If somebody doesn’t come tell me what the bloody Hell happened ashore, I’ll strangle someone! Lewrie fumed as he paced the bulwarks of the poop deck, peering first with his night-glass, then with his day-telescope, for any clue as to what was being done ashore. Fires were lit under the spans of the bridge, and once glowing hot, rags were wrapped round lengths of foraged wood as torches were scattered round the centre pillar. He could barely make out picks and shovels dully glinting by the torch lights, but he was too far off to hear the sounds of labour. The sea between ship and shore, and the light surf that cast up upon the gravelly beach, glittered with red-gold and amber flickers like fireflies from Hell.
“Hoy, the boat!” a Midshipman shouted to one of Vigilance’s barges emerging from the gloom.
“Rutland!” their laconic Second Officer growled back, and Lewrie clumped down the ladderway to the quarterdeck, then onto the sail-tending gangway by the entry-port to greet him, chiding himself to not appear too eager.
“Ah, Mister Rutland,” he said as that worthy clambered up the boarding battens to grasp hold of the bulwarks either side of the entry-port. “The Army had a brief fight for the bridge, did they?”
“Oh no, sir,” Lt. Rutland told him, heaving a brief gasp for air after his climb. “It appears some local partisans beat them to it. The Ninety-Fourth didn’t have to fire a shot, and no one even skinned a knuckle,” Rutland said in his usually gloomy way, as if he found the lack of bloodshed deplorable and dis-appointing. “We need crow-levers, sir.”
“Crow-levers,” Lewrie echoed.
“To pry the stones of the pillar loose, sir,” Rutland said, “the picks and shovels are of little avail. Very little soil for us to dig through, and the base of the pillar might as well be one with the rock on which it rests. We might grub enough room for charges to be placed by sun-up, or later.”
“You’ve spoken with Colonel Tarrant?” Lewrie pressed. “Does he know where the guard detail came from, where the rest of them might be encamped?”
“We’ve shouted at each other, sir,” Rutland told him, “he upon the bridge, me in the gorge, but he’s not mentioned that, yet.”
Lewrie felt a tearing urge to go ashore with Rutland as soon as he gathered up some long iron crow-levers that gunners used to shift the traverse of their wood carriages, but for once, he forebore; he remembered the description of how one could get up to the bridge by scrambling from one boulder to the next, like a mountain goat, and he didn’t think it worth the effort.
Time I get there, Tarrant might not know much more than what I know now, he thought; Bugger it. I ain’t a goat, and I’ll not wear my lungs out, shoutin’ with him from the gorge.
“Right then, Mister Rutland, carry on,” Lewrie ordered.
“Aye, sir,” Rutland said, touching the brim of his hat.
Lewrie pondered where a French encampment might be in the area, close enough for a sentry detail to be sent each night to guard the bridge. The village of Pizzo made the most sense, but two scouts by Don Julio, then his man “’Tonio,” said not. If there was partisan activity in the area, he doubted if the French troop strength would be less than a battalion, but … where could they shelter and defend themselves? And if alerted, how soon might they come to defend the bridge? Lewrie dearly wished that Tarrant was thinking about it, for it sounded as if the setting of explosive charges was taking even longer than they’d expected, and if the soldiers were still ashore after daybreak, and his ships close ashore waiting for them, then this quick incursion might run into a hornet’s nest of trouble!
“Mister Wickersham,” Lewrie called out for the Sailing Master, “are we still in five fathoms of water? And do you have any way to determine the distance to the shore?”
“Aye, sir, still in five fathoms, the last casts of the leads,” Wickersham replied from a corner of the quarterdeck, “Though, if the wind picks up from offshore, we will have to anchor or brace round the yards to stay off. I think we’re half a mile offshore, but the sketches gave no height of the bridge, and in the dark, I’d just be guessing, sorry, sir. Trigonometry does not avail at the moment.”
“Mister Farley? Hands aloft to take in all sail, and let go the bower and a stern kedge anchor,” Lewrie was forced to order. It appeared that they were going to be there quite awhile.
* * *
“Might as well be hackin’ away in a coal or tin mine,” stroke-oar of Lewrie’s boat, John Kitch, carped to his mates as he paused to take a sip from his canteen.
“Coal mine’d be easier,” another sailor griped as he swung his pick, raising a shower of flinty sparks and a fine shower of stone chips from the base stone he was attacking. “Dammit!” he spat as he felt the ring of iron on stone right up the wooden handle that stung him up his arms to his shoulders. “I know coal. Joined the Navy t’get away from all this, I did. Jesus, we’ll be at it all damned day!”
“Put yer backs in it, lads!” a Bosun’s Mate encouraged.
“Ah, fuck yerself,” Kitch muttered. “I don’t see your back in it!”
“Crow-levers!” Lt. Rutland was yelling as bundles of gun tools were fetched up from the beach. “Anyone has a gap ’twixt the stones yet, sing out, and try prying with a crow-lever!”
Kitch’s team stopped work to inspect what they’d accomplished by the light of a torch, shrugged to each other, and went back to it, without the aid of a crow-lever.
“Look out below!” someone on the bridge called down, a moment before long ropes were dropped over, four from each span, that would hoist the cargo nets full of fused powder kegs up snug beneath them, when the explosives were prepared.
“It gettin’ lighter?” someone asked, looking round.
“Close t’false dawn, I expect,” another opined.
“Shit,” someone spat, then took another swing with his pick. “Should’a brought gloves.”
* * *
Lieutenant Rutland was back aboard by 7 A.M., just as Six Bells chimed from the forecastle belfry, a sound which made Lewrie grind his teeth each time the bell sounded.
“Any progress, Mister Rutland?” Lewrie asked; wished for, in truth.
“We’ve two places where we’ve managed to chip out and lever the outer course of stones out, sir,” Lt. Rutland reported, “but there’s another course inside those. God only knows how many layers there are to go. Captain Whitehead thinks we should lay the charges now, and hope for the best. He’s read that the Romans filled the middle of their bridge pillars with rubble, so the charges may succeed.”
“Or, it’s solid stone right through, and they won’t,” Lewrie said with equal gloom. “Very well, let’s fetch the Marines and all but the Gunner’s Mate’s men off, and have them prepare the charges.”
“Aye, sir,” Rutland replied, turning to look about for a likely Midshipman to go ashore and relay that order.
“Still no sign of French troops, sir,” Lt. Greenleaf cheerfully pointed out. “We may get everyone away, Scot free, and not one man injured … but for blisters, haw!”
Lewrie turned his head to glare at Greenleaf, brows furrowed, and his usually merry blue eyes gone Arctic grey, and Lt. Greenleaf shrank into his coat and found something important to see to.
“Mister Upchurch, you’re in charge of signals?” Lewrie called out.
“Aye, sir!” Midshipman Upchurch answered from the taffrails aft.
“Make Dis-Continue The Action, then spell out Recall,” Lewrie said, looking up the coast where Bristol Lass lay at anchor, waiting for her boats and the soldiers to return to her. Before they had left Milazzo, Lewrie had made sure that Col. Tarrant and his officers had a simplified book of code flag signals.
* * *
“Vigilance is making a signal hoist, sir!” an Ensign from the Ninety-Fourth piped up. “It is Recall.”
“And about time, too,” Col. Tarrant said with a firm nod as he peered over the side of the bridge into the gorge to see Marines and sailors gathering up their tools, casting off coats and shirts, and making a weary way down to the boats at the foot of the gorge. “Carson, run tell Captain Meacham to shift his company up the road closer to where we came ashore. Skirmish order, just to be wary, mind. Wiley, let’s get your men ready to haul the nets up against the bottom of the spans, soon as the Navy says they’re fused and ready.”
“Yes, sir,” Capt. Wiley replied.
“Ah, Signore Tomasso,” Tarrant said, turning to his English-speaking interpreter, “we’re about ready to prepare the charges and light the fuses. You might tell Signore ‘Spada’ that he might move his men back to a safe distance.” Tarrant shook his head at the pretension of the partisan leader’s insistence upon keeping his real name secret, choosing instead “Sword” as a sobriquet.
Tomasso relayed that to his leader, then engaged in some more palaver before saying “Signore Spada, he ask again if you can spare some muskets, Signore Colonnello.”
“Tell him that I cannot spare any at the moment,” Tarrant said with a moue, “and that if I could, only fourty cartridges could be given him, and then they would be useless. Better for him to take sixty-three calibre muskets from the French, for ammunition for them is closer to hand.”
As he waited for that to be explained to “Spada,” Tarrant had an idea.
“Tell him that I will relay his best wishes to a fellow by the name of Quill,” Tarrant continued, inspired, “who lives in Messina. He is a British agent who urgently wishes to speak with, and aid, anyone in Calabria who fights for liberation from the French. Send a letter to him by smuggler, or send a messenger to speak directly with him. Mister Quill can arrange arms and ammunition for you, and he and your leader can make arrangements for one of our ships to come meet you at some safe place to deliver what you need.”
Tomasso’s face lit up at the promise of aid, and after he had relayed all that to his leader, so did Spada’s face.
“Hoy, the bridge!” someone shouted from the gorge below.
“Yes?” Captain Wiley shouted back.
“Ready t’tail on them lines an’ haul taut when we tells ya!” Gunner’s Mate Finney bawled aloft.
* * *
Finally! Lewrie thought with rising excitement as the barges with the Marines and sailors returned aboard. One barge remained on the beach, bow barely resting on the sand and gravel, oarsmen holding their oars aloft, ready to stroke away. Lewrie raised his day-glass to study the activities. He could see kegs of gunpowder stacked by the foot of the bridge pillar, dirt and gravel packed in heaps to contain the blasts even a little bit. The cargo nets with more kegs of powder were inching upwards, with his shore party carefully spooling out long slow-match fuses as the nets rose.
Lewrie raised his glass to study the bridge and its approaches; the raggedly-dressed partisans had gone south for safe vantage points, now almost invisible in the scrubby trees and bushes. The soldiers of the 94th had marched away to return to their beach and recovery, leaving only a small party to do the hauling, and Lewrie recognised Col. Tarrant, who had shed his stovepipe shako for a feather-adorned bicorne. Some last lashings, and even the men atop the bridge took up their arms and trotted north away from the blasts to come.
Lewrie pulled out his pocket watch, begrudging the fact that it was now three quarters past eight in the morning, well into the Forenoon Watch.
Now there were only three men left in the gorge, Gunner’s Mate Finney, Yeomen of The Powder Gullick and Yates, each with a leftover torch in their hands. They dipped them to the fuses as one, tossed the torches aside, and ran for the boat, bounding down the boulder-strewn gorge to the sand, their feet raising spurts of beach to fling themselves over the bows of the barge even as it was shoved off and stroked astern, so they splashed knee-deep through the surf before getting away. Once in water deep enough, the oarsmen stroked about, turning the barge bows-out, then putting their backs into their oars, raising a bow wave and rushing seaward as if the Hounds of Hell were gnawing at the transom.
Three slow-match fuses were fuming, emitting clouds of smoke as the fires slowly made their spitting, fuming way up towards the slung kegs, to the kegs packed round the pillar.
“How long now?” Lt. Grace wondered aloud.
“Captain Whitehead said they estimated ten minute fuses,” Lt. Rutland told him. “Soon now … if God’s just.”
“And everything works,” Lt. Greenleaf quipped.
“It must,” Rutland said. “Don’t be a croaker.”
Lewrie pulled out his pocket watch, again, his attention torn ’twixt the passage of time, and the view ashore in his telescope. The barge with the last shore party was almost alongside, and yet the fuses continued to shorten and sputter, closer and closer to the kegs.
Come on, come on, come on! Lewrie fumed; Go bang, please!
The smoke and red-hot glows on the fuses reached the suspended nets, and the kegs, at last, and the explosions should have come, but a long breath or two later, there was still nothing …
Baroom! and a massive cloud of powder smoke erupted under the bridge, followed a moment later by another Whoom! under the northern span, as flame-shot belches of stone soared aloft, lighter material pattering all round the bridge, onto the beach, and raining down onto the sea, raising great splashes. Then came a last gigantic explosion under the southern span, and the whole bridge and gorge were smothered with a towering, spreading blanket of gunsmoke!
Vigilance erupted in cheers of joy as her crew celebrated that destruction, tossing hats in the air, her rigging crowded with hands seeking a better view, and even Commission Sea Officers whooped and huzzahed as loudly and as enthusiastically as the Midshipmen and the ship’s boys.
For long minutes there was nothing to see ashore as the smoke slowly dissipated and blew inland on a light sea wind, long enough for Lewrie to look to the north towards Bristol Lass, where barges were alongside her on both beams, disgorging Tarrant’s two companies to safety aboard their transport.
“Ehm, sir,” Lt. Farley drew his attention back.
“Hey?” Lewrie said, returning his telescope to the bridge.
“It, ah…” Farley said, coughing into his fist.
The smoke had finally blown clear enough to reveal what they’d accomplished, wisps of smoke still rising as if they’d lit a fire.
The north span of the bridge was almost gone, leaving a stub of roadway from each end, loosened stones still dribbling away to clash into the gorge like the slow fall of leaves from a winter-killed tree. The south span was also gone, though a roadway jutted from the end on the edge of the gorge.
“It appears we’ve blown a gap of at least thirty feet on the north end, sir,” Sailing Master Wickersham opined, “but only about twenty feet on the south span. It could be bridgeable, with enough timber. The ah, pillar, though…”
The bastard still stood! Stones in the outermost course where they had managed to pry openings had been blasted away, scattered in the gorge, leaving greater, ragged gouges, with the inner course of stones blackened. But, the base had not been harmed, and the bastard still stood in its ancient Roman-engineered defiance!
“Well, shit!” Lewrie spat. “Just damn my eyes. Mine arse on a band-box!”
Now, what the Hell do we do? he asked himself, pounding an impotent fist on the lee bulwarks’ cap-rails; What we do best, I s’pose.
“Mister Farley, beat to Quarters,” he snapped. “Man the larb’d lower-deck twenty-four-pounders. If we can’t blow it up, we’ll have to pound it down with roundshot!”