But Valdivia it would have to be, for Sharpe's word was given, and so a last battle must be fought. To pluck a friend from madness.
PART THREE
VIVAR
The embers were gathering. Reinforcements arrived from the northern provinces. They were not many, and none was officially despatched by the republic's government in Santiago, yet still they came. A few owed Lord Cochrane for past favors, but most were adventurers who smelled plunder in Chile. They arrived at Puerto Crucero in small groups; the largest were brought back on Cochrane's pinnace, but others came by land, all daring the forests and the savages as they skirted the Spanish-held territory to gather at Puerto Crucero. After two weeks the newcomers had added just over two hundred volunteers to Cochrane's meager forces, but Cochrane was convinced that his war would be won by just such small increments. At least half of the newcomers had fought in the European wars, and more than a few recognized Sharpe and hoped he would remember them. "I was in the breach at Badajoz with you," a Welshman told Sharpe. "Bloody terrible, that was. But I'm glad you're here, sir, it means we're going to win again, does it not?"
Sharpe did not have the heart to tell the Welshman that he believed the attack on Valdivia to be suicidal. Instead he asked what had brought the man to this backside of the world. "Money, sir, money! What else?" The Welshman was confident that the royalists, having been defeated in Peru, Chile, and in the wide grasslands beyond the Andes, must have carried the spoils of all that empire back to Valdivia. "It's their last great stronghold in South America!" the Welshman said, "so if we capture it, sir, we'll all be rich. I shall buy a house and a farm in the border country, and I'll find a fat wife, and I shall never want for a thing again. All it takes is money, sir, and all we need for money is this battle. Life is not for the weak or timid, sir, but for the brave!"
The Spaniards were making no effort to recapture Puerto Crucero. Instead they had pulled all their forces back into the Valdivia region, abandoning a score of towns and outlying forts. Cochrane's volunteers arrived at Puerto Crucero with tales of burning stockades, deserted customs posts and empty guardhouses. "Maybe," Sharpe suggested, "they're planning a complete withdrawal?"
"Back to Spain, you mean?" Cochrane scorned the suggestion. "They're waiting for reinforcements. Madrid won't abandon Chile. They believe God gave them this empire as a reward for slaughtering all those Muslims in the fifteenth century, and what God gives, kings keep. No, they're not withdrawing, Sharpe, they're just planning more wickedness. They know we're going to attack them, so they're drawing in their horns and getting their guns ready." He rubbed his hands with glee. "All those guns and men in one place, just waiting to be captured!"
"That's just what Bautista wants," Sharpe warned Cochrane. "He believes his guns will pound you into mincemeat."
Cochrane spat. "The man's useless. His guns couldn't kill a spavined chicken. Besides, we'll be taking him by surprise."
The surprise depended entirely on the Spaniards being deceived by the two disguised warships. The O'Higgins, brought into the inner harbor, was being disguised with tar so that her gunports were indistinguishable from any distance. She looked, by the time Cochrane's men had done with her, as drab and ugly a ship as had ever sailed the ocean. The fine gilrwork at her bow and stern had been ruthlessly stripped away so that she resembled some unloved transport ship. The Kitty, the erstwhile Espiritu Santo, was being similarly disfigured. She was also being made seaworthy, and Cochrane chivied his carpenters unmercifully, because every day that the Kitty spent careened on the sand shoal was a day lost, a day in which Lord Cochrane worried that the two real Spanish transport ships might reach Valdivia, or that some Spanish spy might report back to Valdivia just what preparations the rebels were making.
Even a half-witted spy, Cochrane grumbled, could have guessed his plans by just looking at the work being done on the two warships. In essence Cochrane was repeating the trick that had won him Puerto Crucero. That trick had enabled the Scotsman to take his men to the very edge of the defenses before their presence was detected, yet if the Spaniards had been alerted to the trick and had opened fire on the Espiritu Santo as soon as she had shown at the harbor mouth, blood would have poured thick from the frigate's scuppers and Cochrane would have earned his first defeat.
The Spaniards could easily inflict that first defeat in the massive harbor at Valdivia. Valdivia's six forts contained far more guns than Puerto Crucero's one fortress, and Valdivia's guns were spread out so that a surprise assault on one bastion could only serve to alert the others. It was that dispersion of enemy guns that worried Sharpe. Five of Valdivia's forts were on the harbor's western shore, while the sixth, Fort Niebla, was on the eastern bank and guarded the entrance to the River Valdivia. Cochrane, if he was to capture the town with its citadel and reputed treasure, had to capture Fort Niebla, for with the river mouth in his hands he could prevent the garrisons of the remaining fortresses from reinforcing the town's defenders.
Cochrane's plan to capture Fort Niebla was unveiled at a council of war that he held in the high arched room of Puerto Crucero's citadel. He spread a map on a table and weighted its corners with bottles, of Chilean brandy, then, in a calm voice, spoke of sailing the disguised ships past the silent guns of the Spanish forts. Sharpe, like the other dozen officers in the room, listened to Cochrane's confident voice, but saw on the map the terrible dangers that the Scotsman so blithely discounted. Most of the forts had been built high on the hills that surrounded the harbor—so high that, while they could plunge a lethal fire down into Cochrane's ships, his own cannon could never elevate enough to return the fire. "But no one will open fire if they believe us to be the long-awaited transports with Colonel Ruiz's guns and men!" Cochrane said confidently. He would keep his false ensigns flying until his two ships actually reached the quays in the river's mouth. There, sheltered from all the western fortresses, as well as from the guns on Manzanera Island, he would launch a sudden landward assault against Fort Niebla. "And when Niebla falls, the whole thing collapses!" Cochrane said again. "Niebla controls the river! The river controls the town! The town controls what's left of Spanish Chile!"
"Brilliant! Genius! Superb!" exclaimed Major Miller, his eyes glowing with admiration for his hero's cleverness. "Superb, my Lord! Quite magnificent! Worthy of Wellington! I applaud you, 'pon my soul, I do!"
"I believe Major Miller trusts our plan!" Cochrane said happily.
"I don't," Sharpe said.
"You don't believe it will work?" Cochrane asked sarcastically.
"I believe it will work, my Lord, just so long as not one Spanish soldier can tell the difference between a transport ship and a warship. It will work so long as the real transport ships haven't arrived yet. It will work so long as those real transport ships weren't supplied with a password we don't know. It will work so long as not one single officer of Colonel Ruiz's regiment isn't carried out to the arriving ships to check their cargoes. Good Lord! You think the Spaniards won't be suspicious of every ship that comes into sight? They know how you captured this fortress, my Lord, so they'll surely suspect that you'll try the same trick again! How do we know that the Spanish aren't inspecting every ship before it's allowed to enter the harbor?" Sharpe spoke in English so that his pessimism would not be obvious to every man in the room, but his tone was more than enough to give it away. Even those who did not understand his words could look at the map and imagine the hell of being caught in the harbor, at the center of a ring of heavy guns that would be splintering the ships into floating charnel houses.