Then Ramage realized that he could not see the upper half of the hilclass="underline" clouds of billowing smoke now covered it and already the flames had swept over several yards, leaving an ever - widening scorched black band which was advancing up the hill as though pulled by the flames.
A wind eddy made a momentary gap in the smoke and Ramage caught sight of several groups of men running about quite aimlessly at the top of the hill. He stood up and shouted to his left and then to his right: 'Stand by, men; they might make a dash for it any moment'
Immediately the seamen and Marines knelt behind their piles of stones, muskets ready, aiming up the hill into the smoke, so that it would take only a moment's twitch of the muzzle to take precise aim.
Suddenly a section of the hillside seemed to move and he saw figures weaving about in the smoke as they ran down the hill. As some reached thinner patches of smoke Ramage could see they were trying to protect their eyes, and some had rags tied across their faces, probably to try to filter out some of the smoke before it went down into their lungs. But they were clutching muskets and cutlasses; they were men about to fight, not surrender.
With a fearful deliberation Rennick's Marines fired, the muskets delivering what seemed a ragged volley until you realized that no man fired until he had taken proper aim.
Now no one moved up there in the smoke. There were two dozen or more bodies sprawled just this side of the line of flames: Rennick had let them come down dear of the smoke before allowing his men to fire.
Wagstaffe's company would fire at the next target while Rennick's reloaded - and yes, here were another ragged group of the enemy, coughing and spluttering while they ran, firing pistols wildly and yelling as they waved their swords. Two or three, probably blinded by the smoke, sprawled flat on their faces, tripped by rocks or the roots of burned bushes.
There was a crash of musketry as Wagstaffe's men fired, and only two or three of the enemy kept on running - not, Ramage realized, because they intended to attack a couple of hundred British, but because they had no choice: they were escaping the smoke and flame of the hill rather than braving the fire of the British muskets. Ramage was just about to order half a dozen of his own men to pick them off when more muskets fired from Wagstaffe's company. The men were coolly obeying orders, that much was sure I Lacey's company would take the next group, but if there was a great rush down the hill all the companies would fire. And, Ramage realized, there was probably no one in command of the rebels and privateersmen at the top of the hill; groups were just bolting when they found the smoke and heat became too much.
The line of flames, growing crooked now as stronger eddies of wind drove it on, leaping gaps when sheets of sparks flew into the air, was soon two - thirds of the way up the hill, and the flames themselves were in places six or eight feet high as bushes blazed, their boughs quickly turning to flaming scarecrows.
A few men ran down the hill - too few, Ramage felt; only madmen would come in such small numbers. 'Stand by, men!' he shouted. This may be the - '
But before he could finish the flames were momentarily hidden as scores of men came racing down the hill, like a great centipede moving sideways. Lacey's company fired at once - they were already aiming into the flames, waiting for targets to appear, and Ramage could see many of the leading men falling, followed a few moments later by a score shot down by Baker's company. There was too much noise to shout an order and anyway his own thirty men knew it was their turn after the muskets close on their left had fired.
Jackson's musket kicked and then Stafford's, and both men were tugging at their pistols. Ramage grasped his, cocked them, and waited a few moments as the muskets of the next company - that would be Kenton's men - and then the next, Aitken's, fired almost simultaneously.
The effect was ghastly: the enemy appeared to run into an invisible wall and collapse: barely twenty men were still running, the rest had fallen, some among the flames, others in the smouldering debris this side of the flames. Some reached the unburnt shrubs and grass six or seven yards beyond before being cut down.
Ramage realized that neither Jackson nor Stafford had fired their pistols, and his own were still cocked and loaded, but unused. Please, please, let a man come out of the smoke with a white flag or waving a shirt, or just shouting that they have surrendered: there's no point in continuing this aimless slaughter. Except, he realized, that the Dutch rebels knew they'd get no mercy if they fell into the Governor's hands because they were traitors, and French privateersmen by the nature of their bloody trade expected no quarter and rarely gave it. But piles of dead and wounded lying on a scorched hillside ... this was not the kind of war that Ramage had seen before nor, he realized, queasiness sweeping over him in waves, could he stomach much more of it. Then, before he could do or say anything, another group of Frenchmen came pouring down the hillside, screaming and coughing, rubbing their eyes and yelling defiance, and, as soon as they broke through the line of flames and made clearer targets, he heard Kenton calmly giving fire orders to his company. Again there was a volley of musketry; then, as some of the enemy still ran on, he heard a crisp voice telling a company to open fire with pistols, and a moment later he realized it was his own, and a crackle of pistol shots brought down the rest of the men.
The Calypsos were now busy reloading their muskets, and he could see, just this side of the flames, what seemed a low parapet and then, as a puff of wind blew the grey coils of smoke clear for a moment, that it was built of bodies. An arm waved here and there, a man staggered upright and collapsed, vague movements which made the barrier seem alive - as indeed parts of it were.
Yet, ghastly as it all. was, he was saving his own men; he had dreaded sending them charging up the hill to attack prepared French positions. Those bodies out there, lying dead or, if wounded, coughing in the smoke, were enemy, not Calypsos. Not just regular enemies, either: if they were Dutch they were traitors to their own folk; if French they were privateersmen and little better than pirates, and perhaps a hundred of them came from Brune's ship and had helped murder the Tranquil people.
Slowly the scene became less ghastly; his imagination superimposed the neat staterooms of the Tranquil, where the blood of the raped women with their throats cut had stained carpets and settees. He found it a satisfactory thought that by now the Marines and the seamen in all the companies had reloaded their muskets and were kneeling, waiting for the next wave of the enemy to come through the smoke, which was now thinning. The flames were high up the hill, perhaps forty yards away now. Another twenty yards, he guessed, and they would have reached the top.
How many French were left? They must be crowded at the very top of the hill now. unless they were jumping off into the sea, but the Marine 'patrols sent out by Rennick to watch the beaches had not fired, showing that the enemy preferred the devil to the deep blue sea. Or course, from the very first the men on the hill had not known the fate of their comrades once they had run down the hill and plunged through the smoke: they would hear the firing but the clouds of rolling smoke prevented them seeing how the musketry from the Calypsos was cutting them down like corn before a reaper's scythe. When the smoke clears, Ramage guessed, the remaining enemy will surrender. Yet they might all make a dash before the last of the hill burned, preferring a sudden foray through the flames. It would be the flames rather than the smoke that made the men run: they would scorch anyone who stood and waited for them to pass.