Rennick wriggled, looked again through his telescope, and then said judicially: 'I have to agree with you, sir.'
'All this military business baffles me,' Ramage suddenly admitted. 'I'd be lost the moment I went through the gateway at the Horse Guards. But as a sailor I can see we have one advantage.'
Rennick waited to hear about it and when Ramage said nothing, finally asked: 'What advantage had you in mind, sir?'
'We have the weather gage; with this south - east wind we are to windward of them.'
'But sir, I don't see how that can help us.'
'Oh, there are many advantages. We can breathe garlic over them. If they look hungry we can roast some beef over a bonfire and drive them mad with starvation as they smell the aroma. We can call out insults and be sure they hear every word.'
He scrambled back, followed by Rennick, and learned that all the lieutenants had managed to get some sleep after arriving at Sint Kruis, and they reported that except for sentries their companies were also sleeping, the seamen quite cheerfully curling up on the hard ground and in the blazing sun, the only requirement being a small pile of rocks to protect them from French fire. Sentries squatting behind larger piles were also watching for any of their own shipmates who while asleep rolled over beyond the shelter of the rock piles.
The lieutenants soon received their orders, grinning at their simplicity, and Ramage, taking one last look at the French positions, glanced over to his right and saw that the wind was still steady in strength and direction, a breeze from the east, with an extra gust every few minutes that was just strong enough to make the dust rise up in little eddies. Yes, it was east now, but one could never be sure it would not back to the north - east or veer to the south - east. There was very little cloud; a few cotton balls whose whiteness was emphasized by the hard blue of the sky. It was strange to be lying here on earth, smelling all the strange odours that went with life on land. The sharp sweetness of thyme, the spicy smells of plants and shrubs whose names he did not know.
He dosed the telescope and slid it into a pocket. The French seemed to be dozing; they bad not - so far, anyway - put out sharpshooters to keep up a hail of musket fire every time a Briton moved. Were they short of muskets, powder or shot? Surely not every man had bolted from the bonfire leaving his gun behind? Perhaps, but at least each man would have a cutlass, and this was the sort of situation which must be settled finally with the blade of a sword, the edge of a tomahawk or the point of a pike.
The wind was freshening, there was no doubt about that, and the cotton - ball clouds were swelling up with the warmth of the sun. In half an hour, with the land heating up, the breeze would be brisk as the Trade winds set in for the day. He wanted no more than that, of course. It had taken only five minutes to tell the lieutenants what he wanted done and to make sure they all understood. Some men might be killed or wounded but once again, if they obeyed orders they would have the advantage of surprise, the invisible armour which had so often protected them in the past.
Half an hour gave plenty of time for the preparations. In an hour's time, when the small hand of the watch had moved a twelfth of the way round the dial, the whole thing should be over, one way or the other: either the rebels and Frenchmen would control the island (in which case they'd hang the Governor and most of the Calypsos would be dead) or the bodies of the rebels and Frenchmen would be piled up at the top of the slope, and waggish seamen would refer to the Battle of Sint Kruis Baai. Ramage rubbed his bristly jaw and wished he could shave and dean his teeth.
At first glance it looked as if it would be a repetition of the previous night's attack, except it was broad daylight and instead of being in front of a bonfire the enemy were hiding at the top of a sloping hill. Ramage was lying flat on the hard ground with, from the feel of it, the same sharp stones digging into the same soft parts of his body. Jackson was to his left and Stafford to his right, and the only difference from the previous night's attack was that the companies were grouped evenly on each side, so that his own company was in the middle to form the vanguard, the sharp point of a wedge driving up the hill in - he glanced at his watch yet again - eleven minutes' time.
Now he was holding his watch in front of him, impatiently staring at the dial, unsure whether to regard the slowly - moving hands as friends or enemies. The two pistols pressed against his stomach, the belt hooks held them securely against the waistband of his breeches. His cutlass was beside him, ready to be snatched up. His feet throbbed, the glare made his cheek muscles ache from continually squinting. Insects buzzed or crawled while the air shimmered from the heat, the wind only moving not cooling it. There was no sign of movement up the hill; the French were having a siesta, no doubt, except for their sentries.
Ten minutes to go. They would be hungry and very thirsty, those Frenchmen. Were they waiting for a vessel to come into the bay to take them off? In theory they could, of course, be penned in until thirst forced them to surrender, but in practice many would escape in darkness.
Eight minutes. Some could scramble down the small cliff at night and into the water, and swim for a hundred yards or so, then come ashore beyond the encircling British. Perhaps half of them could swim - that was the usual proportion of swimmers in a British ship.
Seven minutes. Of course, the idea of keeping the French trapped up the hill until they surrendered for lack of water would mean quite a feat of endurance for the British, too, because they had only a quart each. A quart, rather, less what they had already drunk this morning, although they could get more. < Six minutes. This bloody soldiering: how he hated it. Heat, dust, physical weariness, the sheer length of time an action took. If you wanted to move from here to there you walked - marched, rather. If it rained you marched through mud. Then, as night came on, you pitched camp in more mud and at daybreak put on your wet clothes and marched again. You could and often did get soaking wet at sea, but once you came off watch you could sleep in the dry and put on dry clothes.
Five minutes. A faint and passing smell of burning. Jackson had noticed it and glanced round him from behind his little cairn of rocks, watching for telltale smoke. Ramage peered round his own cairn and searched the hillside. No movement, and the hillside looked so peaceful one half expected to see a few goats walking delicately among the stones and bushes, standing up on their back legs to wrench at the higher leaves of bushes.
Four minutes. The lack of goats was of course the indication that human beings were hiding up that hill: there were goats over on the flat land to the left and to the right, goats variously quartered in white and black, brown and black, white and brown. The kids born three or four months ago were quite large now, and he realized he had become accustomed to their almost human bleating.
Three minutes. In fact, they sounded like shrill - voiced wives nagging their husbands, or children bleating complaints to their mothers.
Two minutes. They were nimble, though, and often skittish, jumping into the air with all four legs stiff, as though playing a game.
One minute. Jackson was watching him now, poised, tensed and with a white cloth ready in his hand. Ramage said, quietly: Three - quarters of a minute . . . half a minute ... a quarter of a minute . . . now!'
Jackson leapt to his feet, waving the white cloth so that all the men in the eight companies - and the French, if they were looking - could see him; then he dropped flat again. With luck he had given the signal without being spotted by dozing sentries and certainly without noise.
Now three men were running forward from each company, each with a blazing torch in his hand. They ran - like nimble goats, Ramage realized, because each had spent the last quarter of an hour deciding his targets and his route - to bushes and withering shrubs, patches of dried grass, to cacti that had fallen years ago and were now long - dried husks - and held the flaming torches against them. Within seconds the base of the parched hillside had a line of flame sputtering, spurting and then driving up it, fanned by the wind and leaping, flames a few inches high growing to six feet in as many seconds. The smoke as the few green bushes were scorched and then burned by dried shrubs drifted up the hill, like the smoke of a continuous broadside; the crackling of burning twigs and boughs increased until it sounded as though a giant was crashing through a jungle.
Then Ramage realized that he could not see the upper half of the hill: clouds of billowing smoke now covered it and already the flames had swept over several yards, leaving an ever - widening scorched black band which was advancing up the hill as though pulled by the flames.
A wind eddy made a momentary gap in the smoke and Ramage caught sight of several groups of men running about quite aimlessly at the top of the hill. He stood up and shouted to his left and then to his right: 'Stand by, men; they might make a dash for it any moment'
Immediately the seamen and Marines knelt behind their piles of stones, muskets ready, aiming up the hill into the smoke, so that it would take only a moment's twitch of the muzzle to take precise aim.
Suddenly a section of the hillside seemed to move and he saw figures weaving about in the smoke as they ran down the hill. As some reached thinner patches of smoke Ramage could see they were trying to protect their eyes, and some had rags tied across their faces, probably to try to filter out some of the smoke before it went down into their lungs. But they were clutching muskets and cutlasses; they were men about to fight, not surrender.
With a fearful deliberation Rennick's Marines fired, the muskets delivering what seemed a ragged volley until you realized that no man fired until he had taken proper aim.
Now no one moved up there in the smoke. There were two dozen or more bodies sprawled just this side of the line of flames: Rennick had let them come down dear of the smoke before allowing his men to fire.
Wagstaffe's company would fire at the next target while Rennick's reloaded - and yes, here were another ragged group of the enemy, coughing and spluttering while they ran, firing pistols wildly and yelling as they waved their swords. Two or three, probably blinded by the smoke, sprawled flat on their faces, tripped by rocks or the roots of burned bushes.
There was a crash of musketry as Wagstaffe's men fired, and only two or three of the enemy kept on running - not, Ramage realized, because they intended to attack a couple of hundred British, but because they had no choice: they were escaping the smoke and flame of the hill rather than braving the fire of the British muskets. Ramage was just about to order half a dozen of his own men to pick them off when more muskets fired from Wagstaffe's company. The men were coolly obeying orders, that much was sure I Lacey's company would take the next group, but if there was a great rush down the hill all the companies would fire. And, Ramage realized, there was probably no one in command of the rebels and privateersmen at the top of the hill; groups were just bolting when they found the smoke and heat became too much.
The line of flames, growing crooked now as stronger eddies of wind drove it on, leaping gaps when sheets of sparks flew into the air, was soon two - thirds of the way up the hill, and the flames themselves were in places six or eight feet high as bushes blazed, their boughs quickly turning to flaming scarecrows.
A few men ran down the hill - too few, Ramage felt; only madmen would come in such small numbers. 'Stand by, men!' he shouted. This may be the - '
But before he could finish the flames were momentarily hidden as scores of men came racing down the hill, like a great centipede moving sideways. Lacey's company fired at once - they were already aiming into the flames, waiting for targets to appear, and Ramage could see many of the leading men falling, followed a few moments later by a score shot down by Baker's company. There was too much noise to shout an order and anyway his own thirty men knew it was their turn after the muskets close on their left had fired.
Jackson's musket kicked and then Stafford's, and both men were tugging at their pistols. Ramage grasped his, cocked them, and waited a few moments as the muskets of the next company - that would be Kenton's men - and then the next, Aitken's, fired almost simultaneously.
The effect was ghastly: the enemy appeared to run into an invisible wall and collapse: barely twenty men were still running, the rest had fallen, some among the flames, others in the smouldering debris this side of the flames. Some reached the unburnt shrubs and grass six or seven yards beyond before being cut down.
Ramage realized that neither Jackson nor Stafford had fired their pistols, and his own were still cocked and loaded, but unused. Please, please, let a man come
