“Think that covers everything, Captain Lewrie?” Hughes asked.

“I do believe it does, Major Hughes,” Lewrie replied, satisfied that even the most minor matters had been dealt with.

“Then let’s board the transport tomorrow morning, gentlemen,” Hughes confidently concluded. “Bright-eyed, and relatively sobre, at least, and be about it! Let’s show the Spanish how real soldiers go about their business … let’s show the world!”

*   *   *

Imbued with confidence from their first relatively successful raid at Puerto Banús, the landing at Almerimar went off like clockwork, the officers and men of the 77th’s detachment boarding their boats with alacrity, the boat crews forming up in line-abreast formation as if they’d been doing it for years, and, once the boats grounded the soldiers and Marines advanced on the semaphore tower, and created a screen ’twixt the tower and the town, in a twinkling, going in at the double-quick and raising great, feral cheers.

As soon as it was evident that two “Inglese” ships were coming to the town, church bells in Almerimar had begun to peal madly, audible even two-thirds of a mile offshore. Spaniards could be seen dashing about the streets, loading carts, hitching up mules, horses, or donkeys, saddling up, and piling their most treasured possessions in the carts or waggons, even snatching the town’s clotheslines bare to salvage any scrap of clothing or bedding. The townspeople fled East up the coast towards Roquetas de Mar, or inland towards El Ejido, raising clouds of dust from the roads or fields.

There was no opposition, and the landing could have been done by only one company of men. The few Spanish soldiers who manned the semaphore tower stayed at their posts ’til British troops began to swarm ashore from the boats, and the arms of the tower with the black balls at the ends finally stopped wig-wagging, sagging in a downward vee as the positioning ropes were left slack, at last. Seven or eight Spaniards dashed off-inland, their officer and sergeant flailing away with whips to spur their donkeys to a full run, leaving those on foot in their dusty wake.

A few minutes after Sapphire’s Marines surrounded the tower, it and the Spanish signalmen’s tents began to smoke, then break out into a roaring fire, helped along with lanthorn oil and scattered gunpowder, sending dense, rising, spreading clouds of dark grey smoke rising high in the morning sky, letting the towers up and down the coast know that the one at Almerimar was silenced for a good, long time, and if they weren’t watchful, the same thing might soon happen to them.

The Marines marched back to the beach in a column-of-twos, and as soon as they were under way, the two companies of the 77th retired from their guard upon the town and fell in behind them, the trailing company still spread out in pairs of skirmishers to form a rearguard. The boats were soon filled, and gotten off the beach, and, in looser, more casual order, returned to the ships to muzzle by the masts’ channel platforms and the scrambling nets. They boarded both ships with laughs, cheers, and impromptu songs, at least an hour before the first rum issue was piped.

No one had been injured, and the worst complaint was that some had gotten their boots and trousers wet to the knees, and had to go change their stockings once weapons and accoutrements had been stored away.

As planned, Sapphire led Harmony up the coast to the East, in plain sight and only a mile or two offshore of Roquetas de Mar, and Aguadulce, and a Midshipman in Sapphire’s mainmast cross-trees could gleefully report that he could see semaphore towers as far off as the city of Almeria whirling away like so many dervishes. Satisfied with the morning’s work, Lewrie then ordered the course to be altered, out to sea and out of sight, gradually fading hull-down from watchers on the tip of Cabo de Gata, as if further raids might take place East of Almeria, threatening Mojacar, Garrucha, Palomares, or Aguilas. Once completely out of sight, though, about both ships went once more, to shape course for their second objective.

*   *   *

One lone stroke upon the forecastle bell rang out most eerily as the ship’s boy who tended it opened a small hooded lanthorn just long enough to see the last of the sand in his half-hour glass run out.

“Boats are in place and manned, sir,” Lt. Westcott reported to Lewrie on the blackened quarterdeck.

“Very well, Mister Westcott,” Lewrie replied, shivering a bit to the cool night breeze. “Load the boats. Pass word to Lieutenant Keane, and send the Execute lanthorn flash to Harmony.”

“Aye, sir.”

HMS Sapphire was fetched-to just a little over half a mile off the shore, slowly rolling to the faint scend of the sea, hull timbers and mast steps making faint creaking noises. The breeze was light, and the sea, though black as a boot, barely rippled, reflecting tiny lights from Salobreña’s waterfront, the lights which burned that late in the town of Amuñécar off a bit to the West, and from Motril, higher up and inland from Salobreña, casting amber winkings from the tops of what waves there were, as if the warship lay on the edge of a lawn aswarm with fireflys that flashed in their hundreds as they hummed about.

Hope they’re up to it, Lewrie thought, worrying that the training in the complete dark, and the experience that the soldiers had gotten from the first two landings, might not be enough to put them onto the shore at 4:30 A.M., over a full hour before false dawn. There was a nagging thought that he might be asking a bit too much of them this night. He peered shoreward intently, searching for any sign of breaking surf on the black beaches, but could not discern any disturbances. At least the boats would have an easy row in over a blessedly calm sea and ground on a beach on which the waves rolled in lazily to roil in ripples, sweep cross the hard sands, seep in, then retreat as slowly and as gently as the breathing of a sleeping kitten.

He went up to the poop deck for a better view, taking along a night-glass, despite the skewed view it would provide in its ocular.

Streetlights, doorway lights … were some of them moving, he wondered? Small as Salobreña was, could the town afford nightwatchmen? Even at that hour, fishermen might already be awake and astir, their wives stoking hearth fires, and one waterfront tavern or two might be open that early to dish up hearty breakfasts for men who had to rise that early and put out in their boats by sun-up. And all it would take would be one shout of alarm, and the whole attack could go smash!

“Dammit, dammit, dammit!” Lewrie whispered to the night.

“Light, sir!” Lt. Westcott shouted up to him, startling him. “Two flashes from the boats. They’re in contact with each other!”

He’d been so intent on the blackness of the land that he had missed seeing it. Both ships were darkened, revealing nothing to any casual watcher, but now came another risk, the signal to proceed with the landing, from seaward, which any fool might spot!

“Three flashes back, Mister Westcott,” Lewrie called back.

He looked for the tiny splashes from the blades of the oars as they dug in, for the eery phosphorescence that arose from disturbances in nighttime waters, but this time there was nothing to see, no sign of the boats’ very existence.

Pray God it stays so! he thought. He felt as if he was waiting for the wee plop of a pebble tossed down a well, a well so deep and infinite that it would never come.

He lowered the telescope and pushed its tubes shut, and despite a lifetime of training not to, he leaned on the bulwarks, arms on top of the cap-rails and his chest pressed against the wood, facing that stygian shore. Something bumped the back of his right knee above his boot, once, then again, and he groped down to find a cold nose and a furry muzzle; Bisquit had come up to seek company, awakened by all of the clumping of sailors and Marines leaving the ship.