The Bravest of the Brave — or, with Peterborough in Spain by G. A. Henty (beach read book txt) 📖

goes under an iron bar which is bent, and the two ends fastened in a rock. When they want to fix the boom the end of the chain is passed under this iron loop and then fastened to some blocks and ropes worked from the battery above, and the end of the chain is drawn up tight there, so that there is no loosing the chain till that battery is taken.'

“'And you say the guns of the lower batteries at the inner point sweep the entrance?'

“'They do, sir. There are ten of them on each side, twelve pounder carronades, which are always charged, and crammed up to the muzzle with bullets and nails and bits of iron. The batteries on the top of the cliff at the entrance are the heaviest metal. They have got twenty guns in each of them. They are loaded with round shot to keep a vessel from approaching, though of course they could fire grape into any boats they saw coming in.'

“'This does not seem an easy business by any means, Mr. Earnshaw,' the captain said.

“'It does not, sir,' the lieutenant agreed in a dubisome sort of way; 'but no doubt it can be done, sir—no doubt it can be done.'

“'Yes, but how?' the captain asked. 'You will be in command of the boats, Mr. Earnshaw, and it will never do to attack such a place as that without some sort of plan.'

“'What is the boom like, my lad?' the lieutenant asked; 'is it lashed together?'

“'No, it is a solid spar,' I said. 'The entrance is not more than forty feet wide, and the boom is part of the mainmast of a big ship.'

“'It seems to me,' said the lieutenant, 'that the only way to get at it would be to go straight at the boom, the two lightest boats to go first. The men must get on the spar and pull the boats over, and then make a dash for the batteries; the heavy boats can follow them.'

“'It would never do, Mr. Earnshaw,' the captain said. 'You forget there are twelve guns loaded to the muzzle with grape and musketballs all trained upon a point only forty feet across. Would it be possible to land just outside the boom, lad, on one or both sides, and to keep along the edge, or wade in the water to the batteries?'

“'No, sir, the rock goes straight up from the water both sides.'

“'Well, the two sentries, how do they get down to the water's edge?'

“'They are let down by rope from above, sir, and the rope is hauled up as soon as they are down.'

“'This is a deuce of a place, Mr. Earnshaw,' the captain said. 'We must do nothing hastily in this matter, or we shall only be throwing away the lives of a lot of men, and failing in our object. I was intending to sail on and not return for a week, for no doubt they will be specially vigilant for a time after seeing a large ship pass them. As it is, I will return tonight to the back of the island, and will there leave the cutter and my gig. You will be in charge of the cutter, and Mr. Escombe will take the gig. I shall then sail away again before daylight; for although from what the lad said there is no watch kept on that side of the island, it cannot be more than three miles across, and any of the men or women might stroll across or might from any high point in the island obtain a view that way. You will make a thorough survey of all that side. The cliffs certainly seem, so far as we could see them as we left the island, as perpendicular as they are on the side we passed; but there may be some place easier than another—some place where, by setting our wits to work, we may make a shift to climb up. Get into the island I will, if I have to blast a flight of steps up the cliff.'

“'I will do my best to find a place, sir,' the lieutenant said; 'and, if there isn't one, I will make one.'

“The lieutenant told me that I was to accompany him in the cutter, and all was got ready for the trip. Water and a week's rations of food were placed on board the boats; for in that climate there was no saying when a gale might spring up, or how long the vessel might be before she got back to pick up the boats.

“When we were fairly out of sight of the island we lay to till it got dusk, and then her head was pointed back again. There was scarce a breath of wind stirring, and the vessel went through the water so slowly that a couple of hours later the captain ordered the boats to be lowered, for he saw that if the wind didn't freshen the ship could not get to the island, much less get away again, before daylight. The oars were got out and off we started, and after four hours' steady rowing, the lieutenant, who was steering by compass, made out the land looming high above us. Another quarter of an hour's row and we dropped our grapnels close to the foot of the cliffs, and the men were told to get a sleep as well as they could till morning.

“As soon as it was daylight we were off again and rowed to the end of the island; for, as Mr. Earnshaw said to the third lieutenant, we had best begin at the end and do the work thoroughly. When we got to the point we turned and rowed back, keeping about two hundred yards from the cliff, so that we could see well up. They were about a hundred feet high—sometimes a little less, sometimes a good bit more, and they went as straight up from the water's edge as the cliffs at Dover, only there weren't no beach. It was deep water right up to the foot.

“We went along very slowly, the men only just dipping their oars into the water, and all of us watching every foot of the cliffs. Sometimes we would stop altogether while the officers talked over the possibility of any one climbing up at some place where the water trickling down from the top had eaten away the face a little; but not a goat in the world could have climbed up them, not to say men. So we kept on till we got to the other end of the island, which must have been five miles long. Not a place could we see.

“'Unless we are going to do as the captain said—blast steps up the face of that rock—I don't believe it's to be done,' Lieutenant Earnshaw said to Mr. Escombe. 'Well, there's nothing to do, lads, but to row in and drop your grapnels again and wait till we see the ship's lights tonight.'

“Although we rowed in to within an oar's length of the cliff, there was eight fathoms of water when we dropped the grapnels. We had been lying there an hour when the third lieutenant said:

“'I should think, Mr. Earnshaw, that if we were to bring the pinnace with that four pounder gun in the bow and up end it, and with a small charge fire a ball with a rope fastened to it up into that clump of trees we saw just about the middle of the island, it might get caught.'

“'So it might, Escombe, and the idea is a good one; but I doubt whether there's a man on board ship could climb a rope swinging like that against