In a trice they were dancing back, tallying on to the rope and hoisting the bundle up again, leaving the cage dragged to one side.
Drinkwater could see what it was now, though there was something oddly liquid about its movement as it left the ground feet first. Suspended upside down was the naked body of a man. As he rose he emitted a low gurgling moan.
Still standing, Morris shouted: 'Arria-a-ah!'
With the gorge rising uncontrollably in his throat Drinkwater could hear the anticipatory pleasure in those last attenuated syllables. The Dyaks released the rope. The low moan rose to a brief and awful shriek which stopped as the body struck the hard earth beneath the tripod.
It was Tregembo.
CHAPTER 20
A Forlorn Hope
February 1809
Tregembo, or what had once been Tregembo, lay oddly crumpled and without form. The earlier liquidity of the body was clear to Drinkwater now, clear as the piercing of those agonised shrieks, for the tripod had done its terrible work. Tregembo, though still living, had been broken into pieces, his bones fractured by repeated impact with the ground.
Drinkwater vomited, his empty stomach producing little but the slimy discharge of bodily disgust.
'There, sir!'
Dutfield's arm was outstretched, a pale line of rigidity above the swaying grey shapes of the oarsmen.
'Hold water!' hissed Fraser, and the gentle knock-knock of the rag-muffled oars ceased, the turgid water swirled with dull stirrings of phosphorescence and the boats slewed to a stop.
Dutfield's keen eye had detected the only landmark within the creek, the captain's landing place. They lay on their oars and gathered themselves for the final assault. Mount was aware that they were already late, for the edges of the overhanging trees were darker against the lightening sky. But a canopy of vapour hung above them, cold on their skin and dampening the priming powder in the pans.
'Cold steel,' he whispered, 'if your firelocks fail, cold steel
He heard the words passed along, the sibilant consonant thrilling Mount with its menace. The slide of steel from scabbards, the last tiny clicks and rattles of men turning pistols in their hands and thumbing hammers and frizzens, an occasional grunt, the papist whisper of a prayer, passed like a breeze over dry grass.
'Ready, Mount?' Fraser's voice came low over the flat water that was assuming a faint yellow in response to the dawn sky.
'Aye,' the marine officer replied.
‘Frey?'
'Aye, sir.'
'Pater?'
'Yes ...'
Even the purser, Mount thought, the warrant officer's unusual presence indicative of just how desperate a hope rested with them. Patrician's officers were spread very thinly indeed, and if their assault failed, if it was bloodily repulsed as, Mount privately thought, by all the laws of military science it should be, the ship would inevitably fall.
'Take station then ...'
There was a back-watering, a twisting of the boats' alignments. Oars became briefly entangled in the narrow channel. A man cursed, stung beyond toleration by yet one more mosquito.
'Silence!'
'Vestigia nulla retrorsum,' muttered Mount, 'no retreat from the lion's den,' and in a louder voice, 'Cold steel and a steady arm, my lads ...'
'Stand by!' commanded Fraser, and the oarsmen leaned forward, their blades hovering above the water.
'Give way!'
'Thank the Lord for this mist,' muttered Mount as the stern thwart of the launch pressed his calf with the impetus of acceleration.
Taking station on the launch, the Patrician's boats swept forward to the attack.
Morris passed the pipe to the boy, exhaling the last fumes of the drug. An utter peace descended upon him, his mind swimming in a pool of the most perfect tranquillity. His body seemed to float, satiated as it was by the most exquisite of lusts. No Celestial Emperor had ever enjoyed more perfect a sequence of sensations and now his mind rolled clear of every earthly inhibition, filling with a light more intense than the yellow dawn that flooded the eastern sky. He seemed elevated, lifted to the eminence of a god. Far, far below him lay the broken, used body of Tregembo. After so many years, revenge was infinitely sweet ...
And there was yet one pleasure to enjoy ...
His hearing, tuned to an unnatural acuity by the opium, detected the approaching boats. Swaying slightly he looked down at the upturned face of his catamite.
'Here they come!' he said, and the boy ran from the istana with the news while Morris waited for the moment of consummation he had first thought of when he saw Nathaniel Drinkwater from the curtained secrecy of his palanquin beside the Pearl River.
Drinkwater woke with a start. He had no idea how long he had passed out, but a lemon yellow light already flooded the eastern sky. With quickening anxiety he lifted his head, half expecting to have been discovered, but the lovers had vanished and he was suddenly cold and lonely. The sharp stink of his spew stung his nostrils and, in a sudden wave of self-recrimination, he recalled the events of the night. It had been no nightmare that he had witnessed, though when he sought Tregembo's smashed body it was no longer there.
As he gathered his thoughts, the hill below him erupted in an explosion of fire and smoke. Hesitating only long enough to gather his arms he was up and running at a low lope, gaining height and flinging himself down in the shelter of the rocky outcrop at the summit of the hill. Here, not daring to look below before he was ready, he drew the charges from his pistols and, with shaking hands, poured fresh powder into the barrels and pans.
He had come here to reconnoitre and create a diversion and what had he done? Thrown up like a greenhorn midshipman and fainted! Now Fraser was launching his attack, Mount would be storming ashore at the head of his boot-necked lobsters in sure and certain faith of some diversion carried out by the ever resourceful Captain Drinkwater — and he was cowering behind a rock ...
Christ, he had even abandoned Tregembo!
The thought brought him to his feet. He drew in a great gulp of air, filling his lungs with the sharpness and scent of the morning. Beyond the rock, on the hillside, the rattle of musketry had augmented the desultory thunder of artillery. Devoid of plans but filled with a desperate determination, Drinkwater emerged from cover.
He stood against the sky looking down upon the scene below. Heavy wraiths of mist lay over the creek and it was clear the gunners had no better a view of the approaching boats than he had, but they were working the six cannon with a regular determination that argued they had predetermined the trajectory of their shots. Drinkwater dropped below the skyline and ran to the right, towards the plantation through which he had laboriously climbed. Before he reached it he dodged down and worked his way round the hill. He had a better view here, although he was slightly below the level of the rampart. Gun-smoke hung in a dense pall over the palisade, but the plumed spouts rose from the mist where the plunging shot fell in the creek.
Below the six-gun battery on the summit the hill was terraced with earthworks, parallels of defence behind which Morris's polyglot army levelled their muskets at the pool before the landing place.
Drinkwater tried to gauge numbers. Perhaps two hundred men, perhaps two hundred and fifty, and they were supported by more cannon, smaller pieces but quite capable of decimating any assault force that stormed the hill.
There was the sudden reverberating bark and flash of a wide-muzzled gun that showed through the low veil of mist. A carronade! Fraser's boat gun, by God! The hot cloud that it belched seemed to burn a hole in the mist, though the small shot it fired did little damage beyond peppering a prau and cutting up the ground around the landing.
To Drinkwater's left came a shout and he looked round. A man, the yellow-robed chieftain, stood on the parapet of the upper battery and drew his gunners' attention to the presence of the launch's gun.
Quickly Drinkwater levelled his pistol. It was a long shot, too long for a man in his condition but ...
He squeezed the t
rigger, then quickly rolled away beyond the edge of the escarpment, out of sight. He did not wait to reload but climbed quickly, returning to the overhang nearer the stone outcrop of the summit. Here he reloaded, then edged forward. The chieftain appeared unscathed, but he no longer leapt gesticulating on the parapet. Resting his hand on the ground and propping the heavy barrel of the pistol on a stone, Drinkwater laid the weapon on the same man. As the ragged discharge of the battery ripped the morning apart again, he too let fly his fire. At twenty-five yards the ball went home, spinning the Dyak to the ground. Drinkwater ducked down to reload.
He had begun to create a diversion.
Ten yards from the landing the blue cutter struck the stakes of the estacade. Such was the pace of her advance that the bow was stove in by the impact. Frey was equal to the moment.
'Over the bow!' he shouted and leapt from the tiller. Stepping lightly on the thwarts, he touched a toe on the stem and, waving his cutlass, plunged into the water. An outraged sense of having been misunderstood had possessed Frey from the moment he had abandoned Drinkwater. Already privately convinced the captain was dead, Frey sought to expiate his guilt. With a foolish gallantry his men followed him, cutlass-bearing seamen, half a dozen with boarding pikes, few of whom could swim in the deep water. They floundered, found the oars they had so precipitately abandoned and, wrenching them free of their thole-pins, kicked their legs as they supported their bodies on the ash looms.
The mist mercifully covered their confusion. Virtually unopposed, they dragged their way gasping ashore.
Fraser's launch had by good fortune forced the gap left in the estacade. Dutfield, in command of the carronade, wrenched clear the wedges as his crew plied sponge and rammer.
'Fire!'
The boat bucked and the short, smoking black cannon snapped taut its breechings as it recoiled on the greased slide.
'In my wake!' Fraser screamed at the other boats, seeing the fate of Frey's cutter. 'Come on!' He was waving as Mount leaned on the tiller of the red cutter and led Pater's boat past the launch that stood off and pounded the landing. Fraser's men were trailing their oars, making room for Mount and Pater whose boats were almost gunwhale under with their load of armed men. The pale glint of bayonets showed purposefully and then a plunging shot dropped on the launch. The sudden dark swirl of water ran red with the blood of an oarsman whose leg was shattered by the iron ball.
'Cease fire and give way! Don't shoot our fellows in the back!'
Tearing off his hat Fraser thrust it into the hole and then felt the boat's bow rise as it grounded.
The sun emerged above the eastern tree-line, its slanting rays striking through the swirling vapour. Both attackers and defenders had, as yet, no very clear view of the opposition. The upper battery continued to fire, blindly dropping its shot beyond the boats where the plunging balls threw fountains of mud and water harmlessly into the air. As Mount and Frey stumbled gasping ashore, they forced their men into a rough line and peered about them. The hill rose upwards, scarred by the barred lines of the earthworks and palisades, while to their right the higgledy-piggledy gables of the atap-roofed houses tumbled down the hillside.
The brief flashes and eruptions of smoke lining the lower defences marked their objective. The musketry fire struck its first victims and Mount sensed his men waver. He shook his sword and took a deep breath.
'Forward!'
The ragged line of sodden men began to advance: seamen in the centre with boarding pikes in their hands, cutlasses swinging on their hips from canvas baldrics; on the flanks the steadying influence of Mount's marines, stripped of their red coats, but in close order. Bayonets and cutlasses caught the rays of sunlight and gleamed wickedly as, with every foot of elevation, the attackers came clear of the clinging river-mist.
Above, Drinkwater saw them clearly, recognised Mount and Frey, caught the evil sparkle of the light on the weapons. Directly below him two of the gunners were bent over the wounded chieftain. They did not seem to have considered the possibility that the shot had come from behind them, for the noise of gongs and the war-shrieks of the Dyaks, the heavy powder smoke and their own high excitement dulled their wits to this unlikely event. Despite the fact that their shot was now useless, the boats having passed the fixed line of its fall, they continued to load and fire, unable to depress their guns to command the slope of the hill. Emboldened, Drinkwater struck two of them with pistol balls, rolling backwards to reload.
The sunlight cleared his head of the cataleptic horrors seen in the night. His nerve was sharply steady, his brain functioned with that cool clarity that operated beyond the threshold of fear, when desperation summoned up the most primitive of instincts, that of the aggressive survivor.
When he looked at the battery again, he was aware of some confusion; a debate seemed to be in progress, some of the gunners favouring joining their brethren in the defences below, two pointing to their right, clearly considering some attack was coming up from the plantation. They had not yet realised that those shots had come directly from their rear. He saw the gunners split their forces. Suddenly the battery was empty!
Drinkwater hesitated only long enough to see that the wavering line of the attackers seemed to have reached the first line of earthworks, then he was bounding down the hill, his sword bouncing on his hip, Dutfield's dirk digging into the small of his back.
At the rear of the gun platform lay half a dozen powder kegs. An astonished man, a Portuguese or Spaniard by the look of him, sat quietly filling cartridges with a scoop, hidden from view by the angle of the slope above him. Drinkwater was no more than three yards from him, and only the indrawn breath of surprise alerted Drinkwater to the man's existence. For a split second the two stared at each other, then Drinkwater discharged the pistol in his right hand. The impact of the ball smashed the man's skull hard against the rock behind him. Copper scoop and cotton cartridge bag fell with a surreal slowness from his grip. Powder cascaded in a tiny stream off the man's saronged lap.
Grabbing an already filled bag, Drinkwater split it and continued the trail, scuffling backwards and drawing the grey line in the direction of the plantation. Running back to the sagging body of the cartridge-filler he overturned the broached powder cask with his foot, then ran to the battery. Piles of shot lay by the guns. Bending, he lobbed them, bowl-like, back under the overhang, aiming them at the stack of powder kegs.
Picking up a linstock carelessly thrown down by the departing gunners, he blew on the foot of slow match that smouldered in its end, walking smartly to the end of his powder trail and stepping over the body of the chieftain.
He was about to touch the slow match to the powder when he heard voices, the shouts of the searching gunners returning from the plantation. Somewhere below the rampart the gongs rose to a crescendo and shouts, screams and cheers told of savage hand-to-hand fighting. Drinkwater touched the slow match to the powder and flung himself into the upright crops in the plantation.
The voices were quite near, raised in some urgent expectation. Had they seen him? Had they seen the powder train sputtering away? He lifted his head. Someone crashed through the stems a yard away, turned and saw the prone Drinkwater. The pistol misfired, too hurriedly loaded ... The gunner shouted something and raised a parang. Drinkwater gathered his legs, tossed the useless pistol aside and drew Dutfield's dirk. The parang swung, biting earth, its owner staggered back with the dirk buried in his loin, Drinkwater's shoulder thrust into his chest. They crashed into the gunner's confederate, the three of them falling. Drinkwater struggled to withdraw the dirk; his sword hilt dug painfully into his side, both the men were on top of him now, one vomiting blood and bile, the other yelling with rage, recovering himself and preparing to retaliate.
There was a sudden roar, blasting hot air out of the hillside in a hellish, roasting exhalation. Drinkwater heard, or fancied he heard, the crinkle of frizzing hair and skin as the gunner's yell turned to an agonised shriek. The searing force of the explosion rolled over them, poundin
g them with shards of rock and gobbets of earth. Only their position in the plantation saved them from the falling shot and the landslip as the rampart exploded outwards, cascading rock, stones, earth, cannon shot and two dislodged guns over the parapet on to the third defensive line immediately below it.
Badly shaken, quivering like a wounded animal, Drinkwater dragged himself from beneath the two gunners. Both were near death and he turned his head sharply from the horror of the sight. To his right as he stood facing uphill, a dense cloud of dust still hung over the site of the explosion, but a great scar of exposed earth and rock was gradually emerging beneath it.
The muscles in his thighs still shuddering, Drinkwater moved forward.
Shot, debris, rock and, quite recognisable, a man's leg, fell on the launch in which Fraser and his oarsmen, and Dutfield and his carronade crew, were theoretically covering the landing. Fraser's main preoccupation had been in stemming the leak with something more effective than his hat and, at the moment of the explosion, he had just succeeded. His coat, stretched underneath the boat by its arms and tails on light ropes, had reduced the inflow. Further insertions of shirts made it possible to reduce the amount to a trickle. As the launch crew found themselves afloat amid widening circles of disturbed water, they looked up at the brown cloud still hanging over the hillside.
'Sir!' shouted Dutfield, pointing excitedly, 'It's the captain!'
He stood at the edge of the great scar, staring down on the brief hiatus in the savage fight below. Then he turned and vanished from their sight.
'Thank God ...' breathed Fraser with a heartfelt blasphemy.
Mount caught a sight of Drinkwater while he fought to keep his footing. As the explosion had rolled rock, cannon shot and earth down on them Mount had roared his anger, meeting a parang thrust and riposting before turning on a second assailant. The indiscriminate avalanche bore down on them, though the wild trajectory of the heavier debris flew over their heads. Mount was already aware of losing many of his men. Muskets the enemy might possess, but they did not disdain the deadly sumpitan. The struggle uphill had cost them dear, for forty of the hundred and twenty men committed to it were lying behind them killed or wounded.
A Private Revenge Page 22