John Drake - Skull and Bones

"Colonel!" cried a handful of wide-eyed officers, running up to him. "Thank God you're here! How many of them have landed? How many regiments?"

"Regiments?" said Bland. "I saw no more than a few boatloads!"

"But it's two ships!" cried a voice. "Everyone says so!"

"God bless you, yes!" said Bland. "But small ships, and I saw no more than a few dozen Spaniards come ashore!"

"Ahhhh," they said, and their spirits soared and they straightened their backs and thrust out their manly jaws.

"Stand the fort to arms!" cried Bland. "Muster every man in the fort, and sound the march! I shall lead forth our men to drive these invaders into the river!"

"Huzzah!" they cried, and soon the drums were sounding a rattling beat, the fifers were blowing "Come Lasses and Lads" and the redcoats were marching boldly out over the fort's drawbridge with hysterical cheering from the civilians behind them. At their head strode Colonel Bland, transported into glory, with sword in hand and fire in his heart.

At the same time, and with much less fuss, a hundred woodsmen marched quietly behind the regulars, and took early opportunity to lope off, in loose formation, trailing their arms. Bland never gave them a thought, but they were trained to seek opportunity, and any means whatsoever to take their enemies by surprise; and they were as determined as any redcoat to fight for their homes and their families.

A Spanish army officer charged up the stairs with the latest boatload of men from La Concha. He was a commandante – a major – and with him came two capitбns. Alvarez saw them and nearly wet himself in relief. He stood to attention beside Ortiz and thanked the Virgin and all the saints.

"Seсor Commandante!" said Alvarez, and received a curt nod, for the commandante believed that no drop of use whatsoever could be squeezed out of a sea-service aspirante on land, and in this case he was entirely correct. Instead he yelled at his juniors and the trumpeter he'd brought with him, and mustered his men – of whom he found he had nearly two hundred and fifty, and plenty more to come from the ships. He looked at the town, and saw no threat. He looked at the fort with its English flag and saw no threat. But he looked at the battery… and saw the teams of men hauling guns out to bear upon himself and his men.

"Mother of God!" he cried. "Grenadiers to the front! Follow me! The rest, stand fast!" He was a very brave man, if not a particularly inventive one. He saw the two heavy guns in the instant of being loaded. Men were ramming home, they were training and levelling, and the range was just over one hundred yards.

He turned to the body of fifty grenadiers – big men with bearskin trim on their caps, the swaggering bullies among the ranks, who thought themselves better men than all the rest. Now the English gunners were standing clear while the gun- captains swung their linstocks.

The commandante ran to the side of his men.

"Present muskets!" he cried. "Make ready…"

Cli-cli-cli-clack! said the locks.

"Fire!" and the muskets roared. "Santiago!" cried the commandante and charged.

"Santiago!" cried the grenadiers, and ran after him with bayonets levelled.

BOOOM! BOOOM! cried the pair of heavy guns, with monstrous voice.

At one hundred yards, not a single musket shot found a human target, while – firing from soft, churned-up earth – the eighteen-pounders on their sea carriages recoiled so heavily that their muzzles twisted wildly off target. But the load was so heavy – totalling over eleven hundred musket balls – that it screamed and sizzled and scoured like the Devil's broom, such that when the smoke cleared only fifteen grenadiers were left standing, and the rest, including their brave but uninventive leader, were dead, dying or wounded, and comprehensively riddled with shot.

But the rest of the Spaniards charged the now-empty guns. There were two officers left, and nearly two hundred men, and every chance that they could over-run the battery before the gunners had time to reload. So thought the two Spanish capitбns, and they led their men in a rolling, ragged charge over the bodies of the grenadiers and the commandante. They ran with gleaming bayonets and bellowing roars, which swelled with delight at the sweetest sight a soldier ever sees in the field: the backs of their fleeing enemies. For the English gunners, seeing sense, were running away, without even taking the time to spike their guns.

But their triumph was brief. No sooner had the artillerymen run off towards the English fort than the sound of fife and drum signalled the advance of an English column: a giant red centipede with white legs and a rippling steel crest, emerging from the fort, and coming in strength.

Aspirante Alvarez gasped. Sargento Ortiz said nothing, for he was dead from loss of blood, but the two capitбns, reinforced by another boatload from Walrus, carefully drew up their men and marched towards the English column, with Spanish drums beating, and with profound satisfaction that this wretched business of being fired upon by batteries had come to an end, with a correct and proper battle about to begin, in the correct and proper way.

Alvarez watched as the two columns – the white and the red – advanced upon each other and deployed into line in the open ground between the fort and the town. He saw that there were more red than white, and he searched in his conscience and found that his duty was now at the bottom of the stairs, not the top, for there was more boat work to be done, and himself a sea officer.

At the bottom of the stairs, he found two shot-riddled boats, half-sunk, with the dead and wounded sprawled within them. And there he cringed as the first volleys rolled out in the fight for Savannah.

Dusk, 20th July 1754 The Savannah River

"John!" said Selena, "It's nearly night. The battery can't see us. We can work the ship out of reach of it, before daylight!" She looked over the quarterdeck rail at the line of heavy timbers, driven into the Savannah river bed, each with a heavy ringbolt secured at its cap: the dolphins present in any civilised anchorage to enable ships to move against the wind. "Even I know how it's done," she said. "Secure a line to one of them, and all hands haul on the line, and pull her from one to the next!"

"Aye, lass," he said. "And a proper little sea-madame you are, an' all!" and he sighed and reached out to stroke her cheek. She still had on the taffeta dress, and he was pierced to the heart with the loveliness of her. The two of them were alone on the quarterdeck, with all the Spaniards gone and a mass of the ship's people in the waist, making ready for what the council had agreed.

"Then why must you go ashore?" she said, and looked up to where the town lay uneasy in the dark, with the red glow of fires and occasional gunshots in the streets. "We could be gone from all that!" she said.

But Silver shook his head.

"I got to go, lass," he said, "for Flint -"

"And his half of the papers?"

"Aye," he said. "I do want them, and no mistake… but I'm going mainly for himself!" He sighed. "See here, lass… if we sail away from here, we'd never be safe! We'd forever be waiting for him – and by God and the Devil he'd come, and nothing'd stop him! For the bugger ain't human and he ain't holy, and we'll have no peace till he's dead!"

She fell silent. It was true… And in any case, all hands had voted to follow John Silver's plan. For when it came to hard choices, most wanted a share of Flint's treasure, and the rest had been won round by Silver, Israel Hands and by Blind Pew, who as always was listened to with respect, and who wanted the gold as a pension for his sightless future, when at last he should be cast up on dry land.

So Silver went over the side into Walrus's launch, with a dozen men who weren't the best in the ship by a long way, for there'd been suspicion among the hands as to what others might do, once they'd got their hands on both halves of Flint's papers! And suspicion became distrust, until Blind Pew proposed that those who went with Silver should be chosen by lot. Thus Silver sighed as he sat in the stern sheets, for he was facing Tom Morgan, who was stroke oar, and whose head was thick as teak, and beside him was Darby McGraw, an idle swab who was drunk more often than sober, and a precious pair they made for such a task!