'We do, I hope. I shall want you to go to the Thirty-eighth and find out when they are to begin. They have orders to take a stockade about two leagues north. I intend going with them, but I'll first have to ask leave of Major Seagrass.' In the event, the interview with the military secretary proved an unusual exchange. By nine o'clock it was raining again, a steady downpour of the type that cruelly tested the builder's art. The myosd had built his rice store well, and Hervey remained dry while others in more exalted positions found themselves dodging leaks and inundations. Major Seagrass was abed complaining of cramps and a sore head when Hervey reported to him. His quarters were almost adjacent to the general's, but water dripped with the regularity of a ticking clock onto the floor near his head, and mosquitoes hovered like wasps about a fallen plum on an English summer's day.
Hervey assumed at once that Seagrass's indisposition would rule out his own hopes of slipping away from the headquarters to join the Thirty-eighth, but he was surprised to find instead that the major did not in the least object – although his manner of reasoning was startling. 'Go on, Hervey,' he moaned, hardly opening his eyes. 'You may as well be killed in the cannon's mouth as sickening and dying in this place!'
Hervey was appalled at the self-pity. Could a man sicken quite so quickly? He looked down at the plump outline of the military secretary concealed beneath the grey blanket, and he sighed. How was it that men were appointed to commands and to the staff who were so manifestly incapable? There was another way of looking at it, of course; and perhaps he ought not to be quite so contemptuous of Seagrass's words, for the major knew as well as he that sickening was not a soldier's business. Perhaps he was only lamenting his disability. In any case, Hervey himself had no intention of either sickening or succumbing to the cannon's roar. He took his leave, summoned Major Seagrass's servant to his quarters and sent him back with a phial of citronella. Hervey cursed himself and everything as he hastened to buckle on his sword and bind his pistols with oilskin. It was barely an hour since reveille, but the Thirty-eighth had been quicker off the mark than he fancied even his own troop would have been. Liffey's boats were already on the water and pulling through the deluge as if it were nothing but a spring shower. He ought to have known it, he muttered, fastening closed his lapels: men who had been cooped up for so long would be off at their quarry like hounds on to a hare. The door flew open. 'Sir, the Thirty-eighth-' 'Yes, Corporal Wainwright. I've just seen for myself. Are you ready?' 'Ay, sir.' They ran all the way to the river, slipping and sliding in the mud, drenched within a couple of minutes. Corporal Wainwright began hailing the boats. There was no one else about in that rain, so their object must have been plain enough, and it was not long before a cutter began pulling towards them.
The boats were packed with the Thirty-eighth's biggest men, the grenadier company, and there was scarcely space for one more, let alone two. But the grenadiers looked happy enough that an officer in another uniform – from the staff indeed – thought their enterprise worthy.
The grenadier captain was welcoming. 'It would not do for a dragoon to be overtaken by foot,' he said, smiling and holding out his hand. 'I am Richard Birch, sir.'
'Matthew Hervey, sir. And very pleased to join your ranks, though I fear my coat a little conspicuous in so much red.'
'I should worry not, Captain Hervey, for I have no doubt we shall all look the same within minutes of scrambling ashore.'
Seeing the colour of the grenadiers' belts, Hervey could only smile ruefully; the white pipeclay had run off onto their jackets and trousers, and even the red dye was not holding fast. 'I freely confess that your alacrity took me by surprise, though. It was but a few hours ago that the general gave the brigadier his orders.'
Captain Birch smiled. 'The colonel has had a company under arms since we landed. It was my good fortune that it was the grenadiers' turn for duty today.'
Hervey nodded. Even so, he thought, it was smart work.
'The rest of the battalion will follow. Our intention is to test the strength of the stockade and to try to take it by surprise.' Captain Birch had to raise his voice against the beating rain and the sailors' oar work, and his resolve seemed all the stronger thereby.
Hervey had no doubt that Birch's company would carry all but the most determined resistance before them – if they could make headway enough to reach their objective: so strong was the current that the sailors were red in the face despite the cooling drench. If ever they had need of the steamship to give them a tow it was now, but Commodore Peto had said he would not risk Diana until he was sure the banks were clear of cannon, and the river of fire boats.
Captain Birch's little flotilla was not without resource, however. The naval officer in command, one of Liffey's lieutenants, had as good an eye for water as Hervey prided himself he had for ground. As they reached the point of the big bend that hid Rangoon from further observation upstream (and, as Hervey observed, vice versa), and where the oars could shift no more water in that swollen flow, he signalled for the boats to turn full about and for hands to pull hard for the slack water by the left bank.
It was done in less than a minute, and very neatly thought Hervey – quicker, for sure, than trying to row broadside across the stream, as he would have attempted. The crews now put the boats about again and struck off with a will, for there was an obvious danger in going for the slacker water – too close to the bank, easy prey to musketry no matter how ill-aimed.
It was a tense quarter of an hour before the lieutenant was able to lead the boats to the middle of the river again, but there was no sign of life on either bank except for a solitary zebu that watched them pass, mournful- looking.
'Can we make room in the boat for him on the way back, Corporal?' came a voice from the bows.
Captain Birch replied. 'It will be yours if we take the stockade!'
There were cheers. Hervey smiled to himself. A beef dinner – not a promise that would excite men ordinarily to great feats of arms. But such was the miserable fare to which the expedition had been reduced that a pile of gold was worth nothing compared with boiled meat. He turned his cloak collar up once more against the rain.
'Pull hard now, lads; pull hard!' Though the lieutenant's voice carried easily to the other three boats, there was just something in his tone that coaxed the extra from his sailors rather than commanded it. It promised them something if they did pull hard rather than threaten if they did not. In truth, they needed little encouragement. Months confined, cruising the Bay of Bengal, and now the prospect of action. It would take more than the monsoon and the Rangoon river in spate to damp their ardour.
After half an hour's pulling hard, the boats swung closer to the right bank to clear a thick knot of mangrove that reached into the river like a giant's arm. And then their first sight of the enemy, or rather his work – a hundred yards distant on the opposite bank.
'Still a mile to go by my reckoning, at least,' said Captain Birch. 'An outpost do you think?'
Hervey had no more prior intelligence than Birch. 'I think it best to work on that assumption. It's not a thing to have at your backs as you go for Kemmendine – or, for that matter, in front of you as you come back.'
'My view precisely.' Birch cupped his hands to be heard above the fall of water. 'Mr Wilkinson!'
The lieutenant brought his boat within easier hailing distance, and without once losing the stroke.
'I want to put half the company ashore to assault yonder fort,' called Birch, gesturing with his pistol. 'The rest I would have Mr Ash work upstream to assault the Kemmendine stockade. We can go at it from two sides at once. But maintain a contact.'
Both officers signalled their understanding, and put their boats for the bank. ??? Out scrambled the grenadiers like ants swarming from a nest, with Hervey and Wainwright almost knocked over in the rush. There were no orders, no forming-up, just a headlong rush with the bayonet.
Shots rang out from the fort. At a hundred yards the musketry was well wide, though one ball sent a man's shako flying.
It continued as grenadiers splashed through the sodden padi, and still no nearer the mark. Hervey could hear the whizz of balls high above, or see the odd one spatter in front. He was surprised the Burmans stood their ground at all, for they could neither volley nor snipe.
Now they were under the bamboo walls, breathless. 'Up, up, get up!' shouted the corporals as grenadiers clambered onto each other's shoulders: the Burmans were only ten feet above them, and the redcoats wanted but a fingerhold to claim first blood.
But the Burmans wouldn't wait for them to gain the top. They leapt from the parapet and ran for the gate for all they were worth. The stockade was no longer a fort but a pen.
Over the parapet came the Thirty-eighth, wild-eyed and baying like, hounds on to their fox.
The gate wouldn't open, and then not wide enough. And then the press of Burmans was so great that it
