ALEXANDER KENT - TO GLORY WE STEER Страница 19

Okes controlled his breathing with a savage effort. `The French are coming! Over there, behind the hill.'

`I know. My men have already spotted them.' Rennie regarded him calmly. `What did you expect them to do?'

The marine's obvious indifference gave Okes the little extra strength he still needed. `You can start falling-back. I've given orders to fire the magazine.' He dropped his eyes. `I'm blowing the bridge as soon as McIntosh is ready!'

Rennie stared at him. `But the captain! How in hell's name can he get back to us without the bridge?' He clapped on his hat and reached for his sword. `I'd better go and have a look back there.'

Okes blocked his way, 'his eyes blazing. `You know the orders! I'm in charge if anything happens to the. captain! Your duty is to cover the withdrawal!'

Sergeant Garwood trotted round the bend, his half-pike glittering the growing light. `Sir.' He ignored Okes. `The Frogs is comin'! There's best part of a company movin' down on our flank. I think the rest will try and work round the village and take us from the rear.'

Rennie nodded, his face suddenly grave. `Very well. I'll come at once.'

He turned back to Okes and said slowly, `You'll wait a bit longer surely? It takes time to get a boat back to the headland!'

Okes swung on his heel as a ragged volley of musket fire echoed around the hills. `Get back to your men, Captain Rennie. I hope I know my duty!'

Rennie shrugged and walked quickly up the sloping hillside towards the firing. When he looked back he… could see the smoke from the anchorage drifting across the headland in a solid wall, and tried to picture the devastation beyond.

Against the hillside and the glittering water below the cliff Okes' running figure looked frail and lost. `I hope you do, Mr. Okes!' Rennie spoke aloud to the empty hillside. Then he turned and began to run to his prepared positions and his men.

Okes found McIntosh already squatting on one side of the bridge, craning his head to peer down at one of the massive wooden trestles.

'Ready? Okes could hardly stop himself from shouting. 'Well, are you?'

McIntosh nodded. 'Aye, aye, sir. A two-minute fuse. And a four-minute fuse to the magazine.' He rubbed his hard hands. 'Mr. Farquhar is waiting atop the battery to light it as soon as the cap'n gets back.'

Okes swayed and then controlled himself. 'Wait here!' He started to run again, and as soon as he had reached the outskirts of the battery he blew his whistle and yelled, 'Clear the headland! Fall back there!'

Startled, the seamen gathered up their weapons and began to hurry towards the bridge. Most of them had seen the approaching soldiers and needed no second order.

A petty officer, his face stained with dirt and smoke, strode across to the panting lieutenant. 'Beggin' yer pardon, sir! The cap'n ain't come yet!'

'Yes, yes, I know that!' Okes glared at him glassily. 'You go with the others and get them across the bridge. Wait for me there, and be ready to move!' He peered through the smoke. 'Where is Mr. Farquhar?'

The man shrugged. 'Gone down the steps, sir. He said he'd get a better chance of seeing through the smoke from there.'

Okes strode to the battery wall and leaned against it for support. With the sailors gone and the gunports unoccupied and empty the place seemed strangely dead. He made himself walk to the top of the steps. There was no sign of Farquhar, of anybody in fact.

There was a fresh burst of firing, intermingled with wild cheering, and his limbs started to move as if he had already lost control of them. He walked to the open door of the magazine and stared for several seconds at the waiting fuse and the smouldering slow match beside it. It was not his fault, he told himself. There was nothing else he could do. He sank to his knees, his eyes filled with the fuse and the mental picture of Bolitho hurrying away towards the anchored sloop.

Damn them! Damn them all!.He had to steady his wrist with his other hand as he took the match and held it against the fuse.

He felt the nausea hard in his throat as he staggered to his feet and ran quickly towards the bridge.

McIntosh stared up at him, his eyes uncomprehending,

`Light it, you fooll' Okes was already halfway across the bridge. 'Or stay there and go up with the magazine!'

Mcintosh fired the fuse and scrambled on to the bridge. He caught Okes up around the curve in the road and gasped, 'Where's Mr. Farquhar, sir? An' what happened to the captain?'

Okes snarled, 'Back to the beach! All of you!' To McIntosh he added, 'All dead! Like you'll be if the French catch you!'

There was a thunderous roar, followed almost immediately by a second, sharper explosion. The force of the detonations seemed to quell the musket fire and distant shouts, so that the whole island appeared to be stunned by the noise.

The growling rumble went on, and Okes heard a splintering crash as the bridge fell into the ravine like so much kindling wood.

Strangely, he found that he could walk now, his feet moving almost steadily as he followed his men down the road towards the pier and safety. He had acted in the only way possible. He kept his eyes fixed on the pier. The only way. Others would soon see that, too. He pictured his wife's face when she read the announcement in the Gazette.

'Lieutenant Matthew Okes, who carried the brunt of the responsibility of this daring raid after the death of his commanding officer, is to be congratulated on his valour and his keenness to press home an attack against impossible odds!'

He slowed to a halt as a group of marines burst through the gorse and took up positions on the road itself.

A marine yelled, 'Here they come, lads!'

Sergeant Garwood's voice boomed from beyond the hilltop. 'Hold your fire, my darlings! Ready, now! Fire!'

His last order came as a charging line of blue uniformed soldiers rose above the skyline and started to run down towards the beach. As the musket smoke drifted clear Okes saw the soldiers falling back, leaving others screaming and kicking in a low gorse.

'Reload! Take yer time!' Garwood sounded calm. 'Aim low, lads!'

Another sharp volley, but this time there were more soldiers, and,they came on with fresh determination in spite of losses. And here and there a marine lay dead, and several others crawled slowly down the hillside after their comrades.

Okes could see Rennie standing imperturbably on a hillock, ignoring the sharpshooters as he controlled his thin line of retreating men. He felt his envy giving way to hatred. Rennie would never have acted as he had donel He would have waited for Bolitho and allowed everyone to die for nothing!

Okes shouted, `To the luggert Lively there!'

The sailors ran wildly to the pier, carrying their wounded companions and yelling encouragement to the marines. It seemed to Okes that another age passed before all his men were aboard and the last of the marines were falling back along the pier. There was a fresh morning breeze to fill the lugger's sails, and as the last' marine scrambled gasping over the bulwark the boat idled clear.

With a maddened roar the French soldiers charged from cover and headed for the pier. From individual uniformed blobs they converged into a solid force, and as they surged on to the pier itself they merged into a single enemy.

McIntosh crouched in the bows and looked along the swivel gun. He ignored the sporadic musket fire, and waited until the soldiers were packed into a yelling, tangled, throng before he jerked back the lanyard. `There, my beauties!' He stood up wildly in the pitching boat as the canister shot cut through the screaming soldiers like a scythe. `That's fer the cap'n! An' all the others!'

Before the second wave of soldiers had reached the bloody, threshing carnage on the pier the lugger had gone about and headed out to sea. Aboard there was silence now, and even when the Phararope's raked masts rounded the headland and bore down on the small boat like a protective parent, the exhausted men could not even muster a cheer.

Okes looked back at the island, at the smoke, and the vague outline of the headland battery. It was over.

The lugger was to be abandoned after the raid, so Okes had it laid alongside the Phalarope, where many hands reached down for the wounded and the silent victors.

Captain Rennie stood aside to allow Okes to climb up the frigate's side. He said, `After you, Mr. Okes. I'd not want to spoil your entrance this morning!'

Okes stared at him, his mouth hanging open to reply. Then he saw the cold hostility in Rennie's eyes and decided against it. He must expect jealousy, he told himself firmly. He must be prepared to deal with it.

He reached for the main chains and swung himself up and over the frigate's side. For a moment longer he stared around the familiar deck. He had survived.

9. DEFEAT

Bolitho did not actually 'remember hearing the exploding magazine. It was more like a sensation, or the ending of a nightmarish dream when a man awakes even more afraid of the waiting reality. He recalled sitting in the stem of the crowded and half-swamped boat, staring back at the hissing,. writhing water where the transport had made her last dive to the bottom. His eyes ached from the blaze, and were now dulled by the ship's sudden disappearance and the shadow which reached across the high-sided anchorage to hide the pain and terror beneath.

His men were laughing and chattering with relief and excitement, but as Bolitho turned back to search for the treacherous rockfalls at the foot of the cliff the whole world seemed to explode in one gigantic tremor. Rocks rained down into the water, and as the men pulled desperately at the oars one large piece of splintered stone struck the stem like a hammer, and Bolitho staggered to his feet as the sea surged jubilantly into the listing boat.

It seemed as if the bombardment from above would never cease. He saw one man swept underwater by a complete section of cliff even as he tried to scramble up on to the rocks. Belsey, the master's mate, fell cursing into deep water, and when Stockdale heaved him' bodily up on to the rocks he yelled in anguish, 'Me arm! God, me arm's broken!'

Bolitho's dazed thoughts were slowly returning to normal, and as he called encouragement to his half-drowned men his mind rebelled against what he knew to be true. Someone had fired the magazine without waiting for him and his party. He could find only small gratitude for the fact that had his boat returned minutes earlier they would have all been blasted skyward with the magazine and the battery.

He called, `Follow me, lads! We'll climb along the water's edge on these rocks. The tide's dropping, so we should be able to reach the steps well enough.' He groped his way forward, knowing that they would follow. There was no choice. At the far end of the anchorage he could hear the frantic cries and the urgent notes of a trumpet. The French were too busy saving their own to care about the raiding party. But it would not last. Then the vengeance would be swift and,final.

He staggered to a halt- and blinked through the haze of acrid smoke. In the pale morning light which filtered down the steep ravine he could clearly see the remains of the bridge. There was no point in climbing the steps now. There was no way back to the beach.

A seaman ran dazedly past him and stared open mouthed at the wreckage. `You bastards!' His voice shook with despair. `You damn, cowardly bastards!'

`Silence!' Bolitho pushed the man back with the others. 'No doubt there was a good reason for blowing the bridge this early.' But he saw the look on Stockdale's face and knew that he had seen the lie in his eyes.

Belsey moaned and leaned against Stockdale for support. 'They left us to die! Ran -to save their precious skins!'

,Bolitho held up his hand. 'Quiet!' He cocked his head. 'Listen!'

A seaman said sharply, 'Over there, sir. I heard somethin', too.'

They scrambled over the smoking, splintered timbers until the first seaman fell back with a gasp of horror. Midshipman Farquhar was sitting propped against the ravine's rough wall, his body pinned in position by a great baulk of timber, and lying close by his side was a neatly severed leg.

Farquhar opened his eyes aild croaked, `Thank God, sirl I thought I was going to die alone!' He saw their expressions and managed a painful grin. `It's not my leg, sir! It belongs to our Spanish prisoner!'

Bolitho glanced around him and then up at the brightening sky. `Right. Lift that timber off him, and be very careful!' He knelt beside the midshipman and ran his hands swiftly beneath the massive beam, keeping his eyes on Farquhar's taut features as his fingers probed at his trapped body.

Farquhar said between his teeth, 'Nothing broken it seems!' He lay back and closed his eyes as the beam quivered and began to move. 'I was looking for you, sir. Then I returned to the fnagazine and saw that the fuse was almost burned through!' He sounded near breaking. 'I seized our Spaniard and ran for the bridge, but just as we reached it the whole thing blew up and dropped into the ravine.' He winced. 'And us with it!'

The beam was dragged clear, and Bolitho tightened his jaw as he saw the smashed remains of their prisoner. He asked harshly, 'How did it happen?'

Farquhar allowed himself to be lifted to his feet. Immediately his legs buckled, and Stockdale said gruffly, 'Ere, I'll take the young gentleman, sirl'

Farquhar clung to Stockdale's shoulder and said, `Sorry about all this, sir. I'll be all right in a while.' He remembered Bolitho's question and said vaguely, `I can't understand it, sir. I still can't believe it happened.'

Bolitho pulled the dirk from Farquhar's belt and handed it to one of the seamen. `Here, make a good splint with this for Mr. Belsey's arm. It will suffice until we get back to the Phalarope.'

Belsey watched the men's awkward fingers and groaned. `Watch what yer doin' You're like a pair of blind whores!'

Bolitho walked slowly along the weed-encrusted stonework. Fourteen men including himself. One with a broken arm, and one already half delirious from a ball in his shoulder. Farquhar looked as if he might fall unconscious, too.

He tried to push the bitterness and suspicion to the back of his mind. That would keep. Right now he had to get these men to safety. No doubt the rest of the raiding party was already embarked in the lugger. He suddenly felt calmer. Whatever else happened, he had succeeded in his work. Two transports destroyed and a valuable sloop with them. And without a battery Mola Island would be useless to the French and their allies for a long while to come.

Stockdale called throatily, `The second longboat, sir! It'll still be tied to the jetty where we left it!'

Bolitho scrambled across the wet stones and stared down at the remaining boat. It was not much of a craft. Patched. and well used, and with only four oars and a mere scrap of canvas furled around the mast for every purpose. But no doubt the garrison had only used it for visiting the ships in harbour.

He said grimly, `Get them aboard, Stockdale. We'll have to make the best of it.'

A ray of yellow sunlight lanced suddenly across the headland and glittered in the deep water. Without effort Bolitho could see the gleaming barrel of one of the battery's cannon almost below the swinging boat. A few feet this way and there would be no way out at all!

`Four of you man the oars! The rest of you take turns in baling and keep a sharp lookout!'