“Sir!” The Riflemen, taking the Americans from the rear, and coming so unexpectedly with weapons ready, gave the Thuella’s crew no chance to fight. Docherty drew his sword, but Taylor’s bayonet touched the Irishman’s throat and the feral eyes of the Rifleman told the lieutenant just what would happen if he raised the blade. Docherty let it fall. Some of Thuella’s crew, unable to retreat into the clearing that was covered by the Marines’ muskets, dropped their weapons and ran to shelter with the startled villagers.
“Who the hell are you?” Killick asked.
“Captain Frederickson, Royal American Rifles. You’re supposed to offer me your sword.”
Killick succinctly gave his view of that suggestion, and Frederickson smiled. “I can always take it from you. Do you command here?”
“What if I do?”
Killick’s truculence only made Frederickson more patient. “If you want to fight my lads, then I assure you they’ll welcome the chance. They’ve been fighting for six years, and about the only consolation our Army offers to them is the plunder from dead enemies.”
“Shit,” said Killick. There was no fight to be had, for the Riflemen were already herding his gun crews back. One of the green-jacketed bastards, the one who had taken Liam Docherty prisoner, was folding the Stars and Stripes into a bundle. Some of his men, Killick saw, were edging away with the villagers, but they had abandoned their weapons so as not to be taken for combatants. Cornelius Killick felt the impotence of a sailor doomed to fight out of water. He could have wept in anger and impotence and for the shame of seeing his flag taken. Instead, clinging to a shred of dignity, he plucked his sword from his scabbard and offered it, hilt first, to Frederickson. “If you’d fought me at sea…” Killick began.
“… I would be your prisoner,” Frederickson politely finished the sentence. “And if you give me your word that you will not attempt to escape, then you may keep your sword.”
Killick dutifully slid the blade back into its scabbard. “You have my word.”
Frederickson took a silver whistle from the loop on his crossbelt and blew six blasts on it. “Just to let our web-footed friends know that we’ve done their job.” He opened his pouch and took out an eye-patch and false teeth. “You’ll forgive my vanity?” Frederickson asked as he tied the eye-patch in place. “Shall we go back now?”
“Back?”
“To the fort, of course. As my prisoner I can assure you that your treatment will be that of a gentleman.”
Killick stared at the Rifleman whose face, even with patch and teeth restored, was hardly reassuring. Cornelius Killick expected a British officer to be a supercilious poltroon, all airs and graces and high-spoken delicacies, and he was somewhat shaken to be faced with a man who looked as hard-bitten as this Rifleman. “You give me your word we’ll be treated properly?”
Frederickson frowned, as though the question were indelicate. “You have my word as an officer.” He smiled suddenly. “I can’t speak for the food tonight, but doubtless there’ll be wine in abundance. This is, after all, the Medoc, and the harvest was good this year or so I believe. Sergeant!” He in gave a shrug of apology to Killick for thus turning away. “Leave the guns to the web-foots! Back to the fort!”
“Sir!”
Cornelius Killick, who had hoped to be as successful on land as he was at sea, had met a Rifleman, and all he could do was light a cigar and console himself that, for a sailor, there was no disgrace in being bested ashore. But it irked all the same, God, how it irked!
And the Arcachon Basin, in which the Thuella was stranded, had fallen.
Henri Lassan, seeing his men cornered in their bastion and recognizing the import of the feared Green Jackets and their long, glittering bayonets, had known there was no future in fighting. “Over! Over!” He pointed over the bastion and down to the strip of wind-drifted sand that edged the fort’s western ramparts. Here, on the fort’s seaward facing flank, there was no flooded ditch for the tidewater was better than any moat, and his gunners leaped from the embrasures to tumble heavily on the sand. Lassan, as he jumped, felt a sudden, keen pang for the loss of his books, then the wind was driven from him by the jar of his landing. Two of his men twisted their ankles, but they were safely helped into the dune’s cover from where, the wounded men assisted by their comrades, Lassan led his men north. Two rifle bullets followed them, but a bark of command ordered the ceasefire.
The fortress had fallen, not to Marines, but to Green Jackets, and Lassan wondered how they had come so silently, and how they had pierced the defences without his knowledge, but that was useless speculation today, when he had failed in his task.
He had lost the Teste de Buch, but he could yet frustrate his enemy. He supposed they had come for the chasse-marees and Lassan, stumbling in the cloying sand, would go to Le Moulleau and there burn the boats.
Falling night brought cold rain to pit the sand with tiny dark craters. The track wound through dunes, past discarded fish traps and the black ribs of rotted boats. The fishing village lay two miles north and Lassan could see the dense tangle of masts and yards where the chasse-marees had been moored by his orders. The owners of the boats mostly lived aboard, waiting and grumbling until they could be released back to their trade.
Vestiges of cannon smoke sifted north with Henri Lassan. The tide, he saw, was turning. Tiny waves rolled over the beds where mussels and oysters thrived. No more would the women bring him the flat baskets of shellfish and stop to gossip about the prices in the Arcachon town market or to whisper, with pretended shock, of the bedtime exploits of the American captain. Lassan wondered what had happened to Killick, but that speculation was as useless as wondering how the Teste de Buch had fallen. Commandant Henri Lassan, sword at his waist and pistol in his belt, had a task to do, and he went north in the gathering darkness to perform it.
And at Le Moulleau the chasse-maree crews mutinied. They gathered outside the white-painted Customs House, disused these many years because of the Royal Navy blockade, but still manned by two uniformed men who opened their heavy door to listen to the commotion outside. Behind the crews were the wooden pilings that edged the sheds where the shellfish were broken open and where the murmur swelled into an angry protest. The ships were their livelihoods. Without the ships they would starve, their children would starve, and their women would starve.
Lassan’s men, embarrassed by their predicament, stared at the ground. Torches flared in brackets on the Customs House facade, casting a red light on angry faces. Rain spat from the south. Lassan, a reasonable and kind man, raised his hands. “My friends!” He explained why the boats were needed, how the English would use the craft to make a bridge or to land their Army north of the Adour. “What of your children then? What of your wives, eh? Tell me that?”
There was silence, except for the running of the tide and the hiss as rain hit the torches. The faces were suspicious. Lassan knew that the French forces were disliked by the French peasantry, for the Emperor had decreed that French troops could take what rations they wanted and not pay for them. Lassan himself had refused to obey that decree, but the disobedience had been funded from his own pocket. Some of these men knew that, knew that Lassan had always been a decent officer, but still he threatened them with hunger.
“The English,” a voice shouted from the anonymity of the crowd, “are offering twenty francs a day. Twenty!”
The murmur started again, grew, and Lassan knew he would have to use force to keep these men from interfering with his duty. He had tried reason, but reason was a feeble weapon against the cupidity of peasants, so now he must be savage in his duty. “Lieutenant Gerard!”