A Flag of Truce Page 6

  ‘Prosser,’ hissed Dilnot to his sergeant, a small Londoner. ‘We want some brushwood cut to lay on the passage, otherwise the clearances we have made will look too obvious once the sun is up. And don’t just roll any rocks and boulders to the side. Move them a distance.’

  The sound of hacking seemed like the knell of doom, so loud was it and that was when Dilnot’s other ruse came into play. He carried a shaded lantern, and when he opened it to show a light to his rear torches began to wave and move about, only enough to light the area right in front of the rampart, and loud shouting filled the air, the idea that if all French eyes were on the redoubt, they would not be simultaneously looking into the darkened hollow ground that lay between the positions. They worked their way forward to the base of the outcrop, and here the ground began to rise, not by much, but enough to imagine the task of hauling a cannon up there to be a telling one.

  ‘It has to be human muscle, Mr Pearce, we cannot risk an animal, but with good fortune we will have the whole night to accomplish it, and if we can get the cannon rigged on some reasonably level ground, I reckon we can make their encampment a place too warm for comfort.’

  The party worked on until Dilnot, carefully unshading to take a look at his fob watch, called a halt. Having done that he went right to the edge of the small plateau on which he intended to site the guns and stared hard at the fires of the French encampment.

  ‘You know, Mr Pearce, it would be a fine thing to open up before they reveille. Damn me, we could catch them in their smalls.’

  ‘If I am not mistaken, sir, it is time we retired.’

  ‘True. You go ahead, while I call in my skirmishers.’

  They were all back behind the rampart walls as the sky turned grey, that soon followed by a red ball of sun rising behind the French camp, which led to an anxious period of waiting, till it rose enough to cease blinding those looking east, and showed that it would take a sharp eye to find the line of the track they had made during the night.

  ‘Breakfast I think, Mr Pearce, then I fancy that you, like me, will welcome some rest.’

  Dilnot stood his men down, and they immediately made up beds under the ox-wagons, shaded from the sunlight. Within minutes the first sound of snoring emerged, and that soon turned into a cacophony. Pearce, finishing a bowl of coffee, reckoned they had managed a good night’s work, and he had to admire the way Dilnot had handled things, yet he was dying to ask what had caused Elphinstone’s outburst, while knowing that was an impossibility.

  ‘I am curious, sir, what tempted you to become a sailor?’ Dilnot asked

  This had Pearce wondering if the man could read his mind, it being a perfect foil to deflect any questioning of him. To open up or dissemble? He decided on the latter; what Dilnot did not know would not hurt him, while finding he was in the presence of a military novice might affect his actions.

  ‘Shall I say, sir, that I had little choice.’

  ‘Choice,’ said Dilnot wistfully. ‘Few in this world have that.’

  ‘You?

  ‘My father was a soldier before me, Mr Pearce, and reckoned the army the best career a man could aspire to, so I was chosen for the profession. He would turn in his grave to see me acting as a marine.’

  ‘Is it so arduous a burden?’

  ‘Only at times.’ There was a strange glint in his eye as he added, ‘At others, like now, I would not wish to be elsewhere.’

  ‘As you say, Mr Dilnot, time to sleep I think.’

  ‘I must find a spot away from that racket my men are making.’

  ‘Do you not have a billet in town?’

  ‘I do, and so do my men, but it seems bizarre to march all the way down to the Old Town, only to have to march all the way back up again tonight.’

  ‘Our party of seamen will do it.’

  ‘Your party of seamen are not carrying sixty pounds of kit, sir.’

  A steady stream of supplies arrived as they slept, all the things Pearce, advised by Dilnot, had informed Elphinstone were necessary. A couple of light carts, a dozen baulks of twelve-foot timbers, some capstan bars, more blocks and pulleys, plus, as the sun dipped into the west, a strong party of tars who would be needed for what was hoped would be the final act. Dilnot had his men lined up and was, with his sergeant, checking their muskets, ensuring they had the requisite amount of powder and shot and that their bayonets, which tended to get used for every job under the sun, had not been blunted. The sound of trudging boots had Pearce turn round, to observe a dusty midshipman approaching, and seeing he had been spotted, the lad grinned.

  ‘Mr Pearce, sir. I have been sent to assist.’

  ‘Mr Harbin, I am glad to see you.’

  ‘And I you, sir.’

  ‘Mr Dilnot, allow me to name Midshipman Harbin who recently sailed with me. If he is to go out with us tonight, I beg you ensure you keep an eye on him, otherwise he will be attacking the French command tent single-handed.’

  Harbin blushed through ten thousand freckles as Dilnot greeted him. ‘Mr Pearce, we need lifting frames erected with pulleys to raise both the cannon and their trunnions onto the carts. Of necessity they will have to be lifted over the rampart and their wheels replaced in open ground. It would be an asset if we could make that a single manoeuvre.’

  When Pearce said he was glad to see Harbin it was not just from affection. The boy was not only enthusiastic and brave, he was intelligent and knowledgeable in areas where his superior would struggle, perfect for the task now in hand. Pearce listened carefully as Harbin outlined how he would carry out the manoeuvre, the right size of lifting frames, their location, a set of ropes and pulleys that would take the cannon over the rampart to a lower frame that would sit right on the level of the carts once that had been established.

  ‘So, you see, sir, it will slide very neatly onto a bed of straw.’

  ‘Excellent, Mr Harbin. I can leave you to get that rigged. The coxswain, Robertshaw and I, will see to the carts.’

  A set of fascines were placed upright outside the rampart to create a screen behind which, with torches, the men could work, not perfect enough to entirely cut them off from view but enough to cause confusion as to their purpose at a distance. The wheels of the smaller carts had been knocked off the axles, and as soon as the light faded the body of each of the two were lifted over the rampart, the wheels put back in place once they were on the outside and the necessary tools, powder, shot and flintlocks loaded on; long, thick metal spikes, water for both men and matériel, levers to move the aim of the guns, spades to dig and a tub of unlit slowmatch to ensure that if the flints malfunctioned, the cannon could still be fired.

  Harbin was as good as his word; if there was anything the Navy was good at it was shifting two-ton weights as though they were feathers. Using double blocks, the cannon were lifted clear of the ox-wagons that had fetched them up the hill, then slung onto a thick cable that sloped towards the cushioned bed of the carts. The trunnions followed quickly, and the gun crews who would fire these pieces took up the ropes with which they would haul, this as Dilnot sent his men out to form a defensive line in front of the party.

  ‘Mr Harbin,’ called Pearce, seeing something that had been missed, ‘two more cables to the rear of the carts. If we have to beat a hasty retreat we will not have time to turn them round.’

  ‘Our friends over yonder must wonder what we are about,’ said Dilnot. ‘If they come out in numbers to find out we will be in trouble.’

  ‘Worth the risk, Mr Dilnot?’

  ‘No doubt about it, Mr Pearce.’

  ‘Right, you behind the parapet, take the strain. Quench the torches and drop those fascines.’

  The creak of the wheels, which had been greased, still sounded too loud for comfort as the carts were eased down the slope into the hollow ground. Once there those cables were detached and left for later, as the seamen took up the strain on the front, leaning on capstan bars that had been lashed to the steering frame that controlled the front axle, a better method of forw
ard movement over uneven ground than pulling. Dilnot’s bullocks walked fifty paces ahead, bayonets fixed, ten feet apart, the officer and his sergeant behind them to keep them dressed in the right line.

  Several times a wheel dropped into a depression. These were impossible to see in the low light of the stars, plus a sliver of new moon, and the carts needed to be levered out, in one case hauled backwards and manoeuvred round the obstacle. It took three hours to get to the foot of the incline leading to the proposed position and at that point Pearce called to Dilnot to say every hand, his skirmishers included, would be needed to get up the slope, which was accomplished by a heave, moving it forward a few inches, with men again placed behind the rear wheels to jam in levers that would prevent the carts slipping backwards. Now a couple of inches would have seemed like a mile as the gun transports, in all weighing near three tons each, were eased up and up, until finally the front wheels crested the plateau and pushing became easier.

  There was not a man, officer, seaman or marine who was not sweating buckets at the exertions, but there was no time to rest. Harbin had a frame and pulleys to rig, the trunnions coming off first, they being wheeled because they could be moved on their own, if not with ease, at least with effort. They were rolled into shallow forward-facing pits, freshly dug, designed to absorb some of the recoil and each cart was rolled over the top so that the cannon could be lifted straight in the air. The cart was then removed and the weapon lowered into position. Having twice carried out that manoeuvre, the next task was to rig the lines that would also act to control the recoil, though the stakes that would be needed to hold them would have to wait till near dawn; that was the last task to be carried out.

  Powder and shot were unloaded and set in place, the cannon tompions removed and the barrels swabbed before loading. Flints had been fitted and the slowmatch lit out of sight, to fizzle in the dark bringing with it the smell of burning saltpetre, and ahead of them, still flickering in the dark, were the dying campfires of their enemy.

  ‘A grey goose at a quarter mile, Mr Dilnot.’ There was just enough light to see his quizzical expression, as Pearce added, ‘It’s is a naval term, sir.’

  ‘I only ask, are we wholly ready?’

  ‘We are, barring the stakes. Mr Harbin.’

  The midshipman stepped forward to kneel down, a long metal spike in his hand, this copied by four other tars. Above them stood the strongest of the seamen’s party, each having in his hands a sledgehammer of formidable weight. There was no way to do this quietly, so on the command those hammers swung and the clang, as they hit the head of the spike, reverberated around the hillsides, each blow so close it was impossible to tell what was real and what was echo. The looped restraints had been prepared in advance, and as each spike was sunk to as much depth as was required, those lines were attached and tightened.

  ‘All done, sir,’ said Harbin.

  ‘Then, young sir, I would suggest it is time to let our friends yonder know we are here.’

  ‘Gun captains,’ Harbin called.

  Both men nodded at Harbin’s order, then admonished everyone to stand clear. This was no shipboard firing with trunnions rigged to be brought up short on thick cable restraints or a well-fashioned redoubt with properly sited artillery. No one had any idea what the cannon would do once fired. The gun captains themselves stood several yards back, holding the long lines that went to the flintlocks. Dilnot stood with his small telescope, Pearce with his larger instrument, their eyes fixed to observe the fall of shot, as both gun captains hauled hard. The flints fired the powder in the touch hole, which set off the charge in the barrel and a long orange tongue of flame shot from the muzzle as a nine-pounder cannonball was sent flying towards the French camp.

  The cannon shot backwards, the wheels in soft ground, the rear of the trunnions running on to hard packed earth, the barrels threatening to rise enough to tip backwards until they were brought to a halt by the ropes, but it was obvious as each whole ensemble dropped back to the ground it was not exactly in the same place from which it had been fired.

  ‘We shall have to aim every time, lads,’ shouted Pearce, trying and failing to see where the balls had landed. What he did see was the utter confusion of an encampment rudely awakened. They had pickets out to ensure they did not fall to a sudden ground assault, but clearly they had not anticipated this.

  ‘I would say, Mr Pearce,’ shouted Dilnot, ‘that rate of fire will count for more than accuracy.’

  Pearce was not listening. He was watching the French gunners, shirts flapping in the breeze, rush to their own cannon, and he was aware that this was something he had not thought of, perhaps forgivable given his lack of knowledge. What was surprising was that Dilnot had failed to foresee it either.

  ‘You will also see, Mr Dilnot, if you look left, that we are about to be in receipt of return fire.’

  ‘Then it will be warm, sir,’ Dilnot replied in what sounded like a happy tone. ‘Very warm.’

  Pearce was content to let the gun captains re-set their cannon, but it was going to be a worryingly slow rate of fire, all the while thinking he could not agree with Dilnot. If their purpose here was to disrupt French preparations then the cannon fire must be concentrated on achieving that. At least the sun had edged up behind a bank of cloud on the horizon, providing a clear sight of where the balls landed from their second salvo. They would not get off another without being paid back in kind.

  ‘Do we need to aim one cannon left?’ Pearce asked, as the first of the defensive battery opened fire. It was obvious, from fixed and prepared positions, they would be able to lay down more accurate fire, obvious that their outcrop, without the same kind of protective revetments as the French enjoyed, was dangerously exposed.

  ‘We have but a small window, Mr Pearce. Let us concentrate on what we can achieve.’

  Odd that Pearce felt more vulnerable on this plateau than he did on the deck of a ship where at least there were bulwarks, more so as the first French ball ploughed into the face of the outcrop and sent up a huge plume of earth. It pleased him that his naval gun crews seemed impervious; they carried on as though no fire was coming their way, even when a ball hit the very edge and ballooned up to fly over their heads. Their salvo in reply sent two balls ploughing through the rows of tents in the centre of the encampment, causing mayhem as half-dressed men and officers ran in all directions, in truth, a mistake, since there was no telling which way the next cannonball would go. And now the counter-battery fire was steady, yet if it was that, it was unlucky, for though much earth was moved, not one ball came close enough to their position to render it untenable.

  ‘Infantry forming up,’ shouted Dilnot.

  Following his pointed finger, Pearce saw a mob of soldiers being hurried into formation, with swords flashing and waving, some he suspected being used on the confused men. Both gun captains tried to hit them before they had any kind of proper shape, and one ball, falling short, bounced off a protruding rocky outcrop to shoot on, sending dozens of bits of stone flying to leave a clear line of bodies, some recumbent, others writhing, through the now-disordered ranks, while what had been chipped off the rock took several men not yet in line. The next salvo achieved what they had been trying to do since the outset; it hit the pile of scaling ladders that lay in the open, and reduced most of them to matchwood, sending splinters of the kind more common aboard ship to inflict gaping wounds on those who were close enough to suffer.

  With several more balls erupting around their position, Pearce suspected that it was only a matter of time before luck shifted from them to the French gunners. Dilnot stood at the very edge of the plateau, seemingly impervious to the idea of death, his glass still trained on the enemy formation, as they formed up in column before their own earthworks. Looking at the distance they would have to cover, and the distance back to their own redoubt, in daylight, from the only place that a man could make a proper judgement, Pearce realised that what looked like a possibility from their own redoubt looked like madness f
rom here. Getting these guns away was a nice idea but probably an impossible one. There was a reluctance to take charge; he knew little of warfare compared to Dilnot, but his gut feeling was such that he felt he had to.

  ‘Mr Dilnot, I would suggest it is time to deploy your men away from the guns. They will be safer in a place to cover us and slow the enemy when we retire. I trust you will know what to do once you are in the hollow.’

  Dilnot’s voice had an agitated tone as he responded. ‘You intend to withdraw, Mr Pearce?’

  ‘I do. We have done that for which we came, and to stay here is to invite annihilation. I fear I must make that an order.’

  There was a pause, then Dilnot said. ‘My men can give you time, sir, with their muskets.’

  There was something about Dilnot’s expression. Not disappointment, but a look in the eye that told Pearce he might welcome death, as long as it came with a dash of glory, and Elphinstone’s words about the man being ‘a damned proven coward’ came back to him. Was that what Dilnot was about, trying to lay the ghost of a reputation and not really caring a damn whom he took with him in the process?

  ‘Please do as I ask, Mr Dilnot, though I will, in my report, acknowledge your reluctance to accept such a command.’

  That seemed to mollify the man and he issued crisp orders to withdraw, following his men as they scurried down the slope in single file. The next order from Pearce was one he had to give, even if he did not want to. He could not risk the men he had led out here any more than he could risk Dilnot’s soldiers. The ball that went over his head with a whoosh of displaced air, and by so little a margin he was sure he could feel its heat, was all he needed to be convinced.