Now that the operation was committed, he felt a frisson of dread, for, by the faint light of the stars, and a sliver of a moon that was just rising, he could make out the disturbed-water splashes from the boats’ oar blades as they dug in, rose, and trailed hints of phosphoresence!
Lewrie knew that the soldiers, Marines, and sailors going ashore in the dark, their young officers also, would be feeling the same sort of icy, stomach-clenching dread of the unknown.
I pressed for this, I planned it, arranged it, come Hell or high water, and if it don’t work, or I get a lot o’ people killed, it’s me that takes the blame, Lewrie fretted.
If the whole thing went smash, it would be tempting to write a report to Admiralty to try and pass the onus of failure off on to someone else; Lewrie had seen that done too many times before. To do so, though, would force him to face the fact that he wasn’t clever enough, or smart enough, to manage senior command, and had spent his career in the Navy coasting by on supreme good luck!
“Christ, but command is a vicious bastard!” he whispered.
At that moment, he would much rather have been one of his Midshipmen in the landing boats, with but one simple task to perform and no responsibility beyond the gunn’ls of his boat.
A simple task for simple bloody me! he thought.
“I think I can make out…” Lt. Westcott intruded on his frets, “yes, I can see the oar splashes, sir. They’re in close to the beach.”
Lewrie looked out over the bulwarks and spotted them for himself, finding that the boats were closing in on the shore, but not in the hoped-for single line-abreast.
“Where the Devil are Harmony’s boats goin’?” he exclaimed, gripping the cap-rails. “Can’t they see the bloody lights on the bloody battery? They’re too far off to the left!”
There was no way of signalling them to change course, and they were too close to shore to do so, without steering right, parallel to the beach, before turning again to make their grounding.
This is goin’ t’turn t’shit! he grimly told himself; Even in this next-to-nothing surf, some are sure t’get overturned!
If the operation failed due to that mistake, perhaps he would write that report to Admiralty, a blistering one!
Lewrie dashed up the ladderway to the poop deck for a slightly better view, even though false dawn had not yet greyed the skies, but by then, even the oar splashes and faint phosphoresence had vanished. He realised that for good or ill, the boats and all those men were now ashore, and there was nothing he could do about it!
Several long minutes passed with nothing happening, no blossoming of lights round the battery to indicate that the sentries had wakened and spotted the troops, then …
“Gunfire, huzzah!” young Midshipman Fywell cried aloud, hopping up and down in excitement.
“Still, young sir!” Lewrie heard Lt. Harcourt snap. “Bear yourself with the proper demeanour!”
Wee red and amber fireflys were twinkling ashore, quite merry to observe, rippling along in a line in what Lewrie recognised as platoon fire. Long seconds later, after the first winkings, he could hear the faintest hint of twig-crackling as many weapons were discharged.
“False dawn, at last, sir,” the Sailing Master, Mr. Yelland, called up to him from the quarterdeck below. “At, ehm … five fourty-seven.”
Black threads, white threads … now it was dark grey land and white surfline, dull grey windmills and stone battery, and red tunics with white crossbelts, billows of gunpowder smoke, soldiers in tall shakoes in a long two-deep line fronting the battery, and another pack going round the right of it, disappearing into the rising smoke. One of the artillery pieces fired with a roar, adding more smoke to the confusion, and a roundshot moaned far overhead of Sapphire’s masts.
“I don’t suppose we should respond to that, hey, sir?” Westcott asked from the foot of the ladderway.
“Not without killing our troops, no,” Lewrie said, grimacing. He had called his crew to Quarters, but had not issued orders to load or run out, and the only weapons from the arms chests had been given to the shore parties.
That was the only shot from the battery, though, and the next sounds that could be made out from shore sounded like thin cheers and feral shouts. That thin line of red-coated soldiers could be seen as they swarmed up the slight slope to the parapets and scrambled over it. A moment later and a small British boat jack was being waved and wig-wagged over the parapet in vigourous fashion.
“We’ve taken it, then,” Westcott said, with a whoosh of relief.
“Thank God!” Lewrie said, with more emotion than was proper to a Navy Post-Captain. “That’s the first part done,” he added, returning to the correct calmness. “Now’s the mills’ turn, and all of the boats in harbour that we can reach. Assuming of course that there’s not a garrison that’s moved in since the last agent’s report.”
“If so, the battery was the most important part, as you said, sir,” Westcott pointed out. “If they appear, we can retire in good order, with the morning’s honour intact.”
“Keep your fingers crossed,” Lewrie cautioned. “And carry on, Geoffrey. I think I’ll go below and see if there’s any coffee.”
* * *
Thankfully, Puerto Banús had no Spanish military presence beyond the artillerists who had manned the battery, and the rest of the morning was spent merrily destroying as much as they could. The windmills were stone towers, but the upperworks, the rooves, mill vanes, and all the gearing that drove the grist milling stones were wood, and the landing parties turned those tall towers into roaring chimneys. The large granary, pitifully low on flour or un-milled wheat in sign of the devastation which Napoleon Bonaparte’s Continental System had wrought upon the Spanish people, was lined with several levels of wood storage racks, and they burned quite nicely, too, so hot a fire that the slate roof caved in and the granary shed slabs from its eaves.
The smaller fishermens’ boats drawn up on the shingle for the night succumbed to boarding axes, their bottoms smashed in, then run into the slack harbour waters to sink. Wood rudders, oars, and fishing nets were gathered up to make a fine bonfire. Landing boats penetrated the inner harbour without a shot being fired, or a single Spaniard to be seen, and armed parties boarded the larger boats to tow them out to the middle of the harbour and set them alight.
Lastly, all but a few of the troops were rowed back to their transport and the small number that remained ashore dealt with the battery and its guns. The guns were spiked at the touch-holes, trunnions blown off with borrowed Spanish gunpowder, and their wooden truck-carriages set afire. The long wooden barracks and the smaller officers quarters behind the battery were set afire, and a long length of slow-match laid to the powder magazine beneath the battery.
When the last shore party was about a cable offshore, the magazine exploded, heaving stone blocks from the parapet and the thick flagstones of the battery high in the sky, flinging heavy guns aloft, and all in a great gout of flame and sickly yellow-tinged white smoke.
The boat crews and the Marines returned to Sapphire just in time for “Clear Decks And Up Spirits” to be piped for the rum issue, which raised a great, self-congratulating cheer. There was an even greater one when Lewrie ordered “Splice The Mainbrace!” for full measures for all hands, with no debts to be paid to “sippers and gulpers” for any favours rendered. The same signal was made to Harmony, with similar good cheer among the men of the 77th.
* * *
“Leftenant Keane t’see th’ Cap’m, SAH!” the Marine sentry at Lewrie’s cabin door shouted, stamping his boots and musket hutt.