Tenacious(109)

‘If you’d been in the eastern Mediterranean as long as I have, you would have your concerns. It could soon be a nor’-westerly,’ Hewitt told him.

Kydd nodded gravely. Any wind of force from the north-west would place Tenacious and Tigre on a lee shore. Anchored as they were, as close to the scattered rocky shoals as was possible, they would have to weigh and proceed to sea to make an offing until it was safe to return. And while the ships were away they could no longer maintain their broadsides – Buonaparte would have his chance.

‘I hold to my small hope that Buonaparte is as much a seaman as my sainted aunt Betsy, and will not in anticipation plan a descent, and will be caught off-guard. Is that too much to pray for?’ Hewitt said.

The wind strengthened: it blustered and the first raindrops fell. Soon curtains of rain squalls were marching in from seaward, laying the dust and forming myriad rivulets in the drab, yellowish-brown dust but turning the dull iron of cannon to a lustrous gleam. Those who could pulled on rain slicks; others endured. The squalls passed but behind them the wind set in from the north-west, hard and cold.

‘Stand to! All hands, get on th’ wall!’ Kydd roared, driving wet and bedraggled Turks to their stations. An assault would come, it was certain; it was only a question of when.

They stood to for an hour – then two. Hewitt had been right. As dusk approached it was certain that Buonaparte was not going to mount an assault that day. Now everything depended on the weather: if the wind shifted back during the night the ships could return, but if it stayed in the same quarter the defenders of Acre would face an assault.

With the dawn came the wind, relentlessly in the north-west. Before the day was out, they would be fighting for their lives, and Smith was still somewhere out at sea in Tigre and could play no part. It was entirely up to themselves.

The enemy came without fanfare, a sudden purposeful tide of attackers. The defenders’ guns blasted defiance, but without whole broadsides from the ships there was no deterring their deadly advance. Kydd lost no time in placing himself at the breach, now choked with hastily placed timber and rubble.

On the tower above him the muskets banged away but against such numbers they had little effect. Then a deep rumble sounded. The front ranks faltered. Kydd’s heart leaped: if the ships had returned they stood a chance. But a crash gave the lie – it was a thunderstorm.

As the French bore down with scaling ladders to throw up against the walls from the fosse, blustering and chilling rain squalls came. The open ground grew slippery with sticky yellow mud. Firearms were useless in such conditions yet still they came on – hurrying lines, the dull glitter of wet steel, a sea of anonymous faces and a continuous shouting roar.

The first wave reached the fosse. Ladders were thrown down awkwardly, but Phélippeaux had designed well: the width of the ditch did not match the height necessary to reach the parapets and the ladders ended in a tangle of bodies and bloody corpses.

The first breathless Frenchmen arrived at the breach, hard, brutal faces in sketchy blue uniforms, bright weapons, the cutting edge of Buonaparte’s will. Pistols banged out and they scrambled over the rubble to close at last with the defenders.

Kydd braced himself, his sword warily at point. A soldier reared up with a short carbine and threw it to his shoulder, aiming at Kydd’s face. It missed fire but he hurled it at Kydd, yanked a long bayonet from its scabbard and came at him. Used to the confines of shipboard fighting, Kydd whirled away and his blade flashed out and took the man squarely in the side. He fell and was immediately trampled by another whose bayoneted musket jabbed at Kydd’s face. He dropped to one knee and as the man lurched forward he lunged for his bowels. The sword ran true and the man dropped with a howl, but his fall jerked the weapon from Kydd’s hands. On his knees he scrabbled for it desperately – but towering above him was a giant of a soldier. Before the man could plunge his bayonet down, bloody steel shot out of the front of his chest. With a squeal the man half turned as if to see who had killed him, then toppled, trapping Kydd under his wet carcass. Struggling to move Kydd felt the body shift. It was heaved aside to reveal the grinning face of Suleiman, his curved Ottoman dagger still dripping red.

Kydd shook his head to clear it. The fighting had moved down the rubble and into the ditch. He picked up his sword and looked about. Rain now hammered down in earnest on his bare head and his eyes stung with a salty mix of sweat and blood.

The well-sited guns from the ships were still tearing great holes in the waves of attackers. A musket ball slammed past his cheek with a vicious slap of air, but he could see that the rain and mud were severely impeding the assault.