The Flag of Freedom (6 page)

G
od had indeed turned Papist. Or asserted His privilege of remaining neutral and letting Nature take its course. It was a clear, moonlit night, the sky a sea of stars. So clear, Nathan could see every one of his little fleet of ships' boats as they pulled gamely towards the shore. Almost as clearly, he supposed, as the Spaniards must be able to see
them
from the ramparts of the city wall or in the gunboats that lay in wait for them at the edge of the harbour.

He tried not to take it personally, but for all the advantage it gave them, he considered they might have given the darkness a miss and attacked in broad daylight.

But the sea was as calm as a lake, that was the main thing. Or so he had been assured by Lieutenant Gourly, the some what overbearing –
bombastic
? – commander of the
Thunder
, for in the slightest swell, he said, their bombs
tended to go awry. They could land anywhere, he said. And they did not want that.

No, they did not want that.

Looking astern, Nathan could see the bomb vessel making its slow but steady progress towards the port, towed by half a dozen boats from the fleet, for there was not a breath of wind, a circumstance that added somewhat to Lieutenant Gourly's satisfaction. ‘Steady' was his favourite word. In the half-hour or so of their acquaintance, Nathan had heard him say it many times.

The
Thunder
was a platform for the delivery of Death and Destruction, and Lieutenant Gourly's job was to deliver it to the right place at the right time. Steadiness was all. Though a lack of imagination probably helped.

About a cable's length to starboard was the gun brig
Urchin
, also under tow. And behind them, a good way behind for fear of the shoals, were the
Goliath
, 74, and the frigate
Inconstant
– as insurance against a sortie by some of the larger elements of the Spanish fleet moored in the Diamond.

But in the event – the almost certain event – of an attack by gunboats in the shallower waters off the peninsula, the task of protecting the bomb vessel belonged to Nathan and his fleet of auxiliaries. His sitting ducks.

He had eight ships' launches under his command and two barges. Also a cutter, the
Fox
, which he had made his flagship. Each boat was commanded by a lieutenant or midshipman, and Nathan had a young sailing master, Prebble, as his Flag Captain. Most of the boats had 24-pounder carronades mounted in the bows, and the cutter had a pair of swivel guns besides. And every boat
was packed with men – seamen, not Marines – armed with the usual assortment of weaponry. Nathan had issued no particular instructions on the matter but he noted with grim satisfaction that they had followed their brute instincts and favoured the simple over the sophisticated. Pistols and cutlasses, tomahawks and bludgeons, even a sledge hammer: weapons ideally suited to murderous, close-quarter encounters in the dark. Though drawn to the tomahawks – he briefly saw himself ducking and diving and slashing out like an Indian, with one in each hand – Nathan had pitched for a pair of pistols and a cutlass, on the rather depressing grounds that they were more appropriate to his rank. He had placed them in the scuppers beneath his feet where they rested more com fortably than in his belt, which he reserved for a dirk he had borrowed from one of the midshipmen, but he touched them from time to time for reassurance.

He was missing his own men – the men who had gone down with the
Unicorn
. On occasions such as these he normally had three self-appointed bodyguards: a giant Irishman called Michael Connor, an equally impressive African called George Banjo, and, most of all, his man-servant, the former highwayman Gilbert Gabriel – known ironically as the Angel Gabriel – who had been his father's servant before him and who had been looking out for him, more or less, since Nathan was a boy. Gabriel had accompanied him to Venice and there was a chance – a faint chance – that he had avoided the fate of the rest of the crew, though it was as likely he had been strung up as a spy by the agents of the Serene Republic, shortly before it was overrun by the French. Connor had died in a fight
very much like the one promised for tonight, watching Nathan's back as they boarded a French corvette in the dark. Banjo was the most likely survivor of the three, for he had deserted, with Nathan's connivance, off the island of Corfu. It was unlikely, however, that Nathan would ever see him again and if he did, he would probably be obliged to hang him.

Nathan dragged his mind back to present realities. The night air was humid; the rowers already gleaming with sweat in the moonlight. Nathan sweltered in his tight uniform coat, but he had found a pair of loose canvas ducks in the slops store which made him more comfortable below the waist, at least, and a pair of seamen's pumps, the better to keep his footing in the close-quarter encounters he anticipated before the night was much older.

It was already a little after ten o'clock and the sky did not seem to be getting any darker. From where he sat in the stern of the cutter, he could see along the entire length of the peninsula, which extended in a long, straight line for five miles into the Bay of Cadiz – rather like the needle of a compass, he had reflected earlier when he had studied it on the charts. It pointed exactly NNW, except that at the very end it turned itself into a phallus and swelled impressively before falling away to westward, as if too heavy for its slender stem. At the very tip of this engorgement was the lighthouse of San Sebastian – their main reference-point for the attack.

They were heading for a spot about 2,500 yards south of this marker, and the same distance west of the peninsula. This, it had been determined, was a blind spot for the batteries defending the city wall.
How
this had been
determined, Nathan had yet to discover. However, he was not overly concerned by the shore batteries. He could do nothing about them – they were not his responsibility – and even on a night as clear as this he doubted if they would hit the smaller boats, except by accident. His sole concern was the fleet of Spanish gunboats waiting for him in the shallows and creeks of the peninsula.

There was, at present, neither sight nor sound of them. But there were no lights on in the port – no streetlights, no lights in the windows of the houses or taverns: a uniform darkness which could only have been ordained by the Spanish authorities, who clearly knew what was coming. Nathan suspected that most of the gunboats were lurking in the even darker patches below the city walls and the brooding fortress of San Sebastian. He could almost feel the eyes of their crews staring out at him from their invisible vantage as they waited for the order to attack.

He twisted in his seat again to look back at the
Thunder
. Lieutenant Gourly had conducted him on a tour of the vessel before they set out and had indicated its salient features with a paternal pride. These, essentially, were the two guns: the 12.5-inch mortar, up forward, and the 10-inch howitzer amidships.

Normally, the lieutenant had explained, they would carry a pair of mortars. The howitzer was a recent innovation. Something in his tone suggested to Nathan that he did not consider it an improvement.

‘But ours is not to reason why,' he observed coolly.

The remaining mortar was his particular delight. It was the only naval weapon designed to fire an explosive shell, rather than solid shot, he informed Nathan impressively.
This was detonated by a smouldering fuse which could be cut to length depending upon the range required. The maximum range was about a mile and a half, about the same as the 24-pounder long guns of a ship of the line, but unlike these more conventional pieces, the mortar fired in a high trajectory, so high it could clear the most formidable of defences and carry the shell into the heart of the enemy camp – or in this case, city.

Nathan privately recalled that an earlier term for a mortar was a ‘murtherer', or murderer.

‘So you will be firing at maximum range,' he had mused in a neutral tone that disguised his earnest wish that every one of the lieutenant's murdering shells would drop well short of its target. He entertained the insubstantial hope that the mere sound and fury of the attack would succeed in its stated ambition of encouraging the Spanish fleet to put to sea without the loss of a single civilian life.

But the range was not a problem, the lieutenant had assured him – not in a flat calm. At 2,500 yards they should be able to fire every shot into the heart of the city. No, his main concern was the length of the fuse. Exact precision was required to ensure that the shell exploded when it landed, he explained, and not in mid-air. If it exploded in mid-air, the shattered pieces of casing would fall harmlessly into the sea, or onto the rooftops and towers of the port. And if you made the fuse too long, it might be put out by a bucket of water or even by the rubble as it smashed through the roof or walls of a building.

And we did not want that
.

Ideally it should explode on impact, or within a second or two afterward, distributing the full force of the
explosion and a lethal hail of shrapnel into the immediate vicinity.

This was why bombardment was a highly specialised art of war, he told Nathan. It required a team of trained artillerymen, supplied by the Army, who had the necessary expertise to aim and fire the weapons. The Navy's job was simply to sail or tow the bomb vessel into position.

The mortar itself was a short, round weapon, not unlike a carronade but with a much wider bore. It was mounted in a pit on a revolving platform that enabled it to fire in any direction not obscured by the rigging, which was made of chain to withstand the blast of the muzzle. But because it fired at such an acute angle, there was no cabling to harness the recoil. Instead the entire force of the explosion was absorbed by a stout framework of timbers extending deep into the hull.

The howitzer was more like an ordinary gun, firing solid shot, save that it was designed to fire at a much higher trajectory than a normal gun – though not as high as a mortar and not at so great a distance.

Nathan had nodded gravely when these details were expounded to him, while disguising his personal disquiet. He knew his feelings were irrational, even hypocritical. Every weapon of war was designed to kill. But somehow, it seemed to him, it was more acceptable to kill someone who was trying to kill you. Raining death and destruction down upon unarmed civilians at a safe distance smacked more of massacre than of honest conflict. But then he supposed its proponents would argue that it was the swiftest way of bringing a conflict to a successful conclusion – and thus saving life in the long run.

Besides, in this case it was debatable whether the murder would be carried out at a safe distance. Not that he found this especially consoling as he led his little fleet closer and closer to the shore.

The first shot was fired a little after half past ten. And it did not come from the bomb vessel.

It was a testing shot from one of the guns mounted on the city wall, and though it fell well short, it came skipping across the water like a stone, marked by several white splashes before it finally sank about a half-cable's length off the
Thunder
's larboard bow. The defenders clearly considered this a satis factory result, for about a minute later the entire battery erupted in smoke and flame.

For the next few minutes the shot fell thick and fast. Who ever had determined that this was a blind spot for the city defences had clearly not calculated on the weather conditions, for the combined effect of a near-flat trajectory and a flat calm was to send almost every shot skimming towards the approach ing attackers, greatly extending the range of the guns. Spent of its force, the shot could have had little effect upon the solid hull of the
Thunder
, but it played merry havoc with the boats that were towing her into position.

So far as Nathan could see, only one of the launches was hit – the round shot ploughing into the bank of oars on the larboard side – but to his consternation he saw that several boats were casting off the tow and heading back out of range. By his calculation the bomb vessel was still some several hundred yards short of the position that had been agreed upon, but whether from choice or necessity, both anchors splashed down into the sea. Moments later,
a great gout of flame illuminated her lower rigging and a massive explosion shook the still waters. The
Thunder
was in action.

Nathan turned to observe the flight of the projectile, marked by an impressive trail of fire – rather like the tail of a comet. Its descent, though, was less spectacular. It fell into the sea about a quarter of a mile short of the lighthouse. Nathan swore he could hear the hiss. This was shortly followed by another spurt of flame – longer, thinner – from amidships, and the sharper report of the howitzer, but the shot left no trail and Nathan had no idea where it fell. Within seconds the
Urchin
opened fire, with much the same result.

And so the fireworks continued. Nathan watched them with interest, his feckless conscience slumbering upon his shoulder, for there was a childlike fascination in seeing the sudden red and orange flash illuminating the rigging and lower yards of the
Thunder
and watching the trail of sparks ascending into the heavens before plunging down towards sea or shore. One or other of the guns fired every minute or so, and Nathan counted two definite hits as the rooftops and steeples of the city flared into brief incandescence and the sound of the exploding shells rumbled back across the still waters. But the flash of the guns blinded him to his own peril, and the first he knew of it was from the startled shouts of his crew as it bore down upon them. He glimpsed the white surge of water below the blunt, black bow a moment before it ploughed into the starboard bank of oars, hurling the rowers onto their backs and sending him sprawling into the scuppers. From this undignified position he saw the single mast of their
assailant against the starlit sky and the twin banks of oars that must have been raised an instant before impact – and the long bowsprit jutting out across the waist of the cutter with a writhing figure impaled upon the end of it like a gaffed fish.