The Shadow of the Eagle (34 page)

CHAPTER 18
The Last Candle

May 1814

Drinkwater felt the chill of foreboding seize him. The game was up.

He was conscious of having fought with all the skill he could muster, of having done his duty, but the end was not now far off. He saw little point in delaying matters further, for it would only result in a further effusion of blood, and he had done everything the honour of his country’s flag demanded. Besides, he was wounded and the effect of the laudanum was working off; spent ball or not, it had done for his left arm and he could no longer concentrate on the business in hand. He was overwhelmed with pain and a weariness that went far beyond the urgent promptings of his agonizing wound. He was tired of this eternal business of murder, exhausted by the effort to outmanoeuvre other equally intelligent men in this grim game of action and counter-action. The effort to do more was too much for him and he felt the deck sway beneath his unsteady feet.

‘Here the bastards come!’

It was Marlowe waving his sword and roaring a warning beside him. The first lieutenant had lost his hat like Birkbeck, and his sudden appearance seemed magical, like a
djinn
in a story, but it was a Marlowe afire with a fighting madness. Both his amazing presence and his words brought about a transformation in Drinkwater.

To strike at that moment would have resulted in utter confusion: Napoleon’s veterans were after a revenge greater than the mere capture of a British frigate and the thought, flashing through Drinkwater’s brain in an instant, compelled him to a final effort.

‘God’s bones! The game is worth a last candle …’

But his words were lost as, with a roar, the boarders poured in a flood over the hammock nettings and aboard
Andromeda.
They were answered by a volley from Hyde’s rear rank of marines who promptly reloaded their muskets in accordance with their drill. Beside Drinkwater, Birkbeck drew his sword in the brief quiet. The rasp of the blade made Drinkwater turn as the front rank of marines discharged their pieces from their kneeling position.

‘Stand fast, Birkbeck! I promised you a dockyard post. Hyde, forward with your bayonets!’

Drinkwater had his own hanger drawn now and advanced through the marines with Marlowe at his side. He distinctly heard Marlowe say ‘Excuse me,’ as he shouldered his way through the rigid ranks, and then they were shuffling forward over the resultant shambles of the marines’ volleys.

Only the officers had been protected by Hyde’s men; as the Frenchmen scrambled over the hammock nettings and down upon
Andromeda,
they had encountered the upper-deck gunners, topmen and waisters, the afterguard and those men whose duties required them to be abroad on the quarterdeck, forecastle and the port gangway. At Drinkwater’s cry to repel boarders, most of these had seized boarding pikes, or drawn their cutlasses if they bore them.

L’Aigle’s
party had not been unopposed, but they outnumbered the defenders and while some were killed or remained detained in the hand-to-hand fighting, more swept past and were darting like ferrets in their quest for an enemy to overcome, in order to seize the frigate in the name of their accursed Emperor. Hyde’s marines had fired indiscriminately into the mass of men coming aboard, hitting friend and foe alike, aided by discharges of langridge from the swivel guns in the tops that now swept
L’Aigle’s
rail and inhibited further reinforcement of the first wave of boarders.

All this had taken less than a minute, and then, after their third volley, Hyde’s men were stamping their way across the deck, their bright, gleaming steel bayonets soon bloodied and their ranks wavering as they stabbed, twisted and withdrew, butted and broke the men of the Grand Army who had the audacity to challenge them at sea, on their own deck. They were all slithering in blood and the slime that once constituted the bodies of men; the stink of it was in their nostrils, rousing them to a primitive madness which fed upon itself and was compounded into a frenzied outpouring of violent energy.

White-faced, Drinkwater advanced with them, his left shoulder withdrawn, his right thrown forward. With shortened sword arm, he stabbed and hacked at anything in his way. He was vaguely conscious of the jar of his blade on bone, then the point of a curved and bloody sabre flashed into his field of view and he had parried it and cut savagely at the brown dolman which bore it. A man’s face, a thin, lined and handsome face, as weather-beaten as that of any seaman, a face disfigured with a scar and sporting moustachios of opulent proportions and framed by tails of plaited hair, grimaced and opened a red mouth with teeth like a horse. Drinkwater could hear nothing from the hussar whose snarl was lost in the foul cacophony to which, hurt and hurting, they all contributed in their contrived and vicious hate.

The hussar fell and was shoved aside as he slumped across the breech of a carronade. The enemy were checked and thrust back. Men were pinioned to the bulwarks, crucified by bayonets, their guts shot out point-blank by pistol shot, or clubbed with butts or pike-staves, and then with a reinforcing roar Ashton’s gun crews came up from the waist, eager to get to closer grips with an enemy they had shortly before been blowing to Kingdom Come with their brutal artillery.

Drinkwater sensed rather than saw them. It was all that was needed to sweep the remaining able-bodied French, soldiers and seamen alike, back over the side of
Andromeda
and across the grinding gap between the two heaving ships. Drinkwater was up on the carronade slide himself, trying to get over the rail one-handed. Frustrated, he put the
forte
of his hanger in his mouth, afterwards recalling a brief glimpse of dark water swirling between the tumble-home of
L’Aigle
and
Andromeda.
He leaned outwards and seized an iron crane of
L’Aigle’s
hammock nettings as Ashton’s men joined Hyde’s marines and their combined momentum bore the counterattack onward.

Sergeant McCann had been the right-hand marker as Lieutenant Hyde ordered the marines to advance. They had only to move a matter of feet; less than half the frigate’s beam, but every foot-shuffling step had been fiercely contested, and McCann felt his boots crunch unmercifully down upon the writhings of the wounded and dying. The pistols in his belt felt uncomfortable as he twisted and thrust, edging forward all the time, but they reminded him of his resolve.

Suddenly he was aware of movement on his extreme right. As the flanker, he turned instinctively and saw Lieutenant Ashton lead the gunners up out of the gun-deck. He grinned as his heart-beat quickened and Ashton, casting about him to establish his bearings and the tactical situation, caught sight of Sergeant McCann appearing in the smoke to his left.

‘Forward Sergeant!’ he cried exuberantly, engaging the first Frenchman he came across, a dragoon officer who had shed his cumbersome helmet and fought in a forage cap and a short stable coat. The dragoon slashed wildly, but Ashton was supported by two sailors and the three of them cut the man to his knees in a second. The dragoon fell, bleeding copiously. Lieutenant Ashton felt a surge of confidence as he swept his men forward.

Smoke enveloped them and Ashton half turned, again shouting ‘Come on, Sergeant!’ his voice full of exasperation. Unable to see the full fury of the action on the quarterdeck, Ashton hacked a path forward and then, as the pressure eased, McCann advanced at a quickening pace. The line of marines began to gain momentum as the column of gunners continued to emerge from the gloom of the gun-deck. Below, their remaining colleagues carried on adding their remorseless thunder to the air as they fired indiscriminately without aiming, into the wooden wall that heaved and surged alongside.

Sergeant McCann followed Lieutenant Ashton as he clambered over the bulwark amidships, and stretched out for the fore chains of
L’Aigle.
He could have killed Ashton at that moment, stabbed him ignominiously in the arse as he had sworn to do, but he faltered and then Ashton had gone, and with him the opportunity.

Further aft Lieutenant Marlowe had reached
L’Aigle’s
mizen chains and was hacking his way down upon the quarterdeck of the French frigate. Between the two British officers, the line of defenders bowed back, but it had already transformed itself as the French attack was repulsed and the tide turned. As Marlowe struck a French aspirant’s extended arm and deflected the pistol ball so that it merely grazed his cheek, the whole line began to scramble aboard
L’Aigle.

Carried forward by this madness, Drinkwater felt his ankle twist as he landed on the enemy deck, and he fell full length, cushioned by the corpse of a half-naked French gunner who lay headless beside his gun. The stink of blood, dried sweat and garlic struck him and he dragged himself to his feet as a fellow boarder knocked him over again. The seaman paused, saw whom he had hit and gave Drinkwater a hand to rise.

‘Beg pardon, sir, but ‘ere, let me …’

‘Obliged…’

It seemed quieter now and Drinkwater took stock. There were fewer of the enemy, which seemed strange since they were now aboard
L’Aigle.
The wave of men he had led aboard dissipated, like a real wave upon a beach, running faster and faster as it shallowed, until, extended to its limit, it stopped and ran back. Bloody little fights took place everywhere, but the numbers of men already slaughtered had robbed
L’Aigle
of all her advantage, and it now became apparent to what extent
Andromeda’s
cannon-fire had damaged the French ship.

About the helm lay a heap of bodies and Drinkwater caught the gleam of sunlight on bullion lace. Was one of the ungainly dead
Contre-Amiral
Lejeune? The boats on
L’Aigle’s
booms were filled with holes, her main fife-rails were smashed to matchwood, releasing halliards and lifts. Parted ropes lay like inert serpents about the decks, drawing lines over and about the corpses, like some delineation of the expiring lives which had left an indelible impression upon the carnage.

About the broken boats on the booms amidships and at the opening of the after hatchway, Hyde’s marines were clustered, firing down into the gun-deck below, thus preventing any reinforcement of the upper-deck such as Ashton had managed, and which had turned the tide of the battle. Elsewhere a handful of British jacks chased solitary Frenchmen to their deaths, and it seemed in that short, contemplative moment that they had achieved the impossible and seized
L’Aigle.
Drinkwater thought he ought perhaps to order his own guns to cease fire, but when he stopped to think about anything the pain of his broken arm came back to him and he wanted to give in to it. Surely providence was satisfied: surely he had done enough. Then, as if from a great distance, Drinkwater heard a cry.

‘Look to your front, sir!’ There was something urgent and familiar about the voice. Slowly he turned about and saw through the smoke, the hazy figure of Birkbeck standing above
Andromeda’s
rail and gesturing. ‘Look to your front!’

‘What the deuce are you talking about?’ Drinkwater called, unaware that the terrible noise of battle had partially deafened him and he had been shouting his head off so that his voice was a feeble croak.

‘The Russian! The
Gremyashchi!’
Birkbeck waved over Drinkwater’s head, gesturing at something and Drinkwater turned again. Looming above the port bulwark of
L’Aigle,
unscathed and perhaps a foot higher in her freeboard, the big Russian frigate appeared. Drinkwater could see her bulwarks lined with men, many of them fiercely bearded, like the Russians he had seen on the coast of California many, many years ago …

And then he suddenly felt the naked exposure of his person.

‘Take your men below, Sergeant!’

Ashton shoved a marine aside and pointed down into
L’Aigle’s
gun-deck.

‘Sir?’

‘You heard me! Lead your men below and clear the gun-deck.’

McCann hesitated; Ashton was ordering him to a certain death.

‘Are you a coward?’

‘The hell I am …’

‘Then do as you are ordered! I’ll take my men down from forward.’

Furious, McCann ported his musket and began to descend into the smoke-filled hell. ‘Catten,’ he instructed one marine, ‘run back aboard and let the master know we’re going below before that stupid bastard has us all shot by our own gunners. The rest of you, follow me!’ he cried.

Ashton was right: he, McCann,
was
a coward. Only a coward would have submitted to the thrall of soldiering; only a coward would have passively acquiesced to this madness and only a coward would have let slip the opportunity to rid the world of Josiah Ashton. Almost weeping with rage, McCann charged below.

What confronted the invaders when they spread out across
L’Aigle’s
gun-deck was horrifying. The planking was ploughed up by shot. In places, splinters stood like petrified grass. Stanchions were broken and guns were dismounted. Sunlight slanted into the fume-filled gloom through the frigate’s gun-ports.
Andromeda’s
12-pound shot at short range had beaten in the ship’s side in one place, while the grape and langridge she had poured into
L’Aigle
had piled the dead about their guns in heaps.

On
Andromeda’s
gun-deck, Lieutenant Frey received the message to cease fire from Mr Paine who also added the request for the larboard guns to be withdrawn and the ports shut.

‘What’s amiss?’ asked Frey, unable to do more than shout to hear his own voice.

‘We need your men on deck, sir. Most of our fellows are aboard the Frenchman and that bloody Russian’s just coming up on her disengaged side!’

‘Where’s the captain?’ Frey asked.

‘I last saw him going over the side with his hanger in his teeth.’