Buccaneer (34 page)

‘Put your hands behind your heads!’ Hector screamed in Spanish at the prisoners. They looked at him in disbelief. Hector realised that, without a firearm, he must have looked a harmless figure, with only a cutlass at his waist and the slow match coiled around his wrist. ‘Do as he says,’ growled Jezreel. He spoke in English but his giant size and fierce scowl made it clear what he wanted. The prisoners hurriedly obeyed.

From within the gateway came the sound of more gunfire, a lot of it. Watling’s advance guard was encountering furious resistance. A man came scurrying out from the town, bent low to dodge stray bullets. ‘There are more barricades inside,’ he gasped. ‘The Spaniards have built them at every street corner. Watling says we need grenades to clear them.’

‘I’ll go,’ said Jezreel. He unfastened the flap to his satchel and hurried off behind the messenger. Hector turned back to face the prisoners. ‘No one move!’ he ordered. Looking around, he saw a musket lying on the ground where it had been dropped by one of the defenders. He picked it up and took a quick glance at the lock. It appeared to be primed and loaded. He pointed it at the captives.

Minutes passed and there was a muffled explosion from inside the town, not far away. Hector presumed the grenade had done its work, for there was a lull in the sounds of fighting. Then almost at once the crackle of musket fire resumed.

‘We need reinforcements! Come on ahead!’ Duill had appeared in the entrance to the town. He was dishevelled and streaked with grime. There was a look of urgency in his movements.

‘On whose orders?’ Sharpe snapped.

‘The general! Watling orders the rearguard to enter the town!’

‘And what about the prisoners?’

Duill swore at him and for a moment Hector thought that the second quartermaster would strike Sharpe in the face. ‘Leave a couple of men in charge of them,’ he snarled. ‘There’s no time to argue.’

Sharpe turned to Hector. ‘You and Jacques stay to guard the prisoners,’ he ordered. ‘Dan, leave your grenades here and go back up the hill. Your task is to keep a lookout for any extra Spanish troop reinforcements arriving. Let us know if you see anything that poses a risk. The rest of you follow me.’ At an unhurried walk he set off towards the sound of the musketry.

A groan came from Hector’s right. It was the buccaneer with the wounded face. He had slumped against the barricade and, with his forearm, was trying to staunch the flow of blood from his ravaged face. Hector set down his musket and hurried across to him. ‘Here, let me bandage that,’ he said and reached for his satchel before he realised that it did not contain medicines and bandages, but grenades. The corpse of a Spanish soldier was lying on the ground nearby. The dead man had worn a cotton scarf around his throat. Hector reached down and removed the neck cloth, then began to knot the bandage around the wounded man’s head. Behind him, he heard Jacques let out a curse. Hector spun round in time to see at least twenty of the Spanish prisoners running away. ‘Halt!’ he shouted. ‘Halt or I fire.’ But he knew it was a bluff. There was no way that he and Jacques could restrain them.

‘Not much point in hanging about here,’ said Jacques. ‘We should see if we can help Jezreel and the others.’

The two of them cautiously made their way into the town. At the first crossroads they came upon the wreckage of another barricade. It had been made of upturned carts, planks and old furniture. There was a gap where Watling’s men must have forced their way through. On the far side lay more dead men, both Spanish and buccaneer. A second crossroads and another barricade, and this time the buccaneers were using it as a breastwork themselves, taking shelter behind it, then standing up and taking shots at the enemy.

Hector spotted Jezreel. He was aiming his flintlock towards a nearby roof top, and a second later he pulled the trigger. A Spanish arquebusier ducked back out of sight. ‘Missed him,’ grunted Jezreel. He extracted the ramrod from under the barrel, spat on a rag to moisten it and began to clean out the gun. ‘We can’t keep up this rate of fire. Our weapons are getting fouled.’

Watling was in a doorway, conferring with Duill. The two men beckoned to Sharpe and spoke with him for a few moments before Sharpe came running back, tapped Hector on the shoulder, and shouted to him, ‘Collect together the rearguard, and as many men as you can. We must take the fort. Until we secure our flank, we are exposed. The others will deal with the town itself.’

Hector passed the word to Jacques and soon they and some thirty men, including Jezreel, were fighting their way down a narrow street. Ahead of them, Spanish militiamen could be seen falling back, retreating to the safety of the fort. As the last of them passed through the wooden gate, it was heaved shut, and a fusillade from loopholes in the wall forced the attackers to take cover.

Bartholomew Sharpe ducked back into an alleyway and leaned against a mud wall, catching his breath. ‘Time for another of our famous grenades,’ he said. Hector realised that to this moment he had not fired a single shot but had been swept along in the general confusion. He looked down at his left wrist, and was surprised to see red burn marks on his skin where the lit end of the match had scorched him. In the chaos of battle he had never noticed the pain. He opened the flap of his satchel and took out a grenade. The little bomb looked very ill-made. The covering of hardened pitch had softened in the heat and lost its shape. Several of the half musket bullets had fallen loose. The fuse, a short length of slow match an inch long, was pressed over to one side and stuck into the pitch like the bent wick of a candle. Carefully he prised the fuse straight.

‘Try to throw it over the gate! And good luck!’ muttered Sharpe as he backed away. Hector brought the glowing end of the slow match across to the fuse and touched the two ends together. He saw the grenade’s fuse begin to burn and, forcing himself to stay calm, started to count to ten very slowly. He stepped out from cover and as Watling had instructed, tossed the grenade, keeping his arm straight. The bomb flew through the air and, to his chagrin, thudded against the wall of the fort at least a foot beneath the top, dropped down, and lay on the road.

‘Beware bomb!’ he shouted and leaped back into shelter, pressing himself into a doorway. Several moments passed and nothing happened. Cautiously he peered out, and saw the grenade lying in the dust. He could not see any smoke rising from it. The device had failed to work. He fumbled in his satchel for a second grenade.

‘Don’t be in a hurry. Let’s use our heads about this,’ said Sharpe, who had reappeared beside him. ‘You and Jacques follow me.’

He pushed open the door to the house and led the two of them inside. A buccaneer was already in the room, kneeling by the window and aiming his musket towards the fort. Sharpe looked up. The ceiling was made of narrow poles laid horizontally, above them a layer of palm fronds.

‘There must be a way onto the roof,’ Sharpe said. He crossed the room and pulled open the back door. ‘Just as I thought, there’s a ladder.’ He began to climb its rungs with Hector and Jacques at his heels.

Emerging on the flat roof Hector found that he was level with the top of the wall of the fort just across the street. The roof itself was made of clay and tamped earth. Sharpe gripped his arm, holding him back. ‘We don’t want to be seen before we are ready, and we’ve got to get this right,’ he said quietly.

Jacques had scrambled up beside them and was already selecting a grenade from his satchel.

‘Compare your fuses, and make sure that both are the same length,’ Sharpe advised. ‘I’ll light both the fuses so that the two of you can concentrate on the throw. When I give the word, step across the roof, it’s no more than five paces, and hurl the bombs. Don’t worry about hitting a precise target, just make sure they fall inside the fort. As soon as you’ve thrown your grenades, get back here and crouch down.’

Hector unwound the slow match from his wrist, gave it to Sharpe, and then picked out the better of his two remaining grenades. ‘Are you ready?’ Sharpe asked. Both men nodded, and their commander pressed the slow match to the fuses. They began to burn, the dull red glow steadily eating its way towards the gunpowder. But Sharpe appeared to ignore them. He was gazing out across the roof tops. As the seconds dragged past, Hector found himself sweating with apprehension. He could smell the acrid stench of the burning match.

Finally, and very softly, Sharpe said, ‘Now!’ With Jacques by his side, Hector started out across the flat roof. For one heart-stopping moment he felt the surface crumble beneath his weight, and thought he would fall through with the lit grenade still in his grasp. Then he was at the edge of the roof, overlooking the street. The top of the fort wall was no more than thirty feet away. Hector swung back his arm and threw the little bomb. It went in an arc over the fort wall, cleared it easily, and dropped out of sight. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Jacques’s grenade follow.

There was a musket shot and Hector felt a tug at his sleeve. A defender must have seen them and opened fire. Bending double, the two men scurried back to where Sharpe was waiting. ‘Now we wait,’ he said.

For what seemed like an age nothing happened. Then abruptly there was the sound of a detonation, followed by shouts of fear, then silence.

They waited another minute, but there was no further explosion. ‘One bomb seems to have been enough,’ said Sharpe. He cocked his head to one side, listening. ‘We’ve given them something to think about.’

T
HERE WAS
an anxious shout from below. Someone was calling ‘Captain Sharpe! Captain Sharpe!’ and a worried-looking buccaneer appeared at the rear of the building. He had a bloody rag wrapped around one hand.

‘Who are you calling “Captain”? I’m just one of the company now!’ exclaimed Sharpe, looking down.

‘The general’s dead!’ cried out the newcomer. ‘He was shot at the barricades. We need someone to lead us.’

‘Really?’ said Sharpe. ‘I thought quartermaster Duill was second in command. Let him take over.’

‘Duill has disappeared,’ answered the man. ‘No one can find him, and we’re in a bad way in the town.’ He was begging now. ‘Captain, come back down to assist us.’

Sharpe descended the final rungs slowly and deliberately. ‘Do all the men want me back in charge?’

‘Yes, yes. The situation is very bad.’

Sharpe turned towards Hector and there was a gleam of satisfaction in his pale blue eyes. ‘Hector, tell the men to abandon the attack on the fort and fall back.’

‘We are too few,’ the exhausted-looking buccaneer was saying. ‘Every time we overrun one of their barricades and move forward, the Spaniards come in behind us and reoccupy the position they just lost. We can’t spare anyone to look after all our prisoners. Many of them make their escape and rejoin the fight.’

They had reached the main square, and the extent of the raiders’ difficulties was all too evident. The main force had fought its way into the heart of the town but the Spaniards had sealed off all the streets leading from the far side of the central square with piles of stone and rubble. They had placed sharpshooters where they could fire on anyone who tried to advance any further, and several buccaneers had been shot down as they tried to cross the open ground. Their bodies lay where they had fallen. Some two dozen of their comrades were now taking shelter in side alleys or crouching in doorways. Occasionally they fired towards the Spanish positions. A group of about twenty Spanish prisoners, clearly terrified, were lying face down on the ground watched over by a couple of wounded buccaneers. It was obvious that the attack had come to a standstill.

‘Our wounded are in that church over there,’ said their guide, pointing. ‘Our surgeons are with them. They broke into an apothecary shop and took some medical supplies. But the longer we stay here, the bolder the Spaniards are becoming. They’re moving up closer. It’s becoming dangerous even to venture out into the open.’

He ducked as a musket ball struck the wall above his head. Somewhere in the distance a trumpet sounded.

Sharpe took stock of the situation. ‘The Spaniards are bringing up reinforcements, and we can expect a sortie from the garrison in the fort when they are in position. Then we’ll be caught in a pincer movement, and crushed. We’ve no choice but to make an orderly retreat while we are still able to do so.’

‘What about our wounded in the church? We can’t leave them!’ said Hector.

Sharpe treated him to a sour smile. ‘You’re always worried about leaving someone behind, aren’t you? As you are so concerned, I suggest you dash off and check on the situation in the church. See if any of the men can be evacuated. Then report back to me. Hurry!’

Hector swallowed hard. His throat was dry and he had a raging thirst. It occurred to him that no one had drunk anything that day. Nor had they eaten. ‘Jezreel and Jacques, give me some covering fire!’

He removed his grenade satchel and laid it on the ground. He would have to cross thirty yards of open ground before he reached the portico of the church, and he could be halfway there before the Spanish musketeers realised what he was doing. He took a deep breath and burst out from cover.