left behind.’
They scrabbled along as fast as they could, Killigrew conscious that the Ramillies was taking a pounding as the majority of shots began to hull her. When they had gone a couple of hundred yards they were level with the tower, but Killigrew crawled on: he was banking that all eyes in the fort would be turned towards the Ramillies and the marines on the beach, so he wanted to come at it from behind. When he judged he had crawled another hundred yards, the sulphurous stench of gunsmoke drifted from where the Russian guns boomed and the ten-incher’s shells exploded. He stopped, removed his scabbarded cutlass from his hilt, balanced his cap on the end of it, and slowly raised it above the level of the dead ground. When no one took a pot shot at it, he lifted his head and saw the fort all but hidden by the drifting smoke.
He turned to look down the line of seamen crawling up behind him. Molineaux was right behind him, not one iota impeded by the heavy haversack he carried, and behind him was Able Seaman Gilchrist.
‘I want you to wait here and make sure everyone gets as far as the smoke before they leave this ditch,’ Killigrew told him, drawing his revolvers from their holsters one after the other and making sure they were loaded and primed. There was no need to whisper: the guns were making so much noise, he could have bawled the ‘Hallelujah Chorus’ at the top of his voice, had he known the words, and no one in the fort would have heard him. ‘Give Molineaux time to reach the back of the fort, then start sending them over one at a time.’
Gilchrist nodded.
Killigrew tucked one of the revolvers back in its holster, holding the other in his right fist. ‘Same goes for you, Molineaux: give me time to reach the fort, then follow. Gilchrist, if you see Molineaux fall, tell the next man to pick up the haversack on his way.’
‘Oh, never mind me, if I get shot!’ grumbled the petty officer. ‘It’s the grenades that matter.’
‘That’s pretty much the long and the short of it,’ Killigrew agreed cheerfully. He was used to Molineaux’s occasional flashes of insubordination, and had learned to turn a blind eye to them: the petty officer was too good a man to alienate by harsh treatment. ‘But try not to get killed: we need you to unlock the door.’
‘And what if you get killed, sir?’
‘Then you’re in charge,’ Killigrew told him, picking himself up and running through the smoke towards the fort. The smoke got thicker the closer he got, tearing at his lungs and bringing tears to his eyes. Then he broke out into fresh air and the fort loomed over him, less than thirty yards off. One of the embrasures was directly ahead of him, and he could see the dull light of an oil lamp illuminating the figures who served the gun in one of the loopholes on the far side. There was no telling if they were looking in his direction, but he reasoned he would know about it sooner rather than later if they were.
His feet pounded the sod as he powered himself the last few yards, one hand before him to soften his impact against the masonry, before dropping down at the foot of the wall, breathing hard. Once – not so long ago – a short dash like that would not have left him panting, but that had been before his ill-fated voyage to the Arctic. Even the year that had passed since his return had not restored all the muscle to Killigrew’s ravaged limbs, not that he had ever been a muscular man to begin with. In the four months since HMS Ramillies had sailed from Portsmouth with the rest of the Baltic Fleet, he had been exercising on a daily basis, trying to build his strength up, but he still had a long way to go before he regained the peak of fitness he had known before.
When his breathing became normal and his heart rate had slowed, he made his way round to the right until he came to the door at the back of the fort, crouching below the level of the embrasures. His palm was moist inside his glove where he gripped the revolver and his heart pounded, but he felt joyously alive, his senses sharpened by the thrill of the moment.
Molineaux burst out of the smoke a few moments later, the haversack over one shoulder. He dropped down beside Killigrew, lowering the haversack to the ground and crawling across to examine the lock on the door.
‘Can you pick it?’
‘Two, maybe three minutes,’ Molineaux told him, taking a little wallet of lock-picks from the pocket of his jacket. More than sixteen years had passed since he had turned his back on the life of crime he had learned on the back streets of London as a child, but he had not forgotten the skills and nor had he thrown away his set of ‘betties’, a fact for which Killigrew had had cause to be grateful more than once in the past.
As Molineaux went to work on the lock, another seaman emerged from the smoke, ducking down to crouch by Killigrew against the side of the fort, and five more had arrived by the time the petty officer moved back from the door, nodding curtly to the commander to signify that the door was unlocked. Killigrew returned his revolver to its holster, unstrapped the top of the haversack and passed out grenades to the others while they waited for the remaining five to join them. When the coxswain brought up the rear, Killigrew took a grenade out for himself. He reached for his box of matches, and realised he had used his last one.
‘Give me a light, Molineaux.’
The petty officer stared at him. ‘Don’t look at me, sir. You’re the one who smokes.’
‘Cox’n!’
‘Sir?’
‘Matches.’
‘Haven’t got them on me, sir.’
‘Come on! Someone must have some matches!’
Eleven faces stared back at him blankly.
‘Someone’s going to have to go back for lucifers,’ said the coxswain.
‘There’s no time.’ God alone knew what kind of state the Ramillies was in by now. Killigrew drew a revolver and held the grenade’s fuse to the muzzle: he would have to hope that the sound of the guns would mask the shot, or that if it did not then everything would happen too quickly for anyone inside the fort to have time to react.
He squeezed the trigger. The burst of flame ignited the fuse, which sputtered into life. He held it for Able Seaman Patchett to light the fuse of his own grenade from it. As soon as Molineaux saw the fuse on Patchett’s grenade was burning, he hauled on the door handle.
The door refused to budge.
Killigrew had about three seconds left to get rid of the grenade. He was about to hurl it away from him when Molineaux gave the door another tug and this time it opened. Killigrew lobbed the grenade through, and Molineaux slammed the door shut again.
Patchett had already allowed the next seaman to light another grenade from his, and now he threw it through the embrasure above his head. Four more grenades followed in quick succession, trailing smoke from their hissing fuses, and then the first exploded.
Molineaux had moved to one side of the door, which was just as well because it was blown clean off its hinges to land about twenty feet away. The other explosions followed rapidly in a crescendo of sound, and then there was a deafening boom that seemed to tear the whole world apart, followed by an even louder one that made the ground shudder, and brick dust sheeted down the side of the wall. It was swept up in the burst of rapidly expanding gases that leaped through the embrasures all around the tower with an ear-splitting roar.
Killigrew was so dazed by the size of the blast, he hesitated before charging through the door, stunned. One of the grenades must have set off the powder in the fort’s magazine. Gilchrist was shouting something: Killigrew saw his lips move but, deafened by the blast, heard no sound. No time to worry about that, or th
e danger that more explosions might follow: it was too much to hope the explosion had killed everyone in the fort, and the longer he hesitated the more time they would have to recover. Drawing his second revolver from its holster, he charged through the doorway, roaring incoherently.
The place was as hot as hell, and dust and smoke filled the air, choking him. A man loomed at him out of the darkness, naked, his clothes blown from his blackened body. Killigrew shot him twice in the chest at point-blank range before he realised that the man presented no threat to anyone. He looked around for the stairs leading to the first floor, and saw another man in a long, drab grey greatcoat stagger towards him. He pointed the revolver in his left hand and squeezed the trigger. Killigrew was not much of a shot even with his right hand, and the revolver was not the world’s most accurate weapon, but at that range even he could not miss and the man went down. Killigrew was aware of Molineaux and the others charging in behind him, blazing away with their muskets at anything that moved before drawing their cutlasses.
He saw another Russian emerge from a doorway and shot him, stepping over his body to find a curving flight of steps leading up to the first floor. He pounded up the steps four at a time, saw a figure silhouetted in the doorway above and put two more rounds in him. Stumbling over the man’s corpse, Killigrew emerged on to the first floor, still roaring, firing both revolvers alternately at anything in a grey greatcoat. There was no shortage of targets, and a moment later the hammers of both revolvers fell on empty chambers.
A Russian lunged at him with a bayoneted musket. Dropping one of the revolvers, Killigrew caught the musket by the barrel and forced the bayonet aside, using his other revolver to club the man, whose flat forage cap provided little protection from the blow. As the man fell, Killigrew slipped the revolver into its holster but was still trying to draw his cutlass when an officer charged at him with a sabre. The blade of Molineaux’s cutlass came arcing down, slicing through flesh and bone, and the officer fell before he got within three feet of the commander. Another Russian thrust his bayonet at Killigrew’s stomach, but the commander had his cutlass in his hand now and he parried instinctively, kicking the man in the crotch and hacking at his neck as he doubled up. Killigrew looked around – the air was a little clearer up here – and saw a hole in the floor immediately above where the magazine must have exploded. Three of his men were running up another flight of stairs, which must lead to the roof; he heard more shots, and then silence from above, and suddenly there was no one left to kill.
Killigrew’s Run Page 2