“Very well, Mister Westcott,” Lewrie replied. “Mister Kibworth? Show two flashes from your lanthorn to Harmony.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
It took another three or four minutes before the transport made a replying signal light, announcing that her boats were also away and laying on their oars, waiting for the three-flash signal to row ashore.
Two Bells were struck; it was 5 A.M.
“We’re really going to do it, by God,” Lt. Elmes muttered with rising excitement. He could not yet quite make the fellow out, but Lewrie could hear his new Hessian boots, of which Lt. Elmes was especially proud, squeaking as the Third Officer rose and flexed on the balls of his feet.
They had sailed from Gibraltar three days earlier, but once at sea, another bout of squally weather and rough seas had sprung to life, forcing the ships to stand well offshore under reduced sail, with the men of the 77th Foot at the bulwarks to “cast their accounts to Neptune” as they suffered their first exposure to the way that Harmony rode the swells. One would have thought that their long voyage from England to Gibraltar had given them some sort of “sea legs”, but, evidently it had not. They were as sea-sick as so many dogs.
Lewrie had delayed the attack one full day after the weather had moderated to let them recover, fearful of shoving them ashore and into combat, still crop-sick and puking from a ship still reeking of vomit.
As long as I’ve been at sea, the smell’d make me shit through my teeth, Lewrie thought, recalling how a kindly older sailor had put it when he’d gone aboard the old Ariadne the first time in 1780.
“A trader told me that down at Tetuán, the Arabs say that the dawn is when one may distinguish ’twixt a black thread and a white one, sir,” Lt. Westcott said in a soft voice by Lewrie’s elbow.
“Makes sense, I suppose,” Lewrie replied. “Have you tried it, yet?”
“Going half cross-eyed, but nothing yet, sir,” Westcott japed.
Lewrie went back to the binnacle cabinet to stow away the night telescope, then bent over the compass bowl’s glim to consult his watch, and found that it was twenty minutes past 5 A.M., and ten minutes to Three Bells. He stood back up and peered shoreward once more. Those large windmills could now almost be made out, a bit more distinctly.
“Three flashes, Mister Kibworth,” Lewrie snapped. “Let’s get our people on their way, before any sentries can spot ’em.”
Both ships lay about a half-mile from shore, and it would take long minutes, perhaps a whole half-hour for them to ground and land the troops, uncomfortably close to the period of muted greyness, the arrival of false dawn, when those Arabic threads could be distinguished, and a watcher ashore could espy the two ships and the boats that beetle-crawled their way to the beach.
Damme, did I leave it too late? Lewrie fretted to himself; Ye poxy fool, I should’ve sent the signal at Two Bells!
Now that the operation was committed, he felt a frisson of dread, for, by the faint light of the stars, and a sliver of a moon that was just rising, he could make out the disturbed-water splashes from the boats’ oar blades as they dug in, rose, and trailed hints of phosphoresence!
Lewrie knew that the soldiers, Marines, and sailors going ashore in the dark, their young officers also, would be feeling the same sort of icy, stomach-clenching dread of the unknown.
I pressed for this, I planned it, arranged it, come Hell or high water, and if it don’t work, or I get a lot o’ people killed, it’s me that takes the blame, Lewrie fretted.
If the whole thing went smash, it would be tempting to write a report to Admiralty to try and pass the onus of failure off on to someone else; Lewrie had seen that done too many times before. To do so, though, would force him to face the fact that he wasn’t clever enough, or smart enough, to manage senior command, and had spent his career in the Navy coasting by on supreme good luck!
“Christ, but command is a vicious bastard!” he whispered.
At that moment, he would much rather have been one of his Midshipmen in the landing boats, with but one simple task to perform and no responsibility beyond the gunn’ls of his boat.
A simple task for simple bloody me! he thought.
“I think I can make out…” Lt. Westcott intruded on his frets, “yes, I can see the oar splashes, sir. They’re in close to the beach.”
Lewrie looked out over the bulwarks and spotted them for himself, finding that the boats were closing in on the shore, but not in the hoped-for single line-abreast.
“Where the Devil are Harmony’s boats goin’?” he exclaimed, gripping the cap-rails. “Can’t they see the bloody lights on the bloody battery? They’re too far off to the left!”
There was no way of signalling them to change course, and they were too close to shore to do so, without steering right, parallel to the beach, before turning again to make their grounding.
This is goin’ t’turn t’shit! he grimly told himself; Even in this next-to-nothing surf, some are sure t’get overturned!
If the operation failed due to that mistake, perhaps he would write that report to Admiralty, a blistering one!
Lewrie dashed up the ladderway to the poop deck for a slightly better view, even though false dawn had not yet greyed the skies, but by then, even the oar splashes and faint phosphoresence had vanished. He realised that for good or ill, the boats and all those men were now ashore, and there was nothing he could do about it!
Several long minutes passed with nothing happening, no blossoming of lights round the battery to indicate that the sentries had wakened and spotted the troops, then …
“Gunfire, huzzah!” young Midshipman Fywell cried aloud, hopping up and down in excitement.
“Still, young sir!” Lewrie heard Lt. Harcourt snap. “Bear yourself with the proper demeanour!”
Wee red and amber fireflys were twinkling ashore, quite merry to observe, rippling along in a line in what Lewrie recognised as platoon fire. Long seconds later, after the first winkings, he could hear the faintest hint of twig-crackling as many weapons were discharged.
“False dawn, at last, sir,” the Sailing Master, Mr. Yelland, called up to him from the quarterdeck below. “At, ehm … five fourty-seven.”
Black threads, white threads … now it was dark grey land and white surfline, dull grey windmills and stone battery, and red tunics with white crossbelts, billows of gunpowder smoke, soldiers in tall shakoes in a long two-deep line fronting the battery, and another pack going round the right of it, disappearing into the rising smoke. One of the artillery pieces fired with a roar, adding more smoke to the confusion, and a roundshot moaned far overhead of Sapphire’s masts.
“I don’t suppose we should respond to that, hey, sir?” Westcott asked from the foot of the ladderway.
“Not without killing our troops, no,” Lewrie said, grimacing. He had called his crew to Quarters, but had not issued orders to load or run out, and the only weapons from the arms chests had been given to the shore parties.
That was the only shot from the battery, though, and the next sounds that could be made out from shore sounded like thin cheers and feral shouts. That thin line of red-coated soldiers could be seen as they swarmed up the slight slope to the parapets and scrambled over it. A moment later and a small British boat jack was being waved and wig-wagged over the parapet in vigourous fashion.
“We’ve taken it, then,” Westcott said, with a whoosh of relief.
“Thank God!” Lewrie said, with more emotion than was proper to a Navy Post-Captain. “That’s the first part done,” he added, returning to the correct calmness. “Now’s the mills’ turn, and all of the boats in harbour that we can reach. Assuming of course that there’s not a garrison that’s moved in since the last agent’s report.”
“If so, the battery was the most important part, as you said, sir,” Westcott pointed out. “If they appear, we can retire in good order, with the morning’s honour intact.”