Tyger

CHAPTER 17

AT PRECISELY THE RIGHT POSITION in the middle of the Baltic Sea, Lively struck her foremast pennant and the convoy ceased to be. They had reached the dispersal point and the merchantmen quickly clapped on sail and made for their various destinations, with their cargoes of cheap muslins, quiltings, dimities and crockery, tinware, machinery, boots and woollens. They were headed to Memel in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Riga in Livonia and Reval-old Hanseatic ports trading freely and profitably with Britain in defiance of Bonaparte.

Lively and her escorts, however, lay to, for their job was not yet done. There would be a returning Baltic convoy. The ancient medieval towns were trading timber, hemp, iron and tallow, vital supplies in keeping the Royal Navy defiantly at sea, England’s wooden walls and the last defence of the islands.

For Tyger it had been an uneventful five days on passage. Kydd had exercised the men but with a regular honing, not a harsh forging. While there was clear improvement there had been no real challenges in the Baltic.

There was little to do as they lay comfortably a-weather. It was the smaller cutters and brigs that did the hard work, bustling about to shepherd their charges, issue upcoming sailing-order instructions and see to convoy details while the two frigates remained as the unmoving visible centre of preparations.

The convoy was shaping up well in assembly when, one morning, Lively hung out Tyger’s pennants. This was unusual: the two frigate captains had taken to dining each other out alternately, exchanging whatever news there was at that time.

Aboard Lively Hozier greeted Kydd warmly, then went on, “Dear fellow, I’ve been handed something of a puzzler. I’ve a German cove come aboard from a merchantman-all in the right rig, as far as I can tell-who claims he’s an emissary of the King of Prussia and is in a bit of a heat over some army they seem to have stranded. Not much English, but demanding our assistance as an ally. They are, aren’t they?”

“Didn’t they stay out of Pitt’s coalition? If so, they’re not.”

“Ah, but recollect, the new one we started last year?”

“I’m no lawyer, David, but I’d wager a coalition is not an alliance anyway. We’re not bound to get tangled in their problems-and, besides, what the devil can we do to save an army? I’d say we send the beggar away with our warmest regrets and stay with our main duty.”

“They’re fighting the French, and must tie down an awful lot of Boney’s best. Seems a pity we can’t do something for ’em.”

“What? We’re a navy the last time I looked, not an army.”

Hozier fiddled with his pen. “At least let’s hear the chap. I’ll send for him.”

The young man was arrayed in dark blue with silver facings and red trim, his plumed shako under his arm in deference to the low deckhead. “Lieutenant Gursten of the Prussian Army.”

His intense gaze passed from one man to the other as he pleaded in painfully slow English: “Honoured sirs. Ze tyrant Napoleon, he crush all of Europe! We cannot stand against him alone. If-”

“Avez-vous le francais, Lieutenant?” Kydd broke in.

Relieved, Gursten answered in a fluent stream that left Hozier, who had no French, blinking and Kydd frowning.

“He’s saying that Boney is winning not only over the Austrians and themselves but now the Russians, who’ve suffered slaughter. They’ve all fallen back almost to the end of Prussia and their king and court are removed to Konigsberg at the border.”

There was more impassioned French.

“A large part of their army has been outflanked and cut off from the main and he’s saying that if it’s forced to capitulate it’ll bring shame and dishonour to their flag, besides removing a substantial portion from the order of battle facing Bonaparte.”

“So what does he want us to do?”

“They’ll hold out if they can be supplied along the coast using boats and only desire that these come under our protection.”

“Sounds reasonable enough.”

“Except there’s no way we can help ’em,” Kydd said, with asperity. “We’ve got a return convoy in a few days and-”

“Yes, so we have. Hmm. It does cross my mind-”

“We can’t get involved, David!”

“-that it would go ill with one who, when begged for assistance by the king of one of our coalition partners, refused and thereby caused the surrender and humiliation of his army. The government would throw a fit! No, we have to do what we can, do you not feel?”

“Well, send one of the cutters?” Kydd said weakly.

“I was rather thinking of a pair … and a frigate to watch over ’em.”

Meaning Tyger. Kydd was no stranger to armies and their battlefields, but the last time he’d been swept up in one was in Buenos Aires, which had ended in misery and defeat, and he had no desire at all to be sucked into another. “No! You can’t-your escort for a damnably valuable convoy cut by half? This is too much!”

“It won’t be so arduous, I’d believe. Lie off and watch the boats bring relief, that sort of thing.”

“I-I’m not sure of the Tygers yet. They need more time to settle.”

“This isn’t as who’s to say a fleet engagement, old chap! As you said, it’s more armies smiting each other mightily while you look on. Oh, and try not to be too long.”

As Tyger got under weigh, Kydd gloomily stared at his orders, written out at his insistence. “To render such assistance to the military forces of the King of Prussia in furtherance of the relief of his army in Ermeland as shall be within your power, saving always that the interests of His Majesty shall not thereby be imperilled.”

Nothing about the extent of his aid, the hazarding of his command, the length of time he should spend in the defence. He’d heard of sieges going on for years but realised there must be a natural end to it, which would be when his own victuals ran out. And, of course, when Hozier reported to Admiral Russell what he’d done, there could very well be an abrupt reversal of orders or at the very least a relief sent.

He had to make the best of it, and he would insist that not a single one of Tyger’s company set foot on land. There would be no hauling guns, hopeless armed parties, heroic rearguards. The task was clear and unequivocal: to safeguard the supply boats and nothing else.

He’d been given Dart cutter and Stoat armed ketch, and they were dutifully following in his wake. They would form the inshore guard while he lay to seaward as a deterrent.

He let Dillon babble happily away with Gursten in their gruff Germanic-he’d make sure his secretary was on hand when he made his number with the Prussian king.

The merchant brig led the way and the next day they raised the south Baltic coast. As his charts were rudimentary, Kydd was grateful for this guide ahead. Better ones would be the first thing he asked for, along with finding out just what resources were available.

The shoreline was uniformly flat and well wooded, with a fringing buff-coloured beach extending for miles. There were few settlements and nothing to indicate that in the interior vast armies were locked in a ferocious struggle, not even the usual nondescript far-off rising cloud of dust and dun haze that seemed always to hang over a battle.

At an opening in the line of coast, Dillon pointed. “Klaus says that’s Pillau, the entrance to the Pregel river, and Konigsberg lies within.”

Two things roused misgivings in Kydd. The first was the complete absence of any kind of water-craft. The second was that Konigsberg lay up the river. There was no way he was going to hazard his ship in a channel no more than a quarter-mile across-and, besides, a star-shaped fort, fat and menacing, dominated the entrance.

Yet he had to make contact and discover the situation. He should send a lieutenant on ahead but knew their second-hand report would not be enough. He’d go himself: it was not impossible that the whole thing was an elaborate French plot to set a trap for any British warship gulled into coming.

“Mr Bray, I’m heading ashore in the merchantman to see what I can. Your orders are to stand off and on until I return. Should you sight signals requiring you to enter harbour you are to ignore them. Failing my return in twenty-four hours you are to sail immediately to acquaint Admiral Russell of the circumstances. Clear?”

The deep-set eyes looked back at him, guarded, alert. “Aye aye, sir.” There was no attempt to wish him well but neither was there any hidden satisfaction that he could detect.

“Very well. Mr Dillon to accompany me. Carry on, please.”

It was a complete unknown he was going into, on the word of a foreigner with no credentials he was in a position to recognise. He allowed Tysoe to array him in full-dress uniform with star and ribbon. Then, with Gursten and a quiet Dillon, he boarded the merchantman.

They passed the citadel. Kydd saw the line of shore to the right fall away into a broad stretch of water before it closed again, and after some hours they made out the city of Konigsberg with its medieval spires and palaces, canals and opera houses, and a waterfront choked with idle shipping.

Kydd was keyed up for anything but this was not what he was expecting. Here was a great city with, no doubt, a great army-that needed rescuing. Vaguely he remembered figures of half a million or more under arms in the titanic striving taking place not so far distant. How could a single frigate make a difference in this convulsion?

Gursten insisted on being first on shore, determined that Kydd should have the state carriage and escort of troopers suitable for the saviour of their army.

A crowd gathered while it was being prepared, marvelling at Kydd’s exotic uniform, and he grew increasingly uncomfortable, albeit relieved that this showed Gursten was indeed what he seemed. He nodded gravely, doffing his gold-laced hat to this one or that, and they set off through the streets, the splendour and jingle of their escort attracting stares and comment on all sides.

They eventually arrived at a palace.

“Konigsberg Castle,” Gursten proudly announced. “Ze Order of Teutonic Knights an’ … an’ …”

Seeing that his English was not equal to his passion, Dillon intervened, then relayed to Kydd that the forbidding conical tower had been there since the 1200s and was now the seat of the Hohenzollern reigning monarch. He added that this was the home city of the recently deceased Immanuel Kant, he of The Critique of Pure Reason, and of the mathematician Leonhard Euler, whose solving of the Seven Bridges of Konigsberg puzzle had ensured his immortality.

That only increased Kydd’s feeling of helplessness: this was no quaint medieval town or decayed magnificence, such as Naples, but the capital of a great power. The legend of the invincible Royal Navy had led this nation to seek him out for its deliverance.

He was ushered into the presence of King Friedrich Wilhelm of Prussia, Elector of Brandenburg, in the imperial reception chamber. A tall, reserved figure, the monarch was arrayed in military full dress, dark blue with a red blaze and massive silver epaulettes. His sword was an imposing cavalry sabre.

Gursten introduced him-it sounded suspiciously like “Tamas von Kydd”-and he managed as elegant a leg as he could muster.

Once again Kydd was grateful to Renzi’s tutelage in French. He’d learned the language in the tedium of the blockade of Toulon those distant years ago and remembered Renzi saying that all the crowned heads of Europe spoke French to each other.

“I’m honoured indeed to be welcomed by Your Majesty into his palace,” he tried.

“The honour is all mine,” Friedrich replied easily, in the language, “as providing me with the opportunity of making the acquaintance of a very gallant officer …”

Kydd bowed wordlessly. What did “gallant” imply?

“… who comes to succour us in these harrowing times.”

“Your Majesty, I will endeavour to render such service as my ship can provide.”

“Ah. As it happens, there is a measure of assistance that we would be grateful should you perform for us, a mere trifle I’m sure to one of Nelson’s tribe.”

“Sir?”

“Time presses-it were better you hear it directly from our distinguished servant, Generalleutnant von Blucher.”

The stern and moustachioed figure in the background stamped forward and, with a click of his heels, bowed jerkily. “Just so, Kapitan,” he said, in heavily accented French.

He backed away from the presence, bowing, and led Kydd down a richly ornamented hallway until he came to a guarded door.

“The war room,” he snapped, as a young officer hastily flung wide the door.

Inside a vast table bore a single map, tended by staff officers who crashed to attention. At barked words in German they resumed their business.

Blucher went immediately to one side and peered down at the complexity of lines and pointers. An officer obligingly pulled down a lamp cluster cunningly suspended with counter-weights.

“There!” He gestured.

Kydd moved forward and studied it, his first sight of the real situation, aware of the steely eyes of the Prussian on him.

It was a military map, the hachures and topography unfamiliar and the names unpronounceable. It meant nothing to him.

He nodded, with what he hoped was a wise expression, and asked if a smaller-scale map was available to place it in context.

One was brought and Blucher stood back with folded arms as Gursten nervously explained it.

Kydd began to take it in: this was central Europe and, with the Baltic to anchor his position, he looked on while Gursten talked.

Prussia, it seemed, extended right from the borders of the Batavian Republic-Holland-beneath the peninsula of Denmark, on to two-thirds the extent of the Baltic to the border with the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. To the south Gursten pointed out countries whose names meant little to Kydd: Saxony, Bohemia, Bavaria, others, all of which were apparently important to know.

He snatched a glance at Blucher. The general was impassive but his thin lips were beginning to curl in disdain at the incredible ignorance of the English officer, and Kydd reddened.

“Thank you, Mr Gursten. Now be so good as to show me how much of Prussia is at present occupied by the French.”

The young officer slowly drew a finger from the Batavian Republic in the west on and on, through proud and ancient provinces to the east, Hanover, Brandenburg and Pomerania. Over rivers: the Rhine, the Elbe and the Oder. And cities: Hamburg, Berlin and Warsaw.

It did not cease until there remained only a small margin far up against the border to the east. It was then that Kydd understood.

Unless a miracle occurred they were facing extinction as a nation at the hands of Bonaparte. And they had come to him for help-in this grand scheme it was little enough to ask, and in that moment he resolved to do what he could for them.

“Thank you,” he said briskly. “May we see the present situation again?”

They returned to the big map and Gursten studied it for a moment. “All of Pomerania has fallen and here we have the Vistula, which was crossed by the French some weeks ago. Our lines at the moment are so.” With the sea barely visible along the north edge he traced a line from it across to the southeast. “In the centre is Feldmarschall Count von Bennigsen, our joint commander with the Russian forces, say ninety thousand only. He faces Ney, Victor, Grouchy and Lannes each with an entire corps, some hundred and fifty thousand. There is-”

“Where’s Bonaparte?” Kydd said, fascinated by the gigantic scale of this picture of armies locked together in mortal striving.

Gursten looked up in surprise. “Sir, the imperial headquarters would be here, close to the rear where his lines of communication-”

“Yes, of course. Pray do continue.” Kydd’s eyes, however, lingered on the place indicated, his imagination gripped by a vision of the tyrant emperor who held all Europe in thrall now from that little village with tentacles of command connecting him with his marshals and armies, invincible and ruthless.

“Konigsberg lies here on the Pregel.” Gursten pointed to the eastern edge of the map, almost to the last extremity before the border and uncomfortably close-by eye no more than forty miles from the fighting.

“And your trapped army?”

“Here.” He tapped at a point well within the advancing French lines. But it was on the coast in the north-next to the sea.

“Hmm. I see. Unless you are supplied you must capitulate.” Kydd stroked his chin. The distance to cover was not great, even if boats gave a wide berth to French guns before they swung inshore, and providing the weather held, there should be no difficulty in maintaining a continuous flow. There could be contrary currents or shoals but with local charts there should be no difficulty.

Then he recalled the suspicious absence of shipping and asked, “When we arrived I saw all your vessels idle in port. What must this mean?”

“Oh. First, I could say that without our navy they’re worried about privateers but mainly, well, there’s no trade possible when every supply and market is in the hands of the enemy.”

It would be a rash privateer to try conclusions with Tyger, and a resupply would be a straightforward enough matter, with so many unused hulls to call upon.

Straightening with a smile, he said, with what he hoped was winning confidence, “Very well, gentlemen, I shall help you. Your army will be relieved by boat, safely guarded by the Royal Navy.”

“Gott in Himmel!” Blucher spluttered. “Have you any idea of the size of a supply column? For a division of ten thousand-and we have one and a half with von Hohenlau-it’s two hundred wagons, five hundred men and a thousand horses, miles long. And how many more thousands to guard them? Pah! You’ll never do that with rowing boats, Mr Sailor!”

Kydd kept his temper. If nothing else, this army general was going to learn what it was to have command of the sea. “Sir, this we will do.” He bit his lip, then said firmly, “And you have my word on it.”

Kydd collected a wide-eyed Dillon from outside, and they were given a small room to work in where Kydd sat, letting his thoughts focus.

Time was critical: Heaven knew how long it would take to get a system in place and, from what Gursten had told him, the army would by now be on its last rations.

First things first. “Mr Dillon, my compliments to Mr Bray and he is to detach a boat’s crew in my service, as I shall be staying here for a while to set up the resupply. As well, I shall require the master and the purser to attend on me.”

“The purser?”

“Is what I said.”

A hovering Gursten was sent to the harbour-master to secure a large-scale chart, another official to the Customs house for a list of vessels in port, their tonnage and capacities. While they were gone Kydd started to sketch out some ideas.

By the time they were back he had a usable plan. Ships of modest tonnage would voyage from Konigsberg out to sea to avoid French guns, then back inshore to the location of the besieged army to anchor. Boats to take their stores on to the beach, unloaded by many willing army hands, and return. Tyger to sail slowly offshore, a more than adequate deterrent.

As long as the Konigsberg authorities had the wit to manage the assembling of supplies on the quayside in a timely manner, there should not be too much difficulty.

At length Dillon returned with the others.

Kydd nodded. “Gentlemen, please take a seat, we’ve much to do.”

The purser sat blinking and unsure, and the jovial master, Joyce, joined him, gingerly glancing up at the palace ornamentation. Gursten came in, reporting that charts and lists would be sent along as soon as possible.

Kydd started by outlining the problem and his proposed response.

“Now I need detail. Loytn’nt … That is to say, Lieutenant Gursten here will now tell us what rations and stores his army needs and we will shape our plans accordingly. We will start with bread. Sir?”

The young man concentrated. “Shall we take a per diem figure, to multiply later? Then that will be twenty-five thousand loaves, every day.”

“And meat?”

“If they are granted such, a half-pfund is the usual measure, so ten thousand pfunde allowing for waste. Er, the English I do not know.”

“The daily rate for seamen is two pounds o’ beef or one of pork,” Kydd said, adding, “unless it be a banyan day. So we’re saying that for every day for your sixteen thousand. And beer?”

“Essential for troops in the field without reliable water. Say two nosel each, which is to say a Dresden jar of, er, so big?” He mimed a container of about a quart in size. So that would be fifty thousand of those, and every day as well.

“Anything else?”

“We should provide oats, cheese, onions, sauerkraut, of course-the usual is to supply it by the ton …”

This was growing to an amazing amount-and it didn’t take into account the munitions of war that were needed: powder and shot, replacement muskets, blankets and so forth. Kydd tried to visualise the mountain of stores this translated to and found himself aghast. No wonder the Prussian general, with his thousands of horses and wagons, had been so scornful.

There were merchantmen to be had but not all would be suitable and some not fit for sea. Would there be enough? Anxiety tugged at him.

“Right. Assuming one-third more for general stores and munitions, and we have a sizeable problem. Shall we now figure the number of bottoms we’ll need?”

He drew up a pad and pencil. “Assume your usual coastal brig. A cargo volume of say sixty feet long, ten broad and a fathom or so deep. How much can she stow? Mr Harman, the dimensions of a standard loaf of bread, if you please.”

“Sir?”

“Come, come, sir,” Kydd snapped irritably. “You’ve twelve years in the service to tell you what a rack of soft tommy looks like.”

“Oh, yes. Er, your four-inch squared bread is eleven inches on the side.”

“You hear that, Mr Dillon? Get figuring and let’s see how many loaves a brig may take, while we talk about beef. Remind me, Mr Harman, how many pieces of meat do we find in one barrel?”

“In one puncheon we’ve a hundred and seventy pieces, sir.”

Kydd brought to mind the stout provision casks. “And what size are these?”

“Ah …?”

“Yes, Mr Joyce?” The sailing master had ultimate responsibility for stowage of provisions aboard a man-o’-war.

“I allows four foot f’r length an’ two and a half on the bilge.”

“So for y’r brig, let’s see … I make it sixteen alongwise, four across an’ three down. Say two hundred.”

“So. One puncheon holds …?”

“One cow. That’s my rule o’ thumb.”

“Thank you for that, Mr Harman.”

“O’ which we may say, of the fifteen hundred pounds of the beast we get seven hundred pounds as is usable.”

“Hmm. Therefore for our Prussian soldier we can find in each cask enough for fourteen hundred meals.”

“Aye, sir. So with two hundred, our brig is supplying near three hundred thousand-that’s eighteen days’ rations, I make it.”

And all in a single brig. It was looking much more possible.

“Twenty-five thousand.”

“I beg your pardon, Mr Dillon?”

“That’s how many loaves of bread can be carried.”

Kydd thought of the endless lines of mules and carts needed to load such an impossible number and shook his head in wonder. “I think we’re getting somewhere. Say we load the same number of puncheons for beer. That would be-”

“Seventy-two gallon for the Millbrook tertian we usually ships, sir.”

“Yields a hundred and fifty rations. Two hundred barrels on our brig makes our thirty thousand.”

“You’re in rattling good form, Mr Dillon. Gentlemen, what this is saying is that our resupply can be maintained with a convoy of some half-dozen brigs a week, or just one or two a day. I believe we can do it!”

After a Baltic convoy of some hundreds, each vessel many times bigger, this was easy.

“Well, now we know what’s required you may withdraw, Mr Harman. Have the charts arrived?”

Gursten fetched them and stood back respectfully as Kydd and Joyce spread them out.

There were two: one of Pillau at the entrance to the river and the other a detailed study of the approaches to Konigsberg.

The words were in German and the soundings were in klafters-but these were as near as maybe to fathoms so the charts were perfectly understandable.

But what they revealed brought a wash of shock and dismay.

“L’tenant Gursten,” he said heavily. “You said your army extends to the sea. Do show me where.”

He leaned aside to let the young officer find the spot. “Here, sir.” It was a substantial length of the coast that should have proved an ideal landing place, were it not for one thing.

“Pray tell me, then, what the devil is this?” Kydd pointed to a long spit that paralleled the land some three to four miles offshore and ranging as far as the chart boundary in both directions.

“Oh, it’s of no account. A mere piece of sand a few hundred yards across only and going nowhere-of no military significance at all.”

“And this interior water it encloses?”

“This is the Frisches Haff, a brackish lagoon. The only entrance is at Pillau in our hands, so you need not fear-”

Kydd held up his hands wearily. “L’tenant. You don’t know it, but you’ve just killed any chance of saving your army.”

Gursten looked appalled. “I-I had no idea … Is there anything …?”

“I fear that this is a matter between myself and the sailing master. We’ll call on you should we need anything further.”

He pulled the chart nearer and studied it intently, but there was no getting away from it. There would be no access to the army on the coast with that long spit barring the way the entire distance. Even if Pillau at the far northern end had an entrance, there were two very good reasons why their brigs could not sail inside down to the trapped army.

The first was obvious: the few soundings showed that no deep-laden ship could find depth of water to reach it in the near-tideless Baltic. The second was that the plan to sail out to sea to avoid the French artillery and in again to the locality of the besieged was no longer possible. Any approach inside the lagoon must inevitably pass close by the besieging enemy positions on the coast.

Joyce raised troubled eyes to his. “Boats?” he murmured.

It made nonsense of all their calculations-boats full of rowers could carry little, nothing like the massive amounts needed, and would be terribly vulnerable to artillery fire.

“Camels?” the master ventured.

These were barrels open to the water, firmly lashed along the waterline of a vessel, then at the right moment baled out-a method of raising a ship up bodily to take shallow water. It could conceivably work but would make them slow and cumbersome and an unmissable target for the French guns. It was not a solution.

Kydd stared at the chart, willing some winning idea to strike but none came. The coldness of defeat began closing in.

“Mr Gursten.” The officer hurried to his side. “This spit o’ land. What’s it like?”

“Ah, you will call it the ‘Vistula Spit’ on account of the ancient and debased natives by that name living there. It has very few settlements and stretches for fifty miles or more.”

“My meaning was, what is the nature of the ground thereabouts?”

“It’s still well wooded, for farming is hard in sand. I should say firm, suitable for troops on the march.”

“I see.” A glimmer of an answer was emerging. It would need much labour but there were hands to spare in the besieged army.

But first he had to see for himself.

His boat’s crew were by the jetty, Halgren’s bulk unmistakable. About them was a square of Prussian militia on guard. The subaltern screamed an order to bring them to quivering attention, then stamped about to salute him with his sword.

A few hours later Kydd’s boat under sail had passed out of the Frisches Haff entrance to the open sea and turned left down the coast, touching bottom at the right spot opposite von Hohenlau’s encampment out of sight across the lagoon.

Kydd trudged up the beach and found himself in a light wood, continuous for miles on both sides. Crossing to one tree he inspected it. A four-inch bole and, as was usual with Baltic timber, straight as a die. It would do.

He walked on into the wood. There was leaf litter but, underneath it, hard-packed sand. Further on, the trees thinned and there was the lagoon, and some few miles across he could see tents and banners, eddying wisps of cooking fires and what was probably a marching column.

Yes!

“I shall want to remove to Pillau to set up my headquarters,” he demanded on his return.

Soon he was installed on the top floor of a bastion in the Pillau Citadel, the star-shaped fort he’d seen. It commanded a formidable view down the length of the spit, a fine sight of the open sea to the right and the passage to Konigsberg to the left.

Gursten was set to produce a corps of runners, then was dispatched to make contact with General von Hohenlau, carrying a sheaf of written instructions for the resupply plan.

From Tyger Maynard, a master’s mate, was sent for to man the rudimentary signal mast, arriving with a determined Tysoe bearing Kydd’s necessaries and two wide-eyed ship’s boys for general duties.

Then it was down to work.

Eight coastal ships were selected and prepared. Cargo holds were cleared, dunnage battens laid and on the wharf the first stores appeared ready for loading, according to the priorities relayed back by Gursten.

And at the spit the pioneer battalions set to in earnest.

They fell on the timber, lopping down trees by the hundreds in a swathe from the sea to the lagoon. Some were fastened together as rafts, others laid to form a wooden road across the spit-and, astonishingly, they were ready!

Kydd was there when the first brig anchored in the offshore shallows.

Right away it started discharging into a waiting raft on one side, and when that was loaded, turned to another on the other side while the first was hauled ashore. Waiting carts took the stores across the spit and a raft was again loaded.

In the lagoon there were pairs of ship’s boats manned by well-muscled Prussian sailors with a line each to the raft and a continuous relay was set up that rapidly had stores in a satisfactory flow. On their return the rafts carried a different cargo-wounded men, some ominously still, others writhing in pain, but mercifully on their way to Konigsberg’s hospital.

Opposite the Prussian Army, they could not be touched by French guns and the flow of relief could go on unimpeded. Now there were only two things that could stop it: an enemy attack from the sea or the weather.

With Tyger’s sturdy silhouette to seaward, there was vanishingly little likelihood of the first, and with summer approaching its height, the balmy breezes threatened nothing more than cloudless radiance.

It could only be reckoned a success. A workmanlike solution to a military problem in the best traditions of the service … but Kydd felt restless. It had all been too easy, too straightforward.

He fell exhausted into his cot at the citadel and did not wake until morning. Reassured that all was as it should be, his apprehension eased. He had done it. The army was relieved and he had performed what had been asked of him-but then he realised that this was only the first part, the establishing of a resupply route. What had been requested was the guarding of same.

Dart and Stoat were still with him but their value lay in inshore defence against daring strikes by privateers and such. Tyger had to be there to provide an unanswerable deterrent against whatever else could be brought against them, such as a determined swarm of the vermin.

There was nothing for it but to remain until Tyger was relieved. That shouldn’t be long-his was a first-rank fighting frigate and the job could just as easily be done by a light frigate or ship-sloop. Three or four days to get word to Russell and, with a fair westerly, less to detach one of his force. If he was lucky, a week and he’d be on his way.

He should be making an appearance in Tyger but he’d been led to believe that an entertainment had been planned for this day in his honour and it would be churlish to absent himself. Besides, he knew Bray would be relishing his time in temporary command.

The reception at the Grand Palace was to be followed by an orchestral concert.

In his star and ribbon and full-dress uniform, Kydd cut an impressive figure as, with Gursten at his side, he entered the glittering room, remembering to render obeisance to King Friedrich Wilhelm, then award bows of recognition this way and that. In a short while he was surrounded by admiring officers and ladies and the evening swept on in a swirl of gaiety and noise.

Yet underlying the exhilaration and animation he could detect a darker element lurking. Not two score miles away Napoleon Bonaparte and his legions were lying in encampment. Nothing stood between them and that host but Bennigsen and the Russians.