On 28 July, with the new batteries ready to go, General Stuart tries to negotiate terms with the French again. It looks as though we might be approaching the end. The following day, however, a ship carrying supplies for Calvi evades the blockade, and the French reject Stuart’s offer.
At this point, General Stuart and Captain Nelson release the full fury of the new batteries on Calvi. At night on 30 July, I stand in the far battery and watch the town burn. The French defensive fire has slackened, Captain Nelson’s artillery having dismounted a number of the French guns before night fell. It appears that there is not an undamaged building left in Calvi.
Two days later, it is over. On 1 August, Calvi surrenders.
The white flag is something of an anti-climax. The French demand nine days before they relinquish the town to the British. Nine days during which we wait and do nothing. Captain Nelson is restless, and Lord Hood is impossible. General Stuart refused to involve Lord Hood in the negotiations for capitulation and he is offended, which makes him even more difficult than usual.
‘He’s not well,’ Nelson says, his own exhaustion clearly apparent. His right eye is still painful, and he confesses to me that it appears he may not regain his sight in that eye; when the fleet physician examined it, he told Captain Nelson that it seems unlikely.
He derives some pleasure from the spoils, particularly in the acquisition of two French frigates. He tells me he had fought them, off Sardinia, last fall, and it is very satisfying to take them into the British fleet. He sends one of his favourite lieutenants to take command of them.
Hood has departed in a huff, leaving Captain Nelson to deal with the logistics of arranging multiple transport ships for both British allies and French troops, and with the redistribution of ordnance and stores amongst the warships. Once again, he is everywhere, unable to be still, and works until late at night, falling into bed for a few hours before rising and attacking the mountain of tasks again.
I am back aboard Agamemnon, and I rarely see my messmates. With Tom’s death, our mess had begun to break up. I would not have thought of Tom as the anchor that held us fast, but without him, we have gone adrift. When the redoubt where we camped is disassembled, I see Will Fowler and Billy Baxter for what turns out to be the last time.
Bert Bertram has deserted to the Corsicans, Billy tells me in an undertone. In what was probably the longest speech Bert had ever made, he told Will and Billy that he was going to marry the sister of one of the partisan sharpshooters we had worked alongside, then he melted into the hills. Will says a patrol found his coat and kit in a ravine south of the Fountain battery. He apparently took his rifle with him. The army could court-martial him for theft as well as desertion, but they’d have to find him first. And frankly, they have other things to think about. I wonder idly where he met the Corsican’s sister.
Captain Nelson tells me that he has arranged for my permanent transfer to Agamemnon as a marine. ‘You may refuse it, if you like,’ he says, ‘but I have come to rely on your clerical assistance. I shall not have as much work for you, since I no longer need a “liaison” to the army.’ He says this with a certain amount of irony. In the end, I was no more a liaison to the army command than Tom Sharpe was. ‘But you know how to shoot a rifle, and you know your way around a gun. And I anticipate that I will still be able to employ your secretarial skill. It will be unnecessary for you to keep any logs, or maintain any inventories, but if you would continue to manage my correspondence, it would help a great deal. I am afraid that I cannot pay you anything beyond your regular wages as a marine, but I will try to compensate you by other means.’
So as the transports leave the bay, and endless guns and barrels of powder and crates of shot are hauled down out of the hills and redistributed, I find myself slinging a hammock with a new mess.
Illness is still rampant. As the work of withdrawing from Corsica goes on, more and more sailors and marines are sent back to the ships, too sick to work. The fluxes are more easily corrected, but the fevers get their claws into a man and refuse to let go.
Captain Nelson’s feverishness continues, but its severity has mercifully lessened somewhat. Every third day, however, he has to conserve his energy as the fever threatens to drain it. These are the days when he relies upon me most. ‘I need your organisation today,’ he tells me one morning.
When the dispatches go out this time, Nelson is once more disappointed. He has been passed over again. While other, less industrious men received direct praise, Captain Nelson is mentioned only vaguely, or peripherally. In a scene that seems eerily familiar, I sit in his cabin as he reads the official dispatches. I don’t believe that either General Stuart or Lord Hood intended to slight him deliberately. But I cannot understand how what I saw and what they reported could have diverged so strongly. ‘Never mind,’ he says. ‘I shall get my accolades, if I have to write them myself!’
On 20 August, one of Captain Nelson’s fever days, he receives a message informing him of the death from fever of Lieutenant James Moutray, the officer he had sent to take command of the two French frigates, at Calvi. His injured eye is painful today, and he has been using me to read to him and write drafts of his letters. When I read this message aloud to him, the light in his uninjured eye seems to dim. The expression on his face is melancholy and gentle.
‘I knew his mother, years ago in the Leeward Islands. She was a lady of great accomplishment, and he was every bit her son.’ His eyes are unfocused, his thoughts far away for a moment. Then he passes a hand over his eyes and says to me, ‘Begin a new letter. “My dearest Mrs Moutray…”’
When we finally depart Corsica, I stand in the mizzen top watching the land recede. We are leaving the island that claimed Jack Mackay and Tom Sharpe, Captain Serocold, and Lieutenant Moutray; as well as over one hundred others of our British soldiers and seamen, resting peacefully in its now quiet valleys. Below, in the sick berth and in their own hammocks, another one hundred and fifty men lie sick. Corsica is free from French rule, but it is a melancholy sort of victory.
We’d expected to bear up for Gibraltar, but poor Agamemnon is in such bad shape that she can’t make it that far.
‘I’d thought to be able to release you at Gibraltar,’ Captain Nelson tells me, ‘but we must make for Leghorn. I hope it will not be a hardship to remain with us a while longer. Once Agamemnon is patched up, I expect us to be ordered home. I shall be able to return you to Gibraltar at that point.’
The marine whose hammock is slung closest to mine has been unable to rise for several days. His name is Fierson. He has a thin face and sad eyes. His best mate, who I know only as Joe, looks after him devotedly. He sponges his friend’s face and helps him drink. He tries unsuccessfully to get Fierson to eat a bowl of sago.
‘He ourt ter be in th’ sick berth,’ Joe says to anyone who will listen, but all the cots in the sick berth are already full.
One evening, I come down and find that Fierson’s hammock is gone. Joe sits on a shot box, his hands dangling from his knees, his gaze on the floor. I put my hand on his shoulder, and Joe squeezes my hand for a second and then shoves it away. He doesn’t know me. At this point, he doesn’t want to.
In the morning, Fierson’s body is committed to the sea, along with those of two seamen. The chaplain is among those who are not well, so Captain Nelson reads the same burial sentences that he said for Jack Mackay, apart from the bit about commending their bodies to the deep rather than the earth; then each of the bodies, shrouded in their hammocks and weighted with shot, is tipped into the sea.
In his cabin, Captain Nelson sighs deeply. ‘It is a duty I’d gladly forgo,’ he says, ‘but for the honour of the departed.’
‘You preside very well, sir,’ I console him.
‘My father is a clergyman,’ he says neutrally.
‘Our vicar at home was not a good presider,’ I tell him. ‘He raced through the liturgy as though he could not wait to get it over with. And he mumbled, so he might well have been speaking in Latin, for no one could understand him. I prefer to listen to you.’
‘The sacraments are effective regardless of how well or poorly they are administered,’ Captain Nelson says, ‘but thank you, Mr Buckley.’ He lays the palm of his hand over his injured eye and winces. ‘I am so dreadfully tired.’
‘Is your eye any better, Captain?’
‘It is a little painful today, Mr Buckley; yesterday was better. But for all useful purposes, it appears to be blind. No matter,’ he continues. ‘I can see perfectly well with the other one.’
‘What else can I do to assist you today, sir?’
‘Nothing more, I think. I shall record this in my log and then I must write to my wife. With luck, I hope to see her again by the end of the year.’
Lord Hood urges Nelson to take command of a seventy-four-gun ship and leave the Agamemnon. I read the letter to him whilst he reclines in his berth, holding a compress over his right eye. I try not to allow any hint of apprehensiveness to creep into my voice. If Captain Nelson takes another ship, I will very likely be stranded in Leghorn until another captain is appointed, and then I shall be at the mercy of that captain’s will. Despite the work being done on her, Agamemnon is so worn out by hard service that she will be paid off when she returns home; although no one can predict when she will be in a fit condition to sail as far as England.
He is silent for a few minutes, then he says quietly, ‘I must decline. I cannot leave this loyal ship’s company, who with me have seen such difficult service.’ He sits up and looks at me. ‘Besides that, I hope to sail Agamemnon home to England. I need a rest almost as badly as she does. Afterwards, when she is refitted, and I am restored, we both can return to the Mediterranean in fighting form.’
The Admiralty has granted Lord Hood permission to go home, and Captain Nelson hopes to take him. He envisions himself, the admiral, and Agamemnon returning gloriously to the Mediterranean in the spring. In the meanwhile, he takes two of his ‘young gentlemen’ to the spa at Pisa. All three of them return looking markedly improved.
Joe, whose name turns out to be George Augustus Josephs, waylays me one day after drill. ‘I ourt ter say thank you for your kindness,’ he says quietly. ‘You’re a good lad, Buckley.’ He doesn’t wait for me to reply, but walks quickly away.
The marines get a new officer. He is Captain of Marines Raleigh Spencer, and my initial impression is that those two army officers whom I overheard at the base camp at Calvi would approve of him; he is very proper and aloof.
He reviews us at muster, quietly calling the sergeant’s attention to infractions: some legitimate, but one or two others strike me as unwarranted. I suppose that is why he is the Captain of Marines, and I am not. But he orders one man reprimanded for poor posture who hurt his back last week when he missed his footing on the ratlines. For a day or two, this man couldn’t stand completely upright and was excused from muster. But although Spencer listens when Sergeant Preston informs him of this, he doesn’t rescind the punishment.
When we are dismissed, I am walking away to return my rifle to its rack in the gunner’s storeroom when Spencer steps in front of me. ‘One minute, Private,’ he says.
I stand at attention while he looks me over from head to foot. ‘Are you even old enough to be a marine?’ he says. His tone reminds me of Lieutenant Colonel Moore.
‘Yessir; I am, sir.’
He reaches for my Ferguson. I have no choice but to let him take it.
‘This is not a sea service musket.’
‘Nosir, it is not.’
‘What are you doing with this gun?’
‘I am a rifleman, sir,’ I say, staring straight ahead. Does he think I stole it?
‘Are you indeed.’ He thrusts the Ferguson back at me and I have to grab it before it ends up on the deck. Fergusons are fragile, and their stocks are liable to crack if they’re roughly used.
‘You are dismissed, rifleman.’
‘Sir.’
He walks away. There is just a hint of a swagger in his step. I fear that trouble may have just found me.