The French Admiral

'Real coffee?'

'The genuine article,' Burgess boasted.

'Then I accept, with pleasure.'

He was led into camp behind the draw, where life was lived more openly than in the forward face of the position. Tents were slung under the trees or stretched like awnings over lean-tos for shelter and concealment. Very small fires burned, with a lot less smoke than Alan could credit.

'Brother, look who I found tramping in the woods,' Burgess said as they got near the shelter he shared with his sibling. 'I promised him some coffee if he'd bide awhile with us.'

Alan was made welcome under their rude shelter while his mount was led off by an orderly. He shed his tarpaulin coat and sat down on a log before the fire, which was damned welcome after a morning in the cool damp. A large mug of coffee was shoved into his hands and when he took a sip he made the happy discovery that it had been laced liberally with brandy, which made him sigh in pleasure.

While he took his ease, he explained where he was set up what his errand was, and related his experiences with the Hessians.

'Poor bastards,' the elder Chiswick said. 'Sent over here as a ready source of money for their prince or whatever he is, no idea of the country or what the fighting is about. Even have to supply their own rifles.'

'Diddn't look like yours,' Alan commented.

'No, it's more like a rifled musket or one of these Rebel Pennsylvania rifles,' Burgess told him, adding a top-up of brandy into the mug. 'Poor work, but more serviceable than what the Rebels have.'

'I thought the Rebels had a wickedly good gun.'

'Damned long ranged, and most of 'em can shoot the eyes out of a squirrel at two hundred paces.' Burgess shrugged. 'But, it's slow to load because of the rifling in the barrel, a lot slower than a musket, and the stock's too light to melee with hand-to-hand.'

'Won't take any sort of bayonet, either, unless you shove a plug down the barrel,' Governour stuck in. 'And then where are you?'

'Then why make them?' Alan asked.

'Because they were light enough to carry in the woods, accurate enough to drop game with one shot when that's all the chance you get to feed your family, and long ranged enough to avoid having to sneak right up on a deer or what have you. It was never meant for a military use. You put a line of Rebel riflemen up against a line of regular infantry and you'll get your much-vaunted riflemen slaughtered every time once the regulars go in with the bayonet,' Governour confidently said. 'We and the Jagers can fire three, four times as fast as they… and give 'em cold steel after our last volley.'

Governour and his younger brother were good-looking fellows. However, even the younger Burgess had a ruthless look. They both had sandy hair and hazel eyes, but those eyes could glint as hard as agate, so Alan assumed they truly knew the heart of the matter when it came to skewering and slaughtering Rebels.

'So I may depend on the Jagers?' Alan said.

'Absolutely,' Governour assured him. 'They're highly disciplined and crack shots, near as good woodsmen as we. And Heros von Muecke can be relied on to stand his ground like Horatius at the Bridge. He's a bit hard to take —thinks he's some German blood royal and can get his back up over the slightest thing—but we've skirmished beside him before, and he and his men have always been bloody marvels.'

'That is reassuring, since I don't know the first thing about land fighting,' Alan said, leaning back on the wall of the lean-to. He described where his battery was and how the redan was laid out, until he began to notice how the Chiswick brothers were both frowning.

'Tis a bad position,' Burgess said with finality.

'Why?' Alan asked, once more beholden to someone for knowledge and slightly resenting the necessity of it, of being so unprepared for what he was being called upon to do. Damme, I was getting right good at the nautical cant, and here I am an innocent lamb again, he thought.

'We rode over that last week, Alan,' Burgess said. 'You only have what… a ten-, fifteen-foot rise to your front, and you're set in the open before that last bit of ground. Steep hills on either side, higher than you but not unscalable.'

'A regular officer would think unscalable,' Governour spat.

'Rebels'd be all over you like fleas on a dog. Come at night, most like. I would,' Burgess said.

'No way down the back side, and if you do get down, you're stuck on one bank of the creek with no way down, or across,' Governour added.

'Never get your guns out of there if you have to withdraw,' added the younger Chiswick.

'Never get your own arse out of there, either.'

'Well, what about you and your troops, then?' Alan sputtered.

'We cover both sides of the defile in a crossfire, and the front of both little fingers of the ridge.' Governour sketched in the dirt with some kindling from the small fire. 'If overwhelmed, we fall back and skirmish to the marshes of the creek to the north-east. We can fall back on the fortified parallel on the river or into either the Star Redoubt or the Fusilier's Redoubt. Really, I don't know what the officer who sited you was thinking of,' he concluded, tossing the stick into the fire.

'There is no reason to cover that ground, 'cause no one could ever use it.'

'Because it is too steep and wooded on the east slope, and goes right into the deep ravines of the creek,' Alan said, seeing the sense of it. 'They could not bridge it, or find boats to cross it.'

'Exactly.' Governour smiled briefly. 'Might find sites for mortar or howitzer batteries in there, but you'd be much better placed up here with us. If they did set up in there, we could butcher their flanks.'

'But the ground is so boggy now, it would take fifty mules to get one gun shifted.' Alan groaned. 'Mayhap those army guns could move in all this, but mine would not.'

'We could make a strong-point with our battalion and Lewrie's guns, Governour,' Burgess enthused. 'We would not have to fall back as we planned if assaulted. And with von Muecke's Jagers to flesh us out…'

'Aye,' Governour said, getting to his feet stiffly. 'Do you entertain our naval compatriot while I see Colonel Hamilton about this. He could get the battery resited for us.'

Lieutenant Chiswick shrugged into his coat and squared his hat, then stalked away on his long legs to see their battalion commander while Burgess lifted the lid of a stewpot.

'Have you breakfasted, Alan?' he asked.

'My man Cony snared a rabbit last night. Yes.'

'Mollow shot a deer yesterday. Care for some venison?'

'Well, I'd not say no to a slice or two,' Alan beamed.

It did indeed take nearly four dozen mules to shift the guns to a better site over the next two days, after Lieutenant Colonel Hamilton had made his protestations to Cornwallis's aides. The rain still came down in sullen showers, clearing for a while and warming up just enough to make everyone steam below gray skies, then starting in again for an hour or two. Alan was constantly shifting into his tarpaulin coat and out of it, constantly checking the priming of his pistols and his musket, and learning the value of an oily rag wrapped around a firelock, or the worth of a whittled pinewood plug in the muzzles to keep the loaded charge fairly dry. At a suggestion of Governour's, Alan sought out a wagon-wright to see if he could get field-gun wheels and axles attached to his gun trucks, with some longer timbers to serve as trails and limbers. There was only one dry path across the marshes to their rear, the one the guns had negotiated the week before, and he was damned if he would surrender his artillery for the lack of proper carriages when finally placed in a position he could hope to evacuate.

They tore down the abatis and loaded them on muleback to be redug into the new position, shoveled down the ramparts into the shallow trench and filled in the magazines and dugouts, leaving only bare patches of earth to show that they had ever been there. The area looked like mass graves when they were finished destroying the redan, and the ease with which it went down gave everyone a squeamish, impermanent feeling.

There came a time, eventually, when Alan could have killed for a clean set of linen, and there was little that Cony could do to keep his uniform presentable in the field. Alan asked permission to go back to Desperate for some fresh things from his sea-chest, and it was granted. Burgess was