Patrick O'Brian - The Mauritius Command

"My God," thought Jack, looking at the broad belt of surf, the steep-to beach of rounded boulders. He stepped to the taffrail and hailed, Nereide ahoy. Come under my stern." The Nereide shot up, backed her foretopsail, and lay pitching on the swell: there was Lord Clonfert on her quarterdeck; and Stephen noticed that he was wearing full-dress uniform--no unusual thing in a fleet-action, but rare for a skirmish.

"Lord Clonfert," called Jack, "do you know the deepwater channel?"

"Yes, sir."

"Is a landing practicable?"

"Perfectly practicable at present, sir. I will undertake to put a party ashore this minute."

"Carry on, Lord Clonfert," said Jack.

The Nereide had a little captured schooner among her boats, a local craft; and into this and some of her boats she poured an eager party of soldiers and seamen. The squadron watched the schooner run down to the edge of the surf, followed by the boats. Here she took to her sweeps, backing water and waiting for the master-wave: it came, and she shot in through the breaking water, on and on, and they thought she was through until at the very last she struck, ten yards from the shore, slewed round, and was thrown on to the beach, broadside on. As the wave receded all the men leapt ashore, but the backdraught took her into the very curl of the next, which lifted her high and flung her down so hard that it broke her back at once and shattered her timbers. Most of the other craft fared the same: the boats beaten to pieces, the men safe. Only four bodies were to be seen, dark in the white water, drifting westwards along the shore.

"It is essential to carry on," cried Colonel Keating in a harsh voice. "We must take Saint Denis between two fires, whatever the cost."

Jack said to Mr Johnson, "Make Groper's signal."

While the transport was coming up he stared at the beach and the floating wreckage: as he had thought, it was only the last stretch that was mortal at this stage. Anything of a breakwater would allow boats to land and the Groper was the only vessel with a draught shallow enough to go in so far. When she was under the Boadicea's lee he called, "Mr Pullings, you must shelter the boats: take your brig in, drop your stern-anchor at the last moment, and run her ashore as near as you can heading south-west."

"Aye, aye, sir,'said Pullings.

The Groper bore up in a volley of orders, made her way slowly towards the land while her people were busy below, rousing a cable out of a stern-port, and then much faster: into the surf, on and on through it. In his glass Jack saw the anchor drop, and a moment later the Groper ran hard aground right by the shore. Her foretopmast went by the board with the shock, but the hands at the capstan took no notice: they were furiously heaving the cable in, forcing her stern round so that she lay just south-west, braced against the seas and creating a zone of quiet water right in by the shore.

"Well done, Tom Pullings, well done indeed: but how long will your anchor hold?" muttered Jack, and aloud, "First division away."

The boats ran in, landed and hauled up, half-swamped in most cases but rarely overset: the beach was filling with redcoats, forming neatly in line as they came ashore. Some, with Colonel McLeod, had taken up position a few hundred yards inland. Then the Groper's cable parted. A tall comber took her stern, wrenched it round, and flung her on that unforgiving beach: and since her bows were already stove, she went to pieces at once, leaving the surf the full sweep of the shore. The wave that broke her was the first of a growing series; and presently the belt of surf grew wider and wider, thundering louder still.

"Can another ship be sent in, Commodore?" asked Keating.

"No, sir," said Jack.

On the road that led from Sainte-Marie to Saint-Denis, and that here curved inland from the coast to avoid a swamp, three separate bodies of French troops could be seen, moving slowly from east to west, towards SaintDenis. Colonel McLeod's party on shore had already thrown up dry-stone breastworks between the beach and the road, and had formed behind them in good order. To the left of their line the seamen and the Marines had done much the same; but being on wetter ground they had made a broad turf wall, upon which stood Lord Clonfert, conspicuous with his star and his gold-laced hat.

The first body came abreast of the landing-party at a distance of two hundred yards: they halted, loaded, levelled their pieces, and fired. Clonfert waved his sword at them, reached behind him for a Marine's musket, and returned the fire. It was almost the only shot in reply to the French discharge: clearly the landing-party had spoilt nearly all its powder.

As the squadron watched, too far for accurate fire on this heaving sea but near enough for telescopes to show every detail, two cavalrymen came galloping down the road from Saint-Denis, spoke to an officer and rode on. The troops shouldered their muskets, reformed, and set off towards Saint Denis at the double. The second and third bodies, also given orders by the horsemen, came fast along the road: each halted long enough for a volley or two, and each was saluted by Clonfert from the top of his wall. He was eating a biscuit, and each time he put it down on his handkerchief to shoot. Once he hit an officer's horse, but most of the time his musket missed fire.

Still more horsemen came riding fast from Saint-Denis, one of them probably a field-officer, urging the troops to hurry. The inference was as clear as the day: Colonel Fraser had landed in force from the Sirius, and these men were being called back to protect the capital.

"Magicienne and the Kite and Solebay transports must go and support him at once," said Jack. "The rest of the squadron will stay here, in case the sea goes down by the morning." Colonel Keating agreed: he seemed glad of the authoritative statement, and Stephen had the impression that he had lost his sense of being in control of the situation--that this impossibility of communicating with the visible shore was something outside his experience.

Throughout this time Stephen and Farquhar had stood by the hances, out of the way, two figures as unregarded as they had been at the time of the military councils, where they sat virtually mute, dim among the splendid uniforms; but now, after a hurried consultation with Farquhar, Stephen said to Jack, "We are agreed that if Colonel Fraser has a firm footing on the other side of the island, I should be put ashore there."

"Very well," said Jack. "Mr Fellowes, a bosun's chair, there. Pass the word for my coxswain. Bonden, you go aboard Magicienne with the Doctor."

What remained of this anxious day off the Riviere des Pluies was taken up with watching the surf. A little before sunset half an hour's downpour of a violence rare even for those latitudes deadened the white water of the breakers so that the channel was a little clearer, and a subaltern of the 56th, born in the West Indies and accustomed to surf from his childhood, volunteered to swim ashore with Colonel Keating's orders to Colonel McLeod. He launched himself into the rollers with the confidence of a seal, vanished, and reappeared on the crest of a wave that set him neatly on his feet at high-water-mark: shortly afterwards McLeod, covering the subaltern's nakedness with a plaid, marched off at the head of his men to seize the little post at Sainte-Marie, deserted by its occupants, to hoist the British colours, and to regale upon the stores left by the sergeant's guard.

Yet darkness fell with its usual suddenness in the tropics, and it was impossible to send boats in through the reviving turmoil. The ships stood off and on all night, and in the morning the combers were still roaring up the beach. There might, Jack agreed, be a slight improvement, but it was nothing like enough; and his strongly-held opinion was that they should proceed at once to Grande-Chaloupe to reinforce the troops landed from the Sirius and Magicienne, leaving the Iphigenia and some transports to land at the Riviere des Pluies later in the day if the sea went down. Happily Colonel Keating shared this opinion to the full, and the Boadicea made sail, passed Saint-Denis, where the soldiers swore they could distinguish gunfire on the far side of the town, rounded Cape Bernard, and stretched south-south-west under a cloud of canvas for the beach of Grande-Chaloupe, obvious from miles away by the congregation of shipping and the now unmistakeable gunfire in the hills above.