Trade Wind (41 page)

He managed to snatch a bare hour of sleep that night, and at first light joined the small flotilla in which Colonel Edwards, together with the Commander of the
Assaye
and as many officers as could be spared from duty, proceeded up the coast to the Sultan’s camp at Beit-el-Ras to call upon His Highness.

The interview proved tolerably satisfactory, in that it had resulted in the Sultan striking camp and moving off with his entire force to attack the rebels. Dan and several of the younger officers had been requested to accompany him, and the cumbersome amateur army marched away from the coast through groves of palm trees, fragrant plantations of cloves and oranges, tangled thickets of jungle greenery and rough stretches of open country, towards the centre of lie island and rebel-held
Marseilles
.

By mid-afternoon they had covered roughly ten miles, and after a halt and a brief conference it was suggested that the British contingent should ride ahead to reconnoitre, and led by a reluctant guide they left the track and rode off at a tangent towards a grove of trees that lay just beyond the boundary of the
Marseilles
estate. There had been a farmhouse near the grove, but it had been recently burned and now lay blackened and deserted; the ashes still hot to the touch and a thread of smoke drifting up from a charred beam that had once been part of the roof.

It was a sobering sight, for it made the rebel force a reality and not merely something that had been spoken of in words but whose existence had yet to be proved. There was nothing unreal about the burned and looted building whose shell made an ugly blot against the lush green of the trees. And neither was there anything illusory about the vicious whine and crack of a dozen musket balls that greeted the advance party as they emerged on the far side of the grove. They were well out of range, but the horses did not take kindly to the sound of the shots, and Dan lost patience with his plunging animal, and dismounting, handed the reins to his coxswain, Mr Wilson, who had accompanied him, and went forward on foot to study the rebel position. It looked to him a good deal stronger than they had been led to suppose, and staring at it through eyes narrowed against the dazzle of the hot sunlight, he realized that subduing it was likely to prove a more serious matter than anyone had suspected.

The stretch of ground that lay immediately ahead provided little in the way of cover, for the palm and clove trees that a short time ago had made it a green and pleasant place had been ruthlessly destroyed to allow an uninterrupted field of fire, while the house itself might almost have been a fort, so well was it constructed for defence. Large, two-storeyed and solidly built, it was flanked on either side by several detached buildings and outhouses, and surrounded by a high wall that Bargash’s men had evidently loopholed and protected with parapets of sandbags.

There was also a formidable outer stockade of recently felled palm trunks, and Dan regretted that he had not thought to bring a telescope with him, since at this moment it would have proved a far more useful piece of equipment than the ceremonial sword that had been an active irritation ever since he had buckled it on at dawn. But even without one he could make a reasonably accurate guess at the amount of opposition the Sultan’s force were likely to encounter in any attack on the position; if-which he began to doubt—they could be persuaded to attack it at all!

The sunlight glinted on the brass barrels of at least three guns that had been mounted near the outer gates, and the enclosure was alive with armed men. He could see muskets and dark faces at every window, and the men peering down from between the sandbags that reinforced the low parapet on the roof continued to fire at him. An occasional spent ball dropped into the grass or struck the rocks at his feet, but as he was still out of musket range he remained where he was, for there was one important point that needed to be made clear; did they or did they not possess rifles? He thought it unlikely, since the Lee-Enfield rifle was still something of a novelty in the East, and though they were now in general use in the British Army in place of the antiquated “Brown Bess’ (and had been issued with disturbing results to the East India Company’s Bengal Army), they were not as yet being manufactured for sale abroad. But it was always possible that some might have found their way here and Men into the hands of the rebels, for they commanded high prices and there was a brisk trade in stolen army rifles smuggled out of India to Afghanistan, Persia and the Gulf.

The Lee-Enfield’s range was far greater than that of the old-fashioned musket, and Dan was well aware that in offering himself as a target he would be taking a considerable risk. But it was one that would have to be taken, because if the defenders of
Marseilles
possessed rifles it was going to make a deal of difference to the Sultan’s gun crews. And since he was convinced that no one armed with a Lee-Enfield would be able to resist using it on a tempting target, and it was not in his nature to order another man to run a risk that he, personally, would choose to avoid, that target would have to be himself.

A few nerve-racking minutes later, having induced the insurgents to waste a quantity of ammunition on him and proved to his own satisfaction that their armament did not include rifles, he turned and walked thankfully back to where the remainder of the party waited at the edge of the grove:

“We’ll have to get a couple of guns and some rockets up here,” said Dan. “No good storming that place until we’ve blown a hole in it. Let’s get back.”

It had taken the best part of an hour to manhandle the guns into position, and by the time they had done so they were drenched with sweat and grey with the gritty dust of the open country, and Dan, who in company with the rest of the naval contingent had discarded his coat, hat and sword belt, and was working in his shirt sleeves with a borrowed scarf wound turban-wise round his head against the relentless glare, was feeling far from confident as to the outcome of the engagement. The Sultan’s troops were for the most part untrained and undisciplined men with few ideas on the subject of organized fighting and none at all on tactics, and already a body of them, rushing forward to the attack on their own initiative and without waiting for the guns to make a breach for them, had met with a withering fire that had left the ground in front of the palm stockade strewn with dead and wounded.

This disaster had effectually discouraged any further advance, and now that the guns were at last in position Dan discovered that it was he and his fellow officers who would have to man and fire them, for with the exception of a handful of Turkish gunners the Sultan’s troops (who had received a salutary lesson and were not anxious to have it repeated) remained firmly in the rear and refused to move.

The hour that followed was a torment of dust and din, and though at sunset the wind died and the air became cooler, the evening reeked with the stink of black powder and the smell of blood, and the guns had become almost too hot to handle. The crews had worked under continuous fire from the roof, the loopholed walls of the mam buildings and the well-served brass guns by the gateway, and Dan’s left arm had been put out of action by a splinter of rock sliced off by a shell that had landed less than five feet away and killed a Turkish gunner.

Three of the naval officers and two more Turks had been wounded by the scrap-iron which the rebels were firing in place of round shot. But their casualties were negligible when compared with those they had inflicted on the garrison of the besieged house, and though the pursuit and arrest of slave ships had accustomed Dan Larrimore to unpleasant sights, he was young enough to wince and sicken at the sight of the bloody devastation wrought by round shot and rockets landing among a dense mob of shouting men.

There must, he thought, have been anything up to five or even six hundred men inside the walls of
Marseilles
. Arabs of the el Harth tribe, raiders and Bedouins from the Gulf, and terrified African slaves who screeched and ran to and fro like panic-stricken animals, striving to take shelter behind walls and outhouses. But they would soon have nowhere to hide, for now at last the way was open: the outer gate a mass of rubble and pieces of what had once been men, and the inner doors smashed to splinters.

Now, for once, it was Majid who called for action—and could not persuade his troops to move, though he placed himself courageously at their head and urged them to follow him. Waverer and man of peace as he was, the Sultan yet had sense enough to see that an attack at this moment would be met by little resistance from his brother’s demoralized forces. But the disastrous sortie of the earlier afternoon, the deafening crash of gunfire and the crackle of musketry that had rolled over them ever since, and above all the sight of their own dead and wounded, had sapped his troops’ courage, and neither threats nor pleading could persuade them to advance.

“For Christ’s sake!” muttered Dan between clenched teeth, “can’t they see that all they’ve got to do is to walk in? The place is a shambles I At least half of those poor devils in there must be dead or dying, and they can probably take it without firing another shot. Or do the chicken-livered bastards expect us to take the bloody position for them? Why the hell we should be expected to do their dirty work for them I don’t know, but if they won’t, I suppose we shall have to try.”

He looked round at the handful of smoke-blackened, powder-grimed, exhausted ragamuffins who had set out only that morning suitably attired to attend an audience with a reigning monarch, and knew that they could not advance unsupported. There were too few of them; and those few too young and tired and dishevelled to impress even the battered garrison of
Marseilles
, who seeing such a ragged remnant advancing against them would draw encouragement from the sight, and shoot them down at point-blank range. And yet…

It was getting dark and the battered house seemed to move with a curious up and down motion as though the ground was not quite solid. But now that the wind had died it should be still. He could not understand why it did not stay still. His left arm was caked and sticky with half-dried blood, and the tourniquet that Massey had applied above the ugly ragged gash was biting into his flesh and causing him a great deal of pain. He tried to move the fingers of his left hand and discovered that he could not do so, and once again the distant house swayed dizzily before his eyes and he found himself thinking that if there were any men left alive in it they must surely fall off the roof and out of the windows. Perhaps they were all dead, and if so there was really no reason why he and his fellow officers should not occupy the place themselves.
Finish the job
, thought Dan hazily.
That’s right—finish it
…

He said: “Wait here while I take a look. May as well finish…finish the…” The Assistant-Surgeon caught him as he fell.

“No you don’t,” said the Assistant-Surgeon grimly. “Or the rest of us either. We’ve done the spade work for them and they can damn’ well do the rest themselves. Home, I think. And not on those blasted horses either! The least our cautious allies can do is lend us a reliable guide and some decent animals, and the sooner we all get back on board the better.”

They had got back—the majority on horses from the Sultan’s own string and the four injured officers in a creaking bullock cart, while behind them the Sultan’s forces prepared to camp for the night, leaving the dead lying sprawled before the broken walls of
Marseilles
and the wounded to crawl painfully away under cover of darkness.

It had been a slow and uncomfortable journey, and Dan, who had lost a good deal of blood and was unconscious for most of it, was surprised to find how relieved he was to see so commonplace a sight as the riding light of his own ship reflected in the grey harbour water. He had submitted impatiently to having his wound washed and dressed, and as soon as that unpleasant operation was over, stumbled to his bunk with the observation that at least the next few days were likely to prove peaceful.

But he was wrong, for the next few days were anything but peaceful.

The morning dawned hot and windless, and in the city the shops were still closed. Nervous citizens kept their doors barred and their shutters bolted, while panic-stricken ones besieged the harbour offering large sums in return for a passage to the mainland. And in his camp near
Marseilles
, His Highness the Sultan, having again failed to persuade his troops to advance, sent an urgent message to the British Consul asking for the assistance of Her Majesty’s forces.

“Wants us to pull all his chestnuts out of the fire for him,” grumbled Colonel Edwards. “Well, I suppose we shall have to do so, because if we don’t there’s no knowing what sort of mess he’ll end up in.”

“Pretty good mess already,” commented the Commander of the
Assaye
, “Four of our own men wounded and sixty of his killed or injured—and God alone knows how many losses on the other side. Not bad for a minor skirmish! What assistance do you propose to send him, sir?”

“That’s up to you, Commander. As many of your men as you consider necessary to capture the position.”

“From all I hear, a petty officer and a dozen bluejackets could have done It yesterday evening,” said the Commander disgustedly. “But the rebels will have had well over twenty-four hours in which to pull themselves together and reorganize their defences before we can get out there again. Oh well, I’ll see what we can raise, and with your permission we’ll send ‘em off at first light tomorrow.”

The following dawn had seen another naval contingent setting off for the Sultan’s camp: this time consisting of twelve officers and one hundred petty officers and seamen, armed with rockets and a twelve-pound howitzer and commanded by a senior officer from the
Assaye
, They found Sultan Majid angry and ashamed and his followers sullen and uneasy, but although the atmosphere had been considerably lightened by the sight of the British contingent, only the Sultan and three of his ministers expressed the intention of accompanying them to the attack. The troops had declined to move, and standing prudently back they watched their ruler and his white reinforcements move off in the direction of
Marseilles
, and listened anxiously for the sound of firing.