As he gathered his thoughts, the hill below him erupted in an explosion of fire and smoke. Hesitating only long enough to gather his arms he was up and running at a low lope, gaining height and flinging himself down in the shelter of the rocky outcrop at the summit of the hill. Here, not daring to look below before he was ready, he drew the charges from his pistols and, with shaking hands, poured fresh powder into the barrels and pans.
He had come here to reconnoitre and create a diversion and what had he done? Thrown up like a greenhorn midshipman and fainted! Now Fraser was launching his attack, Mount would be storming ashore at the head of his boot-necked lobsters in sure and certain faith of some diversion carried out by the ever resourceful Captain Drinkwater — and he was cowering behind a rock ...
Christ, he had even abandoned Tregembo!
The thought brought him to his feet. He drew in a great gulp of air, filling his lungs with the sharpness and scent of the morning. Beyond the rock, on the hillside, the rattle of musketry had augmented the desultory thunder of artillery. Devoid of plans but filled with a desperate determination, Drinkwater emerged from cover.
He stood against the sky looking down upon the scene below. Heavy wraiths of mist lay over the creek and it was clear the gunners had no better a view of the approaching boats than he had, but they were working the six cannon with a regular determination that argued they had predetermined the trajectory of their shots. Drinkwater dropped below the skyline and ran to the right, towards the plantation through which he had laboriously climbed. Before he reached it he dodged down and worked his way round the hill. He had a better view here, although he was slightly below the level of the rampart. Gun-smoke hung in a dense pall over the palisade, but the plumed spouts rose from the mist where the plunging shot fell in the creek.
Below the six-gun battery on the summit the hill was terraced with earthworks, parallels of defence behind which Morris's polyglot army levelled their muskets at the pool before the landing place.
Drinkwater tried to gauge numbers. Perhaps two hundred men, perhaps two hundred and fifty, and they were supported by more cannon, smaller pieces but quite capable of decimating any assault force that stormed the hill.
There was the sudden reverberating bark and flash of a wide-muzzled gun that showed through the low veil of mist. A carronade! Fraser's boat gun, by God! The hot cloud that it belched seemed to burn a hole in the mist, though the small shot it fired did little damage beyond peppering a prau and cutting up the ground around the landing.
To Drinkwater's left came a shout and he looked round. A man, the yellow-robed chieftain, stood on the parapet of the upper battery and drew his gunners' attention to the presence of the launch's gun.
Quickly Drinkwater levelled his pistol. It was a long shot, too long for a man in his condition but ...
He squeezed the trigger, then quickly rolled away beyond the edge of the escarpment, out of sight. He did not wait to reload but climbed quickly, returning to the overhang nearer the stone outcrop of the summit. Here he reloaded, then edged forward. The chieftain appeared unscathed, but he no longer leapt gesticulating on the parapet. Resting his hand on the ground and propping the heavy barrel of the pistol on a stone, Drinkwater laid the weapon on the same man. As the ragged discharge of the battery ripped the morning apart again, he too let fly his fire. At twenty-five yards the ball went home, spinning the Dyak to the ground. Drinkwater ducked down to reload.
He had begun to create a diversion.
Ten yards from the landing the blue cutter struck the stakes of the estacade. Such was the pace of her advance that the bow was stove in by the impact. Frey was equal to the moment.
'Over the bow!' he shouted and leapt from the tiller. Stepping lightly on the thwarts, he touched a toe on the stem and, waving his cutlass, plunged into the water. An outraged sense of having been misunderstood had possessed Frey from the moment he had abandoned Drinkwater. Already privately convinced the captain was dead, Frey sought to expiate his guilt. With a foolish gallantry his men followed him, cutlass-bearing seamen, half a dozen with boarding pikes, few of whom could swim in the deep water. They floundered, found the oars they had so precipitately abandoned and, wrenching them free of their thole-pins, kicked their legs as they supported their bodies on the ash looms.
The mist mercifully covered their confusion. Virtually unopposed, they dragged their way gasping ashore.
Fraser's launch had by good fortune forced the gap left in the estacade. Dutfield, in command of the carronade, wrenched clear the wedges as his crew plied sponge and rammer.
'Fire!'
The boat bucked and the short, smoking black cannon snapped taut its breechings as it recoiled on the greased slide.
'In my wake!' Fraser screamed at the other boats, seeing the fate of Frey's cutter. 'Come on!' He was waving as Mount leaned on the tiller of the red cutter and led Pater's boat past the launch that stood off and pounded the landing. Fraser's men were trailing their oars, making room for Mount and Pater whose boats were almost gunwhale under with their load of armed men. The pale glint of bayonets showed purposefully and then a plunging shot dropped on the launch. The sudden dark swirl of water ran red with the blood of an oarsman whose leg was shattered by the iron ball.
'Cease fire and give way! Don't shoot our fellows in the back!'
Tearing off his hat Fraser thrust it into the hole and then felt the boat's bow rise as it grounded.
The sun emerged above the eastern tree-line, its slanting rays striking through the swirling vapour. Both attackers and defenders had, as yet, no very clear view of the opposition. The upper battery continued to fire, blindly dropping its shot beyond the boats where the plunging balls threw fountains of mud and water harmlessly into the air. As Mount and Frey stumbled gasping ashore, they forced their men into a rough line and peered about them. The hill rose upwards, scarred by the barred lines of the earthworks and palisades, while to their right the higgledy-piggledy gables of the atap-roofed houses tumbled down the hillside.
The brief flashes and eruptions of smoke lining the lower defences marked their objective. The musketry fire struck its first victims and Mount sensed his men waver. He shook his sword and took a deep breath.
'Forward!'
The ragged line of sodden men began to advance: seamen in the centre with boarding pikes in their hands, cutlasses swinging on their hips from canvas baldrics; on the flanks the steadying influence of Mount's marines, stripped of their red coats, but in close order. Bayonets and cutlasses caught the rays of sunlight and gleamed wickedly as, with every foot of elevation, the attackers came clear of the clinging river-mist.
Above, Drinkwater saw them clearly, recognised Mount and Frey, caught the evil sparkle of the light on the weapons. Directly below him two of the gunners were bent over the wounded chieftain. They did not seem to have considered the possibility that the shot had come from behind them, for the noise of gongs and the war-shrieks of the Dyaks, the heavy powder smoke and their own high excitement dulled their wits to this unlikely event. Despite the fact that their shot was now useless, the boats having passed the fixed line of its fall, they continued to load and fire, unable to depress their guns to command the slope of the hill. Emboldened, Drinkwater struck two of them with pistol balls, rolling backwards to reload.