Nelson: The Poisoned River (7 page)

Fourteen

By full daylight, the expedition had been split to several sections. The rearmost still worked and cursed and sweated to get the heavier hulls upriver, while the navy boats pushed ever onward with as many of the native craft as could keep up. Colonel Polson, aware that there were rapids in the offing, which would slow down his main advance, chose to commission the clearing of a pathway through the forest at the water side.

Despard
and Nelson took the opposing view. This happened with almost every advance they made, and Polson sometimes took it badly.

‘All
very well for you to stick to comfy hulls,’ he said, ‘but I must have men with boots on ground. This is an armed camp up ahead, or at least a post that we must take. If we pass them in the water, there are then armed men in rear of us. That way, my friends, disaster lies.’

Nelson
retained his good humour.

‘My
dear sir,’ he said, ‘if their eyes are open the Dons will see us coming, and so will never be behind us. My way would be to come up with them, then go ashore and fight. It is an outpost, it is not a fort. When we come ashore they will run or die. Spaniards might not speak English, sir, but they are not fools.’

‘And
I have checked the undergrowth,’ said Despard, ‘and have consulted with my royal consorts. Both Duke and King say the land way is impassible on our side. But it might be possible on the other side. And what is more, the outpost is perhaps on a small island.’

Polson
was no fool himself. He gave a decisive nod.

‘So
Lieutenant Mounsey must take a band ashore and cut through that way,’ he said. ‘I will take this side, and you may struggle up the river as well as maybe, then we’ll have them from both sides. Is that agreeable?’

Hastie
went in the cutter with Nelson, and from what he later learned was grateful for it. It was a tremendous slog, with the waters running faster than a gallop, and there were many leaps ashore to pull and haul, and a good few wettings. But Polson and his men had by far the worst of it, near torn to pieces by the thorns and briars, some as big as dirks or daggers according to report. They were constantly menaced by snakes, frightened by spiders ‘the size of plates,’ and sucked at by flies and leeches.

The
bands regrouped some hours later, filthy and exhausted, in sight of the island in the middle. Despard and Nelson favoured a surprise attack, and proposed some Indians should creep upstream in canoes to get above the post. The difficulties were many, said the Mosquito men, but they had spotted Spanish uniforms by now, and (as Hastie wrote for Sarah) ‘were almost slavering, my dear, at the thought of taking them for slaves. That is their promised reward. The bribe for which they’re helping us.’

The
night of grinding labour seemed to never end. By the break of dawn, as far as they could tell, half the pincer, maybe a little more, was fixed in place. Mounsey and his secret band were on the far side from Nelson and Despard, who shared the cutter’s well, while the colonel and a bigger party held the other bank. There were Indians upstream, and Tim Hastie fancied the screams of monkeys, as the light began to wake them, might in fact be them. From the silent ramparts of the island battery there came not a sound.

Five
minutes later Nelson gave the whispered order, and his seamen bent to the oars. They pulled hard but silently, and the cutter leapt towards the earthworks. Beside him Despard seemed relaxed, while Hastie was so tense he thought he’d die.

When
they were close enough to open fire, the morning air was torn by a booming cry in Spanish. They had been rumbled.

‘Ha
ha!’ said Despard. ‘Not so sleepy after all, the bastards!’

‘Hard
ahead all!’ shouted Nelson. ‘Pull your guts out, lads, pull your guts out! Make way there before I have your heads off! I’m coming through!’

Small
man, big cutlass. As Nelson leapt onto the nearest thwart, his curved bright sword swung out and forward, above the oarsmen’s heads. He was almost dancing as he skipped from stern to bow, using shoulders, hats and pigtails to keep him steady. As the nose of the cutter drove into the shore, Despard was on his heels. And Timothy was a half a pace behind them.

There
was a sudden fusillade of shooting, with musket bullets splashing and skidding in the water all around. When the battery fired its first cannon shot at them, the sailors cheered.

Tim
Hastie watched in horror as his captain hit the shore, and stumbled, and sank on to his knees. As the clouds of filthy smoke enveloped him, Nelson fell.

Fifteen

It was from this point onwards that the dying really started. Choking in the smoke, flecked with burning wad and powder, Tim was held steady by a sailor until he could make out his captain’s body. And watch it rise upward in the thick red mud, straighten its back, throw its arms out sideways to catch a balance.

‘The
devil take it!’ shouted Nelson. ‘It’s like ten tons of glue and suet!’

Shots
were still buzzing and shrieking round his head, and he seemed to be inviting them with his cutlass. He was pludging and stamping with his feet, trying to pull first one free then the other. Hastie thought he saw one ball clip his wig.

‘I
can’t get out!’ he roared. ‘Tim! To me, man! Give me a pull for Christ’s sake! I’m like a duck in aspic!’

Tim
jumped, and found a slightly harder spot of banking. He sank in an inch or so, compared with Nelson’s plunge beyond the ankles. Nelson grabbed him, he grabbed Nelson, both jerked and staggered. Even above the gunshots they could hear the squelching and the sucks.

‘Lost
my shoes,’ said Nelson. ‘Both of them. My God, the vile corruption squeezing through my toes!’

‘Quick,
sir!’ cried Timothy. ‘Never mind your shoes! Just run up bank before they shoot you down!’

Nelson
laughed. He could be an aggravating man.

‘They
are not shooting, Tim,’ he said. ‘Have you not noticed yet?’

Another
volley rattled out, but he was right. It was not aimed at them, or even near them, it was on the other side of the battery. And then came shouts and cheering, which anyone could hear was English.

‘It’s
Mounsey!’ Despard cried from to their left. ‘It’s the Blues! He’s attacking the Dons from across the river!’

Sailors,
soldiers, officers then crashed forward through the undergrowth to finish them, but they were too late it seemed. There was a burst of shooting from further upstream, and this time Tim had no doubt the whoops
were
Indians, not monkeys. They had lain in wait for the escapers, with the rifles Despard had issued the night before, and were howling with joy at the thought of Spanish slaves.

‘Surgeon!’
shouted someone. ‘Tim Hastie, here’s a man is shot! Over here! Over here!’

‘And
another here!’ yelled someone else. ‘He’s got one in the stomach!’

More
cries from near and far, more rushings to and fro. But each fallen man had comrades, and none seemed mortal hurt. Until Mounsey and his forward party were ferried to the island to join Nelson and his fellow officers. After hands were shaken and congratulations made, Mounsey addressed the captain anxiously.

‘Sir,
I need to beg a favour of you. One of my fellows has been bit by a serpent and is sorely taken. Dr Dancer has given him his best, but had then to tend to many others in the hospital.’

‘Many
others? Why, how were they hit? The Spaniards are on the run!’

‘The
hospital is filling rapidly. Not ball or bullet, but the bloody flux. Not to speak too frank, sir, the tents are all knee deep in liquid shit. And the ague, sir, the recurring fever. Sixteen new cases in as many minutes; or not far off it, though.’

‘And
the serpent bite? How could I help you there?’

Mounsey
turned his eyes from Nelson to Hastie. Whose reputation had spread widely through the Blues.

‘I
implore you, Captain. If perhaps your surgeon? I beg you, sir. This man is desperate ill.’

It
flashed through Hastie’s mind that Nelson was heading that way too. Caked in filthy red mud, barefoot, his wig askew, his skin a strange translucent white, he was displaying the tremors that were a certain sign.

‘Sir.’
he said. ‘Captain Nelson. I think you must sit down. I think I must prepare a potion for—’

A
glare of anger. Tim Hastie turned away.

‘I
beg your pardon, sir. Captain Mounsey. Where is this man? Lead me to him, instantly.’

The
soldier, when Tim came to him, had little time to live. He was lying on a pallet almost naked, but twisted like a broken rope. His body was no longer white but yellow, almost a vivid yellow, with black strings like channels proud beneath his skin, and strange fluids were emitting almost from his pores. His flesh was carved with furrows where he had clawed himself, the flesh below was pink and weeping.

‘What
happened? Where did the serpent bite?’

It
was in the eye. The snake had been hanging from a branch as the soldier had stumbled through the thicket. If he had seen it, he would probably have thought it was a creeper. His screams had ‘been enough to wake the dead,’ and had got louder, much, before diminishing.

The
flesh was necrotising before Tim’s eyes. It was like nothing that he had ever seen, or expected to again. It was as if the flesh were dissolving.

Now
he was there, nobody expected him to do anything. It was a token, that was all, it was his sad duty as a man of medicine. All around the soldier were other dying men, not one was injured, not even by a fang. The smell was like the bowels of the world. Or hell.

And
Nelson, whom he’d left a mile away, was sickening. By Tim’s computation, they had reached the river entrance some twenty days before. By Tim’s observation, if not by Dr Moseley’s or by Dancer’s, the crisis had arrived.

Death
was about to scythe them down.

Sixteen

But first, there was a fortress to be won. Not five miles from the battery they’d taken, according to the dozen Spaniards they had captured, lay the San Juan keep, with its surrounding huts and pens. Grateful at having been rescued from the Mosquito men – who had assumed that they were theirs by right of conquest – they held nothing back. And swore, also, that no one had escaped to give a warning.

Polson,
cockahoop at the almost bloodless victory, was prepared to believe them, but Nelson and Despard indeed were not. When Tim Hastie returned – intent on making Nelson rest, and eat, and catch up on lost sleep if only for an hour – he was too late.

‘Gone?’
he asked of Mounsey (feeling sadly like a country booby). ‘Gone where? How? When?’

He
did not really need to ask, but it was soon confirmed. A canoe with six stout native paddlers had set out to go upstream, against a current which would get stronger as it neared the rapids below the fort. Polson had cautioned them to wait until the morrow, which had made Nelson more determined. The only waiting he would do, he said, was when they were close enough to be shot. And then only so that he could assess the situation in full morning light.

‘But
how was the captain?’ Hastie asked, trying hard to hide the anxiety in his voice. ‘He has not eaten for two days. He is very weak. He has all the symptoms of the recurrent ague.’ A thought hit him. ‘And did he even have his shoes?’

Nelson’s
problem with eating enough was one he shared with many of the party. For days now they had relied on foraging by the Indians, and the captain – while not finicky – found some of the ‘rations’ hard to force down. Snake and iguana could be made acceptable, although he preferred not to see them being skinned or cooked, but other meals induced a certain nausea. His last expected ‘feast’ had been ruined for him when he had been led to a pot upon the fire to admire ‘a canny little stew,’ and found a mess of whole skinned monkeys bubbling.

More
worrying, however, were the chills, the sweats, the shakings and the retching, which was dry and painful in the main, so that actual vomit would have been a great relief. As he got more ill, he got less and less inclined to take Tim’s advice, and more and more prone to snapping at him.

‘What
is the matter, though?’ Despard asked Tim one evening, when Nelson had been too weak to stay out round the fire and talk. ‘We all get a go from time to time, malaria’s like that, but this is painful to watch. He is so thin, so small. Why does it affect him so very bad?’

‘He
caught it when a child,’ Tim Hastie said. ‘He was in India, where he claims the mosquitos are the size of wrens. He has been bit again since we hit this coast, and got cold, and wet, and tired, too.’

‘Bah,
mosquitos,’ Despard said. ‘Dr Dancer says they’re naught to do with it.’

‘Aye,’
said Timothy. ‘As does Dr Moseley, the surgeon general. But you note he did not join us here, don’t you?’

‘Bah!’
repeated Despard. ‘More comfortable to stay in Jamaica, and would not you do so if you had the power? Why bark yourself if you’ve got a dog? A good name, too! Dancer, dancing to his master’s tune.’

When
Nelson returned next day, even Colonel Polson expressed concern at his condition. He did have his shoes on, but like all his clothes they were drab and broken, red and black with river mud.

‘Good
heavens, sir!’ said Polson. ‘You look extremely…er. I beg you, sit you down. One will bring brandy. Tea.’

Nelson
shook his head so violently he almost lost his balance. Tim Hastie moved beside him to offer support. That too was shaken off.

‘I
assure you, gentlemen, I have never felt better in my life. We have seen a sight to fill a heart with joy. Up river. A fort ripe for taking down, a settlement of shacks that we can billet in, and fields of cattle begging to be slaughtered. Fruit and vegetables too. Goodbye scurvy!’

‘No
hurry, though, no hurry!’ Polson boomed. ‘I have news, sir, great news! Major MacDonald has a division of the Royal Irish, and I have called them up to here by letter sent downstream. A day or two at most, I hope!’

Despard
was dubious.

‘MacDonald
is…well. A day or two sounds like all my-eye to me. How long did it take us to do the trip?’

‘Ah,’
said Polson, ‘but there is more, sir. Major Lawrie has at last arrived. Here, in this camp. He has more Mosquitos. Guides for us. They know the land like their very own. We will move with great dispatch.’

‘And
where was he a month ago?’ said Nelson. Had his voice not been so weak it would have been sour. ‘I recall, sir, that then he was to provide us with many settlers, English, Scotch and Welsh, more slaves, more fighting negroes. He did not turn up at all.’

Hastie,
with great determination, moved the captain to a shelter and a place to sit, and summoned up a drink and vermicelli. Nelson resisted weakly before giving in. But neither he nor Despard were much mollified.

‘There
is a hurry, sir,’ said Despard, ‘and Captain Nelson has the right of it. If the Dons don’t know by now we’re here, I’ll eat my musket. What of the cannonade last evening? What of the small shot and the roaring? And one of them will certainly have run and spread the news. We must move at once.’

Polson
was stubborn, but he was wilting under pressure. Major Lawrie, who for all his failings was a lively man, shortly added his enthusiasm, and promised his new Indians were devils for a fight. Finally it was decided they would wait until MacDonald’s soldiers were with them, then move ahead by water. Nelson, underneath a shelter, claimed the news had given him new life.

The
afternoon was beautiful as the boats and pangas and canoes set off. A small garrison was left behind to guard the island stronghold, and the river was broad and easy enough to spread a sense of well-being and expectation of success. The officers found themselves discussing Governor Dalling’s original wild confidence of taking Grenada, cutting a canal to the Pacific, and ultimately ending Spanish power in America.

‘It
seemed a dream to me,’ confided Polson. ‘I thought it worth a try, but…well, what a dream! A few stout men and ships, a push upriver, and we destroy the Donnish empire!’

Even
Despard, a clear-eyed man indeed, did not pooh-pooh it. He spared a glance for Nelson, though. Nelson was suffering. His skin was white, with a greenish tinge. His hands were shaking visibly.

‘Bad
cess to it!’ said Despard. ‘We have come so far, that I truly think we cannot fail!’

Nelson
raised his eyes to the north and west. The river was wide, the sky was blue and pale. Except above the mountains. Above the mountains, clouds were gathering, grey white and deeper black.

‘Ask
Major Lawrie,’ Nelson said. ‘He knows all about promising the world, then wasting time. He knows when the rains will start to fall. In earnest.’

There
had been brief showers for some days now. Brief but sometimes violent. When the rains came, they turned the tropic world quite upside down. Even black men sometimes could not live in it.

It
was Despard who tried to break the mood.

‘We’d
better make the signal, Nelson sir,’ he said. ‘Colonel Polson, around that bend we’ll see the castle, and the castle will see us. Unless we plan to attack full on, immediately, we must pull in, and land our men, regroup.’

‘Attack
full on,’ said Nelson. ‘Colonel, I promise you – it is the only way.’

This
had been discussed though, until the time the boats set forth up the final stretch. Nelson and Despard had argued passionately that the fort should be stormed, and taken with the element of surprise. Even if the defenders had been warned, the speed and power would overwhelm them.

But
Colonel Polson was a soldier. He wanted his main force on land. The fortress would be taken by the book. He was the commander.

Nelson
said nothing more as the boats nosed to the bank. His teeth were chattering like castanets.