Dead Reckoning (16 page)

With the
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taken, Delancey prepared to launch a new attack on the village and shore installations but this proved needless. Fitzgerald appeared on the beach and his men could be seen clearing the storage sheds and magazines. Malay resistance had evidently crumbled after the breaking of the boom. Spared the necessity for further battle, Delancey looked for Chatelard and found him at the break of the quarter-deck, lying dead in a pool of blood. Some twenty-three other dead bodies were visible with fourteen wounded and seventeen prisoners. One of the prisoners, a petty officer, said that there had been sixty-three privateersmen (after many lost by sickness), which would leave eight missing. Having made this calculation and seen what damage the privateer had sustained, Delancey heard a bump alongside and found that the two seamen he had left with the boat had impressed some Chinese as oarsmen and so brought the boat up the river.

“Well done,” said Delancey. “But tell me what the French cannon were firing at?”

“At us, sir,” explained the elder seaman. “We made the boat look fully manned and rowed out into the river, dodging back when their shot came too close. We thought it would give them something to think about.”

“It certainly did that. But how did you man the boat?”

“We persuaded these Chinese to row and we added some clothes and hats hoisted on bits of bamboo.”

“There will be extra grog for both of you when we reach the
Laura,
and thank you for your good service this day.”

Manning the boat in more regular fashion, Delancey put the Chinese ashore and then landed on the other side of the river, where Fitzgerald greeted him.

“Well done, first lieutenant. Tell me what happened.”

“Well, sir, the Malays were on that stockade in force, armed with muskets and a lot of brass swivel guns, the sort you see in their war prahus. The stockade itself was higher than we expected and loopholed for musketry. We suffered heavily before we had our scaling ladders in position. The grenades, however, drove the Malays back and we looked back expecting to see Mr Green-well's party but there was no sign of it. We were not really equipped for cutting the boom so I sent a petty officer back to serve as guide or, failing that, to bring us a couple of axes. He did not return and has since told me that he lost his way. For the time being I held the line of the stockade and was planning how to reach the boom but then we were attacked by the Malays in force. We beat them off with great difficulty. When they fell back again, Midshipman Ledingham appeared from nowhere at the head of Mr Greenwell's party, sealed the stockade, and made straight for the boom. We kept up a rapid fire while he cut the cable. After that the Malays rather collapsed, withdrawing in disorder and leaving their dead behind. We pushed on against dwindling resistance and reached this village without further loss. We have lost twenty-nine men in all, many of them killed.”

“And Mr Greenwell?”

“I have been told that he was wounded but have not seen him since.”

There was something constrained about this last statement. Fitzgerald was not telling all he knew. Delancey let it go at that, however, deciding that the time had come to rest.

“With the exception of four sentinels, all seamen and marines have half an hour in which to rest and have a meal from the provisions they carry. After that, we all have work to do.”

Delancey sat down in the shade and Teesdale brought him something to eat. He was not hungry, however, nor very talkative, having a great deal to think about. When half an hour had passed he issued his further orders to Mr Fitzgerald: “You will hold this village and the prisoners with twenty men, assisted by Mr Sevendale and twenty marines. You will send Mr Topley back with the launch and ten men to collect the wounded on this side of the river and take them on board the
Laura,
returning with the launch tomorrow after this has been done. Mr Stock, with eight men, will bury the dead, listing them and collecting their weapons and packs, reporting back to you here when this task has been completed. Tell Mr Ledingham to report to me here with two seamen. Now, Master-at-Arms, you will take six men in the cutter, go back along the far side of the river, and find Mr Woodley and his party. I cannot tell you where they are but their orders were to make a feint attack on the stockade. I suspect that they may be in that area still. They must join me here as soon as possible.”

Had he remembered everything? Almost certainly not. Nor could he be certain that Fitzgerald would think of what he had forgotten. There were, however, some questions he had to ask, with Ledingham as his first witness. When the youngster reported
to him, with two armed seamen at heel, he congratulated him at once on the part he had played. But for his efforts the boom might still be in position.

“Thank you, sir. I think we were lucky, though. Earlier in the action the Malays were fighting like tigers. They even counterattacked the stockade after it had fallen. Then they collapsed and I had my chance to reach the boom. I can't think why they should have lost heart when they did but it was fortunate for us. Two of my men were slightly wounded in that skirmish by the boom and those were our only casualties.”

“You did very well for all that. I am now going to walk back over the battlefield and I want you to tell me what happened. There are one or two things I should like to know.”

Leading the way, the midshipman walked through an area of cultivated land broken up by ditches. Crossing the last of these, they came across their first dead Malay, lying face upwards and deprived of his knees (taken no doubt as a souvenir). There was no sign of a wound but his face was that of a man in extreme pain. On an impulse, Delancey turned the body over and saw, between the shoulder blades, the protruding end of a Dyak dart.

“Poisoned . . .” he muttered. “It must take some time to take effect.”

“Was he shot, sir, with a blowpipe?”

“He and, I suspect, many others. That is why they suddenly lost heart.”

Bodies became more numerous as they came nearer to the stockade, some of them clearly killed by musket shot but others by the blowpipe, all these from behind. Ledingham then showed Delancey where the boom had been cut, where three bodies still lay, all slashed or stabbed with the cutlass but one, face downwards, with a dart in his neck. Going round the end
of the stockade, they inspected it from the attacker's point of view. It was still formidable and the scaling ladders were not really long enough. In the middle where Ledingham had gone through, two ladders had been lashed together with spunyarn. The others had shown less initiative and had probably spent their efforts in firing through the loopholes. The Malays would have been fifty yards further back, shooting from behind trees; and that, he thought, was where the Dyaks found them. The British casualties had nearly all occurred in the approach to the stockade, where five bodies still lay and two wounded men unlikely to live. He had hardly examined these before young Stock came to remove them.

“Now, Mr Ledingham, I want to see the position from which Mr Fitzgerald's musket men brought covering fire.”

“It must have been somewhere to the right, sir. I never saw it myself.”

They walked over in that direction and found the place without difficulty, a dead Malay lying just beyond. He differed from the others, however, in that his head had gone, neatly sliced off. The actual cause of death was a bullet hole through his chest but the Dyaks had been there since.

“Good god, sir!”

“The Dyaks are head-hunters, Mr Ledingham. Now show me the line of your advance.”

The midshipman led Delancey back to a hollow opposite the centre of the stockade, screened by bushes and marked by one or two items of equipment.

“This is where I found Mr Greenwell, sir. He lay over there and told me that he was wounded and that Mr Hubbard had been killed.”

“Were his men in action?”

“Two of them had been sent forward a few paces. They were about here, sir, behind trees, and just able to see the stockade.”

“Were they firing?”

“I rather doubt it, sir. Their fire would have been masked by our own men.”

“I see. And what was the nature of Mr Greenwell's wound?”

“I don't know, sir.”

Retracing Ledingham's route back to the river bank, they came across the body of Midshipman Hubbard. He had been killed by a long-distance shot fired at some other target and had died clutching his dirk. Telling his two seamen to bring the body, he walked slowly back to the stockade. Ledingham now asked him the obvious question:

“If the Dyaks were so active on our side, sir, why don't we see them?”

“They have gone in pursuit of the Malays. They are headhunters, remember.” The midshipman was sick at this point. Delancey laid a hand on the boy's shoulder.

“It happens later. I mean, they have been killed first.”

“Yes, sir. Sorry about that.”

“It's partly the smell. We'll go back to the village now.”

Adding his two seamen to Topley's party, Delancey began to inspect what had been the
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's base. There were still some naval stores in the riverside godowns and these were, very properly, guarded by a sentry. Four other marines were posted outside the hut in which the French prisoners were confined. In the most substantial hut Fitzgerald was making a list of the booty taken, which included the specie out of which the privateers-men were paid.

Walking past all these riverside buildings, with Ledingham still at heel, Delancey came across a smaller hut which would
seem to have been used as a prison, being strongly made with barred windows. Here and there some prisoner had scratched his name on the timber uprights.

Looking idly at these marks, Delancey came across the name JO WAYLAND and knew what he had suspected, that his master's mate had not been killed in the skirmish but had been taken prisoner. What had happened to him after that? Where was he now? To this question he resolved to find the answer but he went on to visit some adjacent buildings. These had been designed and furnished for comfort and with ample servants' quarters behind them. One of them had clearly belonged to Chatelard, who would have slept ashore while the
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was in port. Many of his personal possessions were there and it could be assumed that he had been there the previous night. Another house could have been shared by his officers, who would probably have taken it in turns to sleep on board the privateer. The third and last house presented more of a problem. Its biggest room was furnished like an office with a long table, a desk, and a number of cupboards, all securely locked. On the walls were charts of the Indian Ocean and of the Straits of Malacca, with maps of India, Arabia, and Persia. There was a bedroom but no sign of recent use. When the cupboards were broken open they were found to contain the logs of captured merchantmen, piles of newspapers published in Bombay, Madras, and Calcutta, and sheafs of correspondence found in various prizes. It had been somebody's task to collect intelligence and plan the
Subtile
's campaigns. This was where he had lived and worked but the contents of the drawers of the desk gave no clue to his identity. It was clear that he meant to return or had handed over his duties to someone else. It remained to see what the prisoners would reveal when interrogated.

When back in the village Delancey found that Bartlett, the master-at-arms, had returned.

“I'm sorry to have to report, sir, that Mr Woodley and his party were all killed but two and they badly wounded. I turned those two seamen over to Mr Topley and I have told Mr Stock about the others. It looked to me, sir, as if Mr Woodley attacked the stockade but was himself attacked by Malays who worked round his flank and surrounded him. Mr Burnet and Mr Forrest were also killed, sir. They must have been greatly outnumbered.”

“But there are no Malays there now?”

“Dead ones, sir, about a dozen. The rest must have run away after the boom was cut. I followed back the way they must have come but could find no trace of them.”

So, much, Delancey thought, for my feint attack, led by a warrant-officer for lack of anyone better. It had served its purpose at a cost of nineteen men killed, including a midshipman, and two men badly wounded. It was clear now that the Dyaks had all kept to the one side of the river. That was why Wood-ley's party had fared so ill. Without having totalled the losses, he knew now that they were appalling. Nor was the list complete for his men were still ashore, many of them, and might fall sick before they could embark again. Turning from this disheartening thought, Delancey asked Fitzgerald whether he had extracted any useful information from the prisoners.

“Not much, sir. There are seventeen apart from the wounded but three of them are Portuguese from Goa who have answered questions put to them through one of our Goanese who also knows English.”

“Good. Now question those three on two points. John Wayland was taken prisoner. What happened to him? There was a
man in charge here when Chatelard was at sea. Who was he and where did he go?”

“Aye, aye, sir. What about the
Subtile?
”

“I want you to remove from her everything that would be of use to us—canvas, cordage, powder, stores of every kind. What is not removed will be burnt with the ship tomorrow.”

“Couldn't we bring her away, sir?”

“We could but we shan't and that for two reasons. First, my orders were to destroy her. Second, we shall lose more men from sickness every day we remain here. No, she will burn tomorrow and then we quit this place for good.”

That evening Fitzgerald reported some further success in his interrogation of the Portuguese. “They say that an English seaman—almost certainly Wayland, from their description—was questioned for days in the prison hut but evidently without much success. Chatelard was very angry and handed him over to the Malays for execution.”