Being apprised of these sterling qualities and shining deeds by Walid Pasha, His Grace of Norfolk had knighted Squire John and had promised him a command whenever one should become vacant.
When the prized Papal lugger had been repaired and refitted to His Grace’s and Waiid Pasha’s instructions in Liverpool and sailed over to Dublin by seamen left behind for the purpose, Walid—knowing how busy was Sebastian Bey with other things—had had Sir John Stakeley brought to him and had given the Englishman command of the now-armed lugger, with its rakish rigging and sleek lines.
Even with three Fairley-made breechloading rifled cannon mounted on heavy wrought-iron swivel bases, and the dozen swivel guns now mounted along the rails, the lugger still drew far less water depth than was required for any of the liners and many ot the other less sizable warships. That was why she was the only one of his ships that Walid Pasha would allow to essay the higher reaches of the River Ban. local pilots or no local pilots, and he had also admonished his newest ship captain to take great care, immediately turning back should he even feel discomfort with the journey.
Two fishing boats had escaped the carnage and conflagration of Coleraine, and these Walid Pasha had had loaded with powder, shot, waddings, a few casks of langrage, and assorted other supplies, plus enough seamen to sail them and Fahrooq with a score and a half of his fighters. These vessels had closely trailed the once-Papal lugger, now rechristened Cassius.
Sir John had experienced no trouble at all, all the soundings of his leadsman having shown more than enough water depth for his little ship all the way south to where the river began as an outlet for Lough Neagh. The wind having suddenly failed him, he set his men to the long sweeps with which the lugger was provided and moved out onto the waters of the freshwater lake, its waters colored brownish with the stain of peat deposits near into the shores, but being a grayish-blue farther out toward deep water. Trailed by the fishing vessels which, with the lack of a breeze, were being towed by oarsmen in the longboats. Sir John moved along to the eastward, keeping the passing northern shore in sight off his larboard.
Following the advice of his native pilot. Sir John flew no ensign or banner of any description as he came within sight of the “Port” of Oentreib. It would have been laughable under other circumstances: three rickety listing wharves, supported if they could be called such by warping piles driven into the peat at the head of a little bay closest to the walled town. There were no warehouses or other port facilities of any description, only a cleared space at the lough end of a more or less level dirt road and a couple of wattle-and-daub huts, out of which came a few men at sight of the lugger bearing in from the lough.
The men started to come out on the longest, levelest wharf, then stopped in the cleared space when they saw the ship, propelled by the efforts of men straining at the sweeps, swing broadside to the shore and heard the rattling as the fore and aft anchors were dropped to the lough bed not far below.
Possibly more prescient, certainly more than experienced at saving their hides in sticky situations, the gaggle of men scattered, running when they saw the gun crews begin to swivel about the tubes of the fore chaser rifle and one of the stern chasers. Their screams and cries of alarm quickly brought the full attention of the men manning the light cannon along the palisaded embankments guarding the road from landward assault, and a few of these men began to try to start manhandling the guns on their clumsy carriages about so as to bring them to bear upon the now clearly hostile lugger out in the bay.
But it was too late for them, even at the outset. There was a puff of white smoke from the bow chaser and a screaming shell struck and exploded, dismounting one of the six-pounders, the flying shards of iron casing killing or maiming every member of that gun crew and several caliver men besides.
Another shell, hard on the heels of the first, but from the stern chaser, ploughed into the embankment before exploding, harming no men. but tumbling down ten or twelve feet of palisade stakes. As the guns kept firing and the shells kept exploding, with men screaming and bleeding, being blown apart, and dying all around them, those who had been manning the road and port defenses apparently decided almost as one that to longer remain at their posts would be suicidal, at best. In a formless mob, they started up the road to the lough gate at a dead run, making a splendid target for shrapnel-loaded rifles and swivel guns loaded with langrage. A few of the mob actually made it into Oentreib . . . possibly they attributed such good fortune to the vaunted luck of the Irish.
But Cassias had not come through the action entirely unscatched, either. Two men had been killed and another seriously hurt when one of the rail-mounted port pieces had backfired, blowing apart its removable breech. Sir John himself, standing half the length of the lugger away, on the low afterdeck. had suffered a deep gash along his jawline from a piece of the gunmetal shrapnel. Holding a wad of his linen neckband pressed against the heavily bleeding wound, as clean-cut as if made with a sword, he carefully examined the port piece and, finding not the trace of even a hair crack, pronounced it safe for use, but advised all of the gunners to be exceedingly careful in checking each removable breech in turn and be certain that they were not double-loaded in use. Then he had Captain Fahrooq signaled to send over a boat to take off the wounded man and bring from the supply boats resupplies of shot and shell, plus three men to replace those he had lost.
The tall, brown-haired ship captain smiled broadly, despite the renewed and intensified pain that such movements brought to his gashed jaw. He smiled with the deep satisfaction of an assigned task well done. He also smiled with the pleasure that captaining the ship and commanding this action had brought him. It was all much less of a deadly danger than riding a skittish horse into a battle with the bullets humming all around you and uncountable yards of cold, sharp steel flashing ahead of you, with your bowels turning to water and your bladder nigh to bursting, your mouth as dry as ashes and your eyes bugging out at the sight of the man beside you still riding along, still erect in his saddle, and still grasping both reins and broadsword but without a head, a great ropy gouts of red blood spouting up out of his jagged stump of a neck and showering over everything behind him.
No, this naval business was much preferable to the service he had seen in King Arthur’s Horse.
From atop a small ridge some hundred yards away from the nearest of the lines of palisades, all those who could crowd upon it watched, many of the humbler sorts awestruck, as the lugger’s well-aimed and highly destructive cannonfire wrecked the guns and defenses that had for so long thwarted their aims and ambitions. But when the defenders left their positions and their now-useless six-pounders, dropped their calivers, and fled toward the city, only to be almost all cut down by the fire from the ship, the humbler besiegers—and not a few not so humble— screamed, shouted, cheered, and hugged each other in an excess of unbridled glee.
Bass, on the other hand, felt no joy at the sight, only a soul-deep sickness. Yes, it had been mostly his plan, but the carrying out of that plan had been a butchery, not a combat. None of the defenders had had even the ghost of a chance to strike back at the attackers. Yes, the butchery had been a necessary butchery, under the present circumstances, but a disgusting, sickening butchery nonetheless.
The palisades were all set afire after the cannon had been dragged away and all usable weapons, supplies, and equipment had been garnered. When the half-dozen leaders of the rebel besiegers seemed intent upon staging an immediate all-out assault upon the city, Bass demurred, pointing out that the walls of the place stUI stood undamaged and still mounted cannon and bombards enough to make such an assault by men unsupported by their own
artillery very, very costly and quite possibly doomed to failure from its inception.
It was not until he told them of the big. hard-hitting, far-ranging cannon that he had ordered be brought in from the seacoast that he was able to convince the leaders to wait. Grumbling from the ranks he handled by the simple expedient of ordering the entrenchments lengthened, continued on through the once-palisaded area to entirely encompass the city with an endless ring of trenches and emplacements for the promised siege guns.