Ramage & the Saracens (26 page)

Again the carronades barked out, cutting down more Saracens, who were now beginning to crouch down, obviously puzzled where the noise and swathe of death was coming from. The boat-guns joined in, like puppies barking, and many more Saracens collapsed: the bodies were beginning to pile up on the quay.

But to Ramage's surprise the Saracens did not run back to their craft alongside the quay: instead they seemed to bunch up together, shouting and waving their scimitars as though in defiance. As the third blast from the carronades bit into the crowd, they started running towards the town and towards where most of the carronades were positioned. And Ramage realized he had made a mistake in keeping the guns and the seamen and marines separate: there were no men to guard the guns; the carronade crews would be cut down by the Saracens, who did not fear death. In fact, he suddenly remembered, they regarded death in battle as a certain way to Paradise, so they were men without fear.

How many had been killed—or, more important, how many were left alive? Bodies were so piled up on the quay, sprawled in the ungainly poses of men unexpectedly hit by death, that it was hard to count, but Ramage guessed a hundred: that left three hundred getting ready to attack the guns and the town.

Again the carronades coughed and Ramage saw they were firing at ranges of only a few yards: the screaming Saracens were now running towards the wreaths of smoke spurting from the guns, which they obviously did not fear. There were fewer muskets and pistols crackling: the men had not had time to reload. The Saracens would be at the first of the houses in a couple of minutes. And the seamen would not be prepared for them: they had orders not to move until they heard the three rockets which would stop the carronades firing.

There was only one way out of this mess, Ramage decided.

“Fire the three rockets!” he shouted at Orsini and, looking round at the six lookouts, he added: “Bring cutlasses and follow me: we're going down to the town!”

The mad run downhill to the quay was a nightmare: the carronades had stopped firing the moment the rockets had crackled overhead, but as Ramage and the lookouts neared the quay in their wild dash through the town they could hear the screaming of the Saracens and the shouts of the Calypsos. Then, punctuating the shouting, they heard a single carronade fire.

It was the one of which Jackson was the captain. A couple of minutes earlier, just before the rockets, the four Frenchmen and Rossi were hurriedly reloading the gun when Stafford, walking to the door, exclaimed: “Jacko! The Saracens are coming here! They're charging the guns!”

As the rockets crackled, Jackson said grimly: “This gun is our best protection: hurry up and load!”

Stafford stood by the door watching the approaching Saracens, until the last moment, when he ran with pricker, quills, and powder horn. Although he could not see them he knew the first of the Saracens were only a few yards away when he clicked back the lock to cock it and then sprang back telling Jackson: “Ready!”

The American waited, listening as the shouting grew nearer and watching the doorway, the trigger-line taut in his right hand. Suddenly half a dozen raggedly dressed Saracens appeared at the door, yelling and waving their scimitars, Jackson waited a moment and then, as the first three Saracens were bursting in through the doorway, pulled tight on the trigger-line.

The three men vanished in the cloud of smoke spewing from the muzzle of the carronade and, as Stafford ran through the smoke to the doorway, he saw five or six bodies, with heads and limbs missing, scattered across the paving in front of the stable.

Ramage in the meantime had arrived at the quay to find the Calypsos in a desperate fight with the Saracens, cutlass against scimitar. As far as he could see the Calypsos were in three groups, led by Kenton, Martin, and Hill, and the marines making a fourth group with Rennick.

Ramage, with the six seamen and Orsini, flung themselves against the nearest group of Saracens, slashing with their cutlasses. Ramage heard Orsini cursing them in shrill Italian as he slashed with his cutlass. Ramage stabbed at the back of one Saracen who was about to chop at a seaman and then turned just in time to parry a scimitar slicing down at himself.

The shouting of the Saracens was so intimidating that Ramage realized it could affect his men, so he began shouting “Calypsos! Calypsos!” and the seamen and marines began to take up the a cry until they were making as much noise as the Arabs.

Followed by Orsini, Ramage slashed his way towards the party led by George Hill, which was the nearest, and was amused to hear the jaunty way that Hill was encouraging his men. Ramage lunged at an Arab who parried, shouting at the top of his voice. As his cutlass slid down the curved scimitar Ramage snatched it back and stabbed again and the Saracen collapsed. So much for the lessons learned as a boy from an Italian fencing master, Ramage thought grimly. But there was no question that the Saracens wielded their scimitars crudely; they were no match for the seamen, who had cutlass drill at least twice a week.

A screaming Saracen dashed at Ramage with his scimitar held high over his head and before he had time to slice down Ramage lunged with his cutlass, which penetrated the man's stomach so that he collapsed gurgling, almost disembowelled.

The Saracens were holding their ground: they were standing and fighting, instead of making a bolt for their boats, and Ramage saw that by now eight or ten seamen and a couple of marines were lying among the Saracens, dead or badly wounded. Then in the distance he heard the cough of a carronade and for a moment wondered if it was firing into the middle of the swirling mass of Saracens and Calypsos.

In fact it was Jackson's gun. The American had realized that the Saracens' boats, secured alongside the quay, made a perfect target, and he had guessed that the captain would want them destroyed or damaged. He had therefore ordered his men to train round the carronade so that it raked the craft. It took him only a moment to decide that the slaves in the galleys would have to take their chance, and he fired the first round. After each round Stafford ran to the smoke-filled doorway to see if any more Saracens were coming to attack them, but they all seemed to be occupied fighting the seamen.

After six rounds Jackson went to the doorway himself to inspect the boats and he was satisfied to note that the masts and yards of three tartanes were now slewed down over the deck.

“If only we had some round shot!” he exclaimed to Stafford. “This case shot is only pecking at ‘em!”

“It's cutting the running rigging, and that's all that matters: we're trying to put ‘em out of action for an hour or two, not sink ‘em!” the Cockney replied, coughing from the gunsmoke.

The Frenchmen and Rossi were also coughing and spluttering from the smoke that filled the stable, and they were loading and running out the gun more by feel and instinct rather than being able to see what they were doing. After another six rounds, when he was coughing so much his eyes were streaming and he was gasping for breath, Jackson went to the doorway again. This time he could see that the carronade was having a considerable effect on the boats: of the twenty or so craft, only four or five still had masts standing; the slanting yards of the tartanes had all fallen to the deck, probably because their halyards had been cut, and the square sail yards of two of the galleys were slewed round drunkenly and no sail could be set on them.

“Let some of this smoke clear,” he told his men, “we can't go on like this: the damned gun'll get double-shotted or something stupid.”

The smoke cleared quickly and after a quick glance at the confused fight going on across the quay, Jackson set his men back to work. In two minutes the stable was once more full of smoke as the carronade fired and Jackson again adjusted the aim, having to wipe streaming eyes as he gave new elevating and training instructions that set the men busy with handspikes and had them turning the wormscrew that took the place of a wedge-shaped quoin.

By now Ramage had the desperate feeling that his men were being overwhelmed by the Saracens, who fought like madmen. The Calypsos were too spread out to take advantage of their training: they needed to be concentrated so they could make an organized attack. But getting them into any sort of formation meant several minutes that they would be vulnerable while they reformed. Ramage quickly decided to take the risk; it was a lesser one than having his men overwhelmed.

He ran to one side and shouted at the top of his voice: “To me, Calypsos; to me!”

Many of the men heard him above the yelling and screaming and, led by Rennick, Kenton, Martin, and Hill, the men ran to his side. As he waited for them he continued to hear the sporadic cough of a carronade and his eye caught sight of the twisted lateen yards of the tartanes. He realized that someone, probably Jackson, had seen how vulnerable were the Saracens' craft.

With the Calypsos collected round him, Ramage shouted at the lieutenants: “Form into sections; attack from different directions.”

They were not orders that would be approved by the marines but they were the best he could do shouting at the top of his voice in the middle of a battle. The men collected round their officers, choosing the lieutenant commanding their divisions of guns on board the
Calypso.
The sudden movement by the seamen and marines had puzzled the Saracens, who stood nonplussed. Then Ramage, satisfied that his men were in some sort of order, bellowed: “Charge!”

Now the motley collection of Saracens were attacked by four separate columns and, lacking any discipline, were quickly broken into large and small groups. Ramage joined Hill's men, who were the nearest, and parried a scimitar as it sliced down on to the back of a seaman. The rasping of metal against metal made the seaman turn in time to slash the Saracen with his cutlass.

Orsini was shouting something at Ramage which he could not hear and pointing seaward. Ramage glanced up to see the
Calypso
sailing in through the harbour entrance: she must have spotted the smoke, since the flag had not been hoisted at the castle flag-pole. But what could an undermanned frigate do? She could not open fire with her guns because she would kill more Calypsos than Saracens.

But Ramage had not realized the effect the great frigate—she seemed enormous in the tiny port compared with the Saracens' boats—would have on the Arabs: at that moment several of them spotted her and started a wild, demented howl which was quickly taken up by the rest of them. The moment they turned to look at the frigate the Calypsos redoubled their efforts, slashing at the Arabs in a desperate attempt to take advantage of their momentary preoccupation.

Suddenly the Saracens broke away and started running across the quay and back to their boats. At the same time they seemed to notice for the first time the twisted yards and this provoked more howling, as they realized that they were trapped.

At that moment Ramage heard a gigantic splash as the
Calypso
let go an anchor and then, as her sails were furled, began to swing round, head to wind, to lie parallel with the quay and the Saracen craft, which were fifty yards away from her.

As the Calypsos ran after the Saracens, chasing them back to their boats, they hurled curses after them, slashing with their cutlasses at the unprotected backs of men who had at last panicked and were only concerned with getting aboard their boats.

Ramage paused a moment. Aitken had enough seamen to man a few of the twelve-pounders; in fact Ramage was certain that as many guns as possible would at this very moment be in the act of being loaded and trained. And if and when the
Calypso
's broadsides crashed into the boats, he did not want any of his men near.

He shouted to the lieutenants to halt the men. Hill and Rennick heard him and stopped their sections, and then the rest of the Calypsos, realizing that some of their comrades had stopped, halted and looked back. In the meantime the Arabs continued their headlong dash to the boats and started scrambling on board, despite the damage caused by Jackson's carronade.

At that moment the carronade barked out again and Ramage saw its case shot cut a swathe through the running Saracens. By now there were few of them left on the quay: most had piled into the boats and were beginning frantically to cast them off.

Suddenly the
Calypso
's side was a flicker of winking red eyes and a moment later plumes of smoke streamed out. Then the erratic crash of the broadside rattled across the quay as at least eight 12-pounders fired into the massed boats.

Ramage stood with his lieutenants and the seamen and marines to watch as the
Calypso
fired a second broadside and then a third. Two tartanes began to sink, one of the galleys suddenly heeled over and filled, taking the slaves with it, and two of the captured fishing boats capsized.

“What a slaughter!” Hill commented. “What timing!”

Ramage suddenly felt rather weak; his knees no longer wanted to support him, and he wanted to giggle. Well, that was how relief took you because, he admitted, but for the
Calypso
he wondered if they would have been able to deal with all the Saracens.

“We'll wait and let Aitken finish them off,” Ramage said. At that moment the carronade coughed again, and Ramage added: “And Jackson, too!”

Another two tartanes suddenly heeled over as water poured in through their shattered hulls and they slowly filled, and Ramage saw men floundering in the water. The Saracens could fight well enough, but they could not swim. The
Calypso
's fourth broadside smashed into the remaining boats and Orsini commented: “There go two more of them!” as two fishing boats suddenly sank, their masts vanishing as they disappeared into what Ramage guessed was five fathoms of water.

Yet again Jackson's carronade fired, and Ramage could imagine the American's glee at having caught the Saracens in such a crossfire. And the Arabs' own haste to escape had doomed them: they had cast off the craft alongside the quay, and all the rest of the vessels were secured to them. Slowly they drifted away from the quay so there was no chance for any of the Saracens to get back on to the land; instead they were doomed to drift closer under the
Calypso
's guns.