An Awkward Commission (26 page)

‘Harbin, I am going up to the bows, where I am going to tell them to stand up and chop at the cable till it parts. I will allow three swings of their axes, and then they will get under cover again. As we go down, get your men to stand up and hack away, the same number – three cuts – and then get down again. That will deny them time to take proper aim. Understand?’

‘Aye, aye sir.’

And if they have shifted the aim of that cannon, thought Pearce, one of us is likely to die.

He scurried back to the bows, stopping halfway to shed his coat, and gave his orders, waiting till another volley swept the rigging. Trembling slightly he stood with his sailors, who got in two good hacks and a feeble third before he commanded them to get down, just in time to avoid a fusillade, in his heart thanking Providence for the lack of cannon fire. At the stern a now-coatless Harbin stood up, and his men did the same – and still the cannon stayed silent – ducking down at the right moment, thus allowing Pearce and his party to go again. The first swing parted the thick forward cable, so now it was only secured at the stern, and Pearce realised Harbin would have to be quick or the ship would start to swing round. Stern on to the shore, they would be exposed to the fire from the hillsides with no protection.

‘Come on, Mr Harbin,’ he yelled.

Pearce admired the way the boy obliged, even though he
must have known the ruse would not work a second time, knew that the chances of that cannon remaining silent were slim. He stood with his men and regardless of the shots whizzing around – fortunately only muskets – encouraged them as they hacked away. One sailor went down before the cable parted, but there was one positive; the men in the rigging had taken advantage of the respite to get back on deck. With both cables cut, Pearce waited for the ship to start drifting, but nothing happened. He couldn’t understand it; the prize was as stationary as it had been before.

Harbin shouted, and looking towards the stern, Pearce saw him pointing aloft. He squinted against the glare of the sun, seeing nothing to justify the call, as one of the crew, who he recognised as one of the Gunner’s mates, emerged from below and crawled towards him, getting himself to safety just as a well-aimed musket ball hit the planking behind his feet. Clearly the enemy had a weapon trained on the space between the hatchway and the side.

‘There’s nothing to drink below and the magazine is empty, your honour.’

‘What?’

‘The magazine, your honour, there’s no gunpowder. There be shot in the locker but we can’t turn their guns on them, since we have nothing to fire them with.’

That thought had not even occurred to Pearce, for which he cursed himself. Harbin shouted a second time, a hand again pointing towards the top of the mizzenmast, and finally Pearce saw what he was on about. The gunner’s mate saw it too as Pearce looked to the mainmast to see that what Harbin had spotted was replicated there.

‘The bastards have cables from the mastheads to the shore, your honour.’

Cutting the cables had not freed the ship, and it would not move until those cables aloft were cut as well. Aware that
he had little notion of how to solve that, Pearce sat down, leaning against the side of the ship, as Harbin crawled down to join him.

‘Do you have any orders, sir?’

‘Orders?’ Pearce replied with a grim smile. ‘We need to get a party together, under someone reliable, to get aloft and cut those cables on the masts.’

‘I’ll go myself, sir,’ said Harbin.

Was it bravery or stupidity that made the boy volunteer for something so deadly? Pearce did not know, he only knew that it was admirable, just as he knew that if he ordered the men aloft they would go. And why had that cannon not fired again? It seemed obvious; they knew ashore what had to be done, had probably reset their aim, and were just waiting for them to attempt it.

‘Getting killed is not part of your duties, Mr Harbin, and we have already seen what happens to the anyone caught in the rigging.’ He explained his thoughts about the cannon, then added, ‘We will need to contrive some other scheme. Perhaps we can get our boats back and get clear.’

‘I fear they would suffer many casualties, sir, just to get to us, as we would going over the side.’

‘Which we will also do if we stay put. The sun is rising, and I am informed there is nothing to drink aboard, this while the route of escape is on the other side of the ship. Our opponents have thought this out well.’

He knew it would be better to get the men below; at least there they would be safe, but there was a risk in just getting them down as well as the very obvious fact that getting them back on deck in numbers would be even more risky, and if he could not do that he could not do anything. Rack his brains as he might, Pearce could see no other way out of this trap than by cutting the cables aloft and that could not be done from below. Did he have the right to get killed the half
dozen hands it would take? Not unless he risked his own life; there was no way John Pearce could order men to climb the shrouds with axes, the only thing that could save them, while he sat safe behind his bulwark. He too would have to go, knowledge which concentrated his mind. Could he contrive a distraction of some kind?

He was gnawing on that when he heard a loud bang offshore, saw a ball arc over his head, which he followed, risking musket fire to see a shot strike the hill face.
Weazel
had joined in; Neame had anchored her fore and aft, and run out the guns. Would it answer, or would it take too long, for the deck was getting damned hot? If they could not move they would have to stay here all day, in the sweltering glare, while Neame traded gunfire. They then needed a cloudy, moonless night, unlikely since right now there was not a cloud in the sky, and that would only help if the men ashore made no attempt to retake the ship.

Weazel
fired again and again, seeking to dislodge the musketeers from the hillside, but given they were well concealed and he was having to fire over the French ship it was a forlorn hope. But the real problem was that of the cannon and its grapeshot. Bodies lay around the deck, while another was hanging from the rigging, and that took no account of those who had hit the water. Benton’s corpse was crumpled in the centre of the quarterdeck, like a broken doll, his blood, now dark like the wine he had been so fond of, staining several yards of the planking. Along the bulwark the wounded were being made as comfortable as possible, which was, judging by the moaning, not comfortable enough.

Harbin joined him again. ‘I have had an idea, sir. If we could rig some way of signalling to the master we could direct his fire.’

‘Explain.’

Harbin grinned, all freckles and teeth, then crawled
away. He managed to get to the signal locker by the binnacle without attracting attention, and there he set to, trying to sort out the flags so that he could compose signals that Neame would understand. This took quite a time and the heat, the silence, added to the fact that he had been up all night, was extremely enervating. Pearce closed his eyes, and was
day-dreaming
of a cool dip in the sea when he was alerted by the sound of more shots caused by Harbin running to the signal halyard, having sorted out which flags he could use. The boy was busy, using the mast itself as cover, bending on a message, one that the master, with the aid of the signal book, might understand. He extended the halyard lines to reach into the protected bulwarks, and then, flags under his arms, dived for shelter alongside his superior.

‘All’s ready sir. The first signal will read, “Can you understand our signals?” Might I suggest, sir, that our first task should be to get their fire to silence that cannon?’

‘That seems the obvious course, Mr Harbin. You see to the signals, and I will deal with the cables.’

‘Right, sir. I will ask them to acknowledge with the signal gun.’

He hoisted his first message, which attracted a lot of useless gunfire from the shore. Harbin left it for a moment, and hoisted another, on sight of which
Weazel
fired a gun. They had communication, so there followed a complicated running up and down of flags which made no sense at all to Pearce, but a quick glance offshore showed him that
Weazel
had shifted her position to get a clear shot at the hillsides. Pearce issued his orders, and at the right moment called out, setting he and his party running towards the mast. As soon as they got there they flung themselves on the deck, this, as a great swathe of grapeshot passed over their heads, after which Pearce had them scurrying back to safety.

After a pause, there was a rolling broadside from
Weazel
,
followed by another, then a third, which brought forth a great clanging sound which echoed round the bay, that in its turn followed by a faint cheer from out at sea. Harbin, who had been raising and lowering his head throughout, called to say that the cannon, having given its position away by firing, had, he thought, been dislodged by the sloop’s long nines. The possibility was encouraging, but that did nothing as regards the musketry, and Pearce was reluctant to expose his men to that either.

‘Mr Harbin, is it possible to signal
Weazel
to load with grape?’

‘I can try, sir.’

While the midshipman set about that, Pearce called to the gunner’s mate who had told him about the lack of drink and gunpowder. ‘Are there any hammocks below?’ A quick crawl got the man below, with another musket ball scarring the same part of the deck as previously.

‘Don’t come back,’ Pearce yelled, ‘just shout.’

The wait was only a minute, but it seemed longer before a rolled up hammock was thrown out, that too attracting a single shot from the shore, this as Pearce reached out for his coat, relieved that the notion he had had seemed a sound one.

‘Right, lads, what we are going to do is to make a dummy that our enemies will take to be a sailor, and since it needs to be perceived to be an idiot it better be an officer.’ It was a feeble joke, but it got a laugh. ‘We must find something to fly the dummy so as to draw their fire. That, Mr Harbin, is when we want grapeshot from
Weazel
, as they are reloading. It may not kill them, they could be too well concealed, but it will keep their heads down and spoil their aim and by the time they have been swept twice I hope we shall have cut ourselves free.’

‘Is there enough in the tide to take us out of danger?’ asked Harbin.

‘What makes you doubt it?’ asked Pearce, unsure of the answer.

‘As you know, the Mediterranean don’t rise an’ fall much, sir, only a couple of feet, and with no steerage way we can’t keep her beam on to the shore.’

Pearce looked aloft, to where the sails were clewed up, realising that instead of risking only a proportion of the boarding party, he was going to have to risk them all. ‘Then we must also send men up to drop the topsails, those left on deck are going to have to sheet them home, and some poor soul is going to have to manage the wheel.’

‘Might be a job for an idiot, sir,’ suggested a voice.

‘Then I’d best volunteer,’ Pearce replied, to a gale of laughter, which had him wondering if they could hear that ashore, and if they could, what they would make of it.

It took time to signal
Weazel
, time enough to allow them to fully dress the dummy as a naval lieutenant. It looked like nothing close to, but from a distance it might pass for a man. Nothing but use would tell and they could only hope that Neame fully understood what was required with the gunnery. Harbin waved that he was ready, and the crew crouched beside the useless guns, preparing to leap for the ratlines. One man had the dummy tied to a whip, one he had found that went all the way to the upper yards. Pearce nodded, the man pulled, the hammock rose, and a fusillade of shots cracked over them, none of them striking the dummy.

‘Now!’ shouted Pearce.

The men ran as fast as they could, scrabbling for their footholds in the ratlines as they raced aloft. Mentally, making his way towards the wheel, Pearce went through the loading of a musket. He had just levelled the gun in his mind’s eye, and was ducking down, when
Weazel
opened up with a blast of grapeshot and suddenly the air was alive with the whistling sound of hundreds of small balls. Shots flew
from the hillsides, but faced with a salvo of deadly grape and ricocheting rock, they flew wide.

Within a minute the men were in the tops, letting go the sails as their mates went even higher. Pearce moved from safety and ran to grab the wheel, feeling just as exposed, and waited until he could see that the upper yardsmen had cut them free from the restraining cables, which fell from the masts with a loud splash, this while those left on deck stood to sheet the sails home. He was congratulating himself on getting away without more casualties when a sailor fell from the yards into the sea, just at the moment the sloop had life.

‘Get a rope to that fellow, quick,’ he called to the wounded men, some of whom had the ability to move, humbled by the way they obeyed, hobbling to the task and managing to get a line into the fellow’s outstretched hand.

There was not much wind but the sloop was taking it and getting under way, groaning and creaking, towing the man in the water, but still puffs of powder smoke were erupting from the rocks, braving the continued fire from
Weazel
. Muskets had a poor range, no more than a hundred yards at best if the user wanted accuracy, and Pearce reckoned they must be getting beyond that now, so it would have to be a very lucky shot that would hit anyone. When it did, jarring his arm, the shock killed any pain; that would come later. He looked down to see where the bullet had cut through his shirt and grazed his right arm. He also saw the bright blood well up from the wound, but he took a tight grip and the ship stayed steady, seen out of the bay by the sound of loud cheering.

Arm bandaged, Pearce sat in Benton’s cabin, writing a report on the action, an absolute necessity and a task best carried out when everything was fresh in the mind. The owner of the quill
in his hand was laying on the deck, already sown in canvas, with some joker suggesting that it should be weighted with his store of wine rather than a cannon ball. The jest was not cruelly meant, and it had some truth to it when Pearce discovered just how many bottles and pipes Benton had brought along; ten dozen of his blackstrap unconsumed and two pipes of port bought in Lisbon, and that was without his supply of brandy. It was just the natural morbidity of seamen, and in truth too many of their mates had died or taken a wound in that bay, too many lay alongside Benton on the deck, for the men not to be downcast and in need of some humour. Alongside was the ship they had taken, called
Mariette
, with the
Weazel
’s warrant officers crawling all over her to establish her condition, her guns, stores and the like, all guessing at what she might be worth.