Guns to the Far East (6 page)

“When have I not, sir?” Cochrane challenged, smiling. His gig, handled more smartly than Elliott's, went skimming up river and Keppel watched it, eyes momentarily narrowed.

“Get as much sleep as you can, my boys,” he advised, when the more junior of his officers filed past him in their turn. “You'll need all the stamina you've got tomorrow—and all the guts! Don't underrate John Chinaman simply because his junks look a trifle antiquated—they're ideal for navigating this river and he handles them expertly. If you've never encountered them before, you'll be astonished at the punch they pack and the speed at which they can travel, under sail or oars.” He laid a hand on Phillip's arm. “Ah, my dear boy— the Admiral was talking about you this morning.”

“
Was
he, sir?” Phillip eyed him uncertainly.

“Indeed he was. We shall shortly have three holders of the Victoria Cross on this station—Captain Peel and Midshipman Daniels, when
Shannon
joins, and yourself,” Keppel said. “Her Majesty is to present the first Crosses to sixty-two officers and men at a special parade to inaugurate the award, in Hyde Park on the twenty-sixth of June. Their Lordships have informed the Commander-in-Chief that your three Crosses are to be sent out here and he's been instructed to arrange for their presentation … in the latter part of July, very probably. I thought you would like to know.”

“Thank you, sir,” Phillip acknowledged, without noticeable pleasure. Keppel should have been given a Cross, he thought rebelliously, instead of the penny-pinching C.B. with which the First Lord had sought to fob him off. He …

“You'll be in excellent company,” the Commodore reminded him. “Well, I'll see you first thing in the morning. You're commanding
Raleigh
's cutter, Edward, are you not?” Turnour nodded. “Then be a good fellow and make sure that Spurrier has a length of blue bunting to serve as my broad pennant when I leave
Hong Kong,
would you? I intend to lead the attack in my galley and it's important that the third and fourth divisions should be able to see exactly where I am.”

“Very good, sir, I'll attend to it,” Edward Turnour promised.

“And,” Keppel added, as an afterthought struck him, “tell Spurrier also that he's to leave my dog Mike behind—there's no space for it in any of the boats.”

Turnour contrived to keep a straight face. Spurrier, the Commodore's coxswain, had served with him for so long that he regarded certain privileges as his right and the dog, Mike— an intelligent little terrier—had adopted him and was his constant shadow, to whose presence the
Raleigh
's officers usually turned a blind eye. “I'll tell him, of course, sir. But he maintains that Mike won't leave him and—”

“Be damned to that for an unlikely yarn!” Keppel retorted. “He's my dog, isn't he? Well, he can be tied up here in my cabin.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” Turnour acknowledged.

Phillip, also careful to conceal his amusement, put in diffidently, “Mike
is
quite good for morale, sir. The younger men regard him as a mascot, I fancy and—”

“Mascot indeed! Since when have seamen of Her Majesty's Navy required a mascot?” Keppel demanded. But his lower lip had a suspicious tremor and he said, with well-simulated gruffness, “All right but it's pure superstitious poppycock, you know. If Spurrier must bring the unfortunate animal into battle with him, he'd better keep it out of my sight. If he gets it killed, he'll have only himself to blame … and what price his mascot then, eh?”

“I'll warn him, sir,” Turnour assured him.

“Yes, you do that, my dear boy,” Keppel agreed. The tremor became a smile. “I'll have a quiet word with him when he picks me up in the morning.
I'm
going to make sure of a comfortable night—I'm sleeping here, in my own cabin, and the Admiral's dining with me. Rank has its advantages sometimes, has it not? I wish you both joy of the
Hong Kong
's deck!”

The
Hong Kong,
when they returned on board, was in a state of organised chaos, her boats, like those of the other steamers—strung out astern of her and her decks crowded with seamen and marines. Edward Turnour went in search of the Commodore's coxswain to discharge his errand and Phillip, after inspecting his own command—the
Raleigh
's launch—partook of a frugal supper and then lay down as best he could in the sternsheets of the launch, his long legs tucked uncomfortably beneath him and his head resting on the gunwhale. It was a calm, warm night; the hum of men's voices and the croaking of frogs on the river bank the only sounds he could hear and, accustomed to snatch a brief nap at sea, whenever the opportunity offered, he dozed off undisturbed by the men talking on either side of him.

Young Lightfoot, his boat's midshipman—whom he had sent to the
Hong Kong
for what remained of the night—wakened him well before first light, bringing with him the rest of the launch's crew and the news that Commodore Keppel had come aboard the gunboat an hour before.

So much for the privileges of rank and the comfortable night he had promised himself, Phillip thought, and smiled in the warm darkness, remembering other nights in the Sebastopol batteries when Henry Keppel, supposedly sound asleep in his tent, had made his appearance just before an attack as if, by instinct, he had sensed the danger and knew that his mere presence would put heart into the men who had to face it.

“Shall I issue the rations, sir?” his coxswain asked and he nodded. Breakfast, according to the Admiral's orders, was to be eaten before the advance began—ship's biscuit and the grog ration, sparse enough fare, but welcome as a distraction, if nothing else, from thoughts which at such a moment tended to be apprehensive ones. His own included … Phillip stretched his cramped limbs. It was nearly two years since he had been under fire from an enemy and he felt the familiar sick sensation in the pit of his stomach as he recalled details he had imagined long since forgotten. The face of a young soldier, newly dead, his rifle still clutched in his nerveless hands; the agonised sobbing of a gallant sergeant of the 88th whose legs had been carried away by a roundshot as he led the way into the Russian Redan. And—he drew in his breath sharply. The ghastly scene of carnage inside the fort itself, when he had finally entered it with the survivors of his ladder party and the Engineer officer, Ranken, to find the Russians, secure behind their embrasures, mowing down their attackers in a terrible cross-fire of grape and canister and ball.

That attack had heralded the end of the siege of Sebastopol. During the night, the Russians had withdrawn their troops from the city and its surrounding forts and bastions, leaving the harbour a wilderness of burnt-out, sinking ships and blazing buildings. But for the Allies, faced with an appalling butcher's bill, there had been little joy in the victory. How much joy, Phillip wondered glumly, as he poured a lavish tot from his flask for Midshipman Lightfoot, how much joy would there be today?

“Mix that with lemon juice,” he cautioned. “And drink it slowly, Mr Lightfoot.” The boy, he realised, was shaking with excitement, eager as a puppy, but he managed a dutiful acknowledgement although, in fact, he had swallowed most of his shared portion at a single gulp. It was too dark to see his face clearly but he appeared to be grinning and Coxswain O'Brien, working dexterously with his measure by the dim glow of the boat's lantern, passed out the last of the men's grog ration and observed dryly, “Wonderful to be young, sir, is it not?”

He was a small, spare man of indeterminate age, who had joined in the
Raleigh
's launch as a volunteer from the 84-gun flagship
Calcutta
which, on account of her size, had remained at the Hong Kong anchorage. He had only joined the previous day, as replacement for the launch's regular coxswain, who had gone down with fever, and Phillip asked him, curious as to his antecedents, “How much service have you put in, Cox'n?”

O'Brien looked surprised. “Eighteen years, sir.” His voice was educated, with no trace of accent. “I should have known better, shouldn't I? Never volunteer—that's not a bad motto in the Navy!”

“Well, why
did
you volunteer?”

The coxswain shrugged. “I served here in '42 in the
Dido,
sir, under Captain Keppel, and I thought I'd like to see him in action again. It's a rare sight, I can tell you.” He shifted the plug of tobacco in his mouth from one side to the other, muttered a “beg pardon” and spat expertly over the gunwhale into the murky water below him. “I was in Sarawak with him too, sir—with him and Rajah Brooke. Those were the days! We were never out of action and we revelled in it, chasing pirates and Dyak headhunters by boat up the river. And as for Captain Keppel, why there wasn't a Captain afloat that could touch him. I remember once he …” His reminiscing was cut short by a flashing light signal from the
Coromandel,
upstream and to port, a signal that was repeated by her next in line,
Haughty,
and then by
Starling
and
Hornet.
The first two weighed anchor and, paddle-wheels clanking, could just be seen as dark shapes, starkly silhouetted against the glow of the lightening sky.

Conscious of a quickening of his pulse, Phillip watched them, as they started to forge ahead in the direction of the island and the as yet unseen fort which was their objective.

It would be the turn of the second division next; there was activity on the
Hong Kong
's deck as her duty watch prepared to weigh anchor and a rocket rose from the fort to hurtle skywards in hissing proof that the Chinese were aware of the impending British attack.

“Out pipes, my lads,” Phillip ordered. “Gun's crew close up.” He felt the tow rope go taut and the bowman called out, “The
Hong Kong
's under way, sir!” a slight tremor in his voice. Day dawned with the startling suddenness of the East; the shower of rockets which had been rising from the walls of the fort abruptly ceased and, glass to his eye, Phillip saw the
Coromandel,
with the Admiral's flag at the foremast, alter course, evidently to avoid some obstacle. She was within about two thousand yards of her objective, smoke belching from her two squat funnels as she increased speed but, a few minutes later, Midshipman Lightfoot, squatting behind the bow-gun, let out a yell of dismay.

“The
Coromandel
's grounded, sir!”

Phillip raised the Dollond again. The flagship was held fast on some submerged barrier but Commodore Elliott, he saw, was wasting no time—already his landing parties were piling into their boats. The fort opened fire; roundshot and grape peppered the water all round the racing boats but all fell short and the
Haughty,
holding to her original course and beautifully handled, supplied effective covering fire when the boats were beached and the first wave of scarlet-coated marines leapt ashore on the shelving river bank.

The
Coromandel
had brought two of her three guns to bear now and her gunners were pitching shot and shell into the fort with admirable speed and accuracy. The landing party of seamen and marines, with Commodore Elliott well to the fore, charged up the steep hill with bayonets fixed, cheering as they ran. The position was a formidable one and, Phillip thought, as he watched, a body of resolute troops could have made a hard fight of it. The Chinese, however, unnerved by the heavy fire from the gunboats, after firing a few more shots, abandoned their stronghold and their guns to flee in wild disorder across the paddy fields to their rear.

They were not pursued but, within minutes of the British party's entry into the fort, several of its guns were turned on the line of junks moored in an adjacent creek, upon which they got out their sweeps and started to make off. The
Haughty
's boats, which had landed a reserve party of marines, were seen to be re-embarking some of them and, the first phase of the attack successfully completed, Commodore Keppel signalled the remainder of his flotilla to advance up the channel on the east side of Hyacinth Island, himself leading the advance in the
Hong Kong.

T
hey made good progress
at first, on the rising tide, but then the river began to shoal and, one after another, the gunboats grounded. The
Hong Kong,
with her light draught, got within sight of the first division of junks before she, too, was brought abruptly to a standstill in the shallow water and Commodore Keppel could be seen entering his six-oared galley and waving to the other boats to cast off their tow-ropes and follow him.

“Right, my boys, this is it,” Phillip sang out. “Out oars and give way together!”

His crew needed no urging. Pulling with a will, they sent the heavy launch skimming through the water, making a race of it with the
Starling
's pinnace. It was tiring work, with the sun now hot on their backs and a heavy fire of grape from a gun battery, masked by trees on shore, falling about them like rain. The first division of junks, numbering twenty or so, were moored in a compact line and positioned so as to bring the enfilading fire of their guns on the attacking force. They presented an awesome spectacle from the approaching boats, high, square-prowed craft painted in garish colours, each with an eye depicted on the headboards, their upper decks swarming with men and brass cannon bristling from their lower deck ports. Apart from a few sighting shots, they held their fire until the leading British boats were within 600 yards and then they opened with devastating effect.

Keppel's galley sustained at least one hit before it vanished from sight in the smoke of battle, but the heavier boats were now within range and returned the fire with their bow-guns, Phillip's among them. Led by Edward Turnour's cutter and that of the
Hornet,
the rocket-boats sent a shower of incendiaries into the close-packed junks, which set first one and then another ablaze, the flames spreading rapidly from adjoining, tinder-dry decks and matting sails. The first line disintegrated in a series of fires and explosions, spars and timbers hurtling skywards as stored powder blew up and, with little conscious recollection of how they had got there, Phillip realised that his boat had passed through the once-formidable line and was faced with a second, moored at right angles which, as they approached it, met them with a hail of missiles from gingalls and cannon.