Man Of War

But the question was unnecessary: Collins revealed the carbine’s purpose as he eased the shaft of the grapple into the barrel. ‘An exactly perfect fit, Smiddy. Well done!’

‘You mean to fire the grapple from the carbine?’

‘Ay, sir. Reckon it’ll carry.’

As indeed would the noise. But Hervey was confident enough in that regard: he did not suppose the ‘enemy’ would so disperse his strength by picketing this far from the bridge. And as for the grapple, he had seen a musket’s ramrod fired a prodigious distance on more than one occasion in the Peninsula by a panicky finger . . . ‘Admirably ingenious, Sar’nt-Major.’

‘Colonel on parade!’ came the word from along the line as Lord Holderness made his way forward.

‘Good evening, Colonel,’ said Hervey when he reached the grapplers.

‘Good evening, Hervey, gentlemen,’ replied Holderness, breezily, dismounting. ‘Is that you I see, Sar’nt-Major Collins?’

‘Colonel.’

‘And the farrier-major, I perceive.’

‘Colonel.’

Hervey explained the plan.

‘ ’Pon my word – ingenious, sir, ingenious!’

‘Sar’nt-Major Collins’s idea.’

‘Indeed, Sar’nt-Major?’

‘I saw something its like once at Dover, Colonel, when the lifeboat there were in trouble.’

‘I could wish for a lifeboat here.’

‘The rest of the regiment has marched, Colonel?’ asked Hervey.

‘They have. They will engage the pickets as soon as may be, keep them alert all night, make them think we are probing the lodgement. And, should there be an unexpected opening, Worsley or Vanneck will seize it.’

Collins finished tying the rope to the grapple. ‘Ready, Cap’n Fairbrother, sir.’

‘Ah, Fairbrother – forgive me; I did not see you there.’

‘I have that advantage at night, my lord.’

Lord Holderness rose to the jest in Fairbrother’s voice. ‘So you do, sir!’

Fairbrother, stripping finally to the flesh, and with but matches and candle in an oilskin tied at his neck, braced to attention. ‘Permission to cross, my lord?’ he asked, wholly unselfconsciously.

Lord Holderness took his flask and gave it to him. ‘You may find the brandy restorative. Good luck to you,’ he said nodding, and then to Collins.

Instead of firing the carbine from where they stood, however, a few yards back on the bank, as Hervey had expected, Collins remounted, gave a hand down to Fairbrother and hauled him astride behind him. ‘Keep paying out the rope, Smiddy. Give me plenty of slack,’ he said to the farrier, just as they had planned it. Then he pressed to the water’s edge, raised the carbine above his head, and forged into the river.

By God, reckoned Hervey: Collins knew his horse! He could count on one hand the regiment’s troopers that would take so tractably to water at night. As he recalled, Collins’s had been cast as a roadster on the Bath mail, having thrown a leg over the traces on the long incline to Chippenham, stumbling and almost bringing the whole team to grief; the gelding had never taken willingly to the harness after that. The remount officer had bought him unwarranted but at a good price, thereby, and Collins had taken him on as his second trooper, remaking him, evidently, with great patience.

Hervey smiled to himself: for once, capability and patience had been richly rewarded. Collins and Armstrong were neck and neck as serjeant-majors, in his judgement; it was but Geordie Armstrong’s seniority (and, he must admit, their long years’ association) that to his mind placed him first in line behind the RSM. For a moment he wondered how was Armstrong, and the detached troop, in that southern autumn. Whatever their fortune, with Armstrong the troop was in good hands; of that he was sure . . .

‘A really rather remarkable sort of man,’ said Lord Holderness, lighting a cheroot.

Hervey snapped to in time to see Fairbrother slide from the trooper’s quarters and grasp a stirrup leather as the animal began swimming freely. He held his breath as he watched the current begin taking its hold, swinging the three of them towards the middle of the river, exactly as the branch had behaved when they tried it in the afternoon. Collins lay almost prone along his trooper’s neck, carbine held high, until he reckoned they were at the point when the horse would have to swim hard to make headway, the current no longer working in their favour. He raised himself in the saddle, pointed the carbine at the far bank, high, and fired.

Hervey saw the grapple arching into the darkness, and Collins turning his trooper (or rather, letting him be turned) downstream. He could not see Fairbrother, though he searched with his telescope (it amplified the light); he could only pray the grapple held fast and his friend was able to haul himself across. He could barely see Collins, now: they would, please God, be striking for the home bank, taking advantage of the slack water on the outside of the bend – but a struggle, a prodigious effort, nevertheless. How far downstream they would make their footing he did not know. Even so, he felt like cheering.

‘What do you see, Hervey?’ asked Lord Holderness, searching with his own glass.