The Price of Glory (5 page)

Nearer still. And now Nathan could see the smoke—not from the battery now, but from beyond, rolling across the headland from the burning brushwood that Howard's marines had set alight: thick black smoke, as dense as the morning fog.

That is what you did with a hornet's nest: you smoked them out.

“Very well, Mr. Holroyd, fire as you bear.”

“Fire as you bear!”

The broadside rippled along the deck and Nathan leaped up into the shrouds to watch the fall of shot: most of it kicking up dirt from the escarpment but at least two striking the stone ramparts above—ramparts that suddenly blossomed in orange flame as the battery replied. The sea erupted in a series of waterspouts, the nearest so close, Nathan felt the spray on his cheek. One ball skipped clear across the waist, another announced its arrival by knocking loudly upon the hull. They were out in mid-channel now and Nathan could feel the full force of the flood, pushing them into the Gulf beyond with its shallows and its shoals—and the waiting guns on the opposite point.

He turned to watch the
Conquest
as she bore away, following the curve of the coast and leading the smaller craft in a long line behind her, like a flock of nervous ducklings, close under the guns of the battery. Guns he could no longer see for thick black smoke. They were still firing blindly through it but Nathan could see no obvious damage to his little fleet of gunboats and barges that were even now scuttling through the gap. Judging from the waterspouts flung up by the falling shot, the French gunners were aiming far too high. He thought he could hear the sharper crack of musket fire, too, which could indicate the marines were in action on the farther side of the fort—but he had warned Howard not to persist with his attack if he met with any serious resistance.

It was time to look to his own affairs. They were on a course now that would take them within range of the guns on the opposite point. He saw Graham shoot him a look, impatient for the order to bear away, but it was far too soon, for they must draw their fire from the craft on the far side of the channel. He saw the multiple flash of fire from the distant muzzles and a series of waterspouts erupted just off their starboard bow. Seconds later the
Unicorn
replied and Nathan marked the fall of shot against the embankment. Far too low. Holroyd roared out instructions, running from cannon to cannon, the gun crews heaving on crowbars and slamming in quoins to bring the muzzles up as high as they would bear.

But they were fairly rushing down upon the battery now and the French gunners had their own problems, for their next salvo was aimed far too high. Nathan could see them through the embrasures, frantically swabbing and worming the smoking barrels. He might have as much as two minutes now, before they fired again, for they were no great shakes as gunners. Thus he comforted himself as they drew ever closer to the point and the promised
tourbillons
. Monsieur Calvez was looking thoughtful. Nathan hoped to God he knew what he was talking about. Closer still. He could see faces peering down at them through the embrasures and the black muzzles of the guns as they were trundled back in place.

And then he felt it. The sudden tremor as the bows bit into the counter current.

“Hard a larboard, Mr. Graham!” Nathan roared, loud enough for the helmsmen to start spinning the wheel long before the master's order.

“She does not answer!” Graham wailed, watching the helmsmen in anguish. For a moment their fate hung in the balance and then the bows came round to face the open sea and Nathan felt the full force of the
tourbillons
pushing them round against the tide and he grinned at the pilot who rewarded him with another careless shrug and a lugubrious pout of the lower lip as if to say, what did you expect?

And now a string of orders as the
Unicorn
worked her way to windward, clawing away from that terrible shore. A flash and a bang from the fort. Fired too low now, for the shot fell just short of their stern as they clawed away. And another, with the same result. The French were firing singly now, perhaps to mark the fall of shot. The next smashed into the stern rail, showering the quarterdeck with deadly splinters. Men were down, some screaming, some silent. Kendrick, one of the new midshipmen who had joined them at Portsmouth, a boy of thirteen, had a great shard of wood sticking out of his arm. He was clutching it with the other, white-faced, biting his lip and he looked at Nathan, as if for reassurance. It took all Nathan's will not to run to him. “Get him below,” he snapped to his steward Gabriel, who was in his usual position at his side, and he turned abruptly away, looking aloft as the weather leeches began to flutter and lift. They were close-hauled now, jammed as close to the wind as she would lie. If they were taken aback now, so close to shore …

“Mr. Graham!” The master appeared hypnotised, gazing aloft. “Ease off a point, sir, ease her off. “

A shot struck the muzzle of the 18-pounder nearest the quarterdeck and shattered, dismounting the gun and spraying hot metal over the crew. One man was on fire. A trail of powder ignited and flared across the deck. Tully left the helm and ran forward. His fire engine sprayed water in a great arc across the waist.

But the sails were filled and drawing well. Too well, for they were drawing away from the shore and losing the back current; they must not stray too far from the shore. Why in God's name could the master not see that?

“A point more, Mr. Graham, if you will,” Nathan commanded, struggling to keep his voice calm, for the sails were feathering and they were losing way as they felt the pull of the tide once more. No response. Nathan whirled upon him but before he could damn his eyes, or give the order himself, a direct hit shattered the helm, killing or maiming both helmsmen and sending Graham flying to the deck. Worse, the foretopmast began to sway forward until with a terrible deliberation it came crashing down across the bows, bringing the foresails with it in an impossible tangle of canvas and rigging and spars—and at once the head dropped off from the wind and the frigate was swept back into the mouth of Morbihan.

Nathan met Tully's appalled gaze and knew with an awful certainty that they were lost, but he began to shout orders in a desperate bid to stave off disaster. One party was sent below to man the tiller ropes, and Holroyd and his people were fighting to clear the tangle of wreckage up forward, but the frigate was now firmly in the grip of the tide and it was moving them remorselessly back down the channel into the Morbihan and the guns on Point Kerpenhir. Every shot was hitting home now and several fires had started on the gundeck. It seemed a question only of whether they would be burned or battered to death. Bodies sprawled among a shambles of rigging and dismounted guns, the wounded crying out piteously but there were hardly any men spare to carry them below. Those men who were not hacking at the rigging or working the guns were fighting fires. Then, with shocking suddenness, they struck. Struck with such force that not a man was left on his feet, and with a groan like a tree crashing in the forest, the foretop came down to join the chaos on the deck below.

N
ATHAN
STAGGERED TO
HIS
FEET
, dazed and bloodied from his violent contact with the deck, and gazed wildly about him but even in the extremity of his anguish and pain, he knew they had struck sand and not rock, that the bottom had not been torn from the hull and that with the tide still rising there was a reasonable chance of floating free. But not at once. Not at once, and every minute they waited they would take another pounding from the guns on Point Kerpenhir—and at such close range they could hardly miss. The
Unicorn
was being battered to death before his eyes. He had no option but to strike.

He looked to the stern where the white ensign flapped lazily in the warm summer breeze and called for Mr. Lamb. He appeared to be scrambling around behind the starboard carronade. Why ? Was he trying to hide? No, he had simply lost his hat. He crammed it on his head and came running aft.

“Sir?”

But no. He could not ask a boy to haul down their colours, nor any of the crew. This was something he had to do himself. He moved over to the halyard but paused a moment, searching for some reason to put off the inevitable. He looked back over the stern towards the flotilla, now safe inside the waters of the Gulf, but what comfort was that when he had lost the
Unicorn?
He raised his eyes toward the fort above Port-Navalo. It was no longer wreathed in smoke. Then, to his astonishment, he saw the tricolour coming down from the flagstaff. And after a moment, when time seemed to stand still for him, the Union flag was run up in its place. Howard's marines had taken the fort! And now Nathan could see them, in their red coats, standing up on the ramparts waving their black shakoes, oblivious for the moment to the fate that had befallen the
Unicorn
. But their success gave him heart—and pointed to the one hope he had of saving his ship. If Howard could take one fort with a parcel of marines, Nathan could surely take the other with his battle-hardened veterans of the
Unicorn
.

He sought out Tully amid the confusion on the quarterdeck. He seemed dazed, a thin stream of blood running down the side of his face. Nathan gripped him by the arm and stared hard into his eyes. “Martin, are you hurt?”

Tully shook his head but his gaze was strangely vacant.

“We must try to take the fort,” Nathan insisted. “I am going to take as many men as I can in the ship's boats. Martin? Do you hear me?”

“Yes, sir. The ship's boats …” Tully looked uncertainly to their stern. The four boats had been lowered before the
Unicorn
went into action and the tide had dragged them far out to starboard but at least they had escaped the mayhem on the frigate's decks.

“If I succeed you will be able to float her off on the rising tide but if I fail … Martin, if I fail, you must strike, do you understand me?”

“Aye, aye, sir.” Tully half turned to go but then checked himself and turned back. “Good luck,” he said, with a shaky grin. Nathan wondered if he meant “Goodbye.”

Another salvo from the fort, most of the rounds smashing into the hull so that Nathan swore he felt the vessel shudder at the blows she was taking and there were fires breaking out all over the deck, most of the gun crews running about with buckets of water while the guns stood abandoned, unable to bear. Fire and shot were destroying the only ship he had ever come to love, for all the troubles she had brought him.

“Gabriel! Gilbert Gabriel there!” Nathan turned to look for his servant, but he was there already, at his shoulder. The Angel Gabriel he was called by the hands, in irony, for his character was by no means virtuous. He had been a highwayman—and destined for the rope—before Nathan's father had snatched him from the jailhouse and borne him off to sea.

“Bring my pistols from the cabin,” Nathan instructed him. Then, after a moment's pause, to his retreating back: “And the letter from my desk.”

Gabriel would know what letter he meant, though he checked a moment in his stride and Nathan knew what he must be thinking. That Nathan meant to have it with him when he died, his last word of Sara.

Holroyd and Lamb were leading their divisions aft, pitifully thinned now and barely a hundred strong. Nathan ran his eye over them, seeing men he knew and liked, and whose lives were now forfeit to his blundering conceit, and not for the first time. Jacob Young, his coxswain, a young man of almost the same age as he but with a cheerful vitality that often made Nathan feel as old as his father; Dermot Quinn, the only survivor of the mutineers, pardoned by Nathan in fl agrant abuse of his powers and now rated Volunteer, First Class; George Banjo, the leader of the African slaves Nathan had freed in the Americas … He had been called Jorge then—at least by his owner—but the hands had anglicised this to George. How the name Banjo had been added was still a mystery to Nathan. He had enquired once and been told it was his Yoruba name, but this seemed unlikely, unless it was an approximation. Michael Connor, the biggest man in the crew, who had been in shackles when Nathan had first encountered him on the orlop deck of the
Unicorn,
though it seemed the only offence he could reasonably be charged with was pissing upon the deck, whilst drunk. He still had a fondness for liquor, though he appeared to have been cured of his more noxious habit.

Most of these men had followed Nathan into battle before in the Caribbean and it had been bad then but never as bad as this and doubtless they knew it as well as he but he told them what he required of them as if it was a perfectly reasonable option. He thought of adding something more appropriate to the occasion, some stirring words on Death or Glory, but they did not need that, and nor did he.

Gabriel was back with his pistols, the pair Nathan had taken from the armoury in the Palace of the Tuileries just over a year ago—on the day the tribunes of the people had finally found the courage to rise up against Robespierre and put an end to the Terror. Thesame day he learned that Sara had been sent to her death on the guillotine.

He took the letter and folded it into an inside pocket. Then he made his way to the larboard rail where his barge was waiting, filled already with above a score of men, and nodded to his coxswain to cast off.

The tide now worked in their favour for the
Unicorn
had grounded some three or four hundred yards seaward of the battery and the four boats swept rapidly down upon it. The guns ceased their remorseless pounding of the frigate and sought out these new, more elusive targets, but they were moving so fast and so close to shore the gunners were having problems finding the range. Even so, they tried, and the water erupted in their wake and all but swamped the jolly boat as it came clear of the stricken frigate. Nathan's barge drew swiftly level with the battery, but they were still some way off the shore and it was a desperate struggle now, for the tide threatened to carry them beyond the point and on into the Gulf. Somehow they gained the shallows under the redoubt but here was another problem: a frenzy of white water breaking over half-submerged rocks and more of Jonah's
tourbillons
that threatened to drive them back into midstream and the fire of the guns. There were more than twenty men crammed into Nathan's barge and the water was breaking over the gunwales, but with over a dozen pulling on the oars and the rest bailing furiously, they finally ground on the shingle.