The French Admiral Read online

  “Aye, sir, thank you.”

  Alan scrambled down the battens by the manropes and dropped into place at the stern of one of the hastily built barges. The night was indeed perfect for clandestine activities; there was no moon, and if it had been even a sliver, would have been lost in the thick cloud cover that had blown in during the afternoon. There was a slight breeze from the west that predominated over the sea breeze as well, which would require careful balance on the tiller to counteract it and the current of the York.

  “Toss your oars,” Alan commanded softly. “Ship your oars. Quiet, now. Who is senior hand here?”

  “Me, sir, Coe.” One of the older men spoke from the darkness, leaning forward to be recognized.

  “Rowports muffled with sailcloth?”

  “Aye, sir.”

  “Very well. Shove off, bowman. Out oars. Give us way, lar-board.”

  Desperate was lying athwart the river, anchored with bower and stream hooks, her guns manned to prevent any French spy boat penetrating the upper river. Leaving her starboard entry port, the barge was quickly taken by the current, and by the time they had come about to aim for the town docks, they had lost over a hundred yards downstream.

  “Gonna be ’ard rowin’, sir,” Coe commented from his position of stroke oar, near Alan’s knees.

  “The tide’s making,” Alan told him. “The rowing will get easier as the night goes on.”

  They reached the town docks about nine-thirty in the evening and joined a formless pack of ships’ boats and barges that were queuing up to the various piers and gravelly beaches to pick up troops and load them for the trip across the river. By companies, the battalions and regiments were lining up to depart. To avoid confusion, only one regiment or battalion was permitted near the docks at any given time. There were artillerymen whose pieces had been smashed to ruin or who had run out of powder and shell, now armed with muskets taken from the dead and wounded and most uncomfortable in their new role as “light infantry.” There were troops from the Brigade of Guards—the 17th, the 23rd, the 33rd, and the 71st Highlanders, those that had survived the bombardment and the sickness that had finally struck the camp, as sickness would decimate any large military gathering sooner or later. There were troops from the brigade of light infantry, the 43rd, 76th, and 80th regiments. There were German and Hessian mercenaries from the two battalions of Anspach, the Hessian Regiment Prinz Hereditaire, Hessian Bose Regiment, the Jagers, now not much more than a company of about sixty men remaining, and the provincials from Alan’s friends, the North Carolina Volunteers. But nearly two thousand men were in hospital still in Yorktown, and they would not be evacuated since they could not march and fight, nor survive on the poor rations or forage expected after the army had cut its way through the French and Rebels on Gloucester. They would be left behind to the mercies of the victors.

  Alan’s boat ground ashore on the beach with a rasp of sand and pebbles, and he was immediately swamped with troops intent on escape.

  “Avast there a moment,” Alan said as loud as he dared. “Now, this barge is a lump of shit, and I can only take thirty men with the usual kit and gear or we’ll founder out there. Is there an officer or sergeant here?”

  “’Ere, sir,” a red-coated non-com answered from the darkness. “A comp’ny o’ th’ 23rd preesent an’ haccounted fer, sir. Thirty-h’eight privates, one corp’rl en’ me, sir.”

  “Give me your corporal and 29 men then. Count ’em off and the next boat will take the rest,” Alan said. “Tell ’em to sit in the middle on the bottom and not get in the way of the oarsmen.”

  “Right, sir,” the sergeant replied, disappointed that he would not find immediate rescue, but still in charge of his poise and his men.

  “Wy we gots ta wait, sarge?” a plaintive voice wailed from the night. “They’s plenny o’ room!”

  “My arse on a bandbox there is!” Alan said sharply. “Want to drown out there wearing all that kit? Now hurry up and get aboard with the first thirty.”

  Once in the boat, and the boat back out on the black waters, the troops sat still as mice, breathing shallowly as they sensed how unstable and ungainly the barge really was in the grip of the current.

  This is going to be a muddle, Alan thought sadly, realizing how companies were going to be separated upon landing. Even with one regiment or battalion transported at a time, where they would land on the far shore was up to the vagaries of the individual coxswains of the boats involved, with part of one unit landed in the cove, on the point, to right or left of the area still held by Tarleton and Simcoe. They would also be landing into the teeth of a shelling, and it would be hours before each unit sorted itself out into proper military order for the breakthrough at bayonet point. It would be dark, and regimental facings and distinctive uniform trim would be almost lost to the harried officers, who would be searching for their people. Alan was supposed to link up with all the boats under command of a lieutenant from one of the disabled ships who would lead all the boats bearing one unit to a single landing, but in the almost total darkness, he would be lucky to tag onto any group of boats.

  “Twenty-third over here,” a strained voice called over the sound of the continuing artillery barage. “All boats with 23rd regiment here!”

  He could only guess as to the direction of the voice, for sound could do strange things on the water at night, as he’d already learned to his detriment from his first experiments in boats. Hoping for the best, Alan put the tiller bar over and steered in the wake of a gaggle of boats who were already under way. The current would not allow any stop for cogitation. Sitting up on the high stern thwart of the barge, he could barely espy the boat ahead and the boat astern of him.

  Once the tide began to flood and counteract the current of the river, the rowing did become much easier. They made two round trips in the first hour while the men were still strong and unwearied, but that slowed down as the night drug on. The only rest was on the beach or beside the pier, and the troops loaded too quickly to allow much.

  “Easy all,” Alan called as they drifted into the York side of the river for the third time. With the barge empty, it was not so hard to row, but the very devil to fight across the current. The tide was now pushing them upriver without his having to countersteer, and when Lewrie dipped a hand into the water, he could scoop up a mouthful of very salty water instead of the fairly fresh water of earlier.

  “Boat your oars, stand by to ground.”

  Men splashed into the shallows to take charge of the bow and drag it up onto the strand. His crew slumped down in exhaustion as the hull ground and thumped against the shingle.

  “Everyone ashore,” Alan said. “Coe, break out the barrico of water. We need a rest.”

  “Aye, aye, sir,” Coe said with some enthusiasm.

  “Might rotate the larboard men for the starboard men, too, Coe,” Alan ordered. “Keep ’em from cramping.”

  “Aye, sir, ’at it would. Water, sir?”

  “Aye, I’d admire a cup.”

  Another boat ground alongside his, its crew bent low over their own oars with weariness, and seeing what Alan’s crew was doing, went over the side for a rest as well.

  “Here, stop that!” a thin voice cried.

  “Carey?” Alan asked out of instinct.

  “Lewrie? They just got out of the boat!”

  “They’re worn to a frazzle. Let ’em take a rest for a few minutes. How are you doing so far?”

  “Main well, I suppose.” Carey sulked on his stern thwart, still too unsure of himself to exert much authority with the hands, and smarting from being countermanded.

  “We’re making good progress.” Alan sighed, sipping at his water. “Most of the Brigade of Guards across by now. My last trip was light infantry, I think. Hard to tell in the dark.”

  “Mine, too,” Carey said. Then, in a wheedling tone, “Lewrie, may we trade boats?”

  “Is yours sinking?” Alan chuckled, stepping ashore and looking as close as he could at Carey�
��s barge. Carey scrambled ashore to stand with him so he could speak privately.

  “They won’t work for me, Alan, not like they’d work for you. I have Fletcher as senior hand, and he simply ignores me half the time. I . . . I think they have some rum. I could hear them giggling and getting groggy.”

  “Fletcher, that farmer,” Alan said. “I expect the troops have some small bottles on them and they’re sharing out. You put him straight right now.”

  “Who’s your senior man?”

  “Coe. One of the foresheet men. Good and steady.”

  “Then why don’t we trade boats? I can get along with Coe, Alan, but I can get nothing out of Fletcher, he’s such a surly bastard.”

  “No,” Alan said, after thinking about it for a long moment.

  “But, Alan, I . . .”

  “Look here, Carey,” Alan whispered, reaching out in the dark and taking the younger boy by the upper arm. “Most of the seamen I’ve ever met have been surly bastards. They’re not your favorite uncles, so one senior hand is just as good as another. If they won’t work for you as chearly as you want, then it’s up to you to make ’em do it. You’re not in the mess now. You’re a midshipman in the King’s Navy, so why don’t you start acting like one? Avery and I are not here to cosset you anymore. You’re on your own bottom, and you have a job to do, so you had best be about it the best way you can.”

  By God, I’m sorry I said that, Alan told himself as Carey took himself off, for a quick weep most likely. But it had to be said sooner or later. We’ve been shielding him long enough and letting him get away with his puppy shines, ’stead of putting some spine into him.

  “What is the delay here?” a cultured voice called fruitily.

  “A short rest, sir,” Alan called back. “We’ve done three trips so far and the hands are fagged out and thirsty.”

  “There’s no time for that,” the owner of that plumby voice dictated. “It’s near midnight and there are thousands of troops still waiting to get across. Here, corporal, begin loading these two boats.”

  Several infantrymen began approaching Alan’s boat laden with an assortment of boxes and bags. Alan could hear the clink of metal and glass from them.

  “Military stores, sir?” Alan queried with a lazy sneer.

  “Of course they are, sir.”

  Alan stopped one of the soldiers and took a heavy canvas bag off him. He undid the knot at the top and pulled it apart to reach down into the burden and see for himself what was in it. He smiled in the dark.

  “Silver candlesticks might make good langridge if cut up, I suppose, sir,” Alan drawled archly. “They’re a bit too expensive to be melted down in a bullet mold, and I doubt anyone would appreciate being so expensively shot, sir.”

  “Now look here . . .”

  “No, sir. I am taking troops only. No personal baggage.”

  “Do you know who I am, sir?” the fruity-voiced officer snapped.

  “A suddenly much poorer man, sir,” Alan shot back. “Other than that, I could not give a fart who you are. Take your loot somewhere else, sir.”

  Thwarted, the officer railed for a few minutes longer, then made off up the beach for the piers to try other boats, pressed by the urgency of escape before dawn.

  “That’s enough rest,” Alan called out. “Fletcher, Coe, fetch your men back to the boats.”

  “Aye, sir,” Coe replied. “’Ere, lads, back ta work, now.”

  “Jus’a minute more, Mister Lewrie?” Fletcher whined, as usual. “We bin ’ard at it, sir, an’ it’s ’at tahred we are.”

  “Come here, Fletcher,” Alan commanded with a good imitation of a quarterdeck rasp. The man approached, close enough for Lewrie to smell the scent of rum on his breath. He took him by the front of the shirt and drew him closer. “You will assemble your boat crew and get back to work right this instant, and you will work chearly for Mister Carey or I swear to God above, I’ll see you flayed open like a Yarmouth bloater for drunkenness and insubordination, if I have to chase you down in hell!”

  “Aye, Mister Lewrie, sir. Aye, aye, sir!” Fletcher bobbled, agog at being seized and shaken so roughly. His perennial game of baiting, of walking the fine edge of insolence, had never gotten a response such as that.

  “Very well, carry on, Fletcher.”

  “Aye, aye, sir.”

  “How many boats here?” someone asked from the dark.

  “Two.”

  “Three!” another voice said. “That you, Mister Lewrie?”

  “Aye, that you, Mister Feather?”

  “Aye, sir,” the quartermaster’s mate replied, beaching his boat.

  “Three, then,” Alan said as an officer approached him.

  “Lieutenant, bring your people down here. There are three boats for you.” The officer was calling out to a pack of men further up the beach.

  “How many men in this unit, sir?” Alan asked. “I can normally take thirty in each boat, but the tide is slack and the current is getting stronger. And I don’t care for the wind, sir.”

  The wind had indeed been rising in the last few minutes, stirring the boats to grinding on the shingle and making tiny whitecaps appear on the dark water, reflected in the glow of fires and shellbursts inland. There were also some flashes in the sky to the west that were not man-made, a display of lightning every few seconds that portended very nasty weather before morning.

  “Some sixty all told, I believe,” the officer said, coming up within visible distance. He was a major from Cornwallis’s staff, one Alan had seen briefly the time he and Railsford had gone ashore together.

  “Perhaps twenty men per boat would be best, sir, considering.”

  “Very well. Ah, here you are.”

  “Hello to you, sailor, how do you keep?” Lieutenant Chiswick cried, reaching out his hand to shake with Alan.

  “Lieutenant Chiswick, sir, how good to see you!” Alan replied. “Is Burgess well?”

  “Aye, just behind me a bit. Von Muecke and some of his Jagers, too. Do you have room for us all?”

  “Only twenty men to a boat this trip, sir, sorry. But I believe there are more boats up toward the piers should we run short of room.”

  “Good. Mollow, eighteen men and yourself in this boat,” the Loyalist officer said, pointing to Alan’s boat. “I’ll take passage with you, if you have no objections, Mister Lewrie.”

  “None at all,” Alan told him, genuinely glad to see the Chiswicks once more, even if they and their unit did appear even scruffier than they had in past acquaintance.

  “Burgess, it’s Lewrie, come to ferry us ’cross the Styx,” Governour told his brother. “Do you take eighteen men and the corporal with you in this next boat. Sar’n’t, there’s a boat to the left for you and your men.”

  “For me, bitte? ” Von Muecke asked.

  “Up near the piers, Mister van Mook-ah,” Alan instructed.

  “Fon Mehr-keh, gottverdammt!” the man complained, and Alan was sure he was wetting down that famous mustache in the dark, once more.

  Alan noticed that in most cases, the North Carolina troops were each carrying an extra Ferguson rifle as they boarded the boat and settled down amidships. “Dead men’s weapons, too valuable to leave,” Governour informed him. “We’ll be needed back home and there’s no way to get more rifles. Else the new troops we raise will have to do with Brown Besses.”

  “You’ll be marching the wrong way for the Carolinas.”

  “If any troops are going to get all the way to New York, it will be us,” Governour assured him. “I cannot speak with any hope for the rest of this army.”

  Alan shrugged, unwilling to face the thought of total defeat and surrender of the last army England would raise, or could raise, for the war in the Colonies. What the Chiswicks would face in an America with Rebel forces victorious did not bear thinking about, so partisan was the prevailing mood on both sides.

  “Loaded, Mister Lewrie,” Feather told him. Carey admitted the same. There was nothing for it but to sho
ve off for another trip across the York.

  “Your crew is rested, Feather?”

  “Aye, Mister Lewrie, on t’other side. I ’ave a boat compass.”

  “You lead off, then, and we shall steer in your wake. Shove off!”

  The boats were manhandled off the beach and the men sprang back aboard, wet to the waists as the current plucked the barges right from the start and began to swirl them about like wood chips. The oars were shipped into the rowports quickly, and they had to stroke hard just to regain the distance they had lost.

  Once out from behind the shadow of the northernmost spit of land and into deeper water, Lewrie realized they were out on a new and more dangerous river. The current was building up, possibly the result of a heavy rain inland from all that lightning and thunder that had not been distinguishable over the sound of the cannonading. Whitecaps were more prominent now, and the barges made a lot more leeway than they had on the last crossing. Alan took hold of the tiller bar with a firmer grip in fear of the water and the tendency of the ungainly barge to want to tip to leeward, steering more westerly to keep them from being blown out into the wider reaches of the river below Gloucester Point.

  “You soldiers, shift your weight to larboard!” he shouted.

  “Up ’ere, you silly buggers!” Coe directed. “Up ta the ’igh side.”

  There was a flash of lightning that lit up the entire river, and Alan could see that he was already to leeward of Feather’s barge. He added a bit more lee helm to the tiller, pinching up the bows more toward the wind, which was also rising and beginning to moan across the water.

  “Put your backs into it!” Alan ordered his oarsmen. “Pick up the stroke, Coe!”

  “Aye, sir,” Coe grunted.

  They had barely gotten a quarter of the way across the narrows, and then the thunderstorm burst on them for real. Lightning crackled across the sky with greater and greater frequency, and the claps of thunder that followed seemed shockingly loud and close behind the flashes. The wind got up even more, strong enough to strip hats from people’s heads, strong enough to hinder free breathing. And the wind smelled ominously wet, pregnant with rain to come.