Hazard's Command

by V. A. Stuart

  “They’re coming, I suppose?” Phillip asked, remembering Lord George Paulet’s wishful thinking.

  His second-in-command nodded. “Oh, yes, they’re coming all right. Captain Brock sent out a mounted scouting party, as soon as Grey made his report. I understand, from young Grey—who has just reported back—that your estimate of their number and the speed of their advance wasn’t very far out. The scouts observed a very large force of Cossack cavalry, which they put at between six and seven thousand, forty guns and something in the region of two regiments of infantry. But opinions differ as to when the attack will be launched. The officer who led the scouting party thinks they will wait until just before dawn but Captain Brock told Grey that almost certainly some of the Cossacks will endeavour to probe the defences before the light goes.”

  “Let us hope the scout is right,” Phillip returned, but without conviction, for Captain Brock, he knew, had a great deal of experience of Cossack cavalry attacks. “If he is, then that will give us the night to prepare to receive them.” He glanced up at the sky, bathed in the rosy glow of a superb sunset and smothered a sigh, as he passed on Lord George Paulet’s orders for the Trojan and the gist of what he had said concerning the situation. Fox’s expression underwent a swift change.

  “I did not realize the position was so grave,” he said.

  “No, nor did I, Martin.” They were both silent as they watched another thirty-two-pounder gun being lowered to the wharf. The men on shore, as if they, too, were acutely conscious of how little time they now had, dealt with it swiftly and, hauled by one of the shaggy horse-teams, sent it trundling on its way up the street, the gunlayer and his crew, told off by Sutherland, anxiously endeavouring to hold their weapon steady on a carriage which had not been designed to take it along roughly stone-paved streets. Yet these same men, Phillip reminded himself, had safely hauled heavier guns than these from Balaclava, up six miles of rutted track to the Heights above Sebastopol … and had done so without horses. He called out a word or two of encouragement and then said to Martin Fox, “Well, I had better go and seek out Captain Brock, I think. My compliments to Mr Laidlaw and tell him, if you please, that he and Mr Burnaby will be in command of the ship. Lord George wishes us to keep steam up, so we shall have to replenish our coal bunkers, as soon as the guns are out. He told me there was coal on this wharf.”

  “There is, plenty of it,” Fox confirmed. “In those sheds over there. Are we just to help ourselves?”

  Phillip shrugged. “Yes, why not?” He added instructions for the posting of guards and look-outs and was about to move away when Martin Fox stopped him. “Oh, by the way, sir—Surgeon Vernon went ashore while you were aboard the Bellerophon, to return to his unit. He asked me particularly to remember to tell you that young Durbanville’s leg was taken off and that he came through it well. And I was to tell you also that you were right—I imagine you know what he was talking about?”

  “Yes,” Phillip answered. “Yes, I know, thank you, Martin. And what about my Queen’s Hard Bargain—O’Leary? Is there any word of him, do you know?”

  “Only that he still has his leg.”

  “I’m glad—and glad about Henry Durbanville too, I must admit.” He laid a hand lightly on his First Lieutenant’s shoulder. “See you later, Martin. I am instructed to place myself under Captain Brock’s orders but no doubt he will permit me to visit our gun positions—of which you will be in command, of course.”

  “Aye, aye, sir,” his second-in-command acknowledged. “Good luck to you!”

  “And to you, Martin.”

  “Take Grey with you, sir. He knows how to get to Captain Brock’s headquarters,” Fox suggested. “And thanks—I fancy we may need every bit of luck we can get, if the attack does come before dawn.”

  It came—launched, as Captain Brock had forecast, by the Cossack cavalry—just as the sun sank in a blaze of glory in the western sky. The Cossacks galloped up across the wide, open plain to the north of Eupatoria, wave after seemingly endless wave of savage horsemen, bent low in their high-peaked saddles, the afterglow of the sunset touching the tips of their fifteen-foot lances to blood-red and their appearance calculated to strike terror into the stoutest heart. They advanced arrogantly, without drawing rein and then, from a range of eight hundred yards, opened up a brisk fire with their artillery on the town’s defences.

  It was evident that they had not expected these to be fully manned and still less anticipated that their fire would be returned by so many guns and with so much spirit. The recently constructed palisade, linking the various strongpoints, had suffered some damage during the storm which it had been impossible, in the limited time, to repair and—proof of the close watch kept by the enemy’s scouts and spies—a number of fierce assaults were made on each of the damaged sections. But the palisade stood firm and the naval guns—including the Trojan’s thirty-two-pounders, well supplied with shot and shell and strategically placed at intervals so as to cover gaps in the long earth-wall—wrought havoc with every succeeding charge.

  Phillip, who had, at Captain Brock’s invitation, ridden out with him on one of the captured Cossack ponies when the enemy were first sighted, was conscious of a thrill of pride as he watched his men’s steadiness and the rapidity and accuracy of their fire. Only eight of his guns had been properly sited when the attack began, the remaining two still some distance behind the defensive perimeter, their crews struggling vainly to haul them up to the sandbagged emplacements prepared for them. But the eight, out-ranging the smaller calibre Russian field-pieces and handled with a great deal more skill, sufficed gradually—together with a naval rocket battery in their sector—to turn the tide of battle in favour of the defenders. When the attack had been pressed home, with ferocious courage, for nearly an hour, the light faded and first one of the Cossack gun batteries was glimpsed, limbering up, then a second and a third ceased fire and withdrew out of range.

  “Well, Hazard,” Captain Brock observed, scanning the scene with his glass. “They seem to have had enough, for the time being. Obviously they thought they would take us by surprise, with our men out in boats, endeavouring to take off the crews of the wrecked ships—as, indeed, they might well have done but for you. I am grateful for the timely warning you brought us, more grateful than I can begin to tell you … and also for your guns and ammunition. Your fellows did well—you must keep them in good practise, for I have seldom seen thirty-two-pounders better handled.”

  “Thank you very much, sir,” Phillip said, gratified. Praise from Captain Thomas Saumarez Brock was praise indeed, he thought, as they rode together along the line of defences, Brock pausing here and there to receive reports of casualties, or to watch the Cossacks’ withdrawal across the plain.

  Captain Brock had come out as supernumerary Captain on board Admiral Dundas’s flagship Britannia, Phillip recalled, and—like Captain Dacres of the Sanspareil—he was a member of that elite inner circle of captains and commanders who had served as junior officers in the Blonde, under Sir Edmund Lyons when, in 1829, the frigate had been the first British ship of war to enter the Bosphorus and Black Sea for twenty years. In addition, the commander of the Eupatoria garrison had been on board the Sampson when she had made her audacious survey of the Black Sea ports just before the outbreak of the war with Russia and he was considered one of the leading naval authorities on the enemy’s seaward defences, as well as on their strategy and tactics. Why, despite this, he had been left in Eupatoria, ever since the Allied landing, over two months ago, was a question which only Admiral Dundas could answer but … Phillip studied him covertly, wondering whether or not Captain Brock resented the stagnation of his present command.

  The Captain lowered his glass and observed, uncannily as if he had read Phillip’s thoughts, “It is of considerable importance that we retain possession of this place, you know. It has a larger and better harbour than Balaclava, and, if we were ever compelled to abandon Balaclava, we might be left with Eupatoria as our only operational base on the
whole of the Crimean peninsula. Or, at any rate”—his tone was dry—“that is Admiral Dundas’s belief. Lord Raglan, judging by the way in which he has seen fit to deplete my garrison recently, may not share it but, if he does not, his lordship has not confided the fact to me. My orders are to hold Eupatoria at all costs and I must seemingly do this with a makeshift force of British and French seamen and Marines—borrowed from the ships—and a few hundred Turks!” He glanced at Phillip, lips pursed. “Which may explain why I am glad to have an experienced campaigner like your Major Leach. But … lately I have heard a rumor that the Generals would like to quit Balaclava, now that it looks as if they must face a winter campaign. Have you heard anything of the kind, Commander Hazard?”

  “Yes, sir, like yourself I have heard rumours,” Phillip admitted, and gave him a cautious resumé of what Captain Heath had told him. “But Admiral Lyons—on whose Staff I had the honour to serve for a short time—holds a strongly opposite view and so, I think, does Sir Colin Campbell, who commands the Balaclava defences.”

  “H’m, you interest me.” Captain Brock, still searching the darkening plain with his glass, sounded thoughtful. “Sir Edmund is right, I am sure—he usually is—so I trust that his view may carry sufficient weight with Lord Raglan to prevail. We are forty miles overland from Sebastopol, as you know, but if the shipping at Balaclava has suffered anything approaching the damage we have suffered here, in the gale, we may yet find ourselves using this place as a winter base. A shore base, for the Army, I mean,” he added, sensing Phillip’s bewilderment. “The roadstead has proved quite unsuitable as an anchorage for sailing vessels, with the threat of gales always present in winter, so the sailing ships will have to go home and their Lordships will have to send us steamers, in their stead. I …” he broke off, gesturing into the darkness ahead of them. “Do you see that?” He shouted a crisp order to a group of French seamen by the sandbagged palisade and one of the men sent up a flare. By its glow, a little band of Cossacks was revealed, attempting to steal up and catch the defenders unawares but a few musket shots quickly dispersed them.

  “They will keep up this sort of thing for an hour or so.” Captain Brock spoke with the confidence of experience. “Then they will retire to their camp fires to eat and sleep—Cossacks will ride all day but, at night, they like to sleep and rest their horses. They seldom attack in darkness, unless certain that their prey is defenceless—as, for example, were the wretched seamen, whose ships were driven ashore in the storm. So we may expect a lull quite soon and you will be able to stand your men down by their guns and let them eat and get what rest they can. My garrison cooks will provide a hot meal for them and you, perhaps, would dine with my officers and myself at our headquarters?”

  “Thank you, sir.” He sounded so calm and matter-of-fact that Phillip stared at him in some surprise and, again as if he had guessed his companion’s thoughts, Captain Brock said, “In the early morning mist, the enemy will attack us once more in force, Hazard. If we can hold them then, we may count ourselves victorious … and I hope we can hold them, with the help of your guns and ammunition. You have two guns still to get into position, have you not?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “See to it, then, if you please,” the garrison commander requested. “And perhaps you could let us have another wagonload of powder and shot—we are woefully short of munitions, I am afraid. I’ll expect you at my headquarters in about two hours.”

  Phillip acknowledged the order and cantered back to carry it out. He found the Trojan’s last two guns already being dragged into their emplacements, under Martin Fox’s supervision and, having despatched a midshipman to the wharf to arrange for the unloading of further supplies of powder and shot, passed on the information he had gleaned from Captain Brock to his First Lieutenant.

  “He was pleased with our shooting—pass that on to the guns’ crews, will you please? And warn them to continue to keep a sharp look-out, until they see the glow of the Cossacks’ camp fires … then, on Captain Brock’s authority, you may stand them down. But they are to be at their guns, ready for action, well before first light. The Captain says we may expect another attack under cover of the early morning mist.”

  “Aye, aye, sir.” Fox’s eyes held a gleam of excitement. “It was extraordinary, that charge, wasn’t it? Thousands of them, galloping hell for leather across the open plain! What did they expect to achieve? Cavalry are no match for guns.”

  “They apparently expected the defences to be unmanned,” Phillip told him. “And the garrison to be too short of ammunition to do them much harm. They have spies in the town, James said, who report regularly to the Cossack patrols. They …” out of the tail of his eye, he glimpsed a darker shadow among the shadows cast by the defensive earthworks, as the sweating men heaved and tugged the last thirty-twopounder on to its sandbagged platform and his warning shout came just in time. Both he and Fox emptied their pistols into the darkness and the Marine riflemen, positioned by the loopholes on either side of the gun, fired a scattered volley. A single, high-pitched scream of agony testified to their accuracy but then a score of dark bodies hurled themselves at the parapet, a few, with suicidal courage, managing to leap over it, hacking at the gunners with their sabers.

  A wild mêlée ensued, with both Phillip and Martin Fox in the thick of it until finally Phillip, with the advantage of being mounted, managed to extricate his shaggy Cossack pony from the press of bodies and, rallying the Marines, led them back with bayonets fixed in a spirited charge. The attackers fled, as suddenly and as swiftly as they had appeared, leaving almost a dozen dead and wounded behind them and Phillip had to yell at the pitch of his lungs to stop his indignant gunners going in pursuit of their retreating foe. A big Gunner’s Mate, a bloodied cutlass in his hand, said reproachfully as he obeyed the unwelcome order, “We could have had the lot of ’em, sir, if you’d let us go after them.”

  “They would have had you, more likely, my lad,” Phillip returned. “There are quite a lot more of them in the darkness out there.” As if in proof of his words, the sound of pounding hooves floated back to them and he added grimly, “You hear? About a hundred, I should say.”

  The Gunner’s Mate shrugged his broad shoulders.

  “Aye, sir, you’re right. But they was after our gun, sir—trying to spike it, the heathen devils!”

  “The gun’s all right, Phillip,” Martin Fox assured him breathlessly, after a swift inspection. He, too, listened to the sound of galloping hooves, now receding. “Well, they’ve gone, praise be! But it was a brave try and it almost succeeded. I’ll double the look-outs, shall I?”

  “Indeed you should, although I doubt if they’ll try these tactics again. And pass the word for a surgeon, would you.” Phillip dismounted, looking about him. Several men were nursing minor hacks and cuts but, to his relief, none of his Trojans admitted to serious injury. He ordered the uninjured back to the work of securing the gun and, calling for a lantern, went to where the enemy casualties lay. The first was an officer, a mere boy in an elegant Chasseur uniform and so too, he saw, when someone brought a shaded lantern, were three of the other dead … all four victims of the Marines’ bayonet charge, judging by their wounds. A junior officers’ prank, he thought, with a twinge of sadness, a do-or-die escapade devised, perhaps, in a spirit of adventure by boys having their first taste of action, whose cadet school training had made them despise the Cossacks’ cautious reluctance to carry on the fight during the hours of darkness. Well, they had not lacked courage and, as his First Lieutenant had observed, the brave venture had almost succeeded. He was reminded suddenly of young Henry Durbanville and, conscious of an odd tightness about his throat, Phillip bent, in pity, over the first boy’s body and gently closed the eyes, his fingers not quite steady, for all his determination to keep his emotions under stern control. War was an ugly business, when all was said and done and …

  “The surgeon’s here, sir,” Fox told him. “And Captain Brock’s on his way.”

  Ph
illip recognized Surgeon Vernon, who was accompanied by a small party with stretchers. “Here they are, Doctor.” His voice, even to his own ears, sounded unpleasantly harsh. “I think five or six of them are still alive and you need not be afraid to touch them—they are Chasseurs, not Cossacks, most of them officers.” He got to his feet and added quietly, “We will bury the dead.”

  Captain Brock listened, with raised eyebrows, to his account of the incident, as Vernon and his stretcher bearers busied themselves with dressing wounds and moving the injured, assisted by some of the Trojan’s seamen.

  “A strange incident,” the garrison commander agreed, when Phillip came to the end of his recital. “As you suggest, Commander Hazard, it was probably a young officers’ escapade, of the kind some of our own midshipmen might well have planned, in this situation. We will give them Christian burial. I’ll send you a chaplain or one of the Orthodox priests from the town, if I can get hold of one.” He glanced at the gun, now in position with the rest of the Trojan’s battery, and smiled. “At least you did not lose your gun, which is fortunate, because we shall need it tomorrow morning.”

  “No, sir.” It took an effort to return the smile but Phillip made it. “We did not lose our gun.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  Phillip excused himself from the invitation to dine at Captain Brock’s headquarters. The brief funeral service, conducted by a priest from the town, was soon over and he and Martin Fox remained with their guns’ crews for the rest of the night, eating with them and snatching what sleep they could in the shelter of the palisade, while standing watch with Anthony Cochrane and the young Gunnery Lieutenant, Sutherland. The look-outs were understandably nervous, having so nearly been caught off guard by the Chasseur officers’ raid, but the night passed quietly, the distant glow of bivouac fires from the Cossack camp the only indication of the enemy’s presence.