“Has Chalky behaved himself, Jessop?” Lewrie asked his cabin servant. “More to the point, have you been behaving yourself?”
“He missed ya somethin’ fierce, sir, slinkin’ about lookin’ for ya,” Jessop replied, “an’ meowin’ right pitiful. An’ aye, sir. I behaved. Might ya care for somethin’ t’drink, sir?”
“A Rhenish’d be welcome,” Lewrie said, going to the settee on the starboard side to put up his booted feet and slouch into the cushions. “Aah!” he said with pleasure to have something soft under his backside, at long last, and to rest his tortured feet.
“Lord, who’d be a soldier,” he said with a long sigh, after a first deep sip of his wine, and laid his head back and closed his eyes.
* * *
With their dead interred alongside the few slain from the two attacking regiments of the Heavy Brigade, Lewrie led his party and the trundling waggon down from the Blaauwberg to the interior, following a long, snaking column of infantry, cavalry, and the field artillery, and the dust clouds which all those booted feet, hooves, and wheels roiled up. That journey was like an ant descending the inside of a gigantic punch bowl, for, once past the coastal mountain chain, they caught sight of even more rugged, taller, and more impressive mountains and buttes that seemed to ring the plains on every hand.
The plains themselves rolled gently, sprinkled with knobs or kloofs of up-thrusting bare rock. On those plains they encountered their first farmsteads, with houses and barns and outbuildings made of stone and stuccoed stark white, surrounded by orchards and grain fields, paddocks and pastures filled with reddish cattle, all miles apart from each other, and too far away from the line of march for any foraging for fruit or the odd chicken.
At least they were at the head of the baggage train, half of which had yet to descend the Blaauwberg, and close up with the trundling gun-carriages, limbers, and caissons. They even had time to stop and dole out the first rum ration of the day at half-past Eleven of the morning before being overtaken.
An hour or two later, urgent bugle calls stopped the columns and shook both brigades out into lines, and the artillery left them almost at the gallop. Lewrie spotted a low rise off to their left and directed his men to go there.
He would not press his luck a second time; he and his sailors and Marines would be mere witnesses. And, once settled at their ease on the rise, what a grand view they had! It was like lead soldiers on the children’s room carpet as five thousand British soldiers formed long lines, with the drums rolling and the regimental bands playing, the bright colours waving, and the elegantly uniformed cavalry trotting or cantering to either flank.
They had found the Dutch, and they would make a fight of it, at last. Everyone with a pocket telescope stood and fidgeted with anxiety and excitement, and the Midshipmen counted the Dutch artillery and made estimates of enemy strength.
Five thousand Dutch soldiers, at least a third to a half of them cavalry or dis-mounted dragoons, or mounted infantry, and there were at least twenty Dutch field pieces, arrayed in line of battle the equal of British strength, but that made no difference. Bugles, drums, martial airs, and skirling bagpipes blared, the British guns barked, bucked, and roared, and Col. Shrapnel’s deadly bursting shot decimated the Dutch as both British brigades marched up to the range of musketry and began the continuous rolling volleys at three rounds a minute from each man. The British Army was the only one in Europe to practice regular live-fire musketry, and that steady hail of lead melted the Dutch away. Then the bright winks of sun on steel could be seen as the regiments fixed bayonets, the roars from the throats of five thousand men could be heard as the regiments were loosed at the charge, and it was over. The Dutch broke, turned their backs to their foe, scrambled for their horses, abandoned most of their guns, and ran, or surrendered in place!
Once their cheers had died down, and the last hat recovered after being flung aloft in triumph, Lewrie led his party forward, eager for loot and souvenirs … and some spare Dutch horses to ride. They found plenty of all their wants: shakoes and hats, brass plaques from enemy cross-belts, more wood canteens, spare wool and cotton stockings from spilled and abandoned packs, extra blankets and groundcloths for bedding, and farm lads from the crew managed to round up and calm enough horses for all officers and Midshipmen to ride. Even so, Lewrie and his men were pikers when it came to looting compared to the soldiers of the British Army, and their appalled officers’ attempts to quell the looting of the Dutch baggage train and stores of wine and spirits let Lewrie and his men make their pickings without notice.
The Army camped on the near banks of the Salt River for the night to await the arrival of the siege artillery, and Lewrie laid out their own separate camp, cautioned his men to take sticks and beat the ground from the centre outwards to drive away any snakes, saw firewood gathered and Yeovill put to work with a cookfire before he, Lt. Simcock, and Lt. Westcott rode out to do some hunting. They came back with three native antelopes, grysboks, and a bushbuck, had them butchered, the hides and offal thrown into the river so predators would not raid their camp at night, and spitted them on frames made from Dutch muskets and barrels. With cheese, ship’s bisquit, small beer or rooibos tea, everyone deemed it a feast, and every man rolled into his bedding round the campfires that night feeling stuffed and sated, most of them who were not poachers back home in England tasting their very first game meat!
The rest had been anti-climactic, a stroll through a parkland. The siege guns came up, the army marched on Cape Town, and word came that the Dutch governor of the Cape, Van Prophelow, would negotiate. In sign of that, he allowed Fort Knocke to be occupied, and Lewrie’s party could boil up salt rations in the shelter of the fort’s courtyard, marvelling at the number and great calibres of the guns mounted there. On the morning of the 10th of January, Van Prophelow formally surrendered, and the enemy general they had defeated, Jannsens, who had retreated with the remnants of his army to Holland’s Hottentot Kloof, surrendered as well.
They were idle all the next day, but took part in the victory parade into Cape Town itself on the 12th, found that all the taverns and eateries that Lewrie fondly remembered were open for business, and that Dutch beers flowed freely at the cost of only a few pence.
Lt. Westcott did ask if Lewrie also knew the locations of the best brothels, but that knowledge was ten years out of date, and he would have to fend for himself!
If there was anything to mar their merry jaunt, it was a confrontation with Captain Byng of Belliqueux, who was irked that he’d been counting on all landed sailors and Marines to help get the siege guns and carriages ashore, and Lewrie had run off on his own to play a game of soldiers, very loosely mis-interpreting his orders!
“You’ve a name for scraping, Lewrie, so I can understand why you dashed off for more derring-do, but you can’t have fun all the time,” Byng had chid him, and that not all that sternly, “now and then, you must join in at the onerous pulley-hauley with the rest of us!”
* * *
That reverie made Lewrie smile, and Chalky’s arrival in his lap, then onto his chest, made him open his eyes. He took another sip of wine, and then it was back to routine. Yeovill was announced and given leave to enter the cabins to make the arrangements for the supper for all officers and Mids not on Harbour Watch that evening. Guinea fowl from shore would be one course, ham for another, some fresh-caught yellowtail would be the fish course, and beef steaks would complete it. There would be baked rolls, boiled maize and garden peas, snap beans and sauteed onions, and dessert would be strawberries and cream over pound cake.