The Young Hornblower Omnibus Page 15

  “The French are in force, horse, foot, and guns, I suppose?” asked Edrington.

  “Horse and foot at least, sir,” gasped Hornblower, trying to keep his head clear. “I saw no guns.”

  “And the émigrés are running like rabbits?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Here come the first of them.”

  Over the nearest ridge a few blue uniforms made their appearance, their wearers still running while stumbling with fatigue.

  “I suppose we must cover their retreat, although they’re not worth saving,” said Edrington. “Look there!”

  The company he had sent out as a flank guard was in sight on the crest of a slight slope: it was formed into a tiny square, red against the green, and as they watched they saw a mob of horsemen flood up the hill towards it and break into an eddy around it.

  “Just as well I had them posted there,” remarked Edrington calmly. “Ah, here comes Mayne’s company.”

  The force from the ford came marching up. Harsh orders were shouted. Two companies wheeled round while the sergeant-major with his sabre and his silver-headed cane regulated the pace and the alignment as if the men were on the barrack square.

  “I would suggest you stay by me, Mr. Hornblower,” said Edrington.

  He moved his horse up into the interval between the two columns, and Hornblower followed him dumbly. Another order, and the force began to march steadily across the valley, the sergeant calling the step and the sergeant-major watching the intervals. All round them now were fleeing émigré soldiers, most of them in the last stages of exhaustion—Hornblower noticed more than one of them fall down on the ground gasping and incapable of further movement. And then over the low slope to the right appeared a line of plumes, a line of sabres—a regiment of cavalry trotting rapidly forward. Hornblower saw the sabres lifted, saw the horses break into a gallop, heard the yells of the charging men. The redcoats around him halted; another shouted order, another slow, deliberate movement, and the half-battalion was in a square with the mounted officers in the centre and the colours waving over their heads. The charging horsemen were less than a hundred yards away. Some officer with a deep voice began giving orders, intoning them as if at some solemn ceremony. The first order brought the muskets from the men’s shoulders, and the second was answered by a simultaneous click of opened priming pans. The third order brought the muskets to the present along one face of the square.

  “Too high!” said the sergeant-major. “Lower, there, number seven.”

  The charging horsemen were only thirty yards away; Hornblower saw the leading men, their cloaks flying from their shoulders, leaning along their horses’ necks with their sabres pointed forward at the full stretch of their arms.

  “Fire!” said the deep voice.

  In reply came a single sharp explosion as every musket went off at once. The smoke swirled round the square and disappeared. Where Hornblower had been looking, there were now a score of horses and men on the ground, some struggling in agony, some lying still. The cavalry regiment split like a torrent encountering a rock and hurtled harmlessly past the other faces of the square.

  “Well enough,” said Edrington.

  The deep voice was intoning again; like marionettes all on the same string the company that had fired now reloaded, every man biting out his bullet at the same instant, every man ramming home his charge, every man spitting his bullet into his musket barrel with the same instantaneous inclination of the head. Edrington looked keenly at the cavalry collecting together in a disorderly mob down the valley.

  “The 43rd will advance!” he ordered.

  With solemn ritual the square opened up again into two columns and continued its interrupted march. The detached company came marching up to join them from out of a ring of dead men and horses. Someone raised a cheer.

  “Silence in the ranks!” bellowed the sergeant-major. “Sergeant, take that man’s name.”

  But Hornblower noticed how the sergeant-major was eyeing keenly the distance between the columns; it had to be maintained exactly so that a company wheeling back filled it to make the square.

  “Here they come again,” said Edrington.

  The cavalry were forming for a new charge, but the square was ready for them. Now the horses were blown and the men were less enthusiastic. It was not a solid wall of horses that came down on them, but isolated groups, rushing first at one face and then at another, and pulling up or swerving aside as they reached the line of bayonets. The attacks were too feeble to meet with company volleys; at the word of command sections here and there gave fire to the more determined groups. Hornblower saw one man—an officer, judging by his gold lace—rein up before the bayonets and pull out a pistol. Before he could discharge it, half a dozen muskets went off together; the officer’s face became a horrible bloody mask, and he and his horse fell together to the ground. Then all at once the cavalry wheeled off, like starlings over a field, and the march could be resumed.

  “No discipline about these Frogs, not on either side,” said Edrington.

  The march was headed for the sea, for the blessed shelter of the Indefatigable, but it seemed to Hornblower as if the pace was intolerably slow. The men were marching at the parade step, with agonizing deliberation, while all round them and far ahead of them the fugitive émigrés poured in a broad stream towards safety. Looking back, Hornblower saw the fields full of marching columns—hurrying swarms, rather—of Revolutionary infantry in hot pursuit of them.

  “Once let men run, and you can’t do anything else with them,” commented Edrington, following Hornblower’s gaze.

  Shouts and shots over to the flank caught their attention. Trotting over the fields, leaping wildly at the bumps, came a cart drawn by a lean horse. Someone in a seaman’s frock and trousers was holding the reins; other seamen were visible over the sides firing muskets at the horsemen hovering about them. It was Bracegirdle with his dung cart; he might have lost his guns but he had saved his men. The pursuers dropped away as the cart neared the columns; Bracegirdle, standing up in the cart, caught sight of Hornblower on his horse and waved to him excitedly.

  “Boadicea and her chariot!” he yelled.

  “I’ll thank you, sir,” shouted Edrington with lungs of brass, “to go on and prepare for our embarkation.”

  “Aye aye, sir!”

  The lean horse trotted on with the cart lurching after it and the grinning seamen clinging on to the sides. At the flank appeared a swarm of infantry, a mad, gesticulating crowd, half running to cut off the 43rd retreat. Edrington swept his glance round the fields.

  “The 43rd will form line!” he shouted.

  Like some ponderous machine, well oiled, the half battalion fronted towards the swarm; the columns became lines, each man moving into his position like bricks laid on a wall.

  “The 43rd will advance!”

  The scarlet line swept forward, slowly, inexorably. The swarm hastened to meet it, officers to the front waving their swords and calling on their men to follow.

  “Make ready!”

  Every musket came down together; the priming pans clicked.

  “Present!”

  Up came the muskets, and the swarm hesitated before that fearful menace. Individuals tried to get back into the crowd to cover themselves from the volley with the bodies of their comrades.

  “Fire!”

  A crashing volley; Hornblower, looking over the heads of the British infantry from his point of vantage on horseback, saw the whole face of the swarm go down in swathes. Still the red line moved forward, at each deliberate step a shouted order brought a machine-like response as the men reloaded; five hundred mouths spat in five hundred bullets, five hundred right arms raised five hundred ramrods at once. When the muskets came to the present the red line was at the swathe of dead and wounded, for the swarm had withdrawn before the advance, and shrank back still further at the threat of the volley. The volley was fired; the advance went on. Another volley; another advance. Now the swarm was shredding
away. Now men were running from it. Now every man had turned tail and fled from that frightful musketry. The hillside was as black with fugitives as it had been when the émigrés were fleeing.

  “Halt!”

  The advance ceased; the line became a double column, and the retreat began again.

  “Very creditable,” remarked Edrington.

  Hornblower’s horse was trying jerkily to pick its way over a carpet of dead and wounded, and he was so busy keeping his seat, and his brain was in such a whirl, that he did not immediately realize that they had topped the last rise, so that before them lay the glittering waters of the estuary. The strip of muddy beach was packed solid with émigrés. There were the ships riding at anchor, and there, blessed sight, were the boats swarming towards the shore. It was high time, for already the boldest of the Revolutionary infantry were hovering round the columns, taking long shots into them. Here and there a man fell.

  “Close up!” snapped the sergeants, and the files marched on stolidly, leaving the wounded and dead behind them.

  The adjutant’s horse suddenly snorted and plunged, and then fell first to its knees, and, kicking, to its side, while the freckle-faced adjutant freed his feet from the stirrups and flung himself out of the saddle just in time to escape being pinned underneath.

  “Are you hit, Stanley?” asked Edrington.

  “No, my lord. All safe and sound,” said the adjutant, brushing at his scarlet coat.

  “You won’t have to foot it far,” said Edrington. “No need to throw out skirmishers to drive those fellows off. This is where we must make our stand.”

  He looked about him, at the fishermen’s cottages above the beach, the panic-stricken émigrés at the water’s edge, and the masses of Revolutionary infantry coming up in pursuit, leaving small enough time for preparation. Some of the redcoats poured into the cottages, appearing a moment later at the windows; it was fortunate that the fishing hamlet guarded one flank of the gap down to the beach while the other was guarded by a steep and inaccessible headland on whose summit a small block of redcoats established themselves. In the gap between the two points the remaining four companies formed a long line just sheltered by the crest of the beach.

  The boats of the squadron were already loading with émigrés among the small breakers below. Hornblower heard the crack of a single pistol-shot; he could guess that some officer down there was enforcing his orders in the only possible way to prevent the fear-driven men from pouring into the boats and swamping them. As if in answer came the roar of cannon on the other side. A battery of artillery had unlimbered just out of musket range and was firing at the British position, while all about it gathered the massed battalions of the Revolutionary infantry. The cannon balls howled close overhead.

  “Let them fire away,” said Edrington. “The longer the better.”

  The artillery could do little harm to the British in the fold of ground that protected them, and the Revolutionary commander must have realized that as well as the necessity for wasting no time. Over there the drums began to roll—a noise of indescribable menace—and then the columns surged forward. So close were they already that Hornblower could see the features of the officers in the lead, waving their hats and swords.

  “43rd, make ready!” said Edrington, and the priming pans clicked as one. “Seven paces forward—march!”

  One—two—three—seven paces, painstakingly taken, took the line to the little crest.

  “Present! Fire!”

  A volley nothing could withstand. The columns halted, swayed, received another smashing volley, and another, and fell back in ruin.

  “Excellent!” said Edrington.

  The battery boomed again; a file of two redcoat soldiers was tossed back like dolls, to lie in a horrible bloody mass close beside Hornblower’s horse’s feet.

  “Close up!” said a sergeant, and the men on either side had filled the gap.

  “43rd, seven paces back—march!”

  The line was below the crest again, as the redcoated marionettes withdrew in steady time. Hornblower could not remember later whether it was twice or three times more that the Revolutionary masses came on again, each time to be dashed back by that disciplined musketry. But the sun was nearly setting in the ocean behind him when he looked back to see the beach almost cleared and Bracegirdle plodding up to them to report.

  “I can spare one company now,” said Edrington in reply but not taking his eyes off the French masses. “After they are on board, have every boat ready and waiting.”

  One company filed off; another attack was beaten back—after the preceding failures it was not pressed home with anything like the dash and fire of the earlier ones. Now the battery was turning its attention to the headland on the flank, and sending its balls among the redcoats there, while a battalion of French moved over to the attack at that point.

  “That gives us time,” said Edrington. “Captain Griffin, you can march the men off. Colour party, remain here.”

  Down the beach went the centre companies to the waiting boats, while the colours still waved to mark their old position, visible over the crest to the French. The company in the cottages came out, formed up, and marched down as well. Edrington trotted across to the foot of the little headland; he watched the French forming for the attack and the infantry wading out to the boats.

  “Now, grenadiers!” he yelled suddenly. “Run for it! Colour party!”

  Down the steep seaward face of the headland came the last company, running, sliding, and stumbling. A musket, clumsily handled, went off unexpectedly. The last man came down the slope as the colour party reached the water’s edge and began to climb into a boat with its precious burden. A wild yell went up from the French, and their whole mass came rushing towards the evacuated position.

  “Now, sir,” said Edrington, turning his horse seawards.

  Hornblower fell from his saddle as his horse splashed into the shallows. He let go of the reins and plunged out, waist deep, shoulder deep, to where the longboat lay on its oars with its four-pounder gun in its bows and Bracegirdle beside it to haul him in. He looked up in time to see a curious incident; Edrington had reached the Indefatigable’s gig, still holding his horse’s reins. With the French pouring down the beach towards them, he turned and took a musket from the nearest soldier, pressed the muzzle to the horse’s head, and fired. The horse fell in its death agony in the shallows; only Hornblower’s roan remained as prize to the Revolutionaries.

  “Back water!” said Bracegirdle, and the longboat backed away from the beach; Hornblower lay in the eyes of the boat feeling as if he had not the strength to move a limb, and the beach was covered with shouting, gesticulating Frenchmen, lit redly by the sunset.

  “One moment,” said Bracegirdle, reaching for the lanyard of the four-pounder, and tugging at it smartly.

  The gun roared out in Hornblower’s ear, and the charge cut a swathe of destruction on the beach.

  “That was canister,” said Bracegirdle. “Eighty-four balls. Easy, port! Give way, starboard!”

  The longboat turned, away from the beach and towards the welcoming ships. Hornblower looked back at the darkening coast of France. This was the end of an incident; his country’s attempt to overturn the Revolution had met with a bloody repulse. Newspapers in Paris would exult; the Gazette in London would give the incident five cold lines. Clairvoyant, Hornblower could foresee that in a year’s time the world would hardly remember the incident. In twenty years it would be entirely forgotten. Yet those headless corpses up there in Muzillac; those shattered redcoats; those Frenchmen caught in the four-pounder’s blast of canister—they were all as dead as if it had been a day in which history had been changed. And he was just as weary. And in his pocket there was still the bread he had put there that morning and forgotten all about.

  THE SPANISH GALLEYS

  The old Indefatigable was lying at anchor in the Bay of Cadiz at the time when Spain made peace with France. Hornblower happened to be midshipman of the watch
, and it was he who called the attention of Lieutenant Chadd to the approach of the eight-oared pinnace, with the red and yellow of Spain drooping at the stern. Chadd’s glass made out the gleam of gold on epaulette and cocked hat, and bellowed the order for sideboys and marine guard to give the traditional honours to a captain in an allied service. Pellew, hurriedly warned, was at the gangway to meet his visitor, and it was at the gangway that the entire interview took place. The Spaniard, making a low bow with his hat across his stomach, offered a sealed envelope to the Englishman.

  “Here, Mr. Hornblower,” said Pellew, holding the letter unopened, “speak French to this fellow. Ask him to come below for a glass of wine.”

  But the Spaniard, with a further bow, declined the refreshment, and, with another bow, requested that Pellew open the letter immediately. Pellew broke the seal and read the contents, struggling with the French which he could read to a small extent although he could not speak it at all. He handed it to Hornblower.

  “This means the Dagoes have made peace, doesn’t it?”

  Hornblower struggled through twelve lines of compliments addressed by His Excellency the Duke of Belchite (Grandee of the First Class, with eighteen other titles ending with Captain-General of Andalusia) to the Most Gallant Ship-Captain Sir Edward Pellew, Knight of the Bath. The second paragraph was short and contained only a brief intimation of peace. The third paragraph was as long as the first, and repeated its phraseology almost word for word in a ponderous farewell.

  “That’s all, sir,” said Hornblower.

  But the Spanish captain had a verbal message with which to supplement the written one.

  “Please tell your captain,” he said, in his lisping Spanish-French, “that now as a neutral power, Spain must enforce her rights. You have already been at anchor here for twenty-four hours. Six hours from now”—the Spaniard took a gold watch from his pocket and glanced at it—“if you are within range of the batteries at Puntales there they will be given orders to fire on you.”