A Sea Unto Itself (46 page)

“Aye, aye, sir,” Aviemore answered, touched his hat, and commenced to skip forward along the gangway.

“Clear the ship for action,” Charles said to Bevan. “We will beat to quarters as we approach the point.” Cassandra closed at a goodly pace. He would have to begin taking in the canvas soon. Through one of the nav’s telescopes, he could see the small redoubt at the tip of the peninsula on which the Italians had built their settlement and the roofs of the town itself. In the low scrub desert inland had sprung up sprawling cities of white canvas army tents; behind the redoubt was a forest of masts. Aviemore arrived regularly with revised estimates of their number—forty, sixty, seventy-five, and up. There was no sign of the overarching masts and crossed yards of a seventy-four. Charles did see that the yellow-blue flag of the Genovese over the fortification had been replaced by the tricolor of France.

“Ship is cleared for action, sir,” Winchester reported.

Charles nodded. Where was Raisonnable? “Begin taking in the sails, if you will. We’ll keep the topsails for now.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” Winchester said and turned away. The boatswain’s shrill call sounded, and shouted orders for “all hands to shorten sail” came up and down the deck. Men hurried aloft and to the bunt lines.

“More than a hundred bottoms now, sir,"”Aviemore said, relaying the lookout’s message.

“The seventy-four?”

“Naught, sir.”

“Thank you,” Charles said.

Bevan came from across the quarterdeck. “My God, they’ve left themselves unguarded.”

“Probably the frigate was to cover the embarkation,” Charles answered. “She is now in no position to do that. They had to gamble.”

“It’s going to cost them.”

“You can’t win every wager,” Charles muttered. It was curious, he thought. He took no joy, no sense of triumph or vindication that he’d been right and Blankett wrong. Through blind luck he had found the French invasion fleet at its most vulnerable. He knew what his duty required. It would not be so much a great victory as wanton destruction. There was no joy to be taken in that. He looked upward. The courses and topgallants were neatly taken in and bound to their yards. He could feel that the ship’s progress had slowed. “Beat to quarters, if you please. We will show our colors.”

The drum roll rattled loudly across the decks. They could probably hear it in the settlement, Charles decided. He could see the redoubt clearly now, ahead off the starboard bow. There were men there, the smallish noses of six-pounder field artillery poked out. One, the only one that would bear on the approaching frigate at the moment, gave off a cloud of smoke. The ball struck the water twenty yards short, skipped, and bounced off Cassandra’s side then sank into the sea. “Starboard battery,” he said to Bevan. “We will salute the fort in passing.”

Charles could see into the outer limits of the harbor. All manner of shipping lay moored together, beam to beam: Arab sambuks and baghalas, small dhows, and behind the point the taller masts of the Italian’s pinks and polacre merchant ships. Their number had grown. It was a jumbled crush of sea craft—a hundred and fifty, maybe more. The small fortification fired again, two guns, as Cassandra bore down. A ball sang low through the rigging; the second punched the side with a loud crack, then a splash. At thirty yards they came abreast. “You may fire,” Charles said.

The broadside crashed outward in a ripping string of explosions, covering the decks in smoke. As it cleared, he saw the stone ramparts broken and crumbled, three of the guns dismounted, one artillerymen standing stunned in shock among the wreckage. The quay came into view behind the redoubt as they glided past. The inner harbor appeared a carpet of shipping, crafts tied up five and six deep along the wharf side. The waterfront itself was a crowd of sailors, soldiers, and civilians all hurrying in different directions. The doors to the large warehouses stood open. Charles could see barrels and casks piled to the ceilings where the sunlight angled in. Numbers of seamen ran, jumping from deck to deck, to reach their craft, hopefully to cut them free and somehow escape. Cassandra entered the mouth of the harbor between the Arab island and the Italian settlement. “Back the foresail,” Charles ordered. “Get an anchor in the water with a spring on.”

He stood for a moment in awe of the audacity of it. Under the very noses of the British squadron guarding the exit to the sea, the French—this Napoleon Bonaparte—had assembled his invasion fleet almost entirely from local resources to strike at the heart of British wealth. It bespoke of both strategic genius and ruthless determination. And it had almost succeeded.

The anchor cable rasped out through the port side hawse at the bow of the ship, accompanied by a loud splash. Charles saw the second cablet attached to the bower’s shank being fished in through an after gunport to be wound around the capstan barrel. Hands in the waist took up the bars and heaved; slowly, Cassandra turned her broadside toward the mass of tethered vessels.

“The spring is rigged,” Bevan reported.

“Fire into them,” Charles said.

The cannon exploded, rebounded inward, were cleaned and reloaded, and exploded again. The French seamen who had gone on board their boats hurried back to shore in a panic, tumbling over bulwarks as their frail merchantmen shattered around them; masts fell, bows and sterns gaped. One ball might pass through two or three of the tightly packed, frail scantlinged ships. The difficulty was that there were just too many.

A battalion of infantry, organized by their officers, marched in perfect order onto the nearly empty quay. What the hell did they think they were they going to do? To shouted orders, the body formed smartly into a line. The front ranks knelt and all raised their muskets to their shoulders. The weapons popped and banged along the line with tiny puffs of smoke. Musket balls ripped through the air with the sound of swarming bees. Several at least entered through gun ports, and he saw a seaman clutch at his arm, his shirtsleeve turning red. “Cease firing,” Charles said to Bevan. “Haul on the spring.”

 
The guns fell silent and hands fell to the capstan bars with a will, feet shuffling and the pawl clicking as the axel turned. Cassandra's broadside pivoted toward the quay. “Avast! Cease hauling,” Bevan shouted. A second volley sounded from the French muskets, disciplined, accurate. Lead shot flew across the air or came up with a smack against bulwarks or masts.

Charles looked at the infantry in annoyance. More an irritation than a threat, they were powerless to damage his frigate’s thick wooden sides. “Mr. Sykes,” he said. “If you would be so good as to direct that the carronades be loaded with grape.”

Sykes grinned and touched his hat, then spoke to the carronades’ crews. Charles did not smile. He knew that he was about to kill a great many men because of some officer’s stupidity. Doubtless, that officer thought himself courageous.

“Ready, sir,” Sykes reported.

“Run them out,” Charles said. The three twenty-four-pound quarterdeck carronades, each charged with a canvas bag filled with perhaps a hundred cast-iron balls, ran forward on their slides.

“Fire.”

The barks of the guns sounded across the waterfront, startlingly loud after the prolonged silence. Broad swathes scythed through the tightly aligned infantry in three places. How many were killed or injured, Charles could only guess to be in the many dozens. The remainder broke their ranks and fled to the cover of the buildings, some dragging wounded comrades across the flags.

“Shall we resume with the shipping?” Bevan asked.

Charles needed to think. It was difficult to sink a wooden ship with cannon balls. It could be done if they were struck below the waterline often enough, but it would take hours for them to actually slip beneath the surface. Cassandra would expend all of her remaining powder and shot before even a fraction would be destroyed. There was a quicker, cheaper, surer way. He should have thought of it earlier. “Keep her trained as she is. Fire at any organized force that presents itself. As for the shipping, we’ll burn them. Mr. Sykes,” he called.

“Yes, sir?” Sykes.

“You will relieve Lieutenant Winchester on the gundeck. Say that I require his presence. Inform Mr. Hitch similarly to replace Lieutenant Beechum.”

“The gundeck? Me, sir? Thank you,” Sykes said.

“Don’t forget my messages to Winchester and Beechum on the forecastle.”

“No, sir, of course not.” Sykes hurried for the ladderway.

Winchester arrived first, then Beechum. “Stephen,” Charles said. “I’m sending the ship’s boats out. You will be pleased to command the operation. I suggest you divide your force into two units with Beechum in charge of the second. Your object is to set fire to as much of the shipping as you are able.”

“Yes, sir,” Winchester touched his hat then looked to Beechum who nodded seriously.

“Divide up the marines among the boats as you see fit, and a small work party in each to accomplish the task. The way they’re packed, it should spread by itself if you give it a good start.”

Winchester nodded.

“Don’t endanger yourselves trying for every last one; the majority will do,” Charles said. The lieutenants left, talking between themselves.

The boats were hoisted over on the off side from the town. Their crews and the others went down; the craft set off across the ripples on the harbor surface, their oars dipped and flashed leaving tiny pools like a centipede’s footprints on either side of the wakes. The launch and jollyboat approached the choked mass reaching out from the waterfront while the cutters angled toward the clusters of bottoms moored further out. Charles watched with interest as the launch came alongside the nearest baghala, three-masted and broad-beamed in the Arab fashion. She was abandoned and already much cut up by Cassandra’s broadsides. Winchester, his seamen, and marines climbed aboard, the lieutenant and work party immediately going below. Within five minutes they were up again, and in another minute back in the launch. A thin trail of gray smoke started up from her midships. They did not go to the next, a pink moored bow to stern, but to the third down where the process was repeated. By this time the smoke from the baghala had become thick and dark, drifting through the bare masts of the boats tied up closer to the shore. There was a crackle of musket fire as the launch and jollyboat neared its next target. The marines boarded first to chase some of her few remaining crew away.

In the outer harbor Charles saw a collection of three Arab craft tied up together, one smoking like a volcano. Beechum’s cutters were approaching a second group. The closer baghala, the first ignited, erupted in orange-yellow flame from her middle, tongues reaching for her rigging. A wooden vessel, for all the time it lies on the water, burns gleefully. Fire engulfed the thing in an instant, running up the masts like flaming spires and spreading readily to those closest alongside. Charles could feel the heat on his exposed skin. Farther down, the second that Winchester had visited billowed its own pall of smoke. The inner harbor began to cloud over with it. On the waterfront, he saw a few brave souls emerge from behind the buildings to witness the growing inferno. He also noticed again the warehouse doors standing ajar. “Daniel.” He said it twice to get his friend’s attention.

“Yes?”

“I wonder what’s in those warehouses?”

“Ship’s stores, I should imagine. To get them to India.”

“Let’s find out.”

“How? I’m not going ashore. They’ll be impolite after what we’ve done.”

“You’ll see. Run up a signal to recall the boats; they’ve done enough. We’ll fire off a gun to call attention to the flags.”

Bevan spoke to Aviemore, and then opened the signal book to show him what to do. Charles approached the captain of one of the quarterdeck six-pounders. “Do you think you could put a ball right inside that warehouse entrance?”

The burly man, Tully by name, rubbed at his forehead. “Zure I can, zur.”

“Let’s see you do it then.”

“We’ve loaded with grape.”

“Withdraw it and put in solid shot.”

The gun crew hauled their weapon inboard, extracted the bag of grapeshot with a hook, then placed a ball down its mouth and a wad. All was rammed home. They ran the gun out.

“Whenever you’re ready,” Charles said.

Tully made a show of sighting along the barrel and having the carriage levered around. He adjusted the quoin for elevation then adjusted it again. “Clear,” he said, finally satisfied. He stepped well back with his lanyard and pulled. The cannon leapt backward with a loud bang to be brought up against its breeching. The few people on the quay jumped and ran for cover. Charles saw no sign of the ball striking anything until a gush of bright red liquid flowed outward through the doorway, forming a large pool on the flagstones.