Kimbrough crossed his arms over his chest before speaking. “It seems to me, sir, that this ship, and the transport, can be seen a long way off, so … isn’t getting to within a mile or so of the shore more than ample warning of our coming, and our intentions?”
“If done in broad daylight, aye, Captain Kimbrough,” Lewrie told him. “We intend to close the coast in the wee hours of the night, and begin the landings before dawn … at first sparrow fart.”
“In the dark?” Kimbrough gasped.
“Can’t be done!” Captain Bowden said, blanching. “It’d be an hopeless muddle in the dark. The men aren’t trained…!”
“The Navy does it all the time, let me remind you, sirs,” Major Hughes gruffly countered. “Right, Captain Lewrie?”
“We do, sir,” Lewrie replied. “As for fighting at night, operating in the dark, recall Lord Cornwallis’s loss of his blockhouses which sealed his fate at Yorktown, taken by the Yankee Doodles in the dark. General Bonaparte took the last forts and batteries on the peninsula in a rainy night assault, which forced us to abandon Toulon. I was there to see that’un. I took a French frigate in the South Atlantic in a stormy night with half a gale blowing. Well, there was a lot of lightning,” he admitted. “It can be done.”
“But the men aren’t used to…!” Bowden insisted.
“We’ll get them used to it,” Hughes barked, cutting him off. “That’s what the rehearsals are for. God above, you sound as if you and your troops think that Raw Head and Bloody Bones are lurking in the night, eager to suck your souls! The men will learn their roles, and get good at them, if you gentlemen explain it to them with enthusiasm, and lead with enthusiasm. Your confidence in them, and in the method by which we strike the enemy, will make them confident.”
That shut the young officers up, though it didn’t make them appear any more eager. All slumped in their chairs, arms crossed over their chests, looking abashed and sullen, sharing queasy looks among them. Lewrie wasn’t sure that that very sound advice did them much good. The task of leading put upon them was what officers did, what their families had paid for them to be—leaders of men! Perhaps it was the way that Hughes had imparted his sageness was the problem; too harsh and demeaning.
* * *
“Damned slender reeds, sir … damned slender,” Major Hughes sourly commented after the junior officers had been dismissed and sent ashore. Hughes had lingered over a last glass of wine before taking his own departure. “Christ, what a clueless pack of tom-noddies the Army is awarding commissions to these days!”
“Well, any damned fool with money can buy his way in,” Lewrie said. “One’d think, though, that they knew what their chosen careers would ask of ’em. ‘If ye can’t take a joke, ye shouldn’t o’ joined’!”
“Hah!” Hughes barked with wry humour, slapping his knee. “I have seen this over the years, Captain Lewrie. Until recently, the British Army hasn’t left their home barracks except for a brief annual week of road marches, encampments, and field exercises, and it’s all a lark of champagne, claret cups, horse racing for young officers, and high spirits in their messes each night. Mirth, glee, songs, music, the mess silver, and comfortable beds.”
“Sounds grand,” Lewrie replied, “and damn my father for shovin’ me into the Fleet!”
“It’s much the same the rest of the year, with long spells of leave for shooting, fishing, or chasing young ladies,” Hughes groused, “and once the drill for the day, the inspections once a week, is done, most young officers stroll back to the mess for drinks, leaving their men to the sergeants, and only know their troops by names in a muster book, and without their books, they wouldn’t have a clue who they are. They do not lead, they simply pose in the proper place, by God!”
“Can’t do that in the Navy,” Lewrie told him, “livin’ cheek by jowl with ’em for months on end, and knowin’ ’em by the odour of their farts.”
“This lot, Lord,” Hughes bemoaned, more than happy for Pettus to top up his glass. “Oh, I can understand that this wasn’t what they expected. They thought they’d be in the chummy comfort of the mess, with the bands playing, the colours flying, the bugle calls, and the excitement of battle on a field of honour … not rolling about in a ship, getting wet from the knees down, separated for who knows how long from their regiment, and asked to do the total unknown things.
“Home, hearth, and family is the regiment,” Hughes mused with a note of fondness in his voice. “Recruited from the same county they grew up in, for the most part, many of the rankers childhood friends. A grand system is the way we build our Army, quite unlike the French levee en masse, which rounds up unwilling conscripts and shoves hordes of strangers together.”
Lewrie would have mentioned that the Royal Navy pressed hordes of strangers together, but didn’t think it was a good idea, even if it resulted in tightly-bound ships’ companies in the end.
“I expect you will lead our young fellows to the water, as it were, and make them drink, whether they like it or not,” Lewrie said in jest.
“Damned right I shall, sir!” Hughes exclaimed. “By the time I am done, they’ll know their stuff and swear that they volunteered for the privilege!”
“I have no doubt you will, sir,” Lewrie stated.
“What we’re to do, you know, Captain Lewrie,” Hughes said after a swig of wine, “is revolutionary, a method of attack never before attempted. Why, with a few more transports and some escorting warships, I can easily envision the landing of a whole battalion of specially-trained troops at once, overwhelming any objective, defended or not. What was it you called it in your proposal which you sent to Sir Hew … an amphibious operation? God, a fully-established Amphibious Regiment on Army List, perhaps someday an entire Amphibious Brigade! And the officers in at the beginning leading and training the additional troops to glory, honour, and promotion, hah!”
“Well, only if we make a success of it, mind,” Lewrie told him.
“We shall, we shall, by God!” Hughes boasted.
And you’ll be Colonel of the regiment, or be made Brigadier, or be knighted for it? Lewrie thought; Damn, but he dreams ambitious!
“Well, sir, I must take my leave,” Hughes said after tossing back the last of his wine, and rising. “It’s Mess Night at the headquarters, and we’ve a fresh bullock from Tetuán. Moroccan cattle don’t make the best roast beef, but they’ll do in a pinch, hah hah!”
“See you aboard the transport in the morning, then,” Lewrie said, “though I would’ve thought that your last night ashore for some time would be better spent with your mysterious dining companion.”
“Time enough for her, after a good supper,” Hughes said with a wink as he clapped on his grandly feathered bicorne.
“I’ll see you to the entry-port, sir,” Lewrie offered, thinking that if he were in Hughes’s shoes, he’d have given the roast beef supper a wide miss.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
“Mine arse on a band-box, the…!” followed a moment later by “the cretinous, cack-handed, cunny-thumbed bloody … lubbers!”
Lewrie’s oldest and worst cocked hat was flung to the deck for the third time, and it wasn’t even eleven in the morning, yet, but the latest attempt to dis-embark the soldiers of the 77th from Harmony to the boats was no better than the first three over the last five days, and Lewrie was sure that it was disappointing enough to make the Archbishop of Canterbury start kicking children!