"Then we've got to decide now where the best place would be to make a stand." Calvert turned and motioned Morris forward. The commander had been watching apprehensively as his tattered troops disembarked from the longboats and waded in through the surf. "What say you, sir? Would you have us hold here at Oistins, or try to march along the coastal road toward Bridgetown while there's still some light?"
Morris removed his helmet and slapped at the buzzing gnats now emerging in the evening air, hoping to obscure his thoughts. Did the admiral realize, he wondered, how exposed their men were at this very moment? Why should anyone trust the loyalties of Anthony Walrond and his royalists? It could all be a trap, intended to lure his men onshore. He had managed to muster almost four hundred infantrymen from the ships, but half of those were weak and vomiting from scurvy. Already, even with just the militia he could see, his own forces were outnumbered. If Walrond's regiments turned on them now, the entire Commonwealth force would be in peril. Could they even manage to make their way back to the ships?
Caution, that's what the moment called for now, and that meant never letting the Windward Regiment, or any island militia, gain a position that would seal off their escape route.
"We'll need a garrison for these men, room for their tents." He glanced carefully at Walrond. "I'm thinking it would be best
for now if we kept our lads under separate command. Each of us knows his own men best."
"As you will, sir." Anthony glanced back, smelling Morris' caution. It's the first mark of a good commander, he told himself, but damn him all the same. He knows as well as I we've got to merge these forces. "I propose we march the men upland for tonight, to my plantation. You can billet your officers in my tobacco sheds, and encamp the men in the fields."
"Will it be ground we can defend?" Morris was carefully monitoring the line of longboats bringing his men ashore. Helmets and breastplates glistened in the waning sun.
"You'll not have the sea at your back, the way you do now, should we find need for a tactical retreat."
"Aye, but we'll have little else, either." Morris looked back at Calvert. "I'd have us off-load some of the ship ordnance as soon as possible. We're apt to need it to hold our position here, especially since I'll wager they'll have at least twice the cavalry mustered that these Windwards have got."
"You'll not hold this island from the shores of Oistins Bay, sir, much as you might wish." Anthony felt his frustration rising. "We've got to move upland as soon as we can."