now well alight.
He said, 'Get to the gates, Corporal, call back your pickets. Fast as you can.'
The fuses hissed into life, somehow obscene in the gloom, like serpents.
They seemed to be burning at a terrible speed, he thought.
lie clapped Stockdale on the shoulder. 'Time for us.'
Another ball smashed into the fort and hurled a swivel gun -into the air like a stick.
Two more sharp explosions came from the causeway, and he knew the cannon had been destroyed.
Musket-fire too, remote and without effect at this range. But they would be coming soon.
They ran out into the blinding sunlight, past discarded boxes and blazing stores.
Two loud bangs and then splintering woodwork flying above the parapet told Bolitho that Brown's men must have worked like demons to get their guns up the hill.
The corporal yelled, 'Seargeant Shears is comin' at th' double, sir! The whole bloody rebel army's on their 'eels!'
Bolitho saw the running marines even as one fell headlong and stayed down.
Soldiers were wading and struggling across the causeway too, firing and reloading as they came.
Bolitho measured the distance. It was taking too long. Round one wall of the fort, along the sloping beach where the jolly boat was waiting. Bolitho noticed that the crew had
their oars out, backing water, watching the land, mesmerized. Sergeant Shears panted down the beach, his men behind him.
'Into the boat!' Bolitho looked up at the tower, their flag still above it.
Then he realized he was alone on the beach, that Stockdale had his arm and was hauling him over the gunwale as a nervous-looking lieutenant ordered, 'Give way all!'
Minutes later, as the jolly boat bounded over the first lazy roller, some soldiers appeared below the fort, firing at the boat, the shots going everywhere. One hit the side and threw droplets of water across the panting marines.
Shears muttered, 'I'd get the hell out of here, if I was them, sir!'
They were midway between the beach and the sloop when the explosion blasted the day apart. It was not the sound, but the sight of the complete fort being hurled skywards in thousands of shattered fragments which remained fixed in Bolitho's reeling mind, long after the last piece had fallen. As the smoke continued to billow across the island, Bolitho saw there was nothing there but one huge, black wilderness.
All the prisoners had been taken off after all, and he wondered what they must be thinking at this moment. And young Huyghue, too. Would he remember the part he had played, or would he think only of his own plight?
When he turned his head he saw the sloop's masts and yards swaying above him, willing hands waiting to assist them on board.
He looked at Stockdale, and their eyes met. As if to say, once again, we survived. Once more fate stayed her hand.
He heard the sloop's young commander, Cunningham, shouting irritably, 'Lively there! We've not got all damn day!'
Bolitho smiled wearily. He was back.
Captain Gilbert Brice Pears sat at his table, his strong fingers interlaced in front of him, while his clerk arranged five beautifully written copies of the Fort Exeter raid for his signature.
Around him Trojan's great hull creaked and clattered to a stiff quarter sea, but Pears barely noticed. He had read the original report most, carefully, missing nothing, and had questioned D'Esterre on the more complex details of the attack and withdrawal.
Nearby, his lean body angled to the deck, and silhouetted against the spray-dappled windows, Cairns waited patiently for some comment.
Pears had fretted at the delay in reaching the rendezvous after their feint attack towards Charles Town. The wind's sudden change, a total absence of news and the general lack of faith he held in Coutts' plan added to his worst fears. Even Coutts must have sensed his uneasiness, and had despatched the frigate to assist Spite's recovery of the landing party. Pears had watched Trojan's seamen and marines climbing back aboard after they had eventually regained contact. The tired, haggard, yet somehow defiant marines, what was left of them, and the filthy seamen. D'Esterre and Bolitho, with young Couzens waving to his fellow midshipmen, half laughing, partly weeping.
Fort Exeter was no more. He hoped it had all been worthwhile, but secretly doubted it.
He nodded grimly to his clerk. 'Very well, Teakle. I'll sign
the damn things.' He glanced at Cairns. 'Must have been a
bloody business. Our people did well, it seems.'
Pears glared through the dripping windows at the blurred
shape of the flagship, close-hauled on the same tack, her courses
and topsails filling to the wind.
'Now this, blast his eyes!'
Cairns followed his glance, knowing better than most how his captain felt.
It had taken six days for the ponderous ships of the line to rendezvous with Vanquisher and Spite. Then a further two while their admiral had interviewed the senior officers of his little squadron, watched an interrogation of the disarmingly cheerful French prisoner and had considered the information which Paget had gleaned at the fort.
Now, instead of returning to New York for further orders, and to obtain replacements for the dead and wounded, Trojan was to proceed further south. Pears' orders were to seek out and finally destroy an island base which, if half of the intelligence gathered from the prisoners was to be trusted, was the most important link in the supply chain for arms and powder for Washington 's armies.
At any other time Pears would have welcomed it as the chance to use his ship as he had always wanted. To make up for the humiliating setbacks and delays, the months of patrol duty or the boredom of being at anchor in harbour.
The flagship Resolute would be leaving them shortly and would return to Sandy Hook, taking Coutts' impressive reports to the commander-in-chief, along with the prisoners and most of the badly wounded seamen and marines.
The youthful rear-admiral had taken the unprecedented step, in Pears' view, of appointing his flag captain, Lamb, as acting officer-in-charge of the inshore squadron, while he, Coutts, transferred his flag to Trojan to pursue the attack in the south.
Coutts probably guessed that if he returned with his own flagship the commander-in-chief, in connivance with or under direct orders from the government 'expert', Sir George Helpman, would be ordered elsewhere before he could see his strategy brought to a successful end.
There was a tap at the door.
'Enter.'
Pears looked up, watching Bolitho's face from the moment he walked into the great cabin, his cocked hat tucked under one arm.
He looked older, Pears decided. Strained, but more confident in some way. There were lines at the corners of his mouth, but the grey eyes were steady enough. Like those battered marines. Defiant.
Pears noticed how he was holding his shoulder. It was probably stinging badly from that sabre's quick touch, more so from the surgeon's attentions. But in his change of clothing Bolitho appeared restored.
Pears said, 'Good to see you in one piece.' He waved to a chair and waited for his clerk to leave. 'You'll hear soon enough. We're to stand further south, to seek out and destroy an enemy supply headquarters there.' He grimaced. 'French, to all accounts.'
Bolitho sat down carefully. His body clean, his clothes fresh and strangely unfamiliar, he was just beginning to feel the slackening of tension.
They had been good to him. Cairns, the Sage, Dalyell. All of them. And it felt free to be here, in this groaning, overcrowded hull.
He had no idea what was happening, until now. After the swift passage aboard the sloop, the sadness of seeing more survivors die and be buried over the side, he had found little time, other than to scribble his own
