Hostile Shores

The rest of the repast passed pleasantly, right through to the nuts, cheese, and port, with sweet bisquits, and i

“Well now, Captain Lewrie,” Popham said, peering down the table at him rather sharply, “what brings you to become part of our little expedition?”

“When up to London, sir, I mentioned to the First Secretary that I had spent some time round Cape Town several years ago,” Lewrie told him. “I had no choice, really … a French frigate sneaked up on me in the dark and shot my rudder to bits, had to be towed in, and spent some weeks scrounging up a replacement and getting it fitted. During that time, I hired a local hunter as guide and rode or hunted all over the countryside. Mister Marsden deemed that experience might prove of use to you, sir.”

“And well it might,” General Baird pronounced, thumping a fist on the table top. “Just where, exactly, Captain Lewrie?”

“Aye, let’s bring out the chart one more time,” Popham called out. “Supper is officially over, so there’s no harm discussing ‘shop’. And I’ll request the port decanter, if you will, General Beresford.”

A large chart, more a land map than a sea-chart, was fetched and spread out atop the dining table, the corners weighted down with the cheese plate, the bisquit barge, the nut bowl, and the port decanter.

“We anchored here, sirs, under the guns of the seaward fort, near the town quays,” Lewrie sketched out, pointing his movements during his forced stay. “Our sick and wounded, we placed in a rented cottage a little way up the Lion’s Rump, South of town, where there was a fresh-water well and cool and fresh sea breezes. When it came to the rudder, we put together a train of bullock carts, with native drivers, and trekked down to Simon’s Bay, where an Indiaman had mistaken False Cape for the proper one, and ripped her hull open on the rocks. Fortunately, she was able to beach herself, and there was little loss of life. The locals at Simonstown were scavenging her for her timbers and metal fittings, but they hadn’t gotten round to her rudder, yet. We camped there several days, living off game meat we shot, sleeping rough under canvas, and playing ball in the late afternoons. After we got the rudder replaced, I did ride out as far as the Salt River, to the Nor’east, and North round the shore of Table Bay.”

“As far as Blaauwberg or Saldanha Bays, sir?” General Baird enquired.

“Not quite that far, no, sir,” Lewrie replied. “Once my ship was sea-worthy, a small home-bound ‘John Company’ convoy had come in, and its Commodore requested additional escorts, what with so many Frog raiders working out of the Indian Ocean as far North up the Western coasts of Africa as the Equator. I might’ve gone as far as the South end of the beaches of Blaauwberg Bay, but it was only a day ride, and we didn’t find the type of antelope or whatever that my guide, Piet Retief, promised. Some of my sailors, four or five of my Black hands, had run off with a circus’s hunting party, and some had come back badly mauled, so I also had that on my plate to deal—”

“A circus!” General Baird gawped.

“Mister Daniel Wigmore’s Peripatetic Extravaganza, sir. They were after strange, new beasts for their menagerie,” Lewrie explained. “They hired the biggest fool in all of Africa for their guide, and it was a total disaster. Does a Jan van der Merwe offer you his services, sir, shoot him and run like Hell. He thought that the Cape buffalo would be a good replacement for domestic oxen, and that hyenas could be tamed as guard dogs, and God only knows what other foolishness. Baboons as na

“Yes, your famous Black sailors,” Popham said with a simpering drawl. “Lewrie was tried and acquitted, don’t you know, sirs, for liberating a round dozen Black slaves on Jamaica, and signing them aboard his ship as free volunteers. ‘Black Alan’ Lewrie? Or, ‘Saint Alan, the Liberator’?”

“Oh yes, I recall hearing of that,” General Beresford said, nodding. “That must have made William Wilberforce and his Abolitionist crowd perfectly giddy.”

“They were, for a time, my patrons, sir,” Lewrie had to admit. “Once I was acquitted, though, they found a new’un.”

“That must have been miserable,” General Baird grumbled. “All that tea-slurping and hymn-singing, and deadly-dull earnestness. The lesser races may be taught to make good servants, perhaps even sailors in your case, Captain Lewrie, but, without the firm, guiding hand from a civilised race, they will never amount to much. Pray God that after we take the Cape from the Dutch, we keep it and make it part of our empire forever. Then, you’ll see how much more we English may make of the place than ever the complacent Dutch could.”

“Hear hear!” Commodore Popham enthused.

“Now, with these two forts commanding Table Bay, there is no way to land our force directly upon Cape Town,” General Baird went on, returning his attention to the map. “Commodore Popham, Beresford, and I have thought it best to go ashore in either Saldanha or Blaauwberg Bay, which, or so Commodore Popham and his officers assure me, are open to the sea, and relatively free of any rocky shoals or reefs. Behind either, there is a chain of hills which must be surmounted, but there are passes through which we must march, before descending the Eastern slopes to what is reputed to be a decent road which leads all the way down round the shore of Table Bay to Cape Town.

“It is our intention to flank wide round Fort Knocke, here, at the East end of Cape Town,” Baird went on, “and, should it prove necessary to assault the town proper, it should be done from the South and East, out of the range of Fort Knocke’s heavy artillery, up through the outskirts and street-to-street. I would much prefer, though, for the Dutch to meet us in the open long before, so we may bloody their noses and reduce their numbers before we fall upon the town, eliminating the risk of laying siege.”

“I don’t remember either fort mounting all that many pieces of artillery facing landward, sir,” Lewrie offered, “though I suppose they could shift some guns from the seaward side. There were openings in the ramparts for such. But, once your troops get into the houses on the South side of town, would the Dutch really fire at their own town? They don’t strike me as ruthless enough to risk killing their own people.”

“It’s all profit and loss for the Dutch, yes, Lewrie,” Popham said with a laugh. “They are ever a mercantile lot!”

“What is there, Lewrie … on the Southern outskirts?” Baird asked him directly.

“As I recall, sir, it’s all truck gardens and vineyards, cottagers with some livestock, and some native African workers’ housing,” Lewrie said, tilting his head to one side to summon the images from his memory of the time he’d ridden the area, back when he and Eudoxia Durschenko had flirted with each other … before she’d discovered he was married. “Cape Town’s not all that large a city, sirs. The farms and such just get larger the further one goes outside the commercial centre, warehouses, and docks. Larger pastures, more livestock, more space between dwellings ’til one’s in open country, where the native people still have a few kraals. They lost their own pasturage to the Dutch a long time ago. And the Dutch brought in slaves from the East Indies t’make up the numbers of farm workers. It just straggles off. There aren’t many free natives or East Indians, and those who are are gathered together in little, separate quarters. Unless they tear down the rich, White part of town for fortifications and dig trenches, the town’s wide open, as is the countryside.”

“No impediments,” Brigadier General Beresford said, sounding like a man with his fingers crossed.

“Not unless one calls wood fences impediments, sir,” Lewrie assured them all.

“At any rate, our sudden appearance just out of range of their heavy guns will give them no time to prepare against us,” Commodore Popham idly dismissed. “We bring the fleet to anchor … well, here,” he said, tapping a finger just West of Robben Island at the Nor’west end of Table Bay, “sort ourselves out, and begin landing the cavalry and the regiments of the Light Brigade of Foot in either Saldanha or Blaauwberg Bay a day or two later, the winds and surf allowing, we’ll be at their throats before they know it! Forewarned even a week, the Dutch would still have too little time to prepare fortifications for a siege of Cape Town.”