HMS Diamond (30 page)

      
"I will locate a boat—steal it if I have to—and catch-up to you in Herqui."

      
"How long?"

      
"A few hours."

      
Smith didn’t know why, but he believed the young man. Turning toward the wheel he called, "Mr. Wilkie, have the bosun report to me, if you would."

      
Turning back toward Wright he saw the look of a professional soldier in his eyes go out and return to that of a somewhat disorganized, mild-mannered, superannuated midshipman.

***

      
The harbor at Herqui was a long almost unnaturally perfect rectangle that ran northeast to southwest. Protecting it from the worse of the north Atlantic weather was the thick arm of Cape Frehel. At the tip of the cape were two small peninsulas separated by a shallow bay. As the
Diamond
pulled to the other side of the first of the two peninsulas, Smith could feel the wind and sea settling down. But that did not mean the ship was in the clear. He still had two more problems.

      
To begin with, to look at it, Herqui Harbor seemed wide and inviting, but that was misleading. It was a wide bay, to be sure, but it was also very shallow. There was only one narrow and intricate channel that he could take with his frigate, and the chart he had was old and not well marked. He would have to feel his way into the bay, but that wasn’t the worst of it. Cape Frehel also had guns.

      
The ship was eerily quiet. The men were at their stations, the guns manned and loaded; but no one said a word. The only sounds came from the working of the ship—lines against wood, wood against wood—and the sound of the now diminished wind gently whistling in the shrouds.

      
"Maintop report!" Smith’s command seemed louder than normal in the silence.

      
"They’s guns on the second peninsula, sir. I can just make them out. Looks ter be two... nah make that three. Two’re together near the summit on that ledge and one detached lower ter the left."

      
No sooner had the report been made than a flash of red erupted from the single gun followed quickly by flashes from the two others. The first ball went wide but the second two were directly in line with the
Diamond
, although a bit short. Smith had no doubt that, once the guns were warmed up, those shots would strike home.

      
"Mr. Pine, tell Mr. Sandsbury to direct two of his guns at that lower battery, then pull the quoins from the rest, get as much elevation as he can, and try to take out those two higher guns."

      
This was not a good situation. The
Diamond
had very little room to maneuver because it had to stay in the channel. If she moved out of it, she would run aground. Worse, the ship was moving—making gunnery more difficult—and they had to fire at the extremes of the guns ability to elevate. The land based cannon, however, had none of those disadvantages. They were firing downward from solid ground and had long since been zeroed-in on the channel.

      
The
Diamond
launched her first salvo but they were not even close to either target. The shore batteries replied and the first ball struck the larboard catwalk sending splinters showering down on the men serving the guns on the main deck.

      
Within about 10 minutes the Diamond had taken out the single detached battery, but the two guns higher up were proving more of a problem. She just could not get enough elevation for her guns to hit them and he couldn’t move the ship away from their fire. In effect, they were sitting ducks. Smith summoned Lt. Carter of the marine detachment to the quarterdeck.

      
"Mr. Carter, can your men take out those guns up there?"

      
Carter had been studying the peninsula ever since the guns were first reported. "Yes, sir. See how the peninsula slopes to the left? If you could land my men and I on that beach over there by those rocks, we could go up that slope and take them from the rear. In fact, I suspect there’s a road there to supply the batteries."

      
"Very good. Get your men together. Mr. Pine, bring up one of the boats and muster a crew to take them in."

      
Within minutes Carter had his red-coated marines standing in a line on the main deck and Pine had a boat pulled along side. All of the ship’s boats were trailing behind the
Diamond
because there was no sense having them on deck during a battle. They would only increase the probability of men being wounded by splinters if one were hit.

      
But the whole trip to Herqui seemed to be cursed, where everything that could go wrong, did. When the boat was about halfway to shore, a detachment of French soldiers could be seen trotting toward the peninsula. They took up position behind the rocks on the beach where Carter and his marines were headed and set up a withering fire toward the boat. The marines returned fire but were having little effect. They too were now sitting ducks.

      
Smith unconsciously flinched as a round shot whistled over the quarterdeck and another punched a hole in the fore-topsail. Walking back and forth, he rubbed a small scar on his forehead, the result of an old wound received when he was a midshipman in his first action aboard the old
Unicorn
.

      
Suddenly, he turned. "Mr. Pine. Do you think you could lead a group of men up that precipice in front of those guns?"

      
Pine looked over the starboard rail, studied the peninsula for a moment, and replied, "Yes, sir. I believe I could. As long as they didn’t have muskets up there to fire down at us, I think we could do it."

      
"Then recall the marines and take whatever men you need. Those guns must be silenced or we’re finished."

      
The call went out for volunteers and before the bosun’s mates had finished their circuit of the ship, three seamen were already pulling on a line to bring up the second boat to the ship, able seamen Hayes, Durbin and Pulley. The three had become inseparable since reporting aboard. Walker and Whitney were responsible for restoring Hayes to the navy without being hanged first, and Susan had literally saved Durbin and Pulley’s lives at the Battle of the Saints. These facts brought them together as friends, and all three kept a protective eye on both Susan and Lucas.

      
The boat scuffed up on the narrow beach and 12 men leaped out to pull it further on shore. Pine looked up toward the batteries and saw a half-dozen men looking back down at him.

      
"Please, God, don’t let them have muskets." He thought, then said with as much confidence as he could muster, "All right men, up we go. A guinea for the first man to reach the top."

      
The climb was difficult but not impossible. The hill rose at a steep angle and the gravelly soil was loose, causing them to slip frequently; but there was an abundance of scrub bushes along the way that could be used to help pull themselves up. The
Diamond
was laying down a barrage of canister fire along the left hand slope to keep the column of soldiers that attacked the marines from also reinforcing the batteries. The smaller, lighter, Pulley was leading the way followed by Pine. Further back was Durbin and the rest of the men, and much further back was the heavier, powerfully built, Hayes.

      
Pine was anxiously scanning the summit as he climbed. "Please, no muskets," he kept muttering to himself; but, again, what could go wrong, did.

      
Just as Pulley was a few yards from the top an officer appeared, looked down, calmly raised a pistol and fired. The ball whistled past Pulley’s head and hit Pine in the shoulder. This caused him to loose his grip on a bush and start tumbling downhill toward a near certain death when Durbin checked his progress. The remaining men rushed past the two and on to the summit. Durbin looked around helplessly. He was hanging on to a bush with one hand and Lt. Pine with the other, while looking up toward the ridge expecting to be shot any second. Finally Hayes made it up and, with sweat running down his reddened face, laughed at Durbin's predicament, grabbed Pine by the coat collar and dragged him to the top like he was a large rag doll.

      
Once at the top, there was very little to do. There were no muskets at the battery because they never believed a land attack was possible, at least not from the seaward side. Deciding that discretion was the better part of valor, when the first of the armed seaman appeared over the top, the gun crews fled.

      
Pine was still conscious. He painfully raised himself up on one elbow and looked around to see most of the men had formed a defensive perimeter around the guns while several others were busy driving spikes into the touch-holes of the big 24-pound guns. With the touch-holes blocked the cannon could not be fired and it would take a long time before the French would be able to drill out those holes again. Beyond the cannons, to the left, he could see a stone building where the crews undoubtedly slept, and a small stone powder magazine to the right. Between the two was a flagpole with the French flag still flying.

      
Pine called Pulley over and reached inside his jacket pulling out a neatly folded British flag. "Pulley, take this over to that pole and run it up... and bring me back that damn French flag."

      
After the rest of the men had disappeared over the lip of the ridge, Hayes lit a long fuse and ran back to the cliff edge. Then he hoisted Pine across his broad shoulders and carried him down the slope like he was a child.

Chapter Nine

      
A cheer rose up on the Diamond when the French flag dropped and the British ensign rose on the flagpole at the peninsula’s summit. An even louder cheer erupted when the powder magazine blew. But there was no cheering on the orlop deck as Walker draped a small sheet of canvas over the still form of a seaman, the second one to die that day.

      
There was no time to mourn, however. He looked around and could see Susan, the front of her dress spattered with blood, wrapping a dressing around the head of a seaman whom Walker had attended a few minutes earlier. As he was about to speak to a man with a large wood splinter sticking out of his shoulder blade, when he heard a commotion by the ladderway leading down to the orlop. Looking up, he could see two marines carrying a third red-coated form down the ladder.

      
"Well, the marines have returned," he muttered to himself. But this wasn’t just any marine. It was Lieutenant Carter.

      
"Susan, to me," he snapped, as the young lieutenant was laid out on their operating table. The white facing on Carter’s jacket had a deep red bloom covering it just to the right of the center of his chest. Walker took out a pair of large scissors, opened up his jacket and cut open his shirt.

      
When the wound was exposed Walker was relieved to see that the blood was not coming out in gushes nor were there any bubbles mixed in with it. It was a good initial sign. If the former had occurred, it meant that a major artery was severed. If the latter, it meant the lung was punctured. Either way, it would have been a death sentence.

      
"Susan, give the lieutenant a goodly dose of laudanum."

      
Then, turning to the very pale but still conscious young officer, "Lieutenant, you really must find a better way to collect French souvenirs." Carter made a valiant attempt at a smile.

      
"This might hurt just a little bit," Walker said as he forced a finger into the wound. Carter gasped but didn’t cry out even though he had never experienced such pain in his life. But Walker had to find out how far the ball had traveled into Carter’s body. As he was doing it, he could picture in his mind’s eye what had just happened.

      
The entrance wound of a musket ball was only as large as the ball itself; but it wasn’t the lead sphere that did the majority of the damage. It was the shock wave behind it.

      
As a musket ball enters the body it carves out a track through the tissue; but behind the ball comes a shock wave that is all out of proportion to the size of the ball. It is a cavity about the size of a fist that pulses open and closed multiple times as it travels down the tunnel created by the ball. That, Walker knew, was what usually caused the major damage. It was like having a series of small explosions go off inside your body. Tissue is shredded, bone is splintered, and blood begins filling the affected areas

      
After several seconds of feeling around, Walker withdrew his hand.

      
"Susan, hand me the five inch forceps."

      
Susan rummaged in a tray where the surgical instruments were lying in a mild acid solution, another strange Walker idiosyncrasy, and placed the item in his hand handle first as he had taught her. The instrument looked like a cross between a pair of scissors and a pair of tweezers. Walker slipped his thumb and forefinger into the loops in the handle and flexed the tweezers open and closed a few times.