A figure advanced into the surf and raised an oar with a swatch of red bunting tied to it. It was Stirk, signalling deteriorating conditions and relieving Kydd of a terrible decision.
Chapter 50
During the night there was a ragged rain squall, followed by a streaming westerly, setting the close-packed convoy to a miserable jibbing and snubbing at their anchors in the endless white-capped rollers coming in from seaward.
The morning brought little relief, the ragged scud of clouds above driving ceaselessly in and the combers continuing pitiless, relentless.
In the afternoon Wellesley asked for Kydd. ‘I will not have this landing delayed further. They must go in, sir!’
‘Man alone cannot command the seas, sir. I have men ashore who will signal the instant boats can be expected to land safely.’
‘Have you any idea how important this assault is to the success of His Majesty’s arms in this, the only active opposition the country is mounting against Emperor Bonaparte?’
Kydd felt resentment rising. The navy was hardly inactive – it had always been the Emperor’s unrelenting foe with a success unmatched by any – but he could see the strain was telling on the general, who was in fact a junior field officer, however highly regarded.
But what did he expect Kydd to do in the face of the hostile elements?
Wellesley’s face was rigid and hard; Kydd knew that the man was not above ordering him to send the boats into the cauldron again and take the inevitable casualties. He had to do something – and fast.
‘I see, sir. Then there is a way forward, which I can’t guarantee but will do my damnedest to try.’
‘Do it.’ There’d been no enquiry into what he proposed; as he’d suspected, only a cold determination to win by any means.
It was a long shot, and the only one he had left aboard Tyger he could trust with it was Brice.
Shortly, one of the boats manoeuvred to square off against the thundering surf, in it Brice at the tiller. Doud was in the foresheets, unblinkingly watching aft, a coiled line in his hand.
They came in with just four at the oars, two each side. Two more were along the centreline of the boat, crouched like a coiled spring. Brice was watching, judging, seeing the waves tumbling and noting the distance of the shore with its foaming line of breaking seas as it came closer.
His hand lifted – and chopped down.
In one fluid movement Doud had his line up and, swinging mightily, sailed it out on the beam, the black curl of the grapnel clearly visible. In the next moment the line was in turns around the samson post, a square vertical timber in the foresheets normally used for towing. The boat, still with forward way on, felt the grapnel’s bite and at the same time, with oars pulling hard on one side and backing furiously on the other, the boat slewed about until it faced out to sea once more.
But this time there was a difference. Oars boated, Doud eased the rope continually, the two men along the centre-line taking the strain and following his moves, Brice at the tiller with nothing to do but watch.
The next white creaming of a rising wave was met not with the squared-off transom at the stern of the boat but the stout bow, which shouldered aside the rampaging comber with a mighty rearing but not the slightest deflection to right or left, ready for the next. Doud eased more turns, and more – it was slow work but sure. Under the tension of the grapnel line the boat resolutely faced into the great seas as it was carried in.
The beach team were ready and took the boat each side on its gunwales with no need to rotate it in the shallows to seaward again.
Success! But it was slow. At this rate it would take weeks, and in that time the French, hearing of the landing, might well have brought up artillery and reinforcements to sweep the landing beaches clean.
Ironically the seas moderated in the next few hours and the following day saw innocently playful surging Atlantic rollers and the boats resuming streaming shoreward.
Capitao Meireles had suggested they make use of native craft. At Figuiera they could be seen drawn up on the sand. The barca serrana. Tall-prowed, double-ended boats, they nevertheless contrived a sturdy flat bottom for taking the beach at speed in the surf without toppling, well suited to these local conditions.
Ashore it was soon a scene of chaos and confusion. Dumps of stores were piling up on the foreshore. Gun mountings, monstrous casks of hard tack, barrels of salted meat, rum, officers’ baggage, tenting for the soldiers and pyramids of shot, with cases of small-arms ammunition in endless rows. And without an encampment or any real task to keep them occupied, hundreds increased to thousands of soldiers – sitting or lying on the ground, or aimlessly milling about.
Wellesley and his staff went ashore when the disembarkation was two-thirds complete, and immediately blessed order radiated out from his field tent. By company, then by regiment, an army came into being. It prepared for the march in the age-old way Kydd had seen in earlier campaigns, and he accepted thankfully that his role was near complete. They’d been fortunate – there’d been no sign of the enemy in the five days it had taken and for the most part the elements had been kind to them.
Then, unexpectedly, a fleet was sighted from the south but this was soon resolved into a similar convoy of transports sent from Gibraltar as reinforcements, a much appreciated five thousand, who were efficiently brought ashore to join the others.
As Kydd watched the expedition spread out along the entire foreshore in a dense mass, forming up for their push inland, he pondered that this vast throng on the move, the size of an entire big city, would have to be fed and watered, shod, clothed and kept supplied with ammunition wherever it went. A daunting task – but not his.
Most of the transports had weighed and sailed off when Kydd took in the sight of the first column stepping off into the interior, faint sounds of drum and bagpipe carrying out on the water.
‘Dip our colours, Mr Bray.’ It was the least he could do as Britain’s only army on the Continent of Europe moved off bravely to confront the colossus of Bonaparte and his legions.
Chapter 51
Brooks’s, London
The minister for war, Lord Castlereagh, was not often to be found in his club: he was anything but gregarious in his socialising and lately much taken up with the rapid turn of events in Iberia.
A figure approached him. ‘Well, hello, old stick. It’s been quite some time, I believe.’
Castlereagh put down The Times and blinked. ‘Oh, but all the better for the anticipating,’ he murmured distantly, rising to his feet to greet the man. It never did to ignore the most influential merchant bankers, and Sir Philip Bentinck Lawder of the Baltic Exchange was as high as they came.
A club steward appeared and waited patiently.
‘A little something against the cold, will it be?’
‘A splash of brandy would answer, m’ lord.’
‘Do sit, Pip. What brings you here today?’ Castlereagh asked politely.
‘Curiosity is all, old fellow. You must know I did well out of your late Baltic expedition, damn well, and I’m duly thankful for it. Now all this upheaval in Spain – where’s it going? That’s what I’d like to know!’
‘As would we all.’ Castlereagh sighed.
‘Yes, but I mean to say-’
‘Pip. You have your money to hazard. I have the only army of size England possesses thrown promiscuously ashore in Iberia among a countless French horde to care about, put there at the howling of Parliament and the mob to aid the Dons. It seems they don’t want our help, so it has to be the Portuguee, God help us.’
‘They got ashore, didn’t they?’
‘They did. Thanks to the navy, as always, but it’s not them I’m sore exercised about at the moment. It’s what I’m being asked to do.’
‘What’s that, then, dear fellow?’