“Or, maybe General Moore is tired of being chased all round Spain, and wants to get in a hard lick at them to show the French, and Napoleon, who’s the better soldier,” Lt. Westcott commented with one brow up. “What? Just saying,” he had to add, after almost all officers on the quarterdeck turned to look at him, amazed by such a suggestion. “In his shoes, wouldn’t you want to get in the last blow?”
We do insane things for our pride, Lewrie thought, peering intently shoreward; for God, King, and Country … and ourselves.
The sound of the bombardment, and counter-bombardment was louder, now, the concussions spreading out from the Monte Mero ridges to make the bare limbs of trees ashore tremble, to create wee ripples of harbour water that spread outward from the docks at Santa Lucía. He cocked an ear and imagined that he could almost hear the twigs-in-a-fire crackling of musketry, but he shook his head, thinking that it was much too soon for the French to advance their infantry columns and come down from the further ridges of the Peñasquedo to attempt to march up the slopes of the Monte Mero. He hoped that Moore was husbanding his soldiers on the reverse slopes, as Wellesley had done at Vimeiro, even as Sir Brent Spencer had planned at Ayamonte.
They’ll keep bangin’ away with artillery for a time yet, he told himself; unless they really are starvin’! If the French do get atop the ridge … hmm.
“Mister Yelland,” he called out over his shoulder, his view intent upon the near shores, “those transports East of the quays at Santa Lucía … they’re anchored rather close to shore. How deep are the waters there, d’ye think? Do your charts show?”
“Close to shore, sir?” Yelland asked, rubbing his chin.
Always was slow on the up-take, Lewrie thought.
“Should it be necessary to close the shore and fire our guns to support the army should it be driven back, how close could we get, I’m asking,” Lewrie patiently told him.
“I’ll go look, sir,” the Sailing Master said, taking off his hat and scratching his scalp for a second; “Close” and “Shore” together in one sentence put the wind up every officer responsible for the safe navigation of a King’s Ship.
“I will join you,” Lewrie said, closing the tubes of his telescope and steeling his nostrils for an assault as he went to the improvised chart space.
As Lewrie expected, the shore was steep-to, sloping off sharply, and littered with large boulders, but the old Spanish charts did show at least five fathoms of depth within a quarter-mile of the coast. East of the commercial piers of Santa Lucía there was a deep notch, a cove or inlet that resembled a large, circular bite out of a sandwich, just beneath the heights of Santa Lucía Hill, which was the end of the Monte Mero ridge. With the use of a long brass ruler, Lewrie could determine that if they entered that cove, they would have a direct line-of-sight to the Monte Mero, and could take any French mass of troops, advancing triumphantly on Corunna, in enfilade, and if they came on in their massed columns, Sapphire’s guns could rake their flanks with all her weight of metal.
“There’s this little stream that runs down from the hills, from Elvina to spill out into the bay below Santa Lucía,” Lewrie pointed out with a pencil stub. “If Moore is dis-lodged from the ridge, that’d be a good line t’try and hold, and we could smash the French columns right on their right flank. It’s what … hmm, five fathoms, or the Spanish equivalent … a quarter-mile from the rocky shore…”
“At mean low tide,” Yelland dubiously agreed, “though there’re these two rocky outcrops, wee islands, and the depths between…”
“We get between ’em, right here,” Lewrie said, making an X to mark the place on the chart. “If we have to, Mister Yelland.”
“If we can thread our way through the transports crammed about the quays, sir,” Yelland cautioned. “They are anchored close to ease the rowing distance from shore to ship. Corunna’s as crowded as the Pool of London, or worse, even with the loaded ships moved seawards.”
“It’d take some crafty ship-handlin’, aye,” Lewrie said, standing erect from leaning over the inclined chart table, and tossing the pencil into a low shelf on the back edge. “But, if the army runs into trouble, I’ll not have it said that the Navy let ’em down. That’s what they pay us for … crafty ship-handlin’, right?”
“Right, sir,” Mr. Yelland said, looking as if he had been ordered to thread ’twixt Scylla and Charybdis, hunt up the fabled Northwest Passage through Midwinter icebergs, or sell his first-born son; that glint in his eyes, and the way he licked his lips, told Lewrie that Mr. Yelland was badly in need of a stiff “Norwester” glass of grog.
Lewrie stepped back out onto the quarterdeck, took a deep and refreshing breath of clean air, then trotted up the ladderway to the poop deck for a better vantage point. The cannonading was continuing, with no sign of a French breakthrough … yet. When he swivelled to look to the West, where Percy Stangbourne’s cavalry guarded the road from Vigo, he could not spot any sign of a French attack. Whoever was in command of the French troops looked as if he was throwing all he had at the Monte Mero, so far.
Can’t be Napoleon himself, then, Lewrie thought; that bastard would be sneaky enough t’feint an attack where Moore’s strongest, and hit him where he’s weakest.
* * *
Lewrie returned to the quarterdeck after a break to warm up in his great-cabins, and have Yeovill fetch a pot of hot tea from the galley, and, admittedly, to visit his quarter-gallery toilet. He saw his crew gathered all down the bulwarks facing the shore, half-way up the shrouds, in the fighting tops to watch what was happening ashore. Some men of the off-watch division had eschewed four hours of sleep below, and were on deck in their warmest clothing, with their blankets wrapped round them.
“Any change?” Lewrie asked the First Officer, who was sipping a cup of tea himself, with his own boat cloak wrapped round him for warmth.
“It gets louder, now and then, sir, then fades out a bit,” Lt. Westcott said with a bored expression on his face. “Every now and then I think I can hear musketry, but, who knows?” he said with a shrug. “We seem to be holding them in check.”
Lewrie pulled out his pocket watch to note that it was a little past 10 in the morning of the 16th of January, and the fighting had begun just round 9 A.M. He looked shoreward with his telescope for a long minute, then lowered it and looked round his own decks. Hands were looking aft at the quarterdeck, now that he was back.
Lewrie made up his mind with a firm nod, then went to the edge of the quarterdeck to lean on the cross-deck hammock stanchions.
“Lads!” he called out loudly, drawing everyone’s attention to him. “The Army’s holding the damned Frogs, so far! I’ll tell you what I know from when I was ashore at Vimeiro!”
He described the French column formations, and how they marched shoulder to shoulder like a massive blue carpet, how the British Army kept their men safe behind the ridges yonder ’til it was time to come up and shoot those columns to a bloody standstill; how the exploding Shrapnel shells would burst over them and scatter bodies about; how a reef of dead and wounded would pile up knee or thigh high, when the French would stall, unable to step over those reefs, even though the drums and the officers would still urge them forward; and he told them how the French had broken and run, at last, and how vain those shouts of “Vive l’Empereur!” would be.
“Long live the Emperor,” he said in a comically shaky voice, “and let me live t’get outa this place! Mon Dieu, Mort de ma vie! I am running now, toot sweet!”