Killigrew’s Run

by Jonathan Lunn

  And then suddenly the bridge was there, looming up out of the gloom, a flimsy and insubstantial thing, yet an effective barrier to their escape through the channel if they did not break through.

  ‘Pass the word!’ called Killigrew. ‘Brace for impact! Aim for the middle of the span, Molineaux.’

  ‘Aye, aye, sir.’

  With one arm in a sling, Mackenzie wrapped the other round the ratlines leading up to the mainmast.

  Two knots: a little over two miles an hour. If a man walking down the street bumped into you at two knots, you would do little more than reel. If a man walking under a bridge at that speed hit his head on it, he’d do more damage to himself than to the bridge.

  But the Milenion was not a man walking down the street: she was 170 tons of oak and teak, elegantly yet sturdily crafted by the shipwrights of East Cowes and, even at two knots, 170 tons of oak and teak could do a lot of damage.

  The bowsprit passed over the railing of the low bridge, followed by the prow. Killigrew heard wood splinter and in the same instant felt the shock through the deck. Even braced for the impact, he found himself flung forward against the binnacle.

  And then all was still.

  ‘Anyone hurt?’ he called across the deck.

  ‘Just a few bruises this end, sir,’ Uren called back.

  ‘How’s that bridge looking, Ogilby?’

  ‘Same as she ever was,’ the sailor called back sourly.

  ‘Seems I underestimated the work of Finnish chippies,’ Killigrew said ruefully.

  ‘That’s it, then,’ said Mackenzie. ‘It’s over.’ He glanced fearfully over his shoulder as if the Atalanta could heave in sight round the last bend at any moment, as well it might.

  ‘Nil desperandum, Mr Mackenzie,’ Killigrew called over his shoulder, running forward. ‘I have a contingency plan.’

  In the bows, he climbed on to the ratlines of the foremast and peered into the gloom ahead until he saw what he wanted. ‘Ah-ha! Mr Uren? See that outcrop of rock there, about forty yards beyond the bridge on the left-hand side of the channel?’

  ‘Aye, sir!’

  ‘I want a cable run out from the capstan and belayed around that rock, chop chop!’

  ‘Aye, aye, sir. Fuller, Yorath – bear a hand!’

  Killigrew turned to the Milenion’s carpenter. ‘Burgess?’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘What tools have you got on board? Specifically, saws and axes.’

  ‘A couple of each, sir.’

  ‘Splendid! Run and fetch them. Hughes!’

  ‘Aye, sir?’

  ‘Do you know who built that bridge, Hughes?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Russian serfs, Hughes, driven to their labour by the crack of the knout.’ In fact, Killigrew very much doubted a Russian serf had ever so much as laid eyes on the bridge – more likely it had been built by Finnish carpenters, serfdom being a long-forgotten memory in the Grand Duchy of Finland – but there was no point in confusing the seaman with minor details. ‘In fact, you might go so far as to say that that bridge is the product of Tsarist exploitation of the Russian working classes.’

  ‘Reckon you could at that, sir.’

  Burgess came back on deck with the tools. Killigrew jumped down from the ratlines, took an axe from him, and handed it to the Welshman. ‘Show us what you think of Tsarist exploitation, Hughes.’

  The seaman grinned. ‘My pleasure, sir.’

  ‘Give the other axe to Ogilby and one of the saws to O’Leary,’ Killigrew told Burgess. ‘Nothing fancy, don’t try to cut a section out; just split it down the middle so we can kedge through.’

  ‘Aye, aye, sir.’

  As the four men scrambled over the head to drop down on to the bridge, Killigrew returned aft to the quarterdeck. ‘Mr Charlton, perhaps you’d be so good as to fetch Count Pechorin’s lady friend from below? Make sure she has a warm coat and a stout pair of boots on her feet, and a bull’s-eye.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  As the sounds of carpentry came from for’ard, Killigrew cast a glance aft. It could only be a matter of time before the officer commanding the Atalanta worked out where they had gone: they had only a few minutes to get through the bridge, and he could not help wondering if he was fooling himself into thinking they still had a chance to escape. But he had been in tighter spots than this before now, and he was damned if he would give up while there was still a glimmer of hope.

  The boatswain came back on board with Fuller and Yorath. ‘The cable’s fast, sir.’

  ‘Capital work, Mr Uren. Now go and see if Burgess needs a hand.’

  ‘Aye, aye, sir.’

  Pechorin’s Finnish friend emerged from the after hatch, glowering at Killigrew.

  ‘My sincerest apologies for incommoding you, ma’am, and for any distress we may have caused,’ he told her in Swedish. ‘You’re free to go.’ He indicated the path, just visible off the left-hand side of the channel. ‘The ferry to Ekenäs is but a mile and a half down that track. I regret having to put you ashore alone so far from home, but we can hardly carry you any further. The Royal Navy does not make war on women.’

  ‘The devil take your Royal Navy!’ she retorted tartly. ‘What am I to say to my husband? He expected me home an hour ago!’

  Killigrew had no response to that, even though he had to admit to himself that was hardly his problem; although he was not so ungallant as to say so out loud. With further profuse apologies, he ordered Endicott and Iles to rig up a boatswain’s chair so she could be lowered to the boards of the bridge next to where Burgess and the others attacked the carpentry, none more enthusiastically than Hughes. Molineaux lit the candle in the bull’s-eye and handed it to her so she could find her way home.

  ‘Reckon she’ll be oh-kay, sir?’ Molineaux asked as they watched her fade into the darkness without so much as a backwards glance at the Milenion.

  ‘Oh, I think she’ll be fine. Struck me as rather a formidable young lady.’

  ‘What about… well, aren’t there wolves hereabouts?’

  ‘Oh, they’ll be fine, as long as they steer clear of her.’

  Molineaux nodded until Killigrew’s meaning sank in; then he gave the commander a funny look, and shook his head wearily.

  Killigrew leaned against the bulwark to watch the men working on the bridge. No matter how swiftly they laboured, it was not fast enough for the commander’s liking. ‘Pity we haven’t got any gunpowder on board,’ he remarked to Molineaux.

  ‘Yes, sir. Or Mr Charlton’s headache medicine.’

  ‘Headache medicine?’ echoed Killigrew.

  ‘He means pyroglycerin,’ explained Charlton. ‘It would be just the thing too, if we had enough. Probably wouldn’t take much, either. It’s deuced powerful stuff.’

  ‘Don’t suppose you know how to make it, do you, sir?’ asked Molineaux.

  ‘Funnily enough, I do,’ said Charlton. ‘It isn’t complicated: it’s simply a matter of adding glycerine to a mixture of concentrated nitric and sulphuric acids. We’ve even got some glycerine on board: I noticed a bottle of it in the medicine chest. But no sulphuric or nitric acid, alas.’

  Molineaux scratched his cheek. ‘Sulphuric acid… that’s a fancy term for oil of vitriol, ain’t it?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘And nitric acid… spirits of nitre?’

  ‘Yes. Why? You don’t happen to have a bottle of each on you, do you?’

  ‘No, sir. But they’ve got both in the dark room below.’

  Charlton blanched. ‘Oh, no…!’

  ‘What is it?’ asked Killigrew.

  ‘Mr Charlton’s got everything he needs to mix some pyroglycerin right here on board, sir,’ said Molineaux.

  ‘What is pyroglycerin?’

  ‘It’s a chemical,’ said Charlton. ‘It has a number of uses in both homeopathic and allopathic medicine. But it’s also very explosive. A pint of it would be more than enough to blow that bridge apart.’

  ‘And you can make it?�
��

  ‘Steady on, sir! Yes, in theory… but I wouldn’t like to try. The stuff’s deuced volatile. One knock, and the whole lot could explode.’

  Molineaux frowned and cocked his head on one side. ‘Hear that, sir?’

  Killigrew shook his head, although he knew from past experience that just because he could not hear something Molineaux could, that did not mean the petty officer was imagining it. Molineaux’s hearing was every bit as phenomenal as his night vision, and had doubtless been honed in the same way.

  The petty officer made his way to the taffrail and Killigrew joined him.

  And then he heard it. Or at least, he thought he heard it. The sound was difficult to make out, because of the noise that Burgess and the others on the bridge were making with their saws and axes; he might have missed it altogether, had it not been a familiar sound from the years he had spent serving on board HMS Tisiphone. A steady, rhythmic, plashing sound, mechanical in its regularity: the beat of wood against water, so many times a minute each splash seemed to merge into one throbbing hiss; distant, but growing louder.

  The sound of a paddle-steamer.

  Chapter 13

  Trapped

  12.48 a.m–1.30 a.m., Friday 18 August

  Killigrew turned to Charlton. ‘How long would it take you to make some of this… what did you say it was called?’

  ‘Pyroglycerin, sir,’ Molineaux supplied.

  ‘At least half an hour, sir,’ said Charlton. ‘It’s not a process that can be hurried. But I really don’t think it would be wise to—’

  ‘Then we’ll have to make do without it for now,’ Killigrew cut him off, to the assistant surgeon’s evident relief. ‘That’s half an hour we haven’t got.’

  Followed by Molineaux, Killigrew ran the length of the upper deck. ‘All right, lads, that will have to do,’ he called down to the men working on the bridge.

  ‘But we’re not finished!’ protested Burgess.

  ‘We are if we don’t get out of here now!’ Molineaux retorted. ‘Come on, lads, give us your hands.’

  They hauled the four men back over the gunwale on to the deck. ‘All hands man the capstan!’ ordered Killigrew.

  The men arranged themselves at the capstan bars and began to push, turning around it, taking up the slack of the cable Uren had tied around the outcrop of rock on the far side of the bridge. The Milenion’s bows nosed against the bridge once more, and the timbers groaned under the strain.

  ‘Heave, damn it!’ said Killigrew. ‘Heave!’

  The sound of a musket shot startled him. He glanced aft, expecting to see the Atalanta rounding the bend behind them, but there was no sign of it. Two more shots sounded, one of them splintering the gunwale close to where he stood, and this time he caught sight of the muzzle-flashes through the trees on the right bank of the channel.

  ‘Infantry?’ asked Thornton, ashen-faced.

  ‘Cossacks,’ spat Killigrew. He was no expert on the sound of muskets, could not tell a rifle from a carbine from an old-fashioned Brown Bess; but some instinct told him that it would be Chernyovsky and his Cossacks. Nekrasoff must have guessed that they would try to break through the chain cable, and had set Chernyovsky and his men ahead to ambush them. When they had realised that the Milenion had turned down the Odensö Channel, they had cut through the forest to head them off at the bridge.

  ‘Come on!’ Killigrew tore off his coat and joined the men at the capstan; Thornton and Charlton joined him. Only Mackenzie stood idle – his arm useless in its sling – clearly wishing he could do something to help.

  They pushed at the bars, fifteen men straining to drag 170 tons of yacht through a rotten, sabotaged bridge. A bridge Killigrew might have admired for its stubbornness could he have viewed the situation objectively, but for now it was barring his only escape, and he hated it more than he had hated anyone or anything in his life; and Killigrew could be a great hater when he had justification.

  Feet scuffled for purchase on the teak deck, bones and timbers creaked, men grunted and groaned, but that damned bridge was as strong as ever. More carbines flared in the darkness, barking from the trees, bullets soughing low over the Milenion’s deck. Killigrew convinced himself they were wasting their time; the bridge was never going to break. Better to jump over the bows on to that accursed bridge and run for what limited safety the trees on the left bank could offer; or perhaps to surrender, throw themselves on the Russians’ mercy.

  On Nekrasoff’s mercy.

  But a man like Nekrasoff had no mercy. It was pointless to waste energy even thinking about it. Every thought in Killigrew’s head, along with every muscle and sinew in his body, had to be focused on one objective and one objective alone: breaking that bridge.

  ‘Come on, you bastard!’ he hissed through clenched teeth. ‘Break, damn you! Break!’

  The bullets whistling over their heads only spurred them on to greater efforts, efforts greater than the human body had been designed for; or rather, efforts greater than any of them ever suspected their bodies were capable of achieving. Something had to give: if the bridge would not break, then the cable would snap, but nothing would break these men.

  When Killigrew heard the splintering, he assumed it must be the snapping bones of a man who had strained himself too hard: he dared not believe that they might finally have defeated that bridge. But then the Milenion was gliding forward, and as the capstan became slack once more the men pushing at the bars stumbled and fell to their knees. The bridge continued to splinter as the bows thrust the broken central section aside, the jagged timbers scratching the paintwork on the hull, and to hell with Bullivant’s paint job anyhow, they were through!

  No need for all of them to continue pushing at those bars. Killigrew backed away, sizing up the situation. The Cossacks continued to fire sporadically from the woods to their right, but so far did not seem to be hitting anything other than the bulwarks.

  ‘Take the helm, Molineaux! Endicott, Hughes – grab a musket each and give those Cossacks something to think about! Stand by to cut the cable when I say “now”, Mr Uren: the rest of you, when I give the order, leave off the capstan and man the halyards!’

  Retreating to the quarterdeck, Killigrew waited for the Milenion’s stern to clear the breach it had made in the bridge. The splintered ends still jutted out on either side of the hull, scraping along the sides. He glanced astern, and saw the Atalanta steam around the corner behind them. It was less than two hundred yards away, close enough for Killigrew to make out the matrosy manning the bow chaser. The big gun was angled to fire through the second of the two gunports in the steamer’s port bow, but as it rounded the corner in the channel it was still not at the right angle to fire a shot at the yacht.

  And then the Milenion’s stern was clear of the bridge.

  ‘Now!’ roared Killigrew.

  As the hands at the capstan left the bars to man the halyards, Uren brought down an axe and chopped through the cable. The sails were unfurled once more, bellying in the stiff breeze that blew across Odensö Island. Beyond the bridge, the channel veered to the left, but the cable had already been drawing the schooner in that direction and Molineaux had to spin the helm to port to compensate. Once the yacht was in the centre of the channel, he angled it to follow the narrow waterway ahead, before bringing the helm amidships.

  The Cossacks were still firing from the trees. Charlie Ogilby slumped to the deck.

  The bow chaser on the Atalanta’s forecastle boomed, shooting flame into the night. Killigrew heard the round shot screech through the darkness, felt the whole ship shudder beneath his feet as the ball smashed into the Milenion’s stern, crashing through the bulkheads below, causing God alone knew what kind of carnage, and Lady Bullivant and Araminta were down there with Mr Dahlstedt, and why the hell were the Russians firing round shot into the hull instead of chain shot at the masts?

  ‘Damage report, Burgess!’ roared Killigrew, wishing he had some way of striking back at the paddle-sloop. That this was the first tim
e he had ever been engaged with an enemy steamer was a thought that was far from his mind: his only concern was that the enemy was trying to kill him and those sailing with him, and he was powerless to strike back at them. ‘Look to Ogilby, Mr Charlton!’

  ‘Yes, sir!’

  The Atalanta was barrelling up the channel at more than twice the speed of the Milenion, closing the gap between them to less than a hundred yards. The gentle curve of the channel to the west would hide the yacht from sight within two minutes, but that was more than enough time for a competent gun crew to put two more shots into their hull.

  As the yacht faded into the night, the shooting of the Cossacks in the trees became even more sporadic. The gun crew of the sloop’s bow chaser had had more than enough time to reload… what were they waiting for? Killigrew found himself almost wishing they would fire, to get it over and done with, and then his prayer was answered and the gun boomed again. He braced himself for the feel of the round shot – thank Christ they weren’t using shell! – smashing through his body, or splinters being thrown up from the deck below to lacerate his flesh. The shot shrieked past to starboard, and the trees on the right-hand bank of the channel shivered and splintered as the ball tore through their trunks. A miss, by God, and a wide one at that!

  But the paddle-sloop was less than eighty yards astern and had almost reached the gap the Milenion had smashed through the bridge. Never mind the incompetence of the Russian gunners; in a minute or two more they would be able to run the schooner down and ram her. The Milenion gathered way as the curve of the channel brought her away from the wind and drove her along at something approaching three knots, but still not fast enough to outrun the next shot.

  * * *

  ‘Why don’t they fire?’ Nekrasoff demanded impatiently, referring to the bow chaser’s gun crew.

  ‘The Milenion’s out of their line of fire,’ Lazarenko replied evenly. ‘Once we’re through the bridge, we’ll be able to line up for their next shot.’