Skull and Bones (46 page)

    Colonel Bland found confusion at the fort. He yelled at the sentries, who let him through the drawbridge and gate. They saluted as he ran in, under the gateway bastion, and into the fort's main quadrangle. There indeed stood the garrison - paraded with bayonets fixed, cartridge pouches filled, and their drums, fifes and colours beside them. But…

    "Ah!" thought Bland, "God bless my soul…" For he wasn't the only person who'd run into the fort from the town. There was a mob of civilians, in dread of Spain. There were weeping women, howling children and fathers with their arms around their families, in fear of rape, fire and the Inquisition, and loudly calling for the gates to be closed, the drawbridge raised and the guns of the fort manned. All this had shaken the militiamen, whose lines were wavering, and they were talking to one another and pointing towards the town in alarm.

    "God bless my hopes of Heaven!" said Bland, then…

    "Colonel!" cried a handful of wide-eyed officers, running up to him. "Thank God you're here! How many of them have landed? How many regiments?"

    "Regiments?" said Bland. "I saw no more than a few boatloads!"

    "But it's two ships!" cried a voice. "Everyone says so!"

    "God bless you, yes!" said Bland. "But
small
ships, and I saw no more than a few dozen Spaniards come ashore!"

    "Ahhhh," they said, and their spirits soared and they straightened their backs and thrust out their manly jaws.

    "Stand the fort to arms!" cried Bland. "Muster every man in the fort, and sound the march! I shall lead forth our men to drive these invaders into the river!"

    "Huzzah!" they cried, and soon the drums were sounding a rattling beat, the fifers were blowing "Come Lasses and Lads" and the redcoats were marching boldly out over the fort's drawbridge with hysterical cheering from the civilians behind them. At their head strode Colonel Bland, transported into glory, with sword in hand and fire in his heart.

    At the same time, and with much less fuss, a hundred woodsmen marched quietly behind the regulars, and took early opportunity to lope off, in loose formation, trailing their arms. Bland never gave them a thought, but they were trained to seek opportunity, and any means whatsoever to take their enemies by surprise; and they were as determined as any redcoat to fight for their homes and their families.

    A Spanish army officer charged up the stairs with the latest boatload of men from
La Concha.
He was a commandante - a major - and with him came two capitáns. Alvarez saw them and nearly wet himself in relief. He stood to attention beside Ortiz and thanked the Virgin and all the saints.

    "Señor Commandante!" said Alvarez, and received a curt nod, for the commandante believed that no drop of use whatsoever could be squeezed out of a sea-service aspirante on land, and in this case he was entirely correct. Instead he yelled at his juniors and the trumpeter he'd brought with him, and mustered his men - of whom he found he had nearly two hundred and fifty, and plenty more to come from the ships. He looked at the town, and saw no threat. He looked at the fort with its English flag and saw no threat. But he looked at the battery… and saw the teams of men hauling guns out to bear upon himself and his men.

    "Mother of God!" he cried. "Grenadiers to the front! Follow me! The rest, stand fast!" He was a very brave man, if not a particularly inventive one. He saw the two heavy guns in the instant of being loaded. Men were ramming home, they were training and levelling, and the range was just over one hundred yards.

    He turned to the body of fifty grenadiers - big men with bearskin trim on their caps, the swaggering bullies among the ranks, who thought themselves better men than all the rest. Now the English gunners were standing clear while the gun- captains swung their linstocks.

    The commandante ran to the side of his men.

    "Present muskets!" he cried. "Make ready…"

    Cli-cli-cli-clack! said the locks.

    "Fire!" and the muskets roared. "Santiago!" cried the commandante and charged.

    "Santiago!" cried the grenadiers, and ran after him with bayonets levelled.

    BOOOM! BOOOM! cried the pair of heavy guns, with monstrous voice.

    At one hundred yards, not a single musket shot found a human target, while - firing from soft, churned-up earth - the eighteen-pounders on their sea carriages recoiled so heavily that their muzzles twisted wildly off target. But the load was so heavy - totalling over eleven hundred musket balls - that it screamed and sizzled and scoured like the Devil's broom, such that when the smoke cleared only fifteen grenadiers were left standing, and the rest, including their brave but uninventive leader, were dead, dying or wounded, and comprehensively riddled with shot.

    But the rest of the Spaniards charged the now-empty guns. There were two officers left, and nearly two hundred men, and every chance that they could over-run the battery before the gunners had time to reload. So thought the two Spanish capitáns, and they led their men in a rolling, ragged charge over the bodies of the grenadiers and the commandante. They ran with gleaming bayonets and bellowing roars, which swelled with delight at the sweetest sight a soldier ever sees in the field: the backs of their fleeing enemies. For the English gunners, seeing sense, were running away, without even taking the time to spike their guns.

    But their triumph was brief. No sooner had the artillerymen run off towards the English fort than the sound of fife and drum signalled the advance of an English column: a giant red centipede with white legs and a rippling steel crest, emerging from the fort, and coming in strength.

    Aspirante Alvarez gasped. Sargento Ortiz said nothing, for he was dead from loss of blood, but the two capitáns, reinforced by another boatload from
Walrus,
carefully drew up their men and marched towards the English column, with Spanish drums beating, and with profound satisfaction that this wretched business of being fired upon by batteries had come to an end, with a correct and proper battle about to begin, in the correct and proper way.

    Alvarez watched as the two columns - the white and the red - advanced upon each other and deployed into line in the open ground between the fort and the town. He saw that there were more red than white, and he searched in his conscience and found that his duty was now at the
bottom
of the stairs, not the
top,
for there was more boat work to be done, and himself a sea officer.

    At the bottom of the stairs, he found two shot-riddled boats, half-sunk, with the dead and wounded sprawled within them. And there he cringed as the first volleys rolled out in the fight for Savannah.

Chapter 40

Dusk, 20th July 1754

The Savannah River

    "John!" said Selena, "It's nearly night. The battery can't see us. We can work the ship out of reach of it, before daylight!" She looked over the quarterdeck rail at the line of heavy timbers, driven into the Savannah river bed, each with a heavy ringbolt secured at its cap: the
dolphins
present in any civilised anchorage to enable ships to move against the wind. "Even I know how it's done," she said. "Secure a line to one of them, and all hands haul on the line, and pull her from one to the next!"

    "Aye, lass," he said. "And a proper little sea-madame you are, an' all!" and he sighed and reached out to stroke her cheek. She still had on the taffeta dress, and he was pierced to the heart with the loveliness of her. The two of them were alone on the quarterdeck, with all the Spaniards gone and a mass of the ship's people in the waist, making ready for what the council had agreed.

    "Then why must you go ashore?" she said, and looked up to where the town lay uneasy in the dark, with the red glow of fires and occasional gunshots in the streets. "We could be gone from all that!" she said.

    But Silver shook his head.

    "I got to go, lass," he said, "for Flint -"

    "And his half of the papers?"

    "Aye," he said. "I do want them, and no mistake… but I'm going mainly for
himself!"
He sighed. "See here, lass… if we sail away from here, we'd never be safe! We'd forever be waiting for him - and by God and the Devil he'd come, and nothing'd stop him! For the bugger ain't human and he ain't holy, and we'll have no peace till he's dead!"

    She fell silent. It was true… And in any case, all hands had voted to follow John Silver's plan. For when it came to hard choices, most wanted a share of Flint's treasure, and the rest had been won round by Silver, Israel Hands and by Blind Pew, who as always was listened to with respect, and who wanted the gold as a pension for his sightless future, when at last he should be cast up on dry land.

    So Silver went over the side into
Walrus's
launch, with a dozen men who weren't the best in the ship by a long way, for there'd been suspicion among the hands as to what others might do, once they'd got their hands on
both
halves of Flint's papers! And suspicion became distrust, until Blind Pew proposed that those who went with Silver should be chosen by lot. Thus Silver sighed as he sat in the stern sheets, for he was facing Tom Morgan, who was stroke oar, and whose head was thick as teak, and beside him was Darby McGraw, an idle swab who was drunk more often than sober, and a precious pair they made for such a task!

    But Mr Joe sat beside Silver, and was rated coxswain, and there were others who were near as good as him.

    "Give way!" said Mr Joe, and the hands pulled muffled oars, sending the launch out into the dark: for all was deep shadow on the river with its up-rearing banks that left it deep in gloom.

    Silver couldn't land at Savannah stairs, for the Spaniards might be there, but knowing the river as he did, he steered upstream, just past the town, to a muddy shoreline beneath the river banks. Here they landed and faced a near-vertical cliff of mud that would have left landmen helpless and dismayed. Landmen but not seamen. A grapnel was swung round on its line and heaved upward to take hold of the scrubby trees above. Then the nimblest man swarmed up the thin line carrying a block and a one-inch rope, and secured the block to a tree-trunk so those below could heave up the next man in a bowline, until enough were on the bank to haul directly on the line to lift their mates - by which means John Silver came last and rose like a soaring bird.

    "Now then, lads," he said, "gather round, for there must be no noise."

    "Aye!" they said: a ring of dark faces and pale eyes.

    "We must march around the fort and enter the town from the land side."

    "Aye!"

    "It'll take some hours, for we must keep away from all that…"

    They glanced towards the town, with its fires and gunshots, and nodded.

    "We'll let them buggers fight, and we'll steer clear! For it ain't no matter of ours!"

    "Aye!"

    "Our course is to Jimmy Chester's house, the which I knows well."

    "Will Flint be there, Cap'n?" said Mr Joe.

    "Huh!" said Silver, and spat at the ground beneath his feet. "You bet your dick on it, my son! I've
seen
the swab, so I knows he's here! And he's seen
Walrus,
so he knows
I'm
here!" Silver nodded. "Oh, he's as sweet to see me as I am to see him… and the place agreed between us is Chester's house!"

    They nodded, they growled in anticipation of the fight. They gripped their muskets, their pistols and blades.

    "All hands together!" said Silver, and took a sight on the stars, and led them off into the night.

    "So! What's afoot?" said Flint to Lazy Joe, with his fringed shirt and long gun, who'd crept into Jimmy Chester's grog shop with its shuttered windows and one candle burning. Lazy Joe was one of many who'd gathered, at Flint's orders, and who now sat together, stinking and sweating in a malodorous group, gulping and jumping at the gunfire outside, and feeling for their weapons.

    Lazy Joe was given a chair at the table, with its solitary light, where Joe Flint sat with Billy Bones, Black Dog, and Jimmy Chester himself. A pewter mug of drink was shoved across the table and the wild man swallowed half and wiped his lips.

    "They've fought 'emselves out, Cap'n," he said.

    "What do you mean?" said Flint.

    "Our'ns and the Spanish'ns. They fought to equal parts."

    "Yes - go on."

    "They fired volleys, with drums and flags an' all, and killed a lot of each other, and when they'd had enough, then our'ns fell back on the fort, and their'ns fell back on the town. But our woodsmen are out making trouble in the dark!"

    "So that's the firing?"