He climbed to the ramparts of the Teste de Buch where warm rain came ominous and heavy to aggravate his fear. An east wind, he thought, would be best. That would take his ships well offshore to the wide seas where they would be safest in a hard blow, but a west wind would destroy him and no amount of boastful despatches would forgive a captain who lost his 74 on a lee shore. Bampfylde paused to stare northwards where tiny lights flickered in a village. If de Maquerre came in the morning then Bampfylde would leave a strong garrison in the fort, sail his flotilla out to weather the storm at sea, then return to lead the advance on a rebellious Bordeaux. The storm might delay that glorious moment for two days, but it would also finish off the wounded American schooner.
Yet, in the ominous night of falling mercury, Captain Bampfylde’s hopes of glory were mercilessly dashed. Lieutenant Ford woke the captain at half past three. “Sir!”
Bampfylde, struggling out of a dream, noticed that the wind was stronger, gusting as it had before the fog had come down. “What is it?”
“The Comte de Maquerre, sir. With a man from the Mayor’s office in Bordeaux. They say their news is urgent.”
Urgent or not, Bampfylde insisted on dressing properly, and it was a half hour before, in the finery of a naval captain, he greeted the two Frenchmen. Both Favier and de Maquerre showed the tiredness of men who had ridden good horses half to death, who were weary in every bone and soaked to the skin. Their news sent a shiver through Captain Bampfylde.
“Major Sharpe is taken.” De Maquerre spoke first.
“Taken?” Bampfylde could only repeat the word.
“The Bonapartistes,” Favier picked up the tale, “knew of your coming here, Captain. A brigade was deployed. It was delayed, but it will be here by tomorrow midday.”
“A brigade?” Bampfylde, who had gone to sleep congratulating himself on the coming success of this expedition, stared at the kindly faced Favier. „A French brigade?“
Favier wondered what other kind this plump young man expected. “Naturally, monsieur. They have defeated Major Sharpe, the Marines who were with him, and now come to capture your good self.”
Bampfylde was overwhelmed. “Marines?” He seemed only capable of snatching single words from the disastrous flood of news.
“Marines, Captain,” Favier said sympathetically.
So that was where Palmer had got to! Swanning off with the Rifles! Bampfylde made a note to tear out Captain Palmer’s guts and wrap them round his neck, except that Palmer was a prisoner now. Or dead. “Coming here? A brigade?”
Favier nodded. “We warn you at some risk to ourselves, Captain. Bordeaux was in ferment, you understand, and our Mayor would support the return of King Louis, but alas!” Favier shrugged, “the tyrant’s heel is again upon our necks and we must, as ever, submit.”
Bampfylde, as his daydreams of glory collapsed, stared at the Comte de Maquerre. “But you said Bordeaux had no fighting troops!”
“They do now,” de Maquerre said grimly.
“And Sharpe’s captured?” Bampfylde snatched at another scrap in the fuddling flood.
“Or dead. There was appalling slaughter.” Favier frowned. “General Calvet’s men are veterans of Russia, Captain, and such fiends are pitiless. They think nothing of drinking their enemies’ blood. I could tell you stories,” Favier shrugged, as though the stories were too awful for a naval captain’s ears.
“And they’re coming here?”
“Indeed.” De Maquerre wondered how many times it must be said before this fool believed them. “By midday tomorrow.” He repeated the lie. He doubted; whether Calvet’s troops could reach Arcachon in the next forty-eight hours, but Ducos wanted Sharpe’s escape route cut, and the urgency of fear might hasten Bampfylde’s evacuation.
Bampfylde stared aghast at the two Frenchmen. His hopes, fed by Colonel Wigram, of leading a successful landing that would lance into Bordeaux were evaporating, but for the moment Bampfylde had other, more pressing worries. He twisted round to tap the glass and the column of mercury sank perceptibly. “You’ll come with us, of course?”
Jules Favier, a colonel in the French Army and one of Ducos’ most trusted men, felt a sudden leap of exultation. It had worked! “I cannot, monsieur. I have a family in Bordeaux. Should I leave, then I fear for their fate.”
“Of course.” Bampfylde imagined warriors, hardened by the Russian carnage, slashing into the fortress.
“I have no business here.” De Maquerre desperately wanted to stay in France, but Ducos had insisted he return to the British Army to leak news of whatever scheme replaced the landing at Arcachon. “So I will sail with you, Captain.”
Bampfylde tapped the glass again as if to confirm the bad news. There would be a storm, a ship-killing storm, but this welter of news had severed his last need to stay at Arcachon. He looked at the Comte. “We leave on the morning tide.”
Favier’s tiredness was suddenly washed away. Ducos’ daring scheme had been more successful than Favier had dared hope and, thanks to a growling wind and a falling glass, and thanks to some well-told lies, a Rifleman would be marooned in France, and the trap-jaws would clash home. On Sharpe.
CHAPTER 12
Jules Favier slept. It no longer mattered whether Sharpe was turned back towards Bordeaux or continued on to the coast; either way the Rifleman was stranded and the British plan to end the war by a killing stroke into the belly of France was defeated.
A wind rose as Favier slept. It shrieked over the ramparts, dying sometimes to a low moan, then gusting again to a fearsome frenzy. The waters of the channel, normally too enclosed to be stirred by anything other than a fretting tide, were whipped to whitecaps in the dawn’s first light. The flotilla’s smaller craft snubbed at their anchors while, out beyond the Cape, the Vengeance’s great bellying bows shuddered through the waters in towering, wind-lashed sprays of white.
Boat after boat rowed into the channel. Supplies were taken from the fort, stripping it of food and wine. Two Marines were sent to corrall a cow, which they did with difficulty, and the poor beast was prodded back to the fort where it was shot, messily butchered, and the bloody cuts of its carcass were crammed into barrels for seamen’s meat. The flagpole was cut down, and the Marines and sailors were ordered to use the garrison’s deep well as a latrine so that the brackish water would be fouled. Two seamen, hulking men with muscles hardened by years of service, took axes to the fort’s main gates and reduced them to splintered baulks that were then fired. The drawbridge was hauled up close to the burning gates so that it too would be reduced to ashes.
The Vengeance’s sailing-master, one eye on the glass and the other on the low scurrying clouds that sometimes spat heavy rain on to the burning timbers of the gate, counselled speed, but Bampfylde was determined to do this task properly. The Comte de Maquerre’s news meant that no landing could be made at Arcachon; therefore the fort would be abandoned, but not before it had been made untenable for the French. The Teste de Buch would be slighted.
Men were ordered to the ramparts where they hammered iron spikes into the touch-holes of the huge thirty-six pounder guns. The spikes were sawn through and filed flat so that no pincers could gain sufficient purchase to draw them free. Teams of seamen, using tackles, blocks and ropes from the Cavalier, eased the vast gun barrels from their slides and tipped them, in tumbling crashes, into the channel. The twenty-four pounders, like the six field guns that should have been delivered to Baltimore, were likewise spiked, turned off their carriages, and jettisoned into the flooded ditch. The twelve-pounder carriages were rammed into the burning gate, then Chinese Lights, signalling confections of nitre, sulphur, antimony and orpiment, were tossed among the carriages to encourage the blaze.