The headland of Cabo de Gata was too rocky for a landing, and the beach below it was much too narrow, according to the sea chart, and the sketches. The nearest beach was two hundred yards East of the headland, broader and sandier, but Sapphire and the transport could not fetch-to any closer than a mile from shore. It would be a long row, both ways.
“How large a garrison is there?” Pomfret asked, his forehead creased in worry. “The Spanish must have some force to keep the workers from running off, I should think, else the whole project falls apart for lack of diggers.”
“There is at least a company of Spanish troops,” Mountjoy had to admit, with a touch of worry in his own face. “A mixed bag, really. Cooks, infantry, some engineer officers and their aides, and about a dozen cavalry. My informants say that they’re used to patrol round the site to prevent workers from deserting, and running down those of them who make off.”
“Mountjoy, is this like Salobrena?” Lewrie asked, scowling. “The only target you know the most about?” He shared a quick look with Captain Pomfret, who had evidently been filled in on Salobrena by the officers of the 77th; neither man looked that confident. “It seems t’me that ye might let this’un hatch, first, or let the Dons lay their egg before we go smash it, when the workers are gone, and the powder’s there, so there’s more for the Spanish t’lose, and their garrison’d be about seventy-five or eighty artillerymen … about ten or twelve men per gun, maybe fifteen?”
“Rather a steep climb up from that beach to the battery, up a draw that could get us enfiladed from either side, what?” Pomfret pointed out. “Not to be a croaker … just saying.”
“You do have other objectives in mind, don’t you?” Lewrie demanded. “Something easier t’get at? It seems t’me that we’d be better off cruisin’ up and down the shore, shellin’ the place from a mile off with quoins out, at maximum elevation. That’d stir ’em up, and cause bags of chaos and mayhem.
“That’s our brief, don’t ye know, Captain Pomfret,” Lewrie said to the Army officer with a wink and a grin, “creatin’ chaos and mayhem in job-lots.”
Mountjoy did not take that at all well; he sat back with his arms crossed upon his chest, scowling with his lips pursed and brows furrowed. “It is my best … our best … option at the moment, yes,” he grudgingly confessed. “The others are too strongly defended, or too hard to get at, at present. Hmm.” He drummed his right-hand fingers on his left arm. “How about this, sirs. Sapphire will close the coast and take it under fire, up and down, ’til the battery’s damaged and the garrison and the workers have been run off. Then, if the two of you deem it practical, land the troops and scandalise the works and the semaphore tower. No pre-dawn surprises, do it in broad daylight.”
“Well…” Lewrie tentatively responded, after taking a deep breath and slowly exhaling. “How do I judge if the battery’s damaged sufficiently from a mile off, by telescope? How would Captain Pomfret judge that the defenders’ve been driven away from his transport, which will be fetched-to even further off? Whose responsibility is it to committ the troops into God knows what? Just a simple sailor, me.”
“Good point, sir,” Pomfret agreed, breaking out a wee smile. “The responsibility and assessment of the risk … not the ‘simple sailor’ part.”
“Aye, I can hammer the place,” Lewrie allowed, though still in some doubt as to the value of the attack. “Though it’s more the work of howitzers or sea-mortars, with fused explosive shells. I’ll take Harmony along, just in case, but I doubt if the troops, or my Marines, will have much of a chance t’get their feet wet. Perhaps you should take passage aboard Sapphire, Captain Pomfret,” Lewrie suggested. “If a decision to land the troops must be made, it’d be best if we were face-to-face. Signal hoists are for orders, not discussion, and the best I could send would be ‘yes’, ‘no’, or, ‘maybe’.”
“I’d hoped to be with my troops, sir,” Pomfret said, “but in this case, I agree that I should be in the same ship as you. My officers are practised enough in dis-embarking their companies, by now, and if we do decide to land the men, I could go in with your Marines.”
“We’re settled, then?” Mountjoy perkily said. “Everyone satisfied? Good!” he bulled on, not waiting for them to respond. “Deacon and I will prepare copies of the maps, sketches, and the chart, and we’ll consider the battery at Cabo de Gata our next objective.”
They shared a final glass of wine and some more idle chatter, in which, to Lewrie’s shock, Pomfret casually revealed that he had been with his regiment on Sicily, but had been brought to Gibraltar and the naval hospital after being wounded in action, along with some men of the 16th Foot, and had only been on staff duties at the Convent for a fortnight after being released!
* * *
“Good God, d’ye think he’s physically up to it?” Lewrie asked, with a queasy feeling, after Pomfret had taken his leave. “I doubt if Dalrymple’d appreciate it if he keeled over.”
“He looks fit as a fiddle to me, and I’ve been assured that he is cleared for duty,” Mountjoy replied with a faint grin. “An officer experienced at skirmishing is the best we could have hoped for, as you said yourself in the beginning.”
“I’ll have t’take your word for him, then,” Lewrie said, with a shrug. “He doesn’t seem half the tight-arse that Hughes was. Heard anything of what happened to him, yet?”
“No, the Spanish haven’t sent Dalrymple any word,” Mountjoy told him, then got a crafty look oh his phyz. “Speaking of Hughes … Mister Deacon told me you’ve adopted his mistress. If the lady that he saw you with is not Hughes’s girl, then she’s the spitting image.”
“I have,” Lewrie replied, grinning. “She is.”
“Shore lodgings? Removing from one to another? Shopping?”
“Dammit, Mountjoy, have ye set him t’spy on me?” Lewrie barked.
“Nothing of the sort,” Mountjoy replied, with a wave of his hand. “Just idle happenstance that he saw you. Christian charity, is it?”
“The stupid fool left her nothing, and made no arrangements for her upkeep should anything happen to him,” Lewrie objected. “I asked about with his fellow officers, but he hadn’t a thought for her. His loss. More like pagan lust, if you must categorise it. I was quite taken with Mistress Maddalena Covilhā from the first time I saw her and Hughes dining, as you well know, and as you cautioned me to shun, so Hughes wouldn’t go pettish on us. Utterly wasted on a swine like Hughes. She’s Portuguese…”
“From a mountain town named Covilhā, thence from Oporto, where she took up with a young man in the wine trade,” Mountjoy interrupted, ticking off what he knew, “and followed him to Gibraltar in 1803. He perished in the last bout of Gibraltar Fever in 1804, and she’s been ‘under the protection’ of a series of British officers since. She’s fluent in English as well as Spanish and her native tongue, is well-read in all three languages, and is much brighter than one would imagine of a young woman from such a background, with a fine mind.”
“You’ve spied on her?” Lewrie gawped.
“As soon as Hughes was chosen to command our troops, we looked into her,” Mountjoy said, with that sort of “I know something that you don’t know” superiority that was rife in the espionage trade, and which had always gotten right up Lewrie’s nose. “I told you early on that Gibraltar’s simply teeming with suspect foreigners, and the last thing we needed was a tempting young woman in contact with the enemy, who might beguile a braggart like Hughes into revealing too much of our plans, or my sources, and how we gathered information on potential targets. I have to protect my network.”