Run Them Ashore (9 page)

‘Bugger,’ said Captain Pringle. ‘We’re aground.’

They were on the sandbank where it widened slightly just before it came to an end. Last night the shallow draught of the boats had meant that none were troubled. The prizes ahead of them must either have seen the danger or simply had the luck to steer past.

Carried by Caesar to the stern rail, Pringle looked closely for some time.

‘We’re nearly over. Just the keel caught.’ He looked up at the sky. ‘Tide is nearly out – once it turns back we should float off in three or four hours, at least if we are lucky. That is assuming that the French let us wait around.’

‘Cavalry on shore, sir!’ Dobson shouted.

‘Least of our worries,’ Captain Pringle muttered. Williams joined the sergeant on the starboard rail and looked at the shore to their north. The beach was less than three hundred yards away. A few infantry skirmishers had been there for some time, popping away with the muskets even though no ball had yet hit anyone on board the ship. Behind them a half-squadron of hussars rode along the sand, the men gaudy in brown jackets and sky-blue trousers. At their head was an officer on a white horse. His uniform looked more that of an infantryman, save that the jacket was a rich green rather than the normal French blue. Williams wondered whether he was a German from one of the many states controlled by Napoleon.

‘Try a shot, sir?’ Mr Prentice suggested in his usual loud tones. The prize had gunports for five guns on each side, as well as two apiece at the bow and stern, but actually carried only half that number. The gunner was standing next to one of the two little four-pounders of the starboard broadside.

Williams looked at Pringle, who shook his head.

‘No time for that, at present,’ he said. ‘Mr Williams, would you be so good as to secure all the French prisoners below. Put them all forrard. Mr Prentice, get some men and move all of those four-pounders to the bow and secure them. We need to shift the weight forrard.’

It took ten minutes to move the prisoners below, the wounded carried by the others. A marine guard was placed at the hatchway. As Williams went back to see Pringle he paused for a moment to look at the French on shore. The green-coated officer had dismounted and was staring at them through his glass. Skirmishers still fired now and then, and he heard a ball pluck the shrouds above his head.

Pringle was sitting when he reached him, and looked very pale. Caesar and another tar were rigging up a block and tackle and fixing a sling under the muzzle and breech of one of the long six-pounders placed to fire to the rear.

‘It’s all about weight,’ the captain explained as Williams came up. ‘If we can ditch these stern chasers and shift the other guns forrard then that might just lift the keel off the sand.’ He watched approvingly as, with the help of four marines, the sailors hauled the black-painted barrel off its carriage. ‘That’s a good twenty-two hundredweight there.

‘There is no room for us all in the gig, let alone for the prisoners, so we cannot set fire to her and escape. Which means that we must get her off, or …’ He left the thought unfinished.

A sailor appeared, knuckled his forehead in salute, and Williams recognised young Clegg. He had not noticed the young topman was with them until now, but was pleased to see him. Pringle was less pleased by the sailor’s report.

‘No anchor on board, sir.’

‘Blast, that’s typical of the ruddy Frogs. Liberty to be bloody awful sailors if you ask me.’ The name
Liberté
was painted in peeling gold paint on the stern. Pringle had the master’s papers, but had not had any time to look through them. ‘Well done, Clegg. Now, lad, take a look at the mainsheets and check that
they are sound. We need to be ready if the wind changes.’ Williams nodded to the sailor as he departed.

‘I wondered about putting out a kedge anchor and trying to warp her off,’ Pringle said to the redcoat officer. Williams understood the vague principle. If the anchor was towed by a small boat and then sunk further back, the cable could be attached and turned by the capstan so that the ship was pulled back towards the anchor. ‘But the useless bloody French aren’t bloody well carrying a spare bloody anchor,’ he added bitterly. ‘And of course we cut her cables when we brought her out. Don’t know why they had the anchors down when they were tied up in harbour, but the ways of godless revolutionaries are ever mysteries to good Christian folk.’

Williams failed to detect the irony so familiar from Billy Pringle in his older brother. Edward Pringle simply seemed angry.

‘Artillery, sir!’ It was Dobson once again who called the warning. Williams helped the captain over to look at the shore. This was far more serious. A team of eight horses – twice the number usual for so small a gun as a four-pounder – was being whipped along the beach. The hussars were further back, the men dismounted and holding their horses, and several of the latter stirred with interest as the drivers slewed round in a spray of sand. Gunners rode behind the green-painted gun carriage and limber. They were in dark blue, with tall red plumes and red epaulettes visible even at this distance. Williams guessed that these horse artillerymen had been summoned from some way away, and so had harnessed a double team to get there with a single gun as soon as possible. Springing from their horses with well-practised ease, the six gunners lifted the trails of the gun from the limber, ran it into position, hefted the barrel from the travelling to firing position, and began to load.

Prentice joined them, limping heavily and wincing if ever he let weight fall on his injured leg.

‘Guns stowed forrard, sir,’ he reported. ‘But I could get one ready and make their life difficult.’

Pringle shook his head. ‘We need to get her off.’ There was
a splash from behind them as the barrel of the stern chaser was hoisted over the side and dropped. ‘Well done, lads,’ the captain called out.

‘Mr Prentice, how long would it take you to unspike a gun?’ Williams asked the gunner.

‘You are thinking of the ones in the battery?’

He nodded in answer. The battery they had attacked the previous night was around half a mile away, and they were well within range of its heavy guns.

‘Well, I did a decent job for the time,’ Prentice continued, ‘but nothing like sawing off the trunnions. With the right tools and a fair wind I could get one of them clear in an hour. Be two hours if I had to drill it and you never quite trust a gun after that, but the nails probably weren’t in hard enough for them to need to drill.’

‘So they should have them working again by now?’ Williams asked, for he was confident that the gunner’s guesses were sound.

‘Aye, if they’ve any idea at all of what they are doing.’

‘Which means they could be pounding us by now.’ Pringle clearly understood. ‘In an hour or two they could reduce us to so much matchwood, or burn us to the waterline if they are able to heat shot.’

‘And since they have not,’ Williams continued the thought, ‘they must want to take us back and be confident of doing so.’ As they spoke the gunners on shore had prepared the little cannon and now stepped back. The gun captain lowered his portfire to touch the slim tube of fine powder in the touch-hole – flintlocks and lanyards were too fragile for service with guns on land – and then gun and crew were all lost behind a cloud of dirty smoke. A ball hummed through the air, going high and wide.

‘We shall know if they fire only for our mast and rigging,’ Pringle said. ‘Well, that means we must hurry,’ he added, and then passed out. Williams caught him before he hit the deck.

‘Lay him down,’ he called to a couple of marines. ‘Keep him in the shade.’ The sun was becoming hot now. He saw a look
of concern on Caesar’s face. ‘Keep at it. Get that other gun over the side. Clegg, you take five more men and tip the carriage after it.’ He pointed at the gap in the rail above the stairway. It looked to be wide enough for the gun carriage and as it was on wheels they could push it rather than hoist the thing over the side.

‘It’s made some difference,’ Prentice said, looking at the line of the deck, but his tone was doubtful. ‘Battery or no,’ he added, ‘if they have another gunboat they can stand off and kill or sink us as they please.’

‘I know,’ Williams said. ‘Is there any way we can protect the mast from their shot?’ The four-pounder fired again from the beach, and this time the ball struck the rail a few yards from them, flicked up long and horribly sharp splinters, and then skimmed at head height across the deck.

Prentice shook his head. ‘But it is hard to be so accurate at that range. It’s a small gun, so even a direct strike will not necessarily bring it down.’

‘Sir.’ Dobson stamped to attention. ‘Corporal Milne tells me there are bales of cotton in the aft hold. It won’t stop a shot, but better than nothing.’

Williams looked around and could see that most of the fit men were busy. ‘Good. Take Milne and two others – I have no more to spare – and start bringing them up. Stack them, lash them if you can, along this side.

‘Mr Prentice, the sailors in your party are to be ready to hoist sail. Do you have a good man to lead them?’

‘Clegg is good, sir, I’d like to take him.’

‘He’s young, isn’t he?’

‘All the best sailors are. You never really take to the life if you go to sea after you are twenty. He’s been afloat since he was a boy.’

‘Good, Clegg, then. Put him in charge. I’ll be able to give you more when the other gun has gone over the stern.’

‘Aye-aye, sir. And sir?’

‘Yes, Mr Prentice.’

‘The tide has turned. If only the wind shifts as well.’

‘Yes, Mr Prentice, I know.’

The four-pounder fired every two or three minutes. That was a slow rate of fire, and Williams guessed they were taking great care to lay each shot. The fifth one took the arm off a marine, and the ninth sent a shower of splinters into the face of a sailor. The twelfth was even more worrying, for it chipped the mast. Others went through the rigging, but only occasionally did any harm.

‘Lucky they haven’t any bar-shot,’ Mr Prentice shouted in Williams’ ear. Designed to slash through the ropework and spars of a ship, such ammunition was rarely carried by artillery on land. After a while they had thick cotton bales protecting the base of the mast and all along the starboard rail. When shot struck them it threw up a great puff of white dust and debris. The bale was either knocked down or punched through, but it helped to reduce the number of splinters.

‘Boats, sir! Boats astern. Three of them. No, five!’ Clegg was up in the rigging and was pointing back towards the harbour. The boats were rowing towards them. They were small and brightly painted, and Williams recognised some of the fishing boats they had seen drawn up on the beach. None appeared to be the gunboat Mr Prentice dreaded, but even from this distance he could tell that they were crowded.

With a great splash and fountain of water the barrel of the remaining stern chaser was dropped into the sea. Leaving the tackle where it was, Caesar and his party rolled the carriage to the rail and pushed it overboard.

Liberté
began to move. First it was slight, then the gentlest of pressures from the tide carrying them forward. The
Sparrowhawks
cheered, yelling from parched throats even as another shot slammed into one of the bales and sent up a shower of white cotton.

‘Keep her steady, Bennett,’ Williams shouted, remembering the coxswain’s name just in time, and hoping that the order
was clear enough even with his hazy understanding of nautical language.

‘Aye-aye, sir.’ The man seemed happy enough, and surely had no need of firm instructions to steer clear of any more sandbanks.

Caesar cried out, blood bright on the side of his head, and then there was the sound of a musket shot.

‘Bloody Frogs!’ the able seaman yelled in a voice that spoke more of London than anywhere more exotic. ‘Bloody, bastard, bloody Frogs!’ The top of his left ear was a ragged mess.

Another musket ball smacked into the stern rail beside him, making the sailor duck down. Williams ran to the stern and crouched to see over before another ball flicked past an inch from his hair and he too dropped back. The leading fishing boat was barely one hundred yards away, the next fifty yards behind that and the other three trailing.

‘Marines!’ he called. ‘Dobson, Milne. Get half a dozen men loading muskets and you two fire back at them. Show them they can’t have it all their own way.’ As soon as he had spoken he remembered Milne’s injured hand, but then saw that the corporal was still holding his musket and had begun to load. It looked as if the man would manage, and it was better to have steady men firing regularly than looser volleys from the less experienced.

Liberté
was gathering way and he was trying to decide whether they should work the sweeps or set sail. The wind had almost gone, but then he felt a faint breeze.

Caesar grinned, showing discoloured teeth and several gaps between them, but it was a smile of pure joy.

‘Wind has shifted, sir. It’s nor-nor-east. From the land, sir,’ he added, in case the soldier was as dim as many of their kind.

Williams smiled and stood up. ‘Clegg, get some canvas up,’ he shouted. Dobson and Milne fired the first shots at the fishing boat and then took cover as a spattering of musket balls smacked into the wooden rail. The four-pounder on shore barked out, the ball tearing through the air and missing the mast by a finger’s breadth.

Then another heavy gun went off, from the other side this time, and Williams looked to see two cutters rowing towards them, each with a gun mounted on the bow. The first –
Topaze
’s red cutter – had fired at the fishing boats. The range was long, and he saw the sea short of the leading French boat convulsed as the burst of grape landed, but it was enough to warn. Help had arrived, the only help that could be sent so close inshore in such still airs.

It was not quite over. The battery opened up from near the harbour, firing at the cutters rather than
Liberté
, but these were small, low marks at such a range and the shot did no more than soak the sailors with spray. On the beach, the four-pounder’s crew redoubled their efforts and sent a succession of shots, two of which punched holes in the raised sail. Too late the battery commander decided that the
Liberté
was lost and began to fire at it. One shot went home, shattering part of the stern rail and taking the foot off a marine. Another hit lower, making the hull shudder, but it was above the waterline and the
Liberté
kept moving, going faster as she was able to turn and run before the wind. The French kept firing for another ten minutes, but each shot fell a little further behind.