Hostile Shores (37 page)

He got back to his feet and began to shed his Ferguson and the Girandoni air-rifle, and his pistols, piling all that ironmongery on the binnacle cabinet.

“Things went very well, sir,” Lt. Spendlove reported. “We’ve been anchored here in Table Bay two days now, ever since word came of the Dutch surrender. I saw to our old water butts getting emptied and scrubbed out, and fresh shore water taken aboard.”

“Very good, sir,” Lewrie said with a glad nod. “We were told of
one
Dutch warship, over in False Bay. What of her?”

“The
Bato,
sir, sixty-eight,” Lt. Merriman said. “Commodore Popham sent one of the other frigates round to see to her, but the Dutch burned her to the waterline before she could be made prize. We
heard
there was a battle, but so far no one’s told us anything. May we prevail upon you—?”

“Over supper tonight, once Pettus and Yeovill get me set back up,” Lewrie promised. “Aye, there was, and the Army went through the Dutch like a dose o’ salts. We had a grand view of it. And, a grand time ashore, too. Now Cape Town’s ours, and the Army garrisons it, I have hopes our people will be allowed shore liberty for a rare once. No risk of ’em takin’ ‘leg bail’ in a foreign country, hey?”

“Welcome back aboard, Mister Westcott … Mister Simcock,” Lt. Spendlove said in greeting as the other two officers gained the deck. “I gather we missed a grand adventure?”

“Didn’t you just!” Westcott hooted in glee. “Camping out in the open, sleeping rough, getting in some grand hunting and shooting? Campfires, roast game meat by the
pound,
as much as a man could cram down every night, and not an ounce of salt-meat junk boiled once we set foot ashore! Washed down with small beer or
rooibos
each night!”

“It’s a native bush the Khoikhoi … what people call the Hottentots nowadays … brew up,” Lewrie supplied, “and it makes a grand substitute for tea.”

“There will be several pounds of it coming aboard, so you may try it,” Westcott assured them. “With sugar, it’s delicious.”

“We even had a chance t’have our laundry done, as will you all once you get ashore,” Lewrie told them. “And hot fresh water to bathe in, too.”

“And are the Dutch laundresses handsome, Mister Wescott?” Merriman teased.

“Handsome, sturdy, blond, and
most
obliging,” their ever-randy First Officer said with a devilish grin.

The second barge was coming alongside with half of the Marines aboard. Pettus and Yeovill had accompanied Lewrie in the first, and Lewrie felt that he could quit the deck and retire to his cabins.

“Warn Mister Cooke that there will be lashin’s of fresh game meat comin’ aboard later for the hands’ supper for him to roast,” Lewrie said to Spendlove. “Onions, fresh fruits, potatoes, God knows what-all. I will be below.”

Once Lewrie was in his great-cabins, Chalky sprang off the bed and ran to him, tail high and meowing loudly in complaint. Lewrie scooped him up and carried him to the desk in the day-cabin to give him all the “wubbies” the cat demanded, at least ’til all the greetings had been made, and Chalky began to nip and swat at his fingers in lively play.

“Has Chalky behaved himself, Jessop?” Lewrie asked his cabin servant. “More to the point, have you been behaving yourself?”

“He missed ya somethin’ fierce, sir, slinkin’ about lookin’ for ya,” Jessop replied, “an’ meowin’ right pitiful. An’ aye, sir. I behaved. Might ya care for somethin’ t’drink, sir?”

“A Rhenish’d be welcome,” Lewrie said, going to the settee on the starboard side to put up his booted feet and slouch into the cushions. “Aah!” he said with pleasure to have something soft under his backside, at long last, and to rest his tortured feet.

“Lord, who’d be a soldier,” he said with a long sigh, after a first deep sip of his wine, and laid his head back and closed his eyes.

*   *   *

With their dead interred alongside the few slain from the two attacking regiments of the Heavy Brigade, Lewrie led his party and the trundling waggon down from the Blaauwberg to the interior, following a long, snaking column of infantry, cavalry, and the field artillery, and the dust clouds which all those booted feet, hooves, and wheels roiled up. That journey was like an ant descending the inside of a gigantic punch bowl, for, once past the coastal mountain chain, they caught sight of even more rugged, taller, and more impressive mountains and buttes that seemed to ring the plains on every hand.

The plains themselves rolled gently, sprinkled with knobs or
kloofs
of up-thrusting bare rock. On those plains they encountered their first farmsteads, with houses and barns and outbuildings made of stone and stuccoed stark white, surrounded by orchards and grain fields, paddocks and pastures filled with reddish cattle, all miles apart from each other, and too far away from the line of march for any foraging for fruit or the odd chicken.

At least they were at the head of the baggage train, half of which had yet to descend the Blaauwberg, and close up with the trundling gun-carriages, limbers, and caissons. They even had time to stop and dole out the first rum ration of the day at half-past Eleven of the morning before being overtaken.

An hour or two later, urgent bugle calls stopped the columns and shook both brigades out into lines, and the artillery left them almost at the gallop. Lewrie spotted a low rise off to their left and directed his men to go there.

He would not press his luck a second time; he and his sailors and Marines would be mere witnesses. And, once settled at their ease on the rise, what a grand view they had! It
was
like lead soldiers on the children’s room carpet as five thousand British soldiers formed long lines, with the drums rolling and the regimental bands playing, the bright colours waving, and the elegantly uniformed cavalry trotting or cantering to either flank.

They had found the Dutch, and they would make a fight of it, at last. Everyone with a pocket telescope stood and fidgeted with anxiety and excitement, and the Midshipmen counted the Dutch artillery and made estimates of enemy strength.

Five thousand Dutch soldiers, at least a third to a half of them cavalry or dis-mounted dragoons, or mounted infantry, and there were at least twenty Dutch field pieces, arrayed in line of battle the equal of British strength, but that made no difference. Bugles, drums, martial airs, and skirling bagpipes blared, the British guns barked, bucked, and roared, and Col. Shrapnel’s deadly bursting shot decimated the Dutch as both British brigades marched up to the range of musketry and began the continuous rolling volleys at three rounds a minute from each man. The British Army was the only one in Europe to practice regular live-fire musketry, and that steady hail of lead melted the Dutch away. Then the bright winks of sun on steel could be seen as the regiments fixed bayonets, the roars from the throats of five thousand men could be heard as the regiments were loosed at the charge, and it was over. The Dutch broke, turned their backs to their foe, scrambled for their horses, abandoned most of their guns, and ran, or surrendered in place!

Once their cheers had died down, and the last hat recovered after being flung aloft in triumph, Lewrie led his party forward, eager for loot and souvenirs … and some spare Dutch horses to ride. They found plenty of all their wants: shakoes and hats, brass plaques from enemy cross-belts, more wood canteens, spare wool and cotton stockings from spilled and abandoned packs, extra blankets and groundcloths for bedding, and farm lads from the crew managed to round up and calm enough horses for all officers and Midshipmen to ride. Even so, Lewrie and his men were pikers when it came to looting compared to the soldiers of the British Army, and their appalled officers’ attempts to quell the looting of the Dutch baggage train and stores of wine and spirits let Lewrie and his men make their pickings without notice.

The Army camped on the near banks of the Salt River for the night to await the arrival of the siege artillery, and Lewrie laid out their own separate camp, cautioned his men to take sticks and beat the ground from the centre outwards to drive away any snakes, saw firewood gathered and Yeovill put to work with a cookfire before he, Lt. Simcock, and Lt. Westcott rode out to do some hunting. They came back with three native antelopes, grysboks, and a bushbuck, had them butchered, the hides and offal thrown into the river so predators would not raid their camp at night, and spitted them on frames made from Dutch muskets and barrels. With cheese, ship’s bisquit, small beer or
rooibos
tea, everyone deemed it a feast, and every man rolled into his bedding round the campfires that night feeling stuffed and sated, most of them who were
not
poachers back home in England tasting their very first game meat!

The rest had been anti-climactic, a stroll through a parkland. The siege guns came up, the army marched on Cape Town, and word came that the Dutch governor of the Cape, Van Prophelow, would negotiate. In sign of that, he allowed Fort Knocke to be occupied, and Lewrie’s party could boil up salt rations in the shelter of the fort’s courtyard, marvelling at the number and great calibres of the guns mounted there. On the morning of the 10th of January, Van Prophelow formally surrendered, and the enemy general they had defeated, Jannsens, who had retreated with the remnants of his army to Holland’s Hottentot Kloof, surrendered as well.

They were idle all the next day, but took part in the victory parade into Cape Town itself on the 12th, found that all the taverns and eateries that Lewrie fondly remembered were open for business, and that Dutch beers flowed freely at the cost of only a few pence.

Lt. Westcott did ask if Lewrie also knew the locations of the best brothels, but that knowledge was ten years out of date, and he would have to fend for himself!

If there was anything to mar their merry jaunt, it was a confrontation with Captain Byng of
Belliqueux,
who was irked that he’d been counting on
all
landed sailors and Marines to help get the siege guns and carriages ashore, and Lewrie had run off on his own to play a game of soldiers,
very
loosely mis-interpreting his orders!

“You’ve a
name
for scraping, Lewrie, so I can understand
why
you dashed off for more derring-do, but you can’t have fun
all
the time,” Byng had chid him, and that not all that sternly, “now and then, you
must
join in at the onerous pulley-hauley with the rest of us!”

*   *   *

That reverie made Lewrie smile, and Chalky’s arrival in his lap, then onto his chest, made him open his eyes. He took another sip of wine, and then it was back to routine. Yeovill was announced and given leave to enter the cabins to make the arrangements for the supper for all officers and Mids not on Harbour Watch that evening. Guinea fowl from shore would be one course, ham for another, some fresh-caught yellowtail would be the fish course, and beef steaks would complete it. There would be baked rolls, boiled maize and garden peas, snap beans and sauteed onions, and dessert would be strawberries and cream over pound cake.

“Am I allowed ashore with the Purser tomorrow, sir, I can have a wider selection,” Yeovill boasted, as if his best efforts would not be up to his standards that evening. “What little I saw in the local markets today, well! What a selection of East Indian spices, and the sauces the Malays and Hindoos who live hereabouts make!”

“Aye, it appears that Cape Town ain’t just the ‘tavern of the seas’, but the pantry as well,” Lewrie agreed. “Carry on, Yeovill, and surprise me tomorrow night.”

“Do my best, sir!” he promised.

A Marine sentry guarded his cabin door again, and that worthy stamped boots, slammed his musket on the deck, and shouted, “First Officer, SAH!”

“Enter,” Lewrie called out, sitting up a bit more.

Lt. Westcott entered, looking natty and clean in his freshly-laundered clothing, but with his inevitable sheaf of paperwork.

“A glass of something for you, Mister Westcott?” Lewrie asked.

“A Rhenish, if you’d be so kind, sir,” Westcott said, baring one of his brief, savage grins. Lewrie waved him to a seat by the settee. “I have made a tentative change or two to the muster book, sir, to compensate for the men Discharged, Dead. Our wounded are at present being tended ashore by the Army surgeons, but look fair to heal up and return to us … if only on light duties for a week or so afterwards. Mister Mainwaring will surely request a chance to go ashore and see to them.”

“He’ll also wish t’palaver with strange, new ‘saw-bones’,” Lewrie said with a snicker. “Must be a lonely lot, a surgeon on a warship, with no contact with others in his trade for months and months on end. And, I’m certain that Mainwaring will also wish to re-stock his dispensary ashore. He’ll be free to take a boat with the Purser, any time he wishes, tell him.”

“Aye, sir,” Westcott said, nodding as he ticked off one item of his report. “Ehm … once we’ve re-stocked the ship, there will be the matter of liberty. Will it be shore liberty, or should we put the ship Out Of Discipline for a day or two, and let the doxies and bum-boatmen aboard, sir?”

“I’ll speak with Commodore Popham tomorrow on that subject,” Lewrie promised. “As I said earlier, now we own the Cape Colony, and our troops garrison and patrol the town, shore liberty should be of as little risk of desertion as any island port.”

He stifled a sudden yawn, a real jaw-cracker.

I might not stay
awake
long enough t’dine my guests in!
Lewrie thought;
Go face-down in the soup if I do? The last few days’ve been a lot more strenuous than I thought. Damme, am I gettin’ … old? A nap ’twixt now and then is definitely in order!

“All the hands have settled back in, sir,” Westcott told him, “though the people left aboard are jealous. There’s quite a trade in looted items for cash, or promised shares in the rum ration.”

“No one managed t’smuggle any new pets aboard, did they? No bush-babies, mongooses?” Lewrie asked.

“Mongeese, sir?” Westcott said with a smirk. “No, sir, we saw to that. We’ll have to keep a sharp eye, though, when the bum-boatmen traders come out to the ship … with or without the whores. In the markets we saw, there were quite a lot of colourful caged birds. Do we allow the men shore liberty, they’ll surely try to come back with something amusing.”