by V. A. Stuart
“By George, sir!” Cochrane exclaimed, his voice hoarse. “That was a sight for sore eyes, wasn’t it?” He came to Phillip’s side, leaning against the rock parapet to mop his heated, smoke-grimed face. A fusilade of shots from somewhere below peppered the rock and sent a shower of splinters uncomfortably close to their faces and they both ducked down hastily.
“It isn’t over yet,” Phillip warned. “There’s at least one other field-gun at the rear of the convoy, I think. I’m pretty sure I heard it open up a short while ago—though I confess I can’t see it. Can you?”
Cochrane, still breathing hard, shook his head. Joined by Thompson and Erikson, they peered down at the road. Shots were still being exchanged between the Circassian riflemen— posted on the hill opposite and to their right—and the supply train escort, most of whom had taken cover, either behind their own wagons or among the boulders which had cut the train in two. Neither side appeared to be firing with rapidity or, indeed, with much effect and most of the wagons were or seemed to be undamaged, as far as Phillip could make out. He moved across to his right, beyond the pile of earth and rocks in the centre of the road but, even with the aid of his Dollond, he could not see a second gun.
“I must have imagined it,” he said to Cochrane, who had followed him. “Or else it was an echo from the gun Dafir has just captured so splendidly. Although I could have sworn . . .” he broke off, frowning, still not quite convinced in his own mind that he had imagined the deep, booming sound he had heard. If the Russians had received warning of the ambush, he asked himself, and if they had intended to turn the tables by setting a trap of their own for Serfir’s guerillas, surely they would have added more than one light field-gun to the supply train? They had obviously gone to considerable pains in order to conceal the gun at the head of the train and had doubled the number of artillerymen required to serve it, so therefore . . . Phillip grasped Cochrane’s arm. “I think we had better make quite sure there are no more guns, Mr Cochrane. Check your ammunition, if you please.” He glanced at the two seamen. “How many rounds have you got left, Thompson?”
“Twenty-two, sir,” Gunner’s Mate Thompson answered promptly.
“Twenty-four, sir,” Erikson said.
“And you, Mr Cochrane?”
“Only eighteen, I’m afraid, sir.”
“And I have twenty . . . we shall have to choose our targets carefully.” Phillip slung his Minié and prepared to move on.
“There’s some spare ammunition with the horses, sir,” Erikson volunteered. “The Circassians we left to guard them should have about fifty rounds of Minié ball apiece. Shall I get as many as they’ll part with and come after you?”
“Yes, do that, Erikson, if you please,” Phillip agreed. “Be as quick as you can—you’ll find us farther along this ridge”—he pointed—“I want to check the rear wagons in that supply train.”
“Aye, aye, sir.” The Norwegian was off down the steep slope and Cochrane asked diffidently, “Where’s the girl, sir—the Colonel’s daughter—do you know?”
Phillip turned in shocked dismay. “Isn’t she here?” Fool that he was, he reproached himself wrathfully, not to have noticed that Selina was no longer with them! Thrice-damned fool, not to have taken better care of her in her father’s absence, instead of imagining guns that probably did not exist . . . “Did you see where she went?”
“I’m afraid not, sir,” Cochrane began, “I—” Thompson put in quietly, “She slipped away just after the Circassians took that gun, sir. I caught a glimpse of her out of the tail of my eye, but I thought she was going down to get the horses, so I didn’t try to stop her. I’ll have a look . . .” he moved lower down the slope, slithering awkwardly in his haste and then called back reassuringly, “All right, I can see her, sir. She’s coming back with Erikson and one of the Circassians.” He returned breathless but smiling to where Phillip and Cochrane were waiting. “Must have realized we’d be running short of ammunition and gone to get some for us. She’s a bright young lady and, my word, sir—she can use that rifle of hers! I’ve not seen better shooting for many a day, sir, and that’s a fact.”
Phillip felt relief flood over him as he recognized Selina coming towards him, tackling the steep, rock-strewn slope with the graceful ease of one to whom climbing was—or had become—second nature. She seemed scarcely to pause and, when she reached him a few minutes later, her cheeks attractively flushed from her exertions, he held out both hands to her in welcome, not caring what Cochrane and the others might read into the gesture. The Circassian who was with her, a tall, raffishly handsome young man in a grey astrakan cloak and cap, was a stranger and, as he dumped a leather bag of Minié cartridges at Phillip’s feet, the girl said, smiling at her companion, “This is Serfir’s son Yusef, Commander Hazard. He says that my father attempted to cross the road, in order to reach Serfir and warn him of the gun, but it was impossible. The Muscovs—the Russians, I mean—have a strong rearguard, which is spread out for half a mile or more along the road, and—”
“Where is Serfir, Selina?” Phillip asked.
She pointed. “He is on the other side of the valley with his horsemen, hidden among the trees. My father rode on, with the intention of trying to work his way round the rearguard, but Yusef has sent a rider to recall him. He says there is now no other gun.”
“No other gun? But—”
Selina’s lips parted in a smile of singular radiance as they rested on the young Circassian’s bent head. “Oh, there was a second gun . . . and it might have lost us the day but fortunately, after it had fired only once, it blew up. Yusef thinks that it was damaged when our men rolled down the boulders.”
Once again Phillip was conscious of a feeling of relief. As Selina had said, it was a fortunate accident—fortunate for Serfir’s horsemen, at all events—and one the Russians could hardly have foreseen. With both guns out of action and the road ahead blocked, the supply train could now have little or no chance of reaching its destination. Indeed, unless the escort put up a very spirited resistance or took refuge in retreat, the whole long line of wagons could scarcely escape destruction when Serfir decided that the moment had come to unleash his mounted men in search of plunder. But . . . he listened. The escort was not putting up a spirited resistance. All the firing was spasmodic now and, clambering back to his vantage point on the cliff-top, he saw that most of it was coming from the Circassians. The Russian infantrymen, although under reasonably good cover, were not replying, either because they were short of ammunition or . . . Phillip took out his Dollond.
They had suffered a number of casualties, it was true, but not enough, surely, to cause them to give up the struggle? Puzzled, he swept the length of the supply train, wagon by wagon, with his glass. Judging by the number of opened cases scattered about, they were in no danger of running out of rifle ammunition—why, then, were they refusing to return the Circassians’ fire? And why—with a large enough escort to cover their retreat—why were they making no attempt to bowse round the wagons and return by the way they had come? Because they weren’t; the wagons all faced the barricade of boulders and earth which had split the column in two and, apart from those which had been buried or cut off, there appeared no reason why the rest could not be removed out of range . . . Phillip stifled an exclamation, as he turned his glass towards the rear of the train. As Selina had told him, the Russians had a strong rearguard, composed mainly of Cossacks, strung out for some distance along the road to his right, out of range of the Circassian riflemen on the hillside. The Cossacks had not dismounted, he saw; they were clustered about the last wagon in the train, as if determined to defend it against attack. This wagon had not entered the narrow defile from which the ambush attempt had been launched and it could very easily have been turned and driven to safety but, instead, it was now starting to move slowly towards the defile . . . unless his imagination was once more playing tricks on him. Phillip wiped the lens of his Dollond on the cloth of his sleeve and again raised it to his eye, every in
stinct he possessed crying out to him that his fear that this was a trap was about to be justified. There was a movement beside him and Selina’s soft voice broke into his thoughts. “Something troubles you, does it not, Commander Hazard?”
“Yes,” he answered. “Perhaps I am being unduly suspicious but I think that this train has been sent—not with supplies— but in a deliberate attempt to wipe out Serfir’s guerillas . . .” he gave her his reasons in a few clipped words and saw her eyes widen in shocked surprise. “Will you tell the Pasha’s son what I have told you?”
She did so, without hesitation. Yusef listened, his expression sceptical at first but, when Phillip lent him the Dollond and he was able to see for himself that the last wagon and the Cossack rearguard were, in fact, moving closer to the rest of the beleagured train, his expression changed and his voice held a note of apprehension as he gave Selina his answer. “Yusef says,” Selina translated, “that he shares your suspicions. But he does not know what we can do. There is no time to send riders to warn his father and the horsemen up there will be getting restive. They will charge soon and nothing will hold them back—unless they see that the Russians have guns.” She looked up at him, her eyes trusting and unafraid. “What should we do, Commander Hazard?”
Aware that they were all watching him—Yusef and Selina, Cochrane and the two seamen—Phillip hesitated, his brain racing. Something, he knew, had to be done and done at once but, recalling what the Colonel had said about any signal almost certainly being taken as encouragement, he dismissed the possibility of attempting direct communication. If Serfir’s horsemen were already restive, then shouts, waves or even a rifle shot might send them to their death in a wild, undisciplined charge that could not be stopped but . . . what had Selina said, a moment ago? “They will charge soon and nothing will hold them back, unless they see that the Russians have guns . . .” of course, that was it, that was all they could do. They must force the Russians to reveal those guns, if any guns existed. There were seven of them and, thanks to Selina and Erikson, they had plenty of Minié ammunition . . . his decision reached, Phillip told Selina in English what he intended to do and he was already moving along the ridge at a run, with Cochrane pounding after him, whilst she was translating what he had said to Yusef. The Pasha’s son called out something and vanished momentarily from sight but, as Phillip got into position and raised his Minié to his shoulder, Selina said, flinging herself against the rock at his side, “Yusef has gone to get more men— the horse-minders, any he can find. He says we are too few.”
Perhaps they were, Phillip thought, but at least they could try to create confusion in the enemy ranks, if nothing more. “Rapid fire,” he told Cochrane. “Into the top of that last wagon. If there’s a gun there, we’ll smoke the gunners out.”
His tactics—those of expediency, like the Circassians’, he reflected wryly—proved initially ineffective. The marksmanship of his small party was good, however, and, just as Yusef came dashing up the slope to join them, with another nine or ten of his countrymen at his heels, they gained a lucky and unexpected success when a reserve of powder blew up, shattering one side of the wooden wagon. It did no appreciable damage to the gun which, as he had suspected, was concealed beneath it but, to the accompaniment of excited cheers from the newly arrived Circassians, the piece was hauled out from beneath the wreckage and, surrounded by a milling throng of artillerymen and Cossacks, dragged clear and into the open.
Its crew, with commendable speed, commenced firing and Phillip himself could not refrain from letting out a derisive cheer when a shower of grape struck the cliff below him. The gunners, it seemed, had panicked and were firing—at extreme elevation and with scant chance of scoring a hit—on his own virtually impregnable position, instead of laying their gun on the main body of Circassians on the opposite side of the valley.
An officer, limping from a wound in his leg, endeavoured to rectify his men’s error, striking at them with the flat of his drawn sword in an effort to hasten them and the gun was re-sited a moment or so before he fell to a spent rifle-ball, which ricocheted at an acute angle into his chest. The gun was in full view—Serfir’s horsemen could scarcely fail to see it now— and, in a general panic he had not anticipated, Phillip observed that two other light field-guns were being hauled from their concealment. From the other wagons, men were pouring into the road—grey-coated infantrymen, Cossacks, and here and there more green uniformed gunners. The whole train, he realized, had been a veritable arsenal, with at least as many men hidden inside the wagons as there had been marching openly beside them.
Fire from the hillside opposite had slackened and, as the guns ranged on this target and on the belt of trees to his right, the firing from the hillside ceased altogether and Phillip was again reminded of something the Colonel had said. “If they meet with unexpectedly strong opposition, the Circassians abandon their attack and without waiting to destroy munitions, as we should, they make off . . . on the principle that he who fights and runs away will live to fight another day.” Well, in the circumstances, this was not such a bad principle, he thought philosophically, as he watched a line of Russian infantrymen, with bayonets fixed and in skirmishing order, prepare to start up the rough, boulder-strewn hillside in what would almost certainly prove an abortive attempt to bring their elusive opponents to bay.
Serfir’s men had not won a victory; they had neither plunder nor territorial gain to reward them for the long, cold hours they had waited for the supposed supply train to make its appearance but, on the credit side, they had not fallen into the trap the Russians had set for them and there had been no wholesale slaughter. Phillip smiled to himself. As a result of today, there must be a strong possibility that Serfir would welcome the opportunity offered by the Turks to engage in hostilities on a wider scale and thus be willing to return with him to Ghelenjik without too much delay, in order to talk with Mustapha Pasha and his fellow chiefs. Indeed, he . . . Yusef clapped a hand on his shoulder. He, too, was smiling and he said, in hesitant French, waving in the direction the Russian infantrymen were about to take, up the hillside, “They will find no one. Their guns fire only at trees. It is finished.” He jerked his dark head towards the slope at their backs, indicating that it was time they made their own retreat and, as Phillip got up to follow him, he realized, with some surprise, that the light was beginning to fade. He glanced enquiringly at Selina. “Where are we going? Are we not to wait for your father?”
She shook her head. “Yusef thinks it best that we return to the cave where you met Serfir last night. My father must, after all, have managed to cross the road to join him, so we will wait for them both there, if you do not mind. They will have a long ride but they should be with us again in an hour or so.”
“We are in your hands,” Phillip told her. “But I must endeavour to persuade Serfir to leave with me tomorrow or the day after, Selina, because there’s not much time. May I count on your help in persuading him?”
“Of course,” she promised readily, giving him her shy, charming smile. “But after all that you have done today—and in the light of what the Russians attempted to do—I do not believe that Serfir will be hard to persuade. Also, you have a new ally—Yusef is already your friend. He will add his persuasion to yours, if it should be needed. Both he and his father, the Pasha, are eager to accompany you when you take your ship to shell Anapa, you know.”
“Are they? I’m delighted to hear it.” Phillip’s flagging spirits lifted as he followed her down to where they had left the tethered horses.
CHAPTER SIX
The whole party, British and Circassian alike, were in cheerful mood when they began the ride back to Serfir Pasha’s mountain headquarters.
Despite their weariness, a spirit of optimism prevailed. Even when they were joined by four more Circassian horseminders, with a string of about a dozen spare horses, Phillip noticed that no one enquired the fate of those who had set out earlier that day, on the now riderless horses, in order to do battle with the
enemy. Instead they laughed and joked with one another and, when Erikson expressed guarded pleasure at the prospect of riding instead of walking, it brought a guffaw from the normally taciturn Thompson.
“Horse-back riding’s not so bad, once you get the hang of it, my lad,” the gunner’s mate assured him, with conscious superiority. “I was an apprentice in a racing stable in Newmarket before I joined the Queen’s Navee”—he grinned—“But I grew a mite too tall and put on too much weight to make a jockey. Pity, in a way . . . not that I regret it, mind you, but I’d have liked to ride a Derby winner.”
Erikson echoed his shipmate’s grin. “And I was a schoolteacher, believe it or not, Gunner’s Mate,” he said wryly. “An unambitious, well fed, neutral schoolmaster in a beautiful mountain village called Djupvenshetten!”
They both laughed and Thompson said, addressing Phillip, “Talking of being well fed, sir . . . d’you suppose they’ll feed us, when we get back to that cave of theirs? I reckon I could even relish goats’ meat now—although I’d give a month’s pay for a real man-sized helping of plum-duff and that’s the Gospel truth, sir.”
“So would I,” Cochrane agreed feelingly. He, too, turned to Phillip. “Is there any prospect of our starting back to the ship tomorrow, do you think, sir?”
“I hope so, Mr Cochrane—provided the Pasha is willing to accompany us, of course. We can’t leave without him. But”— Phillip’s smile was warm, as he looked from one to the other of them—“you’ve done well, my boys. I’ll promise you one thing, when we’re back aboard the Huntress—all three of you shall . . .” he was interrupted by the thunder of galloping hooves, coming from a tree-grown depression in the ground— hardly wide enough to be termed a valley—slightly ahead of them and to their left. By common consent, the whole party cantered across to see what was afoot and there was a startled cry from Selina.