Chapter 11

Lt. Alan Lewrie, Royal Navy, paced his tiny quarterdeck as the hours dragged past. Hands in the small of his back, head down deep in thought. And in worry.

A launch from Telesto had assured them that there were two European ships at anchor in the rude harbor at the north end of Balabac Island: one painted a golden ochre with white gunwales and one vessel that bore no masts above her lower masts and tops. There were also at least twenty native praos beached by the Filipino settlement, big seagoing boats with hulls painted blood red. It hadn’t been much of a reconnaissance; just a quick peek in from seaward at sundown of the second day after they had discovered the lone survivor from Cuddalore.

Choundas is a clever animal, Lewrie fretted to himself during his limited pacing. He’s sure to have hidden batteries on the harbor approaches. Perhaps hidden batteries off-shore on those low islands that to the north shelter the harbor. His minions in Stella Mans had not deployed artillery at Spratly past the palisade’s walls, but they could not assume Choundas would make that sort of mistake.

“God help us, it seems he never makes mistakes,” Lewrie cursed in the darkness. “And sentinels all along the bloody coast, on all the land approaches to ...”

“Did you say something, sir?” Hogue asked with a yawn.

“Making my peace with the good Lord,” Lewrie snapped, driving the acting lieutenant away. Who would interfere with a man praying at a time like this, Lewrie thought somewhat cynically.

Since Culverin was so shallow-drafted, she had been chosen once again, that evening, to ferry troops ashore from Lady Charlotte, which had to stand at least a mile off-shore. Three trips they’d made in all, in almost total darkness, with Culve-rin’s decks and former mortar wells packed tightly with sepoys and weapons, with field artillery and all the accoutrements for six-pounder carriage guns, two-pounder boat guns on low, wide-wheeled mounts and coehorn mortars with their carrying blocks equipped with four small but wide wheels like dogcarts.

Lewrie also worried about Burgess Chiswick. When he had last seen Chiswick and shaken his hand before he embarked in a ship’s boat for the beach with the men of his light company, Burgess’ hand had been all atremble. That would seem perfectly natural in any man, but in Chiswick he felt it a sign of his friend’s unpreparedness, his weakness.

There had not been time enough to say all the things one wished at a moment like that; there never was. Perhaps that lack of time was a blessing. Burgess had given him a small parcel of personal items he wanted passed on to his family should he fall. A final word for dear sister Caroline, and a promise Burgess had wrung out of him that should he ... fall (there, that platitude again), Alan would swear to take care of Caroline, and the rest of his family as well as he was able in his stead. It seemed portended, that fall, and a gruesome farewell.

Parting with his father was much easier.

“Time, damnit,” Sir Hugo had snarled. “Look here, lad. If we make a muck of this, I’m much happier you’re safe aboard this little ship of yours. Think kindly of me if you’re able. Lift a glass and toast my shade if you ain’t. Take good care of the Lewrie name today, and I’ll see to mine. Right! Goodbye, me son.”

They had put the troops ashore starting at eleven that night on a leeward beach on the western shore of Balabac, a little more than a league shy of the village and harbor approaches. Once that was done, the three ships had stood out to sea, Telesto leading and Culverin in last place, making a long lee-board out to sea with the wind up their sterns and all sails double-reefed or brailed up to make it a vexingly slow lee-board which would place them due west of the harbor channel just before first light. There, Telesto would turn east and beat up into the sou’east summer Monsoon winds, close-hauled as she would lie and with all battle-flags flying.

And Lewrie had prayed. He’d been raised Church of England, and as much a Deist as any fashionable young gentleman of his class turned out to be after exposure to the better public schools, the classics and the latest eighteenth-century philosophy. Lewrie had also been tended to by a steady parade of governesses from lower stations in life who trended toward a more personal, vengeful God. Neither curriculum had turned him off the more than occasional venality, but when life got a bit too threatening, and he was at the bitter end of his cable, he found no comfort in a Deist’s philosophical detachment, and sought out the sort of God who could wake up, reach down and pluck his arse to safety once more.

He prayed for Burgess’ safety. He prayed for God’s help that this time they’d comer this Choundas bugger for certain and carve him and all his kind into stew-meat so they could go home. He slung in a thought or two for his father (even if he was a rotten old bastard to me, Lord, he don’t deserve gettin’ turned off today), and finally, he asked for help so that his crew would not suffer too much, that they would win a victory at a low cost.

“Please let the sentinels be blind as bloody bats, Lord,” he’d muttered in the privacy of his tiny cabins. “Get us past any batteries without too much hurt. And if you plan to scrag me today, then let it be quick and glorious. I’d rather not know about it when it comes, so let me go like Achilles and don’t let the surgeon have me. Better I die a sinner than survive a helpless cripple, Amen.”

* * * *

“Bloody hell!” Capt. Burgess Chiswick swore softly as his boots sucked and slopped in the muck inland from the beaches. Lieutenant Colonel Willoughby had at first tried to advance up from the strand and find cover in the forests for their forced march. But the woods had turned out to be the ripest sort of mangrove marsh near the shore, and the rankest, densest, sloppiest jungle inland from that. But the artillery he had hoped to deploy on his right flank and center could not be man-hauled through the slop. Indeed, once deep into the over-growth, no one could maintain a proper line of march without constant referral to a compass, and showing any sort of a light was simply out of the question.

So it was only the first light company that made its slow way through the jungle on the right flank, and the rest of the battalion had to march in two company columns nearer the beach, with the guns squeaking along the beach itself in the firmest sand. The second light company led the advance in skirmishing pairs, as scouts, to feel out the way ahead, and silence any pickets they encountered with cold steel or a twisted garotte fashioned from their puggarees.

So far, thank God, they had met none, though it was impossible to know if a scout skulked in the deep jungle, spying out their march and sending reports to the village to prepare them.

Chiswick shivered with a nameless dread. Except for his man Nandu who marched alongside him, he could barely espy any of his sepoys. They were jangli-admi, used to jungle in their home territory of Bengal. Hunters, farmers, poor villagers raised at the edge of a dark green labyrinth where danger lurked. A lush green Hell full of terrors so much greater and more threatening than Carolina woods.

Chiswick asked himself for the thousandth time why he had ever thought he wanted to be a soldier, why he had thought life was better in regimental service when he could have bowed to Fate and clerked or farmed back around Guildford. What stupidity had led him to this, he trembled? He was not so much afraid of death as he was afraid of making a total, ineffective ass of himself when battle was joined! There seemed to be no steady center he could seize to calm his trembling. A mosquito whining in his ear set his heart to racing every time. He felt as if his heart wanted to leap free of his chest and escape even if he could not! And when Nandu got mired, and put out a hand on his shoulder for help, he almost jumped out of his skin and yelped with fright.

“Oh God, don’t let me fail,” was Chiswick’s prayer.

* * * *

“Come on, oh one pubic hairs!” Col. Sir Hugo St. George Willoughby rasped in a harsh whisper of near-perfect Hindee. “I’ve seen Rajput whores carry heavier loads. Subadar-major ji, march our children!”

White teeth and eyes gleamed briefly in the darkness above the white facings, the white dhotis and kurtah shirts of their uniforms. The red-faced co\one\-sahib seemed angry, but they knew him well by now, and knew it was not true anger. They’d seen enough of that by then, as well, and knew the difference. He’d ask them to do this one last dangerous thing, and then, if they were successful, they’d all go home to Calcutta. They were soldiers, no matter what their humble beginnings, no matter how low their castes, and colonel-sahib Weeby treated them as such, with respect, unlike so many of the gora log feringhee officers. They would do this one last dangerous thing.

For Colonel Weeby-sahib, who threw all his efforts into their training and welfare. For this regiment of theirs that had become a haven from Indian society, and the decreed-by-birth poverty of their castes. They may have started as poor ryots or zamindars, but they were treated like all-conquering kshatriya now, men of the warrior caste. They had not always conquered during the war in the south against Hyder AH and Tippoo Sultan, or against the French, but they had tried.

“God grant us a victory,” Sir Hugo mumbled. “A victory that lets me keep my colonelcy so another damned fool straight out from England don’t fuck this regiment up! Lord knows, it’s all I’ve got and I’ll be damned if I’ll throw it away for nothing, either. So give us victory. And a Mention-in-Dispatches back to ‘John Company’ would go down right nice, too. A little loot for my old age, if you’ve a mind I enjoy one after this day’s bloody work. And look after my lad. I really do mean to do right by him. A little time to do right by him would be sweet. Even if I can’t, let him show well today. Carry on the family line with honor and glory. You know me well enough by now; I don’t make silly promises I don’t mean to keep, so I won’t make any to You now. And the regiment. Lord, I know they’re heathens, but they’re good lads. Well, most of ‘em, anyways. Let ‘em carry all before ‘em and not bring any dishonor to the colors.”

Captain Fessenden interrupted what else Sir Hugo would add.

“Sir Hugo, sir,” he whispered. ‘The jungle seems to be thinning out on our right flank. And the beach is bending east. I think we’re getting close.”

“Chandra-ji,” Sir Hugo muttered, snapping his fingers at his bewhiskered orderly. “Run tell Chiswick-sa/n’fc to halt, then feel to his right. Major Gaunt, halt the column. Grenadier company to form on the right. Captain Fessenden, your light company to form on the left front across the beach for now, fifty paces forward.”

“At once, sir.”

That taken care of, Sir Hugo found himself a fallen palm log on which to sit and await the results of his scouts. He amused himself by drawing designs, which he could not see, in the sand with a walking stick.

“Sir?” Captain Chiswick whispered, having been led to him by Chandra after a quarter-hour had passed.

“Good morrow, Captain Chiswick,” Sir Hugo grunted. “What have you to report?”

“Forward of where we stand, sir, the jungle continues for about three hundred yards, thinning out as it goes, and the footing is much firmer. Firm enough I adjudge for artillery. Beyond that, there are flooded rice fields and other crops,” Burgess said with a shaky tone.

“Damme!” Sir Hugo spat.

“But there are some sort of firm dykes surrounding the fields, sir, that are wide enough for gun carriages, and for troops marching three abreast,” Chiswick offered. “And the flooded fields are more inland, beyond our right flank. If we stay close to the beach with our left flank, we could extend across the dry fields, and use the flooded portion as a shield for our right.”

“How much of a front?”

“I estimate about four hundred yards, sir,” Burgess reported, his body trembling with anticipation and feeling as if he had already spent all of his strength in scouting and pacing off the area.

“Too bloody wide for eight and a half companies,” his colonel muttered. “Look here, where’s the bloody village, then? How much of it do we threaten if we form as planned?”

They paced out into what little moonlight was left to draw a map on the beach sand with Chiswick’s sword tip, using dry palm fronds that could be more easily seen.

“Once we incline right, sir,” Chiswick stated on his knees, “the beach here west of the village is rather wide. I saw what I took to be pirate boats beached, starting here. They’d have artillery in the bows that could enfilade us. Thin undergrowth and trees for cover above the beach, extending south for about one hundred yards. Open fields with knee-high plantings, God knows what, all around it. If we come in from the west instead of striking north, we’d have three hundred yards frontage before our right flank brushed up against these dykes and rice-fields.”

“Chandra-ji. Summon officers here to me,” Sir Hugo commanded, then rose and paced while Chiswick continued to draw out a more elaborate plan of the village and its environs. “Palisades, captain? Any batteries your scouts could discover facing inland?”

“Bamboo or palm logs for a palisade, sir, quite low,” Chiswick replied, intent on his model that he was now adorning with fronds to represent the jungle, the dykes and the palisade. “We saw no guns on the inland wall, sir. There is a French battery on the point.”

“Right about here, where the coast trends east?” Sir Hugo asked, using the toe of his boot for a pointer.

“Yes, sir. Dug in as a three-sided redan made of palm logs and sand. It’s been planted with bushes on the seaward side to conceal it. Two, perhaps three guns, my scouts told me, sir,” Chiswick went on, intent on his model. It felt so much like playing soldier, childish and silly, to be on his knees once again, re-creating his little fields of battle, moats and entrenchments out of the clay or sand soil of his native North Carolina. He’d stolen clothespins off the lines to be “troops,” and they could be anything—Romans, Indians or Grenadiers.

“How big is the village?” Sir Hugo asked, kneeling down slowly so his joints didn’t creak and pop. “How far does it extend, sir?”

“About a quarter-mile, sir. On the far side, there is more jungle, much thinner than here, and some dry fields. And another battery of guns, about a mile farther on,” Chiswick said, gathering more material for his construction. “There’s a quarter-mile of open lands beyond the far palisades and the last native houses, pretty much the same as this end. The rice-fields don’t extend that far, though, sir. They approach the center of the village’s back walls.”

“Which would funnel us down as we fight our way in,” Sir Hugo mused. “And if we came up from the south?”

“We’d have to split the regiment on either side of them, sir. Or get channeled into the dykes.”

“Damme if I’ll play that game,” Sir Hugo snorted with derision as the white officers and their native subadars came to hear their orders.

“Gentlemen, we shall change direction right at the halt and go east, through the thin jungle south of these rice-paddies and fields,” Sir Hugo began. “Our ships shall be sailing into harbor from the west, so we must attack from the east, to create the greatest confusion. One gun battery here, Captain Fessenden, on the point ahead of us. Have your best jangli-admi emulate Kali’s Thuggees and silence them. Now.”

“Yes, Sir Hugo,” Fessenden whispered back.

“We shall form regimental front facing west here, in the jungle east of the village. Captain Chiswick, your light company to seaward on the new right flank. You get two of the light two-pounders. And I want you to silence this battery to your rear that your scouts discovered. Grenadier company in the center, with the bandsmen and the six-pounders spaced between companies. Coehom mortars two hundred paces to the rear of the grenadier company and prepared to support either wing. Major Gaunt, your half-battalion shall form our left, with Captain Fessenden’s light company on your extreme left. Supported by one two-pounder. The other three two-pounders placed between line companies across our general front. Be ready, Captain Addams, to shift your pieces to repel any threat. Our front shall be between three and four hundred yards, so we shall have to form in two ranks only. With the rising sun at our backs, we should have good shooting and they should not. Caught between our ships and our attack, we ought to create a little confusion for them, and their only line of retreat will be to their boats on the beach, or across our front through the paddies, then south into the jungle. Major Gaunt, you shall decimate them should they retreat south. Captain Chiswick, you shall threaten their boats. Once in position, prepare torches so you may set fire to as many as you are able as you advance down the beach. Do not allow the bastards to put their bow guns into play. There is a low palisade about this village. I shall not wish us to actually enter the damned place and get cut up in their little lanes. Better we incline right and seize the beach, though it may be necessary to at least gain control of the eastern palisade. Questions, gentlemen?”

“Once we incline towards the beach, sir, do we let the enemy flee into the paddies and jungle?” Major Gaunt asked.

“If they seem to be in great disorder, sir. You may find it necessary to torch the southern palisade and houses, then form your half-battalion as a screen to prevent any counterattack from that quarter, facing south, once we’ve taken the beach and the east wall,” Sir Hugo stated after a moment’s thought. ‘The fire should guard your back well enough, and discourage anyone left in the village.”

There were no more questions. Sir Hugo dug his watch from his breeches pocket and held it up close to his nose, swiveling in the faint moonlight to try and read it. “It lacks a quarter-hour to three, gentlemen. And the Navy tells me true dawn is at a quarter to six. False dawn, a quarter past five. I wish to be in position at least half an hour before that. Then let the Navy have first honors. Return to your companies. Good luck, God speed and let us be on our way.”