He was hoisted aboard, those near hearing him moan softly at the pain as he was taken below to the surgeon. There were other wounded-and Kydd counted only seventeen in the party.
Later he had the lieutenant brought to the coach and placed in an officer’s cot.
Kydd sat with him but it was well after dark before he came back to consciousness and some time before he could recognise his captain.
“How goes it for you, William?” Kydd asked.
“S-sir, what … am I doing here?”
“Never mind. Ship’s company at their grog, too noisy for a sufferer,” he answered gruffly.
The field guns Kydd had seen landed had been turned on the British and a six-pounder ball impacting near Clinton had driven shards of rock into his body and caused a concussion.
The marine had stood at Kydd’s side in the climactic last days of siege in Buenos Aires and other adventures too numerous to recall. His heart wrung with pity at the thought of the young officer leaving his bones to rot here-and for what grand cause?
“Surgeon thinks you’ve a good chance, William.” It wasn’t quite what had been said.
“My r-report, sir.” The voice was weak and slurred but piteously determined.
“Not now, dear fellow,” Kydd said.
But Clinton was going to do his duty. It came out painfully, with pauses to gather his strength.
The first to land had not known the extent of the enemy infiltration until they had rounded the hill and come under fire from concealed gun emplacements protected by the fortified monastery.
They had held their ground until the reinforcements from the fleet had reached them. Jointly it was decided that the guns were too big a threat to be ignored. Mounted on the crest overlooking the fleet, they could place it under a pitiless onslaught of steady, aimed fire.
The problem was that any advance on the gun-pits would be dominated by musket fire from the loopholes of the monastery. One course would have been to land their own guns for an artillery duel but that would take time.
It had to be a frontal assault with no wavering and this had been bravely accomplished. The monastery was taken, the guns spiked and the enemy in full retreat. But before it had ended Clinton had lost three men killed and much of his detachment wounded.
Then orders had come to return on board.
Without knowledge of events on the island Duckworth had obliged them to break off and leave it to the Turks.
“Thank you for your report, Lieutenant,” Kydd said softly. “You have done your duty most nobly, sir.”
Dawn came, and with it, what Kydd had been most dreading. The wind had veered during the night and now was fitfully blowing from the northeast. A broad reach to Constantinople in one board.
It was fair at last for the bombarding of the ancient city.
Like the tragic conclusion of a Greek drama, each of the main players stepped through their parts to the inevitable climax.
A signal mounted in the flagship’s halliards: “Weigh and proceed as previously ordered.” Obediently the warships of the squadron raised anchor and ensigns rose in the ships as they manoeuvred into line-of-battle.
In the delicate early light, the terrifying majesty of the spectacle was made poignant by the knowledge of what was to come. The Ottomans had broken the cease-fire and must now endure the consequences. That morning there would be scenes of destruction that would resound around the world.
L’Aurore took her position to starboard of the line. With the other frigate, her duty was to keep watch to seaward as the battleships did their work. At least Kydd’s ship would have no direct part in the ruin of the city.
The wind strengthened; sails caught and bellied, speeding the ships on to their destiny. Very soon magnificent buildings, olive groves and the splendour of the imperial palace spread out ahead, firming from a blue haze.
Within the hour they would …
Kydd grabbed a glass.
Stretching all along the seafront were moored warships, large and small, a ringing of the peninsula with a continuous line of guns. Kydd steadied his telescope further in-on the cannon manned and waiting, an unbroken chain of artillery that encircled the capital.
A monstrous gathering of strength, an insuperable barrier that even a battle fleet could not batter down.
They were too late.
Duckworth signalled the fleet to reverse its course in succession. It did so, carefully out of range. The shore guns remained silent.
Another signal-“Wear and advance.”
Tacking and veering in front of Constantinople, the admiral flaunted his might at the Turks in the hope of luring them to sea and a confrontation. Again and again, up and down, but the Turks never stirred from their unassailable positions.
It was useless, humiliating, and could have only one ending. Before the close of the day the British fleet had retreated: spread sail and set course southward for the Dardanelles and the wider world.
As they sailed into the darkness there was little cheer in L’Aurore. It was clear to the humblest crew member that the expedition, bigger by far than had taken Cape Town and Buenos Aires, comparable in scale to anything seen in the Mediterranean since Trafalgar, had completely failed.
To Kydd, it now seemed plain that, with their helplessness so vividly demonstrated, French influence could only increase to the point at which Bonaparte might at long last look to bursting out of his European confines.
And there was now no conceivable hope that anything could stop the inevitable slide from influence to power, from there to domination and rule, just as it had in so many countries. Would Bonaparte insist that the next sultan be a brother or cousin, crowned and loyal to France only? He would then have his royal road to India and the world.
It was an utterly depressing thought, made worse by their very helplessness.
That night the gun-room invited him to dinner. He was grateful, for a black mood had clamped in-not only at their dismal failure but at the news that Poulden, Cumby and the midshipmen had not been found in the monastery. He was leaving them behind to their fate in a Turkish prison.
“Cadiz will be a sad let-down after this,” Bowden offered.
“A pox on that,” retorted Curzon. “Any station that offers me a trifle of sport at the Frogs’ expense will do.”
“Afore there’s talk o’ going back,” Redmond, the gunner rumbled, “there’s a little matter should give us pause.”
“What’s that, then?”
“Yez saw how quick-smart your Turk was, gettin’ the defences as they were, in only a few days? Now, if they’s as nimble in the Dardanelles, we’re in for a right mauling as we sails down past them forts.”
“Wasn’t so bad coming up, Thad,” Oakley said. “All a mort pitiful, them Turks as had a try at us.”
“Ah-that’s because they weren’t expectin’. I’ll give youse a guinea to a shilling that they, knowin’ we has to go back the same way, has somethin’ in the way of a farewell salute in mind.”
“How piquant.”
Everyone looked suspiciously at the surgeon Peyton, who rarely spoke at gun-room gatherings.
“What do y’ mean, Doc?”
“Why, can’t you see? The French are the enemies of Turkey and have been since ’ninety-eight when they invaded their territory in Egypt. We’re their allies from the same date. So who’s firing at whom?”
“All a bit murky f’r an old shellback like me,” the boatswain growled. “I’d be beholden to the cap’n to give us a steer.” In the recent past the question would have been directed at Renzi.
“Not so hard to fathom. I’m grieved to say it, but we’re seeing yet another country drop into Napoleon’s bony hands. Unless we can come up with some sort of stratagem, I fear we’re witness to yet one more conquest.”
“Stratagem? You mean land an army or some such, sir?”
“Well, something-anything as sees Johnny Crapaud put to embarrassment, is all I can say.”
“No chance o’ that now, I’m thinking. We’re scuttling off like frightened rabbits, no glory in that a-tall.”