“Depends on what you have in mind,” Lewrie replied, wondering what he was getting at. “Another raid?”
“Two, actually,” Mountjoy responded, slyly grinning, “Within a day’s sail of each other. Look here,” he urged, fetching out a chart to spread on the marred old dining table in his lodgings. “There are semaphore towers all along the coast, in grovelling emulation of those that Bonaparte has built all over France.”
“In grovelling emulation of the British semaphore system that we built, first!” Lewrie interrupted him, with a scornful hoot.
Years before Napoleon Bonaparte had come to power, Admiralty had erected long chains of signalling towers from Whitehall to every major seaport, from Falmouth to Dover, the Downs, and the Goodwin Sands and Great Yarmouth. Signal towers were really an ancient idea, mentioned in recovered Roman texts; they had used large flashing tin mirrors by day, and torches by night, and could send complex messages further and faster than the quickest despatch rider. Unless blinded by a blizzard or pea-soup fog, the wig-wagging vanes atop the Admiralty building could whirl like a dervish’s arms and transmit orders to the Nore or to Portsmouth in ten minutes or less. Lewrie didn’t know exactly how the code worked, or what the many positions of the vanes meant, but was smugly convinced that the semaphore system was a marvel.
The French system put up all along their coasts he’d found useful, too, it must be admitted, especially at night, when the French hung large glass oil lanthorns on the vanes, replacing the black-painted pig bladders; Lewrie had been able to determine where he was along the coast at night by spotting the first one in a seaport town, then keeping count as he sailed along. They were as good as lighthouses!
“Anyway, as I said, there’s a chain of them from Málaga to Almeria, then to Cartagena, one of their main naval ports,” Mountjoy went on. “If they’re a French idea, then Godoy and his Francophiles simply must have them, though, from the reports I’ve gotten, they’re nowhere near finished, and Spain’s so ‘skint’ it’ll be a wonder if they can ever afford to complete them. They’ve none leading inland, so far as I know … just along the coasts. If that coastal warning chain is broken in a few places, the Spanish would have to re-build them and give them a stronger garrison, depriving Sir Hew’s friend, Castaños, of troops … and costing them money they don’t have.”
“What do your informants say of possible opposition?” Lewrie asked him, frowning.
“The towers themselves are thinly manned, just enough men to work the day, and another team for night,” Mountjoy said, shrugging off worries. “Watch for signals in two directions, copy them down, and work the arms to send them on. The ones closer to Almeria might be too risky, since there’s a sizable garrison there, foot, horse and all, but … down here at Almerimar, there’s a tower right on the shore that’s isolated, several miles removed from El Ejido, and even further from Berja, inland, where there sometimes are at least a company, or strong detatchment, of Spanish infantry. You could be in, burn it, and be out before a rider could summon them. Here’s the sketches I’ve obtained, and the nature of the beaches,” he said, placing them atop the chart they had been studying.
The semaphore tower, as depicted, was made of wood with ladders leading up through several open platforms to the larger one at the top where the arms, or vanes, were worked. It sat on a high spot at the back of a small bay open to the sea, with the small, sleepy fishing port of Almerimar situated on lower ground to the right of the tower, straggling up a lesser slope inland to grain fields, pastures, and orchards.
“It looks t’be an easy proposition,” Lewrie cautiously allowed. “I wouldn’t have t’land my troops in the full dark, this time. We’re going after the town, too?”
“Let’s not bother with the town, this time,” Mountjoy suggested, making a face. “It’s poor enough, already, and our aim is to win the Spanish over, eventually, not enflame their centuries-old hatred for us.”
“I thought you wanted chaos and mayhem?” Lewrie said, confused. “You agreed to burning the mills and granary at Puerto Banús, and all the fishermen’s boats,” he pointed out.
“I did,” Mountjoy admitted, “but once Dalrymple read my report, he shot me a stiff note saying that he’d have no truck with making war on civilians, and if we did not stick to destroying strictly military installations, he’d pull the troops away from us. Now, do we put the torch to Spanish army food supplies, that’s one thing, but food stores for civilians is quite another, and completely against the pale.”
“Humph,” Lewrie said with a snort, and a toss of his head. “To do that, we’d have t’land in a major city, and need Hughes’s fantacy of an entire brigade! Oh well. Aye, it looks as if Almerimar is possible, even in broad daylight. All the troops at the tower can do is madly wig-wag their tower’s arms, callin’ for help.”
“Then, if they wish to keep the chain of towers up and running, they’ll have to re-build it, and post at least a company of soldiers there to defend it, next time,” Mountjoy cheerfully pictured. “A company to each tower, and you hold back whole regiments from marching to join General Castaños.”
“You said two towers?” Lewrie prompted.
“Over here,” Mountjoy said, gathering up the first set of hand-drawn sketches and pointing to another coastal town further West, to a cluster of small towns; Almuñécar, Salobreña, and Motril, close to the foothills of the Sierra de Almijara. “Might be a tougher nut, mind you. The main road to Granada, inland, joins the coast road halfway ’twixt Salobreña and Motril. Salobreña’s right on the coast, with Motril higher up and inland, but with grand sea views, so my reports say.”
“There’s a semaphore tower there, at Salobreña?” Lewrie asked. “Anything else?”
“The semaphore tower is all that matters,” Mountjoy told him, “though it will be harder to get at, since it’s at the back of the town, on a higher spur, It would’ve made more sense to build it nearer to Motril, which is uphill, but for a ridge East of Motril that blocks the view.”
“We’d have t’fight our way through a town?” Lewrie exclaimed. “What happened to bein’ sweet to the Spanish? Ye can’t trust soldiers t’not loot a little, on the sly, and if fire’s exchanged, there’s the risk o’ civilians gettin’ shot. If the government in Madrid is apin’ the French, they’ll have their own equivalent of Bonaparte’s Moniteur, and play up the deaths and destruction like the Americans played up a few dead rebels as the Boston Massacre!”
“It’s on the extreme outskirts of the town,” Mountjoy pointed out, producing some more sketches from his field agents and informers. “Look here. Up here’s the tower, about a quarter-mile inland from the beach, beyond a grove of trees, some pastureland, an orchard, and a few scattered houses, barns, and out-buildings. It’s not as if you’d be chargin’ through the streets. Sort of below the village of Motril, but out past the last of the ridge, where the sightline to the towers further East is better.”
Lewrie ignored the sketches for a moment, looking closer at the chart, and finding an host of wee markers which resembled tall, skinny triangles with vees above them, all along the coast.
“Mountjoy, there are hundreds of the bloody things…” he said.
“Well, not hundreds, really,” Mountjoy objected.
“… about eight or ten miles apart, else they couldn’t even begin t’read what signal they’re making. I expect the expense for all the needed telescopes is horrid, even so. Why don’t we just burn the one at Almerimar, and work our way West, startin’ at dawn and ending by dusk?”
“You told me that it takes an hour or so just to get the men ashore, and hours more to complete the destruction as you did with the battery at Puerto Banús,” Mountjoy dis-agreed. “I doubt you could hit no more than two, before the Spanish Army could respond, especially if you kept it up for several days. You might even draw warships out of Cartagena, and then where would you be? So far, the Mediterranean Fleet has kept them penned up in their ports, and, after the trouncing they took at Trafalgar, the Spanish may be loath to lose any more precious ships, but … a series of raids like that would sting them out.”