H.M.S. COCKEREL

sticks of smoke-tinged at the bottom, just atop the hill, with dying embers, with a ruddy orange loom-like flickering, like a lighthouse's loom just over the horizon's knife edge.

'Hola!' Don Luis shouted, raspily enthused, and his bombardiers began to cheer and dance, to caper round the deck and in the wells in triumph.

'We did it!' Lewrie cried, ready to dance himself. 'We hit 'em! Blew 'em to hell, by Jesus!'

Bumm-bumm-brubrumbumm, more secondary explosions thundered, and the hills quaked to the destruction, and they could feel it in their bones and on their faces, a tremendous distant blast that rattled the earth, the shoals, and transmitted itself through the waters. They'd holed out, not on the mortars themselves, but in their magazine, where fixed and kited shells had been stored. Too many of them, fixed ready to fire, kited too close together, and even being sunk into the earth, protected by wet hides and hair-cloth, hadn't saved them.

Lewrie dashed down to the gun deck where Spanish, French and English sailors cavorted and clapped, tossing their caps or hats into the air and huzzah-ing.

'Marvelous!' Lewrie told Esquevarre when he reached him. 'Magnifico! Marveloso! Genius!'

Esquevarre was thumping de Crillart on the back, de Crillart was bestowing Gallic kisses on those lean aristocratic cheeks, and Don Luis tweaked Charles' nose playfully as he stepped back to clasp Lewrie to him and dance him around the deck in a stumbling bear hug.

Must be something in the water, Lewrie thought, not exactly that pleased to be bussed and hugged by a man; bloody foreigners!

'Charles, tell him we'll celebrate,' Lewrie called over Comandante Esquevarre's shoulder as they tripped past him in a shuffling circle. 'Vino! Plus vin? My treat! We'll splice the main-brace… uh, splice-o las main-brace-o? Si, amigo, si, Don Luis? Bueno!'

By sundown, they heaved to short stays on the kedge and broke it free of the rocky bottom, heaved then to short stays forrud on the bower and sailed back to the fortified jetties. The larger three-gun masked-battery's fire had sputtered out by then, daunted perhaps by the sudden destruction of its fellow, and the Little Road became peaceful. Sweeps had to be used as the wind faded to puzzling little zephyrs across the lake-smooth waters. Once tied up, instead of boiling salt rations in steep tubs, appropriated charcoal braziers were lit atop the jetty and fresh meat was roasted. Wine and beer were doled out, the rum ration was issued, and fresh bread and butter appeared from the town for all hands.

De Crillart, Scott, Esquevarre and Lewrie left the ship, repaired to a restaurant and celebrated-rather heavily, in point of fact, in all respects-wine, cuisine, music-and ended up being run out after they called for dancing girls. Esquevarre couldn't quite understand a restaurant that didn't have people who could play the guitar or do the flamenco-nor 'do' the appreciative patrons who flung coins to them.

' France,' de Crillart translated haltingly on their way back aboard. ' 'E say, mon ami… ve are la nation du… 'tight-arses'? Comment?'

The next morning, with a monumental head, Lewrie arose to the softfiimphing of thunder. He flung off his blanket and staggered to a water butt, his mouth as sour and dry as desiccated ordure. There was a knock on the door to his tiny cabin.

'What?' he croaked.

'Sir? Midshipman Spendlove, sir.'

'Enter.'

Spendlove came inside, dry as a bone; Lewrie expected rain, with that far-off thunder. He was too bleary to puzzle it out.

'Excuse me, sir, but… the Frogs are at it again. There's a midshipman aboard from Admiral Goodall, sir. He says we're to stand out into the Little Road, with all despatch.'

'Uhuh,' Lewrie nodded heavily. 'Very well, Mister Spendlove. Do you wake the others, and I'll be on deck directly. Warn Porter to have the hands roused and at stations for shoving off.'

'Aye, aye, sir.'

Already at it again, he wondered as Spendlove departed; don't the Frogs ever learn their lessons? Wondering, too, if, after the celebrations of the past evening, they could hit a bull in the arse with a bass viol this day.

Chapter 8

T he Colossus 74 came in from Cagliani with 350 Sardinian soldiers. On the 28th, Bedford and a Sardinian ship fetched 800 more. A convoy arrived from Spain with 4,000 foot, horse and artillery, and on the same day, two Neapolitan liners brought in 2,000 reinforcements, and a Marshal Forteguerri to command them. There was some problem with Forteguerri-he would not subordinate his men to the Spanish military commander, Rear-Admiral Gravina, insisting that Naples ' treaty was with Great Britain only, and he would only take orders from British officers.

Fortunately, Brigadier General Lord Mulgrave had come to Toulon with a detachment of British troops, a single battalion of one regiment, which raised British troop strength to about 1,500. Forteguerri considered himself under Mulgrave's command. There was talk that one more British general was coming, Major General O'Hara, with another regiment. There was also talk that a Spanish general had been appointed, and would be arriving soon; someone senior to O'Hara.

There was a tremendous scare on the night of 30 September. It was a night of thick fog and swirling mist. So far, the only action had been skirmishes between cavalry vedettes to east and west, some desultory artillery duels between light field guns outside the perimeters of Toulon. The skirmishes had become a little fiercer, as more Republican troops from Marseilles and the Army of Italy arrived; and troops in the heights behind Toulon had reported the presence of French units at Jourris near Fort Valette, patrols probing in the valley of the Faviere River, down towards the nor'east pass at Argeliers towards open ground. Yet the artillery duels in the Little Road were the constant, the only serious action so far.

Suddenly, though, there were French regiments in the hills the night of the 30th, popping up from God knew where, scaling goat tracks thought unscalable, carrying light field guns up the steep, crumbling mountain paths. They erupted, without a shred of warning, upon Spanish troops on the Heights of Pharon, the eastern half of the northern massif above Toulon! In the confusion, the Spanish were routed from their positions, run pell-mell down from the Heights of Pharon in the dark and the fog, abandoning all but their personal weapons, leaving the Republicans with fortifications and heavy guns, which looked down upon the very heart of the enclave and the Great Road.

It looked very much like a disaster that night to Lewrie and his men, taking a much-needed rest from bombarding hidden batteries by dint of a fog so thick they could not spot the fall of shot. Spatters of gunfire could be heard far off above the basin where Zele was tied to the jetty. Spatters turned to ripping volleys of musketry, punctuated with tiny flat bangs of 'grasshopper' guns and lightweight mountain howitzers, and dread rumours passed up and down the jetty were two-a-

penny.

Yet in the morning, Brigadier General Mulgrave, Spanish Rear-Admiral Gravina and the game Captain Elphinstone led a hastily mustered force back up to the Heights of Pharon- Spanish troops eager for the restoration of their honour, grim British veterans experienced in the bayonet and drilled to professional perfection, the newly arrived Sardinians and Neapolitans, and sailors and Marines from the fleet with boarding pikes, pistols and their fearsome cutlasses.

They scaled the heights on tracks no less steep than the French had managed, slipped and slid on the dry, gravelly, crumbling soil and suffered miniature avalanches. And after forming quickly upon narrow level places, rushed the trenches and redoubts. Nearly 2,000 Frenchmen had taken the Heights of Pharon, but only 500 were in any condition to flee after they were overwhelmed and broken. The Coalition lost eight killed, seventy-two wounded (one of them Rear-Admiral Gravina, shot in the knee) and two missing, with forty-eight Spanish hauled off as prisoners earlier.

A little scare after all, the matter was quickly handled, and any dread of Republican rabble was blown to the four winds, if they were that easy to rout! The enclave breathed easier for a time,