The Iberian Flame

Chapter 74

Corunna

General Moore waited for his answer with a terrible patience.

Rowan reached out for strength. Tyger’s jolly sailing master, Joyce, who’d been his instructor in the sea arts, always leavening learning with yarns from a colourful past, would explain what was happening to the ship by imagining a seagull soaring way up, then looking down, seeing one by one the elements come into play – winds, currents, the mass of tide in its channel sliding the ship to one side apparently against the breeze. It all made sense when taken at that perspective.

And he realised what had happened to Tyger. Sniffing the wind, like the deep-sea mariner he was turning into, he saw that it was in the west-south-west, the very quarter Kydd had feared would trap his transports.

‘Sir, I can explain.’

‘Do so, sir!’

Rowan sketched in the dust the aspect of Vigo open to one direction only, the wind now foul for leaving.

‘Sir, I counsel that you wait but a short time, for just as soon as the wind shifts, so shall you see your transports within a day, two days. Captain Kydd will then be here, this I promise you.’

Moore considered this. ‘And when will this wind shift?’

‘Sir, I cannot say. The ways of the winds are hidden from us. I can only say that at this time of the year it may be hours or days but, sir, they will shift.’

‘Very well. And thank you for your lucid explanation. When this shift occurs let me know, Mr, er …’

‘Mr Midshipman Rowan, sir.’

Later in the afternoon the scouts came back. Their heroic march had gained for them a priceless advantage of several days’ distance from the pursuing French and Moore didn’t waste it. Quickly he identified the central heights as crucial – if left to the enemy, artillery could be brought to rain fire down on the embarkation. Therefore it would be held at all costs, preserving the coastal plain, the town of Corunna and its harbour from the enemy.

‘The village atop Monte Mero – Elvina. This is where we shall stand,’ he pronounced.

Set among walled olive gardens and fields of prickly aloes, the French could never deploy cavalry there, and it provided excellent cover for the light infantry Moore had trained. And while those troops took up position, the remainder of his army collapsed to their rest of exhaustion on the slopes below, knowing that very soon the French would come.