How many had been killed - or, more important, how mam 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 triggerline 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 triggerline.
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 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 roundshot!" he exclaimed to Stafford. "This caseshot 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 gun smoke.
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 squaresail 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 doubleshotted 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; tome!"
Many of the men heard him above the yelling and screaming and, led by Rennick, Ken ton, 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.