'May I fire, sir?' asked Welby, whose Marines had lined the breastwork.
'At that distance, and with doubtful powder? No. How many charges do your men possess?'
'Most have two, sir; in moderate condition.'
Jack nodded. 'Mr Reade,' he called. 'My glass, if you please; and pass the word for the gunner.'
The telescope brought the shore startlingly close. They were carefully cutting off the carpenter's head: Gower and another man he could no longer identify had already lost theirs. There were two dead Malays or Dyaks and even at this juncture he was shocked to see that one was Kesegaran. Although she was now wearing Chinese trousers and although she had been pierced through and through she was perfectly recognizable, lying there looking fiercely up at the sky.
Jennings was still at his side, still voluble from the shock. 'It was Joe Gower that done it,' he said. 'Mr White went for to stop her taking his broad axe; she slashed his leg out of hand, and as he lay there she slit his throat quick as whistlejack—he screamed like a pig. So Joe served her out with his fishgig. It came natural to him, being a quean, as they say, and carpenter's mate.'
'Sir?' said the gunner.
'Mr White, let the carronades be drawn and reloaded with grape. What do you say to their charges?'
'I should not like to answer for the piece forward, sir; but the nine-pounder and the after carronade may do their duty.'
'At least change the old flannel for something dry, mix in a little priming and let them air. Those people will be busy down there for quite a while.' He turned to his first lieutenant and said 'Mr Fielding, boarding-pikes and cutlasses have been served out, I am sure?'
'Oh yes, sir.'
'Then let the people go to breakfast watch by watch; and pray search all possible sources for powder, flasks, fowling-pieces, pistols that may have been overlooked, rockets. Ah, Doctor, there you are. You have seen what is afoot, I dare say?'
'I have a general notion. Should you like me to go down and parley, make peace if it is at all possible?'
'Do you know that Kesegaran was there, and has been killed?'
'I did not,' said Stephen, looking very grave.
'Take my glass. They have not carried her back to the proa yet. From the way they are behaving I do not think any truce is possible and you would be killed at once. In an encounter like this one side or the other has to be beaten entirely.'
'Sure, you are in the right of it.'
Killick put a tray on the earthwork and they sat either side of it, looking over the slip and the busy Dyaks below. 'How is the bosun?' asked Jack, putting down his cup.
'We have sewn him up,' said Stephen, 'and unless there is infection he will do; but he will never dance again. One of his wounds was a severed hamstring.'
'He loved a hornpipe, poor fellow, and the Irish trot. Do you see they are putting on whitish jackets?'
'The Dyak guard at Prabang wore them. Wan Da told me they would turn a bullet, being padded with kapok.'
They watched in silence for the space of two coffee-pots. Most of the immediate looting had stopped and now the space round the slip was bright with spear-heads catching the sun. Finishing his cup, Captain Aubrey called 'Mr Welby, there: what do you make of the situation?'
'I believe they mean to attack, sir, and to attack in an intelligent way. I have been watching that old gentleman with a green headcloth who directs them. This last half hour he has been sending off little parties into the trees on our left. Several go, but only a few come back, waving branches and calling out so that they shall be seen. And then more men have been quietly moved under the bank this side of the slip, where we cannot see them—dead ground for us. I think his plan is to send a large body straight at us—charge right uphill, engage on the earthwork, kill as many as they can and then fall back slowly, still fighting, and then turn and run so that we shall leave our lines and pursue them, whereupon the group in the forest will take us in the flank while the people in the dead ground jump up and the first attacking party face about and between them cut us to pieces. After all, they are rather better than three hundred to our one hundred and fifty-odd.'
'You have been there before, Mr Welby, I find,' said Jack, looking sharply into the trees on the left, where the gleam of weapons could in fact be made out quite easily.
'I have seen a good deal of service, sir,' said Mr Welby. As he spoke a swivel-gun and a gingall flashed aboard the proa. The gun's half-pound ball kicked up earth on the breast-work; the gingall's bullet—probably a rounded stone—passed overhead with a wavering howl. This seemed to be the whole of the Dyaks' artillery—no muskets were to be seen—and immediately after the discharge the white-jacketed spearmen began forming below.
After a quick, low-voiced exchange with Jack, Welby called 'Marines: one shot, one man. No one is to leave the lines. Independent fire: no one is to shoot without he is sure of killing his man. No Marine is to reload, but having fired, is to fix his bayonet. Sergeant, repeat the orders.'
The sergeant did so, adding 'having cleaned his lock and barrel if time permits.'
Now an ululation, the beating of a small shrill drum, and the spearmen came racing up the hill in groups. A first nervous musket at a hundred yards: 'Sergeant, take that man's name.' Nearer, and their panting could be heard. The last stretch: twenty or thirty musket-shots; and in a close-packed shouting mêlée they were on the earthwork: spears, pikes, swords, bayonets clashing, dust flying, clouds of dust; and then at a huge shout from some chief man they fell back, at first slowly, still facing the camp, then faster, turning their backs and fairly running away. A dozen ardent foremast jacks ran after them, bawling like hounds; but Jack, Fielding and Richardson knew each by name and roared them back to the lines—fools, half-wits, great hulking girls.
The fleeing Dyaks stopped halfway down and gathered to mock and challenge the camp with marks of scorn.
'Forward carronade,' called Jack. 'Fire into the brown.'
The flint failed at the first pull of the laniard—a frightful anticlimax—but it fired on the second and the carronade uttered a flat poop, scattering a gentle shower of grape among the Dyaks, who howled with laughter, capered and leapt into the air. Some of them waved their penises at the English, others showed their buttocks; and the powerful reinforcement from the trees came running out to join them for a charge in deadly earnest.
'After carronade,' said Jack: and his voice was instantly followed by a great solemn crash and a cloud of orange-lined smoke. While the echoes were still going to and fro the cloud swept to leeward, showing the awful swathe the grape had cut. There was a headlong flight to the slip, and although some came back, creeping low, to help their wounded friends back down the hill, they left at least a score of dead.
Now there followed a long period with no action, well on into the afternoon, but it soon became clear that the Dyaks and their Malay friends (for they were a mixed crew) had not lost heart. There was a great deal of movement down by the slip and between the slip and the proa; and from time to time they fired the swivel-gun. At noon they lit their fires for a meal: the camp did the same.
All this time Jack had been watching the enemy with the closest attention and it was clear to him and his officers that old Green Headcloth was certainly in command down there. The Dyak chief watched the English with equal care, often standing on the bank with shaded eyes; and a good hand with a rifle, having an earthwork to lean on, could certainly bring him down. Stephen could do it, he was sure; but he knew with equal certainty that Stephen never would: in any case both medicos were busy with the wounded—several men had been hurt in the fighting on the breastwork. Nor would he do it himself, not in cold blood and at a distance: although he was not displeased when a broadside cleared an enemy quarterdeck, there was still something illogically sacred about the person of the opposing commander, and some perceptible but indefinable difference between killing and murder. Query: did it apply to a man appointed as a sharpshooter? Answer: it did not. Nor did it apply in even a ver
y humble mêlée.
Captain Aubrey, his officers and David Edwards, the envoy's secretary, ate their dinner on trestled planks laid this side of the breastwork, which had sandbags on its top to protect their heads from the not infrequent swivel-gun, whose layer made remarkably good practice, hitting the embankment or skimming just over it almost every time—such good practice that the moment they saw the flash all hands dropped to their knees, out of direct range. Their genuflexion did not always save them, however, and twice during the meal Dr Maturin was called away to deal with the more sluggish.
Dinner today was informal, so much so that Richardson might without impropriety peer between the sandbags with his telescope and say 'It is my belief, sir, that the enemy are entirely out of water. I see three parties trying to make holes in what they take to be the watercourse; and Green Headcloth is blackguarding them like a fishfag.'
'They expected to be drinking out of our well by now,' said Welby, smiling. 'Though mark you, they may do so yet,' he added as a sop to Fate.
'The odds are more even now,' observed the purser. 'And if it goes on at this rate we shall soon have the advantage.'
'If that should come about they will surely sail away and come back three times as strong,' said the master. 'Sir, would it be foolish to suggest destroying their proa out of hand? It is frail past belief—no metal in its whole construction and a ball in either hull or better still at the junction between 'em would knock it to pieces.'
'I dare say it would, Mr Warren,' said Jack. 'But that would leave us with better than two hundred thirsty villains eating us out of house and home. The Doctor says there are barely a score of pigs left, and only a few days' ration of ring-tailed apes. No. There is nothing I should like better than seeing them weigh and set off for reinforcements. Almost all our long-sawing is done, and very fortunately poor dear Mr Hadley had left several of his most important tools up here for sharpening and resetting; working double-tides I believe we can launch the schooner and be on our way to Batavia before they come back. Their home port is certainly in Borneo.'
'Oh,' cried the purser, as though he had been struck by a new idea: but he said no more. The swivel-gun and the gingall both hit the sandbag immediately opposite, ripping it and covering both him and the table with its contents. When they picked him up he was dead. Stephen opened his shirt, put his ear to his chest and said 'Heart, I am afraid: God be with him.'
During the hot still hours that followed Jack, Fielding and the gunner overhauled the powder, all that had been found, scraped from barrels, withdrawn from flasks and bandoliers, signal cartridges and even rockets. 'We have a charge for each of the carronades and the nine-pounder, with just enough over to leave the Doctor half a flask for his rifle,' said Jack. 'Master gunner, it might be well to load them now, while the metal hardly bears touching: the heat will make the powder brisk. And let the nine-pounder ball be very carefully chipped—indeed, oiled and polished.'
'Aye aye, sir. Grape for the carronades, I do suppose?'
'Case is your real slaughter-house charge at close quarters, but I am afraid we have none?'
The gunner shook his head with a melancholy air. 'All on that fucking reef, sir, pardon me.'
'Then grape, Mr White.'
'Sir, sir,' cried Bennett, 'Captain Welby says they are sending men up through the forest.'
'Perhaps, sir,' said Welby when Jack, joined him at his look-out point, 'it would be prudent not to direct your glass: they might think we had smoked them. But if you watch the open ground to the left of that great crimson-flowering tree at eleven o'clock from the flagstaff, you will see them slip across, their spearheads held low and wrapped in leaves or grass.'
'What do you think they are at?'
'I believe they are a forlorn hope, a storming-party sent to attack the camp from behind, where the silver is. They are to catch up a chest or two and run off into the broken country behind while their friends amuse us with a false attack in front.'
'They cannot know what the back of the camp is like. We can hold it with half a dozen men: there is a shocking great drop where the landslide swept the earth away.'
'No, sir. And as the young person came in by the west gate and left by the south, she would not have seen the drop either. No doubt it is all their general's theory; but still I am sure he thought he could rely on surprise.'
'How many men did you reckon?'
'I counted twenty-nine, sir, but I may well have missed a few.'
'Well, I think we can deal with that—Mr Reade, stop that goddam fool pointing at the trees. Stop it at once, d'ye hear me there? You and Harper can pick up the biggest stones you can carry and take them to the north wall steps at the double. Mr Welby, I think we can afford a round apiece to your eight best marksmen. A quarter of your people down before you start your attack is discouraging. It will be uncommon brave men that go on, with such a rise in front of them.'
Almost at once the diversion began. The swivel-gun and the gingall fired as fast as they could; large bodies of men raced diagonally across and across the broad open slope between the camp and the building-slip, hallooing as they ran or howling like gibbons, and presently there was a furious discharge of crackers along the inner border of the forest. Jack had to shout to make himself heard. 'Mr Seymour, there is a forlorn hope about to make a dash for the silver by way of the north wall. Take Killick and Bonden and the eight Marines Mr Welby has told off together with whatever other men you need to line the wall and deal with the situation while we watch their attempt at amusing us and make sure it don't turn ugly.'
The feint, the diversion, did not turn ugly: the real attack did. The storming-party had been picked for strength and courage and in spite of a heavy loss the moment they left cover they ran straight on to the steps and the foot of the wall, where Killick, beside himself with pale hatred and fury flung great stones down upon them, helped on either hand by the Marines, all the Captain's bargemen and his coxswain. Again and again a Dyak would make a back for another and up he would come, spear poised, only to be flung back at pike-point, pierced through with a cutlass or smashed with a fifty-pound stone. And presently there were no more to come. Seymour, nominally in command, had to beat on the men's backs to prevent them stoning the few dreadfully shattered cripples who were crawling off among the rocks. Even then Killick stood for a great while, livid and glaring, a boarding-axe in one hand and a jagged lump of basalt in the other.
The diversion soon lost all conviction. The diagonal running to and fro grew languid, the crackers spluttered away to one last pop. The sun too was tiring of the day—it had been extraordinarily hot—and sloped westward through a deeper blue.
'Yet even so, sir,' said Welby, 'I do not believe this is the end. Their general has lost a power of men and he has nothing to show for it. They have no water—see how they dig!—and they won't find any there. So they cannot wait. The general cannot wait. As soon as they have rested a little he will launch the whole lot at us, straight at us: he is a death or glory cove, I am sure. See how he harangues them, jumping up and down. Oh my God they have fired the schooner.'
As the black smoke billowed up and away on the shifting breeze the whole camp burst out in a yell of desperate anger, frustration, plain grief. Jack raised his voice and hailed the gunner. 'Mr White, Mr White, there. Draw those carronades and reload with the very best round-shot we possess. Your mates have perhaps five minutes to chip them as smooth as ever they can: certainly not more. And Mr White, let there be slow-match at hand.'
This time there were no manoeuvres, no diversions. They came steadily up the hill, at first at a trot and lastly at a furious run. They came straight at the guns, with no sign of fear, but in no kind of formation either, so that they reached the earthwork in dispersed order, the fleetest first, in tens rather than fifties, and they never beat their way through the massed pikes and bayonets. Their chief arrived in the second wave, still running but scarcely able to see or fetch his breath: he leapt on to a body, slashing blindly at the se
aman opposite him and fell back, his head split down the middle with an axe.
It was cruel fighting, kill or be killed, all in a great roar of sound and the clash of swords and spears, grunting and dust, sometimes a shriek. For what seemed a great while the enemy never fell back except for another spring forward; but the Dyaks and Malays were fighting uphill, against an enemy in close contact with strong-voiced competent naval and military commanders and sheltered by a moderate breastwork; besides, however great their courage, they were smaller, lighter men than the English, and at a given point, when there was a general withdrawal on the right and the centre, a regrouping for a fresh assault, Jack Aubrey felt the turn of the tide. He called out 'Mr Welby, charge. Dianes follow me.'
The whole camp leapt on to the wall with a cheer. The drum beat and they hurled themselves forward. After the first frightful clash the Marines' weight and their exact order bore all before them. It was a rout, a total, disastrous rout: the Dyaks ran for their lives.
They ran faster than the English and on reaching the sea they leapt straight in and swam fast to the proa, as nimble as otters, perhaps a hundred men left.
Jack stood gasping on the shore, his sword dangling from his wrist. He wiped the blood from his eyes—blood from some unfelt blow—looked at the blazing schooner, its ribs outlined in fire, and at the Dyaks, already hauling on their cable. 'Mr Fielding,' he said in a strong, hoarse voice, 'see what can be done to put out the fire. Mr White, gun-crews, gun-crews I say, come along with me.'
They toiled up again, those that were whole; and never before had Jack so felt the burden of his weight. The bodies lay thick half-way to the camp, thicker in front of the earthwork, but he hardly noticed as he picked his way through just by the brass nine-pounder. Bonden, the captain of the gun and a faster runner, gave him a hand over the parapet and said 'They are under way, sir.' He looked round, and there indeed was the proa luffing up, coming as close to the awkward breeze as ever she could sail; the tide had been on the ebb long enough to bare the reef and she had to get all possible offing on the unhandy starboard tack to weather the west point with its shocking tide-rip and northward-setting current.
The Nutmeg of Consolation Page 4