him down. Stephen could do it, he was sure; but he knew with equal certainty that Stephen never would: in any case both medicos were busy with the wounded – several men had been hurt in the fighting on the breastwork. Nor would he do it himself, not in cold blood and at a distance: although he was not displeased when a broadside cleared an enemy quarterdeck, there was still something illogically sacred about the person of the opposing commander, and some perceptible but indefinable difference between killing and murder. Query: did it apply to a man appointed as a sharpshooter? Answer: it did not. Nor did it apply in even a very humble mêlée.
Captain Aubrey, his officers and David Edwards, the envoy’s secretary, ate their dinner on trestled planks laid this side of the breastwork, which had sandbags on its top to protect their heads from the not infrequent swivel-gun, whose layer made remarkably good practice, hitting the embankment or skimming just over it almost every time – such good practice that the moment they saw the flash all hands dropped to their knees, out of direct range. Their genuflexion did not always save them, however, and twice during the meal Dr Maturin was called away to deal with the more sluggish.
Dinner today was informal, so much so that Richardson might without impropriety peer between the sandbags with his telescope and say ‘It is my belief, sir, that the enemy are entirely out of water. I see three parties trying to make holes in what they take to be the watercourse; and Green Headcloth is blackguarding them like a fishfag.’
‘They expected to be drinking out of our well by now,’ said Welby, smiling. ‘Though mark you, they may do so yet,’ he added as a sop to Fate.
‘The odds are more even now,’ observed the purser. ‘And if it goes on at this rate we shall soon have the advantage.’
‘If that should come about they will surely sail away and come back three times as strong,’
said the master. ‘Sir, would it be foolish to suggest destroying their proa out of hand? It is frail past belief – no metal in its whole construction and a ball in either hull or better still at the junction between ’em would knock it to pieces.’
‘I dare say it would, Mr Warren,’ said Jack. ‘But that would leave us with better than two hundred thirsty villains eating us out of house and home. The Doctor says there are barely a score of pigs left, and only a few days’ ration of ring-tailed apes. No. There is nothing I should like better than seeing them weigh and set off for reinforcements. Almost all our long-sawing is done, and very fortunately poor dear Mr Hadley had left several of his most important tools up here for sharpening and resetting; working double-tides I believe we can launch the schooner and be on our way to Batavia before they come back. Their home port is certainly in Borneo.’
‘Oh,’ cried the purser, as though he had been struck by a new idea: but he said no more.
The swivel-gun and the gingall both hit the sandbag immediately opposite, ripping it and covering both him and the table with its contents. When they picked him up he was dead.
Stephen opened his shirt, put his ear to his chest and said ‘Heart, I am afraid: God be with him.’
During the hot still hours that followed Jack, Fielding and the gunner overhauled the powder, all that had been found, scraped from barrels, withdrawn from flasks and bandoliers, signal cartridges and even rockets. ‘We have a charge for each of the carronades and the nine-pounder, with just enough over to leave the Doctor half a flask for his rifle,’ said Jack. ‘Master gunner, it might be well to load them now, while the metal hardly bears touching: the heat will make the powder brisk. And let the nine-pounder ball be very carefully chipped -indeed, oiled and polished.’
‘Aye aye, sir. Grape for the carronades, I do suppose?’
‘Case is your real slaughter-house charge at close quarters, but I am afraid we have none?’
The gunner shook his head with a melancholy air. ‘All on that fucking reef, sir, pardon me.’
‘Then grape, Mr White.’
‘Sir, sir,’ cried Bennett, ‘Captain Welby says they are sending men up through the forest.’
‘Perhaps, sir,’ said Welby when Jack, joined him at his look-out point, ‘it would be prudent not to direct your glass:
they might think we had smoked them. But if you watch the
open ground to the left of that great crimson-flowering tree at eleven o’clock from the flagstaff, you will see them slip across, their spearheads held low and wrapped in leaves or grass.’
‘What do you think they are at?’
‘I believe they are a forlorn hope, a storming-party sent to attack the camp from behind, where the silver is. They are to catch up a chest or two and run off into the broken country behind while their friends amuse us with a false attack in front.’
‘They cannot know what the back of the camp is like. We can hold it with half a dozen men: there is a shocking great drop where the landslide swept the earth away.’
‘No, sir. And as the young person came in by the west gate and left by the south, she would not have seen the drop either. No doubt it is all their general’s theory; but still I am sure he thought he could rely on surprise.’
‘How many men did you reckon?’
‘I counted twenty-nine, sir, but I may well have missed a few.’
‘Well, I think we can deal with that – Mr Reade, stop that goddam fool pointing at the trees.
Stop it at once, d’ye hear me there? You and Harper can pick up the biggest stones you can carry and take them to the north wall steps at the double. Mr Welby, I think we can afford a round apiece to your eight best marksmen. A quarter of your people down before you start your attack is discouraging. It will be uncommon brave men that go on, with such a rise in front of them.’
Almost at once the diversion began. The swivel-gun and the gingall fired as fast as they could; large bodies of men raced diagonally across and across the broad open slope between the camp and the building-slip, hallooing as they ran or howling like gibbons, and presently there was a furious discharge of crackers along the inner border of the forest.
Jack had to shout to make himself heard. ‘Mr Seymour, there is a forlorn hope about to make a dash for the silver by way of the north wall. Take Killick and Bonden and the eight Marines Mr Welby has told off together with whatever other men you need to line the wall and deal with the situation while we watch their attempt at amusing us and make sure it don’t turn ugly.’
The feint, the diversion, did not turn ugly: the real attack did. The storming-party had been picked for strength and courage and in spite of a heavy loss the moment they left cover they ran straight on to the steps and the foot of the wall, where Killick, beside himself with pale hatred and fury flung great stones down upon them, helped on either hand by the Marines, all the Captain’s bargemen and his coxswain. Again and again a Dyak would make a back for another and up he would come, spear poised, only to be flung back at pike-point, pierced through with a cutlass or smashed with a fifty-pound stone. And presently there were no more to come. Seymour, nominally in command, had to beat on the men’s backs to prevent them stoning the few dreadfully shattered cripples who were crawling off among the rocks. Even then Killick stood for a great while, livid and glaring, a boarding-axe in one hand and a jagged lump of basalt in the other.
The diversion soon lost all conviction. The diagonal running to and fro grew languid, the crackers spluttered away to one last pop. The sun too was tiring of the day – it had been extraordinarily hot – and sloped westward through a deeper blue.
‘Yet even so, sir,’ said Welby, ‘I do not believe this is the end. Their general has lost a power of men and he has nothing to show for it. They have no water – see how they dig! –
and they won’t find any there. So they cannot wait. The general cannot wait. As soon as they have rested a little he will launch the whole lot at us, straight at us: he is a death or glory cove, I am sure. See how he harangues them, jumping up and down. Oh my God they have fired the schooner.’
As the black smoke billowed up and away on the shifting breeze the whole camp burst out in a yell of desperate anger, frustration, plain grief. Jack raised his voice and hailed the gunner. ‘Mr White, Mr White, there. Draw those carronades and reload with the very best round-shot we possess. Your mates have perhaps five minutes to chip them as smooth as ever they can: certainly not more. And Mr White, let there be slow-match at hand.’