Dead Reckoning (22 page)

“If they are up there somewhere,” asked Delancey, “will they have seen us coming?”

“I don't see how they could have done. We were not visible between L'Escalier and the point where we emerged from the gorge. We could not be spotted after that because the light was failing. We may be seen at daybreak, however, if we are still here.”

“I think you are right. Did you taste the water from the mineral spring?”

“Yes, sir. It tasted filthy. I should suppose that this place will become a health resort some day!”

“Unless the spring is buried in some landslide. I feel myself there is something unstable about all these volcanic mountainsides. All yesterday I thought we might be buried any moment under an avalanche. And all these great boulders must have crashed down at some time or other. We shall have to watch our step when we go up Le Piton des Neiges.”

“Very true, sir. It doesn't look too difficult, though.”

“No, a climb of some two thousand feet. It will be steep, though, and we shall have a lot to carry.”

A few minutes later Delancey suddenly stopped in his tracks and pointed upward. There was a tiny pinpoint of light on the mountainside.

“Quick,” he said, “fix the position.” Borrowing four bayonets from the marines, they lined up two of them from near the hut and two more at some distance. The light soon vanished but they would be able to see in daylight where it had been.

“It will be in the mouth of a cave.” said Delancey. “No one could camp up there in the open but a cave could be habitable if the entrance were mostly walled up by rocks. What we saw might have been a lantern.”

“Or a glimpse of the camp-fire when a blanket was drawn aside. The cave will be well below the summit, sir.”

“Five hundred feet below, I should guess. If we start at first light we shall be there before eight.”

“Have you any idea, sir, how many men we must expect to find?”

“No idea at all. Their leader is the man I want, a character called Fabius. It would be useful to take him alive. We must approach the cave as if attacking a not inferior force and I suppose that we must give them the chance to surrender. I brought a speaking-trumpet for the purpose.”

“My fear is, sir, that mortar bombs might start a landslide. So I hope they surrender.”

“I've thought about the landslide danger and my plan is to approach the cave from two directions. I shall take the mortar and my two seamen round to the right. You will lead your marines round the left. We must try to keep a ninety-degree angle between the directions of our approach. Should you have to go in with the bayonet, the French will have the rising sun in their eyes. If a landslide should start from the vicinity of the cave-mouth we shall not be in the way of it.”

“Very good, sir. Will you give the signal to assault?”

“Yes, I shall tell the bugler—whom you will leave with me—to sound the advance.”

“And what about the horses?”

“We shall leave them here together with our provisions, packs, and other gear. Our guide, Jean, will look after them and we shall rally back here after our return from the summit.”

“Do we need to go up there, sir?”

“Yes, we do. I think they have had some system of signals between here and Mauritius. I want to know about it.”

“Very good, sir.”

“One other thing. We must try to approach the cave unseen and unheard. If any one of us trips over a stone and starts it rolling, the French will hear it and escape.”

“
Can
they escape, sir?”

“Yes, they could go down the Bras Rouge and we should never have sight of them.”

“I'll impress that on my men, sir.”

Delancey was woken early by the sentry on duty. It was still dark but the stars shone brightly, unobscured by cloud. There was complete silence in that hour before the dawn, broken presently by the sounds of the camp, horses neighing, and muskets being cleaned. Breathing the pure cold mountain air, Delancey and Sevendale took bearings on their objective with a boat compass and marked the position on the map, returning each bayonet to its proper owner. There was a slight paleness in the eastern sky, a faint breeze, the promise of dawn, and Delancey gave orders for the march. Two reliable marines went first as scouts, followed by Sevendale and, the other marines, the sergeant in rear. Leaving a gap of a hundred yards, Delancey followed with his two seamen, properly armed and, behind them, the gunners with their mortar and its bombs.

Progress was slow, the ground being rough and the mortar, heavy, but Sevendale checked his advance so as to keep touch with the rear party. There was a rest each hour but no slackening of pace as the ascent continued. Presently the stars disappeared and a red glow eastwards turned to gold. So far the little column had been following a track and one probably invisible from the French position. The time had now come to deploy and Delancey, pressing on, joined Sevendale and called a halt. After studying the ground through his telescope, he indicated
the two lines of advance and the probable mortar position, within easy range of the cave-mouth.

“I wish to God I wasn't so tired!” said Sevendale quietly.

“You are not the only one,” replied Delancey. “We are beginning to suffer from the rarefied air; a sensation to be expected as we approach the height of ten thousand feet.”

“So the French will suffer too?”

“No, they will be used to it by now. Are you sure now what you have to do?”

“Aye, aye, sir!”

“Advance, then, and good luck to you!”

Sevendale moved off to the left, he and his men gasping for breath but pressing on. After a short rest, Delancey led his own party to the right. They were showing dreadful signs of fatigue but their situation, as Delancey knew, would be worse when they felt the heat of the sun. There could be no respite, therefore, for anyone. He now led the way, stepping from one rock to the next, doing his best to remain hidden from the enemy. There came a moment when he dislodged a small stone but its fall was promptly stopped by Tanner's boot. After what seemed like a week but was really half an hour, he looked cautiously round a huge boulder and glimpsed the cave-mouth at a distance of about three hundred yards. A little to his right was a hollow which seemed suitable for the mortar and he made a gesture towards it which the sweating gunners were glad to obey. He showed them the target and they aligned their weapon towards it. With Tanner, Teesdale, and the marine bugler he worked a little further forward and studied the cave through his telescope. There was no movement but a thin column of smoke ascended against the cliff-face above. The cave-entrance was screened by
a wall of piled stones, lit from the left by the rays of the rising sun. He waited for ten minutes, giving time for Sevendale to cover the distance he would have to go. Then he gave the order to Tanner: “Fire one round at the cave.”

The musket fired, the shot whined in ricochet off the piled stones, and the sound echoed off the mountainside. All was silent for a minute or two and then a scrap of white material waved over the wall. With a feeling of disappointment, Delancey realized that the French were surrendering.

He stood up with his speaking-trumpet and shouted to them to come out and lay their arms on the ground. It was doubtful whether they heard him but one dark figure emerged under the white flag and stood there in the sunlight. Nothing further happened and Delancey felt that he must advance to within earshot. Leaving his bugler behind but calling on his two seamen to accompany him, but well spaced out on either side, he walked forward over open ground, well to the right of the cave, coming to a halt again at a distance from it of perhaps a hundred and fifty yards.

Using his speaking-trumpet again, he shouted “Come out and surrender, all of you—lay down your arms and we'll give you quarter. Come out and I'll spare your lives!” He was giving them a very fair chance but they had seen only three of his party, he reflected, and had no certain knowledge that they themselves were outnumbered. As sole response to his summons, the one visible figure disappeared again behind the rocks, the white flag being still shown above them.

Warned by instinct, Delancey shouted “Down!” to his two seamen while he himself dropped on one knee. There came a scattered volley from the cave, the bullets flying uncomfortably close, and Delancey led his men back on hands and knees, pursued
by further shots of lessening accuracy at longer range. Back at the mortar position he gave the order to open fire.

Moving up to his old position behind the large boulder, and guarded by his two seamen, Delancey studied the cave through his telescope. Then, looking over his shoulder, he watched a gunner light the fuse and drop the bomb down the steeply elevated barrel of the mortar. Another man checked the lock's priming and a third, after making certain of the aim, called out “Ready.” On this report the bombardier said “Fire!” There was a muffled explosion and the bomb rose into the sky. Its slow trajectory was marked by a thin trail of white smoke and Delancey could follow each projectile's rise and fall. The first bomb exploded beyond the target, the next was fairly accurate for distance but went too far to the right. The third was accurate for direction but fell short and failed to explode.

Calling back the corrections, Delancey saw that the French were firing vaguely in his direction but with too small a target at too great a range. Not under fire at all, the gunners were working methodically and their next bomb was fairly on target, hitting the cliff and falling behind the stone wall. Exploding, it blew up a shower of stone fragments. It was tempting to assume that the enemy had suffered casualties but the cave, for all Delancey knew, could have a sideways twist which could have made it sufficiently bomb-proof. There was no further sign of the white flag but a solitary figure bolted from the cave and went to ground, seemingly, among the jumbled stones below it. The next bomb fell short of the cave but the one after that was a direct hit. Delancey was inclined for a moment to be critical of the gunners' performance but he remembered then that there were variations in the quality of the powder used. He also knew that the bombs were subject to changes of wind velocity or direction
at the top of their trajectory. There must be misses as well as hits. On the other hand, the enemy's position was becoming untenable. Sensing that the moment had come, he ordered the gunners to cease fire and made the bugler sound the advance. The shrill call came clear in the mountain air and echoed from the cliffs above. He then told his two seamen to open fire on the cave-mouth.

Over to the left, Delancey saw Sevendale appear from among the rocks with drawn sword. A minute later the marines appeared in open formation, marching as steadily as the broken ground would permit. He felt a moment of pride in their appearance and discipline, their scarlet tunics and white cross-belts, their glittering bayonets and their measured tread. He could not doubt for a moment that they were the finest troops in the world. Some musket shots were fired from the cave but still in his direction, suggesting that the assault group had not even been seen. When within fifty yards of the cave the marines, obeying an order, levelled their bayonets and slightly increased their pace.

“Cease fire!” called Delancey to his two seamen. “Sound the charge!” he said to the bugler, and then “Follow me!”

The effect of the bugle call was to attract more firing, one musket ball passing through Delancey's hat and another through the bugler's left forearm. The marines, meanwhile, had gone in with the bayonet. Firing died away and Delancey, rallying his mortar crew and applying a bandage to his whimpering bugler, marched his own group up to the cave. The more heavily laden men had to pause every few yards, gasping for breath, but they eventually reached the mouth of the cave. Sevendale came out of the cave with a trace of blood on his sword-point.

“There were eight of them,” he reported briefly.

“All dead?”

“Two are wounded, probably dying.”

Delancey followed Sevendale into the cave-mouth and saw the effect of his mortar bombs. It was not a pretty sight. The sergeant was searching the bodies for documents and making a pile of weapons and equipment. Delancey glanced at each of the bodies and knew that the enemy spy, the man he had known as Fabius, was not among them. Sevendale indicated the two men still living. One of them was badly shattered by fragments of rock and lay unconscious in a pool of blood. Without hesitation, Delancey drew his pistol, put it to the man's temple and pressed the trigger. In the high-vaulted cave the shot sounded like the crack of doom. From the back of the cave came an ominous crash of falling rock.

“Wouldn't he have recovered, sir?” asked Sevendale, white-faced, while Delancey reloaded.

“We should have hanged him if he had,” replied Delancey. “Let's look at the other one.” As badly mangled as the first, this man was conscious and moaning in acute pain. Delancey reached for his water bottle, poured water into the man's mouth, threw some into his face and said:

“Where is your chief?
Where is he!
” The man's eyes were open and he struggled for breath, gasping painfully until he finally whispered:

“He got away—damn him to hell!”

There was no point in prolonging the man's agony. Delancey cocked his pistol, placed the muzzle against the Frenchman's head, and pressed the trigger. The shock loosened another fall of rock. With a voice now painfully cracked and harsh, Delancey suddenly turned on Sevendale:

“Don't just stand there, gaping. The most dangerous of our enemies has escaped. Now clear up this mess and prepare to
withdraw, taking all captured weapons and documents. Make a thorough search and see that we leave nothing of value.”

“Shall we pursue the man who got away, sir?”

“No.”

“And what about burying the dead?”

“Leave them in the cave. Bombardier!”