What now? Everything was happening so fast and not at all the way he had expected: instead of all twenty of the Tritons fighting a sudden, short and savage battle with all the privateersmen, it might now turn into a long-drawn-out siege, with the Jorum a fortress.
Could the Triton ever get into here? If the privateers put springs on their cables and hauled themselves round they could train their broadsides on to the Jorum... Jackson had already assembled the men with musketoons and had them scrambling over the bulwark on to the jetty, but he was arguing with several other men who wanted to be among the other half dozen.
'Take more, Jackson!'
'Aye aye, sir!' With that Jackson and the rest of the men were scrambling over the bulwark and running along the jetty.
Gorton called: 'Boats leaving both privateers, sir.'
Ramage acknowledged. Would they try to board, or land on the shore and attack along the jetty?
But what was puzzling him was Gorton's certainty that this was Marigot Bay. It seemed completely landlocked.
'Where's the entrance?'
Gorton grunted. 'That's what's puzzling me, sir. There's the high hills to the south—they're dear enough. And to the north—that's the ridge there. Well, the entrance is between the two.'
'But it's dosed off completely—why, you can see palm trees growing across.'
'I know, sir.'
Suddenly a loud popping and flashing of flame at the landward end of the jetty showed that Dupont and his men were attacking. The musket flashes seemed almost continuous from landward, punctuated by the occasional heavier boom of one of the Tritons' musketoons firing. Jackson's men were heavily outnumbered—and they hadn't much shelter. Even worse, they were having to stay dose to the jetty so Dupont's men couldn't cut off their escape route back to the schooner.
Ramage rubbed his brow. From the other side the privateers' boats were approaching fast. No shooting—obviously they were hoping they wouldn't be seen; hoping that Dupont and his men attacking along the jetty would occupy the Tritons' attention.
And in the meantime the Jorum was secured alongside the jetty, no longer a Trojan horse but a bullock tied up in a stall at the slaughterhouse. And the French call us rosbifs, Ramage thought irrelevantly.
Although the musket-fire on shore was easing, it was now interspersed with the challenge 'Triton!' showing it was almost hand-to-hand. The privateers' boats were perhaps fifty yards away. And he felt a slight breeze on the back of his neck, from the north-east he noted automatically, and then nearly jumped with the realization it was blowing towards the palm trees on the sandspit...
Should he or not? Out of the frying pan? Well, the pan was pretty hot... He yelled out a string of orders: for the grenade men to wait on the larboard side, others to stand by to cut the mooring warps, with more ready to push the Jorum clear of the jetty. The remainder, he shouted, were to stand by at the schooner's taffrail with pistols, ready to fire along the jetty.
Who to send to Jackson?
As if sensing the thought, Gorton said: 'What can I do, sir? I'm standing here like a spare topsail halyard.'
'Get along the jetty to Jackson. Tell him as soon as I shout "Tritons!" he's to get his men back on board. We'll try to cover them with pistols.'
'What about------'
'Get moving, Gorton!'
The man cleared the bulwark in one leap; a moment later Ramage heard him running along the jetty. Then he cursed —he'd forgotten to tell him to shout when Jackson was ready. ,.
The privateers' boats—five of them—were closing fast, moving silently like water beetles across a village pond, silent but heading directly for the Jorum. Each one of these freebooters knew more about boarding an enemy in the dark than any twenty men in one of the King's ships. If only Jackson arrived back as they ... No, that was asking too much.
Five boats, twenty or more men in each. A hundred men, and Dupont had—forty or fifty? He felt sick. Trojan horse! It'd been a wild idea and Wilson had known it—that was why he had wanted that report written for the Governor. An obituary. A two-page obituary for twenty Tritons.
As he stood frightened and despairing that once again he had acted without enough thought, he felt the wind chill on his cheek. The offshore breeze had begun, and a few moments later he saw the fronds of the palms moving gently as it reached them.
But better the Jorum stranded on the beach by those palms, where they would have something of a moat all round them, than stuck here at the end of the jetty.
He filled his lungs and shouted: 'Jackson! Are you ready there?'
'Aye aye, sir!'
'Tritons!'
He was almost screaming now with excitement and relief.
'Aft there—ready with your pistols! Shoot down anyone without a white headband—but watch out for Gorton!'
Feet thundering along the jetty, pursued by musket shots. The dull Sash and crack of a musketoon as the Tritons covered their retreat.
'Cast off all lines!'
Ropes splashed into the water forward, and then aft.
A quick glance round showed the privateers' boats were twenty yards off.
'Grenade men—stand by to light your fuses!'
Then he thought of Evans and shouted for him, hoping he hadn't gone with Jackson.
The Welshman was standing near-by.
'Quick—light a false-fire!'
Seamen scrambling over the bulwarks from the jetty, white-bands round their brows; pistols whiplashing as the Tritons at the taffrail fired along the jetty. Sparks close by. then suddenly Evans's false-fire lit up the whole schooner in its ghostly blue light.
'Grenade men—crouch down! The boats are coming alongside. When I give the word light your fuses from the false-fire and drop the grenades into the boats!'
He was thankful the grenades had no more than five-second fuses. Two wounded men being lifted over the bulwark. Then Jackson standing in front of him, wild-eyed in the light of the false-fire.
'Dupout's got fifty men or more, sir. We lost two dead, and two wounded.'
'Very well. Five boats approaching on the larboard side. Get your men ready but keep clear of the side until I give the word. We've cast off from the jetty.'
He looked over the larboard side: damn, he'd left it late.
'Grenade men: light and drop 'em in the boats—smartly now!'
The men crouched round the false-fire with the grenades, holding them so the fuses, sticking out like wicks, were in the flame. As soon as the fuses sparked the men ran to the side, paused a moment—Ramage realized the bright light had dazzled them—and then dropped the grenades. Almost at once there were shouts from the boats and the crack of pistols fired upwards. One of the Tritons slowly toppled backwards without a sound, a dark stain on his headband.
'Start bearing off!' Ramage yelled. 'Heave her off the jetty!'
A great flash and a deep, sullen roar on the starboard side, then another. Screams of men in terrible pain, screams of men almost witless with fear. It was raining, and pieces of wood were falling on deck. Two more explosions, then a third. Ramage realized the grenades had not only blown up the boats but the explosions were showering water and wreckage over the schooner's deck.
Then Jackson was yelling something from the rail but Ramage couldn't hear from where he was standing at the starboard side exhorting the men to shove harder at boat-hooks—some had even snatched up the hatch beams—to get the schooner away from the jetty.
More yells from the taffrail. What the devil were they shouting about? Glancing back along the jetty it wasn't hard to guess: a black mass, a giant caterpillar, was advancing slowly along it—Dupont's men, and the Tritons at the taffrail were hurriedly re-loading their pistols.