When Kalahua comes up they skirmish a little to concentrate his men and then run hell-fire quick back towards us, drawing the northerners into the cleft. When they are in, the guns at the far end open fire. The northern rear presses hard up against its own van, and the guns at the southern end open up.’
‘Have the northerners no retreat?’
‘None.’
‘I had imagined it was a military maxim that the enemy should always be left a line of retreat.’
‘Perhaps that is so in the army; but the Navy is required to take, sink, burn or destroy.
Pray don’t look so low, Stephen. After all, the man who starts a war only gets what he asked for, you know, if he is destroyed. And he can always call for quarter.’
When Stephen had returned to the sick-berth, Jack sent for Oakes and said ‘Sit down, Mr Oakes. As you know, tomorrow we shall be preparing to support Queen Puolani against the people from Pabay and the Americans. Captain Pullings and I and Mr West and most of the warrant officers will be on shore, and we shall probably sleep there, some way up the country. You will remain on board in command of the ship and Mr Reade of the prize.
If during my absence the American privateer Franklin should make as if to enter the bay you are both to hoist our colours and engage her, but at no greater distance than a quarter of a mile. I shall leave you enough men to fight one side, with the gunner’s mate to assist you. If you are obliged to slip rather than weigh your anchors, which is probable should the American appear, you are to buoy them with the utmost care. Should the Franklin withdraw, she is not to be pursued beyond a line joining the two headlands. I cannot emphasize that point too strongly, Mr Oakes. Have you any questions?’
‘No, sir. But may I say, sir, may I say with all respect, that I never had a go at Pabay. I never had a go at what you might call – I never had a go at regaining your esteem.’
‘No. It is true I was angry with you for bringing Mrs Oakes aboard, but since then you have behaved in a seamanlike, officerlike fashion and I think highly enough of your qualities to make you prizemaster of the Truelove with orders to take her to Batavia to be condemned, if the encounter goes as we wish and if you feel competent to command her.’
‘Oh sir,’ cried Oakes, ‘I don’t know how to thank you – I shall tell Clarissa – that is to say, oh yes, if you please. I am reasonable good at navigation, and I believe I know how to handle a ship – not like you, sir, of course, but tolerably well.’
‘It should not be too difficult. She is well-found and you will have the monsoon with you. I shall, if all goes well, give you an acting order as lieutenant; and although she will still be a little short-handed, I shall let you have a couple of our master-mariners, Slade and Gorges for example, who can stand a watch and keep their own reckoning: the three French prisoners too – they can at least haul on a rope. And I shall make an advance on your pay and prize-money to bear your charge from Batavia home. Now, although the whole matter depends on our success the day after tomorrow, you had better go across and become acquainted with the Truelove and her people.’
‘May I tell my wife first?’ asked Oakes, almost laughing with pleasure.
‘By all means – my best compliments wait on Mrs Oakes -and let Mr Reade know I should like to see him.”
* * *
The ship’s boats were coming back in the darkness, having landed the very heavy material; they were hoisted in, and when the jollyboat was safely stowed inside the launch
– for the small-arms men and the gun-crews were to be taken off at dawn by Puolani’s canoes, by way of precaution – West reported to Pullings, who relayed the news to Jack that all hands except two of the most notorious lechers were aboard.
‘Very well,’ said Jack, and he went below, sharp-set.
At supper he interrupted his steady attack upon the sea-pie to say ‘I was never so much surprised in my life. Just now I told Oakes I should give him an acting order as lieutenant to take the Truelove in, if all went well on Friday. He was amazed. Delighted and amazed.
His wife had not given him the slightest hint. Yet she must have known it hours before, from your questions.’
‘She is a jewel of a woman,’ said Stephen. ‘How I value her.’
Jack shook his head and returned to the sea-pie. Eventually, leaning back, he said, ‘I never asked you what you thought of Puolani.’
‘I thought her a magnificent queenly woman. Juno, with the same large expressive eyes, and I hope without her faults of temper.’
‘She is certainly very kind. She set her people to work making a house for me to sleep in, but I told her that tomorrow night I must be right up by the guns.’ A silence for pudding, and he went on, ‘I do not think I told you how pleased I was with the war-chiefs and their men – thoroughly professional and well-disciplined – not the least jealousy of the Navy, as you so often find at home. They were perfectly ready to take any suggestions I made, and I had hardly mentioned a dressing-station for you on a convenient shaded little plateau half an hour short of the cleft before they started setting it up.’
‘Half an hour short of the cleft?’
‘Yes. It is not the custom here to take prisoners, and I can do nothing about it. I expect something of a slaughter-house; and I cannot have a battle of this kind interrupted for a moment on humane grounds.’
‘Have you ever known me interfere in any battle?’ ‘No. But I strongly suspect you of a tender heart, and in such a case I think you would be far better in your proper place, which is a dressing-station well to the rear, corresponding to the cockpit in a ship of the line.’
It was in this dressing-station that Jack, Stephen, Pullings, West and Adams slept on Thursday night, having walked up the broad well-beaten track, smelling of crushed green, that the carronades had taken before them, stubby short-range guns that could be manhandled for this distance and on this slope with relative ease, they weighing no more than half a ton, three times less than Kalahua’s piece.
And it was here, clearly, that Stephen woke at the first hint of light. His companions had already left, moving with that silence usual among naval men in the night watches; so had most of the warriors, but as he stood in the doorway, with birds singing and calling in the trees all round and below him, more tribesmen came hurrying up the path, big brown cheerful men, some wearing matting armour, all armed with spears, clubs and sometimes dreadful hardwood swords, their edges studded with shark’s teeth. They called out as they passed, smiling and waving.
When the last had gone up, running not to miss the fight, Stephen sat outside the doorway in the rising sun. Presently the birdsong diminished to a few screeches here and there (they were not a melodious choir, upon the whole), and presently Padeen succeeded in striking a light, coaxing a fire into being, and warming the coffee.
A number of birds passed close at hand, some of them probably honeysuckers; but still he waited, listening rather than seeing. Kalahua’s camp fires had showed clear last night only an hour’s march beyond the cleft, and even with the gun the northern men and their white mercenaries should reach it before the sun had risen another hand’s breadth.
At intervals he looked at it over the immense stretch of sea ending in a taut horizon.
Immobile of course. He tried thinking of that glorious Queen Puolani: it was said that her late husband, her consort, proved a man of inferior parts and that she had him set in the forefront of just such a battle in the cleft. He tried repeating verses; but those which he knew well, which came easily, did not overlay his vision of the sheer-sided defile two hundred yards by twenty, filled with men and they being fired upon from back and front and diagonally. The twenty-four pounder carronades would be using canister, about two hundred iron balls at each discharge; and they would be served by expert crews, capable of firing, reloading, aiming and firing again in less than a minute. In five minutes six carronades would discharge at least six thousand lethal shots into those trapped bodies.