Skull and Bones

Chapter 39

The longboat bumped into mooring posts at the foot of the timber stairs. The men cheered. Alvarez shrieked in relief and joy. They'd made it! They'd come ashore! They'd got under the reach of the slaughtering, murdering battery. They couldn't be hit any more! And thump-bump-crunch, the second longboat — La Concha's — was alongside and crammed with yelling mouths, glittering bayonets and black moustaches. The second boat had been badly hit by grape and there were dead and wounded rolling in her bilges, but she still disgorged a load of fighting men.

"Santiago!" cried Alvarez.

"SANTIAGO!" they all roared.

"Follow me!" cried Alvarez, swept away by the triumph of the moment, and he made ready to jump for the stairs with sword in hand.

"Aspirante," cried Sargento Ortiz, grabbing his arm, "shall we not send the boats back for more men?"

"Oh! Ah!ⁿ cried Alvarez. "Soldiers of Spain, follow me! Seamen, return for another load!" And then he was off, fired with fury, erupting with passion, and for once in his life leading from the front with his men following after, boots

pounding, muskets clattering, swarming, tumbling out of the wallowing boats, with the seamen urging them on, and thundering up the wooden stairs that creaked and swayed under their load, and pouring out at the top, with Alvarez leaping with excitement and the civilian population of Savannah shrieking and screaming and running in all directions: men and women, children and adults, black, white, red and mulattos of every shade scattering. Some ran to their houses, some to the forest — but mostly they ran pell-mell towards the heavy grey timbers and the smooth, looming earthworks of Savannah's fort… and never a blow struck in defence of the town and never a glimpse of a red coat… except a hundred yards off to one side, where the troops in the now- silent battery stood in their smoke and peered through the embrasures at the Spaniards, now firmly in control of Savannah's stairs.

"Cease firing!" cried Lieutenant Laurence, hoarse with shouting, deafened by his guns, and eyes streaming from powder smoke. "They're under our fucking reach and it ain't no fucking good!"

And the men gulped and sweated, and stood by their hot black guns and trembled with the effort they'd put out in serving them. They'd hit one of the boats, and mauled it badly, but now they couldn't depress their guns any lower. They couldn't even see the boats.

Laurence sighed. Left to himself, he'd have stood back and waited for a target, but Flint was on him like the wrath of God, with Colonel Bland after him, at first for fear Flint had lost his temper again, and then understanding and yelling agreement wildly.

"Listen!" cried Flint, seizing hold of Laurence, "they'll come ashore up that blasted staircase! I shall drag out two guns to bear upon it! You will stand by your remaining guns, laid on your last sight of the boats, and stand by to fire as they emerge to collect more men! You will ensure that fire is properly controlled such that each boat is pounded, and you will not — under any circumstances — fire upon Walrus!"

"Yes! Yes!" cried Bland, nodding his head off at Flint's words, and marvelling that ever he'd doubted the sanity of so superb an officer, so steady under fire, and so much a master of the hour.

But Flint wasn't done, for the swirling clouds of his personality always had contained — amongst all the rest — a very fine officer indeed. So he clapped his hands behind his back as a sea-officer should and turned on Colonel Bland and gave him his orders.

"Colonel!" he said.

"Sir!" said Bland instinctively.

"You will take command of all your forces and engage the enemy!" Flint nodded towards the Spanish troops that were driving Savannah's people before them, led by an officer who leaped and cavorted and waved a sword over his head.

"You will bring the garrison from the fort!"

"Sir!" said Bland.

"You will send out your woodsmen to fall upon the enemy's rear!"

"Sir!" said Bland, and saluted.

Without a word, without hesitation, Bland dashed off towards the fort where his men were waiting, while Flint took command of two gun crews and began hauling guns out of their emplacements and around the earthworks to face the river bank, the stairs and the Spaniards. It was heavy work and slow, because the guns' small wheels constantly bogged down in the soft earth. But with Flint leading, the gunners persevered.

"Heave-ho! Heave-ho!" cried the Spanish oarsmen, and they backed water to clear the stairs, then each helmsman steered for his ship, for Walrus and for La Concha, and without the weight of a cargo of men the big boats made better speed. From the two ships came cheers and cries to urge them on. Even the wounded in La Concha's boat did their best to cheer, and gave up groaning.

"Heave-ho! Heave-ho!" The boats pulled for their ships, and came out from under the protective brow of Savannah's river bank… and once more into the sight of the eighteen- pounders, which opened up, at maximum depression, with a bound and a roar and a bank of smoke. But this time it was three guns, not five, with two firing at La Concha's boat and only one at Walrus's. More than that, the soldiers aboard Walrus had the sense to open fire with her two-pounder swivels, which, small as they were, had the advantage over her carriage guns in that their mountings allowed unlimited elevation, enabling an aim to be taken — by squint and by guesswork — at the battery up on the river bank.

Following the example of their comrades, those aboard La Concha likewise loaded the swivels mounted on her gunwale and aimed up at the battery and cracked and banged in company with Walrus's fire, sending a steady stream of iron shot whistling up at the earthworks… where they did no harm at all to the eighteen-pounders or their solid defences, for most missed entirely or buried themselves in the earthworks, but one or two lucky shots howled over the heads of the gunners, reminding them of mortality and making them flinch.

More important, with eight or more swivels burning powder, a nice cloud of white smoke began to roll around the anchorage below Savannah's stairs, making it hard for the gunners in the battery to see what they were aiming at.

"Damnation!" cried Lieutenant Laurence. "Load grapeshot! No more solid ball!"

"Sir!" cried his gunners, for it was good sense. Grape might not sink a big longboat as a roundshot shot would, but it greatly increased the chances of a hit. And soon Laurence's men were cheering as water foamed in a deadly circle all around Walrus's longboat, now re-filled with Spanish soldiers and pulling for the shore, and a good dozen one- pound iron balls crashed into the boat such that blood, bone and flesh leapt into the air and cascaded down and smeared the living survivors with the guts and slime of their mates, and fragments of teeth, skin and hair, and pieces of fingers and limbs.

But the boat didn't go down! It wasn't holed so bad that bailing couldn't save it, and most of the oarsmen survived and pulled on with desperate strength, and the dead and dying hanging over the sides between the heaving oars, and a greasy trail of blood and tissues trailing aft like the slime of a monstrous slug.

"Aspirante!" cried Sargento Ortiz. "The battery! We must silence the battery!" Ortiz was weakening. He'd lost much blood. The stump of his arm was pounding horribly, and seeping and dripping, and Ortiz was gasping from chasing Aspirante Alvarez and trying to get the little sod to take command of the men, who'd soon be breaking doors and looting if they weren't stopped.

"Oh!" said Alvarez, and looked around, and saw the empty streets and the few running figures, and his grinning, gasping men, and Sargento Ortiz's accusing face. And then… B-Boom! the battery fired again, and Alvarez remembered and rushed back to the river bank and looked down at the dead and dying and the wreckage floating in the Savannah River. Five hundred men had mustered in arms on the maindecks of Walrus and La Concha. Of these, as Alvarez could plainly see, a good hundred were already dead or ruined, and now the oarsmen were losing their stroke aboard one of the boats, and looking over their shoulders for the smoke and flash of the battery's guns, and the other boat was landing more men at the bottom of the stairs, and the river was filling up with smoke from the battery, and — Alvarez gaped in surprise — swivel guns were firing from the two ships.

"The battery, senor," said Ortiz, and staggered. His face was yellow-white around the black moustache. "We must storm the battery or we cannot take the town."

Alvarez blinked, and tiredness fell upon him from too much running and shouting. He was spent. He'd never been a very good officer, he'd got this far through hysterical excitement, and now that was gone. Seeing that, Sargento Ortiz swayed with sickness and groaned.

Colonel Bland found confusion at the fort. He yelled at the sentries, who let him through the drawbridge and gate. They saluted as he ran in, under the gateway bastion, and into the fort's main quadrangle. There indeed stood the garrison — paraded with bayonets fixed, cartridge pouches filled, and their drums, fifes and colours beside them. But…

"Ah!" thought Bland, "God bless my soul…" For he wasn't the only person who'd run into the fort from the town. There was a mob of civilians, in dread of Spain. There were weeping women, howling children and fathers with their arms around their families, in fear of rape, fire and the Inquisition, and loudly calling for the gates to be closed, the drawbridge raised and the guns of the fort manned. All this had shaken the militiamen, whose lines were wavering, and they were talking to one another and pointing towards the town in alarm.

"God bless my hopes of Heaven!" said Bland, then…

"Colonel!" cried a handful of wide-eyed officers, running up to him. "Thank God you're here! How many of them have landed? How many regiments?"

"Regiments?" said Bland. "I saw no more than a few boatloads!"

"But it's two ships!" cried a voice. "Everyone says so!"

"God bless you, yes!" said Bland. "But small ships, and I saw no more than a few dozen Spaniards come ashore!"

"Ahhhh," they said, and their spirits soared and they straightened their backs and thrust out their manly jaws.

"Stand the fort to arms!" cried Bland. "Muster every man in the fort, and sound the march! I shall lead forth our men to drive these invaders into the river!"

"Huzzah!" they cried, and soon the drums were sounding a rattling beat, the fifers were blowing "Come Lasses and Lads" and the redcoats were marching boldly out over the fort's drawbridge with hysterical cheering from the civilians behind them. At their head strode Colonel Bland, transported into glory, with sword in hand and fire in his heart.

At the same time, and with much less fuss, a hundred woodsmen marched quietly behind the regulars, and took early opportunity to lope off, in loose formation, trailing their arms. Bland never gave them a thought, but they were trained to seek opportunity, and any means whatsoever to take their enemies by surprise; and they were as determined as any redcoat to fight for their homes and their families.

A Spanish army officer charged up the stairs with the latest boatload of men from La Concha. He was a commandante — a major — and with him came two capitáns. Alvarez saw them and nearly wet himself in relief. He stood to attention beside Ortiz and thanked the Virgin and all the saints.

"Señor Commandante!" said Alvarez, and received a curt nod, for the commandante believed that no drop of use whatsoever could be squeezed out of a sea-service aspirante on land, and in this case he was entirely correct. Instead he yelled at his juniors and the trumpeter he'd brought with him, and mustered his men — of whom he found he had nearly two hundred and fifty, and plenty more to come from the ships. He looked at the town, and saw no threat. He looked at the fort with its English flag and saw no threat. But he looked at the battery… and saw the teams of men hauling guns out to bear upon himself and his men.

"Mother of God!" he cried. "Grenadiers to the front! Follow me! The rest, stand fast!" He was a very brave man, if not a particularly inventive one. He saw the two heavy guns in the instant of being loaded. Men were ramming home, they were training and levelling, and the range was just over one hundred yards.

He turned to the body of fifty grenadiers — big men with bearskin trim on their caps, the swaggering bullies among the ranks, who thought themselves better men than all the rest. Now the English gunners were standing clear while the gun- captains swung their linstocks.

The commandante ran to the side of his men.

"Present muskets!" he cried. "Make ready…"

Cli-cli-cli-clack! said the locks.

"Fire!" and the muskets roared. "Santiago!" cried the commandante and charged.

"Santiago!" cried the grenadiers, and ran after him with bayonets levelled.

BOOOM! BOOOM! cried the pair of heavy guns, with monstrous voice.

At one hundred yards, not a single musket shot found a human target, while — firing from soft, churned-up earth — the eighteen-pounders on their sea carriages recoiled so heavily that their muzzles twisted wildly off target. But the load was so heavy — totalling over eleven hundred musket balls — that it screamed and sizzled and scoured like the Devil's broom, such that when the smoke cleared only fifteen grenadiers were left standing, and the rest, including their brave but uninventive leader, were dead, dying or wounded, and comprehensively riddled with shot.

But the rest of the Spaniards charged the now-empty guns. There were two officers left, and nearly two hundred men, and every chance that they could over-run the battery before the gunners had time to reload. So thought the two Spanish capitáns, and they led their men in a rolling, ragged charge over the bodies of the grenadiers and the commandante. They ran with gleaming bayonets and bellowing roars, which swelled with delight at the sweetest sight a soldier ever sees in the field: the backs of their fleeing enemies. For the English gunners, seeing sense, were running away, without even taking the time to spike their guns.

But their triumph was brief. No sooner had the artillerymen run off towards the English fort than the sound of fife and drum signalled the advance of an English column: a giant red centipede with white legs and a rippling steel crest, emerging from the fort, and coming in strength.

Aspirante Alvarez gasped. Sargento Ortiz said nothing, for he was dead from loss of blood, but the two capitáns, reinforced by another boatload from Walrus, carefully drew up their men and marched towards the English column, with Spanish drums beating, and with profound satisfaction that this wretched business of being fired upon by batteries had come to an end, with a correct and proper battle about to begin, in the correct and proper way.

Alvarez watched as the two columns — the white and the red — advanced upon each other and deployed into line in the open ground between the fort and the town. He saw that there were more red than white, and he searched in his conscience and found that his duty was now at the bottom of the stairs, not the top, for there was more boat work to be done, and himself a sea officer.

At the bottom of the stairs, he found two shot-riddled boats, half-sunk, with the dead and wounded sprawled within them. And there he cringed as the first volleys rolled out in the fight for Savannah.