Ram; being the tale of one Ramillies Anstruther, 1704-55 .. (64 page)

"Close, Excellence. I'll fetch some." The big man moved away.

Brian fell back. Mother of God, must this long-planned blow fail because of fantastic incompetence? Bad enough the petty rivalries; the Old Spaniards despising the colonials, the Cuba troops looking down on those from San Augustine. But the sending forward of a

second detachment without enough scouts, after the first had been ambuscaded—incredible! Though he had ridden furiously to repair the blunder, he'd been too late.

Dhia, he must get back and goad General Montiano into making an intelligent, co-ordinated attack! Beat Oglethorpe and every English colony was doomed. Oh, for the old Brigade now!

Bascomb returned, moving carefully, his hat filled with water.

Brian drank greedily, then poured a little into his right palm and dripped it upon his wound. He stood up unsteadily, stifling a groan. The irony that he, who had twice adventured to Scotland with the King, should be shot by a fellow Gael! It was while he was freeing himself from the stirrups of his dying horse that a kilted Highlander had pistoled him. Bitterly he remembered the fierce clan war cries: "Loch of the Plain!" "Stand fast, Craigellachie!" "The Black Craig!" He had heard them first in the '15, these battle slogans of the Mackintoshes, Grants and Macphersons; but then they'd been given for James. Curse them for now serving the Usurper!

Giving a sudden gasp, the sergeant half drew his saber. Bascomb stared anxiously, then grinned with relief as the four missing Timu-cuas filed from behind the great oak. With them was a nervous-eyed grenadier from the Havana battalion. He had no musket and his uniform was ripped and stained, but he appeared to have some grenades left in his bag. Upon seeing Brian, he knelt and gave thanks to the Virgin.

"Oh, Sir Officer, I thought these savages were leading me somewhere to torture me!" he gulped.

"Silence!" Brian snapped and turned to the Indians. "What news?"

"Creeks swarm everywhere, senor," their leader reported in good Spanish. "We cannot go southward. And mounted enemy and those who dress like women seek us out. Many in red coats are marching southward also." To point his words, there came a wailing scream as some other unfortunate fugitive met death.

Brian spoke incisively. "We are nine; we return to our duty. Rouse the militiaman." The latter—Brian recognized as one of the governor's clerks at San Augustine—awakened with a yelp of terror, but then collected himself.

Brian now used persuasion. The two Negroes, he pointed out, were escaped slaves, doomed if they surrendered. The Timucuas faced in-

evitable torture and death at the hands of the Creeks. As for the ex-clerk and the grenadier, surely they'd rather die than face a heretic dungeon? He intended to rejoin the main army. Would they follow him?

Heads nodded, shoulders straightened. He counted weapons: two muskets, five swords, three pistols, four tomahawks, four grenades.

"We'll keep close to the shore. The Timucuas will go as advance and flank guards and the lieutenant will bring up the rear. The rest will be main body with me. March!"

Now he remembered Anstruther and how, twice of late, they had clashed. Using the bastard's name to order the enemy to retire had almost succeeded! First the fate of America must be decided, he thought grimly, then we'll settle our own score!

The little party was advancing slowly through the thick forest. Before long the Timucuas reported enemies to the east and south, and soon thereafter two shots came from not far ahead. There was nothing to do but to crouch in silence until the way was clear once more. The waiting made Brian aware again of his aching wound. He was staring between the trees at the broad Altamaha when his heart leaped. A boat was coming from the north, pulled by four oars and with a redcoat in its bow scrutinizing the shore line.

He whispered orders; then, making the grenadier go with him, he walked deliberately out of the forest and to the water's edge, where he stared southward as if oblivious of the now-close boat.

A shout came bouncing over the water and a musket ball smacked against a nearby tree.

"Now retire—slowly!" Brian ordered the grenadier. "Let them keep us in sight." He sauntered into the forest once more; the grenadier's pace was much faster.

"Surrender, ye Spanish dogs, or we'll eat yer livers for breakfast!" came a threat. "Cox'n, larboard yer rudder and let's ashore."

Halting behind an oak, Brian signaled to Bascomb and the rest. There came the soggy bump as the boat's bow ran onto the muddy shore.

"Keep together!" one boatman warned. "Mebbe there's more'n two."

"Now!" Brian drew his sword.

The grenadier lighted a grenade, held it briefly, jumped from cover

and hurled it among the Enghsh. Bascomb, yelling in some barbaric African dialect, charged, sword upraised. The Timucuas closed in also, their bows twanging.

"The boat—that first!" Brian made toward it. A man had remained in its stern and now, seeing him coming, caught up an oar. Brian reached the bow. Behind him were yells, oaths, shots and the blast of another grenade.

"Excellence," came Bascomb's bass, "leave him to me!"

"Shoot him!" Brian panted, still trying to climb aboard.

The oar sliced down.

His return to consciousness was so gradual that he lived through a jumble of reality and imagery: He was being received by Prince Charles Stuart; he was assuring him that already he had lighted the fuse in the New World that would blow the Usurper off Britain's throne . . . Now he was sailing into the Havana's harbor with Erinne and Juan, after his two-year furlough in Europe; but was being thrust back by a dozen oar-waving enemies, all of them Anstruther!

When he did open his eyes, he thought that dusk had come; until he realized a coat had been stretched tentlike over his head and shoulders. His feet, however, were straddled by a pair of stockinged legs and there was a rhythmic creaking of oars.

"Are we near the fort yet?" His tongue felt thick in his dry mouth.

"Excellence, you've recovered!" The coat was removed; brilliant sunlight almost blinded him.

He moved and pain shot into his neck and left arm. Remembering the blow on his head, he touched it with his right hand and felt bandages. He managed to sit up and saw that he was in the boat's stern beside Bascomb, who held the tiller. The nearest pair of rowers were the grenadier and the militiaman. Behind them rowed the Negro sergeant and a Timucua. Two more Indians were huddled in the bow, but there was no sign of the fourth.

Near by on the right were dunes of mud and sand; on the left was open water of a sound and beyond it the shores of a long island.

"That doesn't look like San Simon's," he said sharply.

"We just passed St. Mary's River, Excellence," Bascomb answered. "By dark I 'spect we'll enter the St. John's."

*'Creestir They'd brought him halfway to San Augustine! "Turn

back! Back, you cowardly scum!" Brian's taunt brought a sullen oath from the grenadier, and the sergeant bared his teeth.

"Excellence, you been sleepin' a full day and more. We can't go back now," Bascomb protested. "Our army's beat and most o' the fleet's gone. We seen it sailin' when we come down-channel."

"Cowards!" Brian groaned. A day lost, a day in which fatal decisions had been taken; and he not there to force their reversal.

"General, I'm no coward. I'm an officer in the Spanish Army," Bascomb cried. "But before that I was a slave, and now we're beat, mebbe the English catch me. Cap Davis, if he gits me back he won't just kill me, he'll torture me worse'n Indians do. The Sergeant there, he was in the risin' in Ca'lina two years back. They catch him, he'll burn alive! Me, I'll fight when we got a chance, but we ain't now . . . Here, Excellence, drink this. You'll feel better."

But for his burning thirst, Brian would have spurned the proffered dipper. So he drained it, then lay back numbly.

Caesar Bascomb, who watched him pityingly, was no coward, nor a fool. He had been gloriously proud that he, born in the fetid hold of a slaver and knowing white men only as callous masters, had, by escaping to the Spaniards, found not only freedom but the dignity and rank of a soldier. Yet since the ambushes he had puzzled over the Spanish leaders' terrible blunders and was convinced victory was no longer possible.

After a while, Brian asked him to look at his shoulder. He did and was horrified. The wound was suppurating, with the red streaks running under the skin up into the neck and into the puffed left arm. Coldly, almost impersonally, the sufferer bade him dig out the ball with a knife tip. He had to force himself to obey.

Once Brian screamed and writhed, but then Bascomb was saying, "Here 'tis. General, and a bit of your coat with it."

Brian stared at the ball and the blood-soaked fragment of cloth in the pink palm; but already the sky was revolving and tossing the boat in nauseating yaws that were hurtling it into darkness.

When he came to again, his shoulder had been bandaged with strips of his own shirt. They were already soaked with bloody pus, but the swelling in his upper arm had decreased. His brain felt clearer.

Discovering that his pillow was the grenadier's bag, he felt inside it surreptitiously and found two grenades and some tow match. A

plan formed. He managed to get his flint and steel from his pocket. Already the sun was waning; soon the tired oarsmen would put ashore for the night, where he would be less able to control them. He must act now.

Simple for Red Brian, but now I'm del Lago and past sixty; perhaps I'll fail! he thought in sudden panic. But his sword lay beside him, giving him renewed confidence. Sitting up, he drew the blade as if to examine it for rust. Laying it down again, he slid the tow match from the bag and with studied idleness, lighted it.

Then he had a grenade in his right hand, the match between his teeth, his sword in his almost powerless left hand.

"Turn about!" He thrust Bascomb forward from the tiller. "We're soldiers. We return to our duty—against the enemy!"

Even then he might have failed or have been forced to throw the grenade and so kill the men whose help he needed. But all his life Caesar Bascomb had been used to obeying orders; besides, as an officer, he must enforce a general's commands.

"We're soldiers," he told the rest curtly. "We turn about."

Ram's cutter and Captain Carr's scout boat were putting out from Fort William on Cumberland. Their mission was accomplished: They had found that, though the Spaniards still held Fort San Simon's, most of the fleet had recrossed the bar and was now standing out to sea. They had then coasted along Amelia Island and seen no sign of the enemy. Now they had left Fort William garrison confident it could hold out.

Carr's boat was manned exclusively by his marines; Ram's had, in addition to Lieutenant Fowler and ten marines, his own Sergeant Sleep and three rangers, and Hillispilli and seven more Yamacraws. His plan had been that not only could the rangers and Indians act as landing parties, but they would spell the marines at the oars.

Aided by a north-running tide, both boats were crossing toward the main, to avoid interception by Spanish galleys. They would then work homeward during the night.

Fowler, at the tiller, shaded his eyes. "Curse me, 'tis our dory, and coming this way!"

"It's the boat you lost by ambush?" Ram asked. "How'd it happen?"

The other brought the cutter close to the scout boat. "Captain

knows. We'll want that dory back." He shouted his news to Carr, and Ram called for more particulars,

"Here's Marine Manning, the dory's boatkeeper," Carr returned. "Lay alongside and I'll put him aboard ye. I'm going to get my dory."

Marine Manning, a soft-spoken Virginian, told how his crew had seen two Spaniards on the shore outside the woods, how it had seemed easy to capture them. "I stayed aboard, suh, being keeper," he went on, "Then there was real smart fighting and a crazed officer tried to board me. I cracked his head so's his hair turned redder'n yours. Colonel. Then a big buck nigger came at me, so I dove overboard and swam for it. Got me ashore a ways up and saw 'em all git aboard—nigger, three Indians and two more whites. But the officer, guess I killed him, because they dragged him in and shoved off. Some kind o' renegade, for 'twas English he shouted, trying to board me."

"English?"

"Leastways, he talked English, but he sounded like an Irishman."

"His hair, what color was it?"

"White, suh, till I dyed it red for him. Long face, eyebrows white too. Way he was dressed, guess he was a mighty high officer."

The marine thought he'd been killed! God, don't rob me of him like that! Ram thought wildly. But why was the dory returning now?

"She's turned away again," Fowler growled. "Likely they've discovered we're not Dons. Captain!" he hailed. "Your permission and I can run up with it before dark."

When Carr looked dubious, Ram intervened. "I want it even more than you. Alive or dead, aboard it might be the chief Spanish spy. Return to Frederica and tell the general I'm in pursuit of my enemy. He'll understand. The bastard's worth a brigade to us."

Carr had to agree, so the boats parted. The sun was already low, its reflection on the water making it hard to keep the dory in sight. Both Ram and Fowler had their glasses and between them managed not to lose it, though it was pulling hard to regain the main. But four oars against ten were hard odds.

Ram, watching the fading light, decided the dory would try to enter the St. John's River. Good! He'd trap it there. Was del Lago aboard—was he alive?

The sun slid down and, though the moon was coming up, black

clouds were forming, with a sultriness that threatened a storm. The oarsmen dripped sweat, yet Ram made them row harder.

Ram lurched onward, sweat blinded, his body burning with fever. It was the fourth day since he had driven the Spaniard into the St. John's mouth and forced them to abandon the dory and start afoot down the virtual island that ended at Augustine. By now they would be close to ruined Moosa. Unless he could overtake them soon, they would find safety in Fort San Marco.