Meanwhile Soult was trying to construct on French soil lines of defence as mighty as those of Wellington at Torres Vedras; and on October 7, Wellington pushed his left across the Bidassoa, the stream that marks the boundaries of Spain and France. On the French side the hills rise to a great height. One huge shoulder, called La Rhune, commands the whole stream; another lofty ridge, called the "Boar's Back," offered almost equal facilities for defence. The only road that crossed the hills rose steeply, with sharp zigzags, and for weeks the French had toiled to make the whole position impregnable. The British soldiers had watched while the mountain sides were scarred with trenches, and the road was blocked with abattis, and redoubt rose above redoubt like a gigantic staircase climbing the sky. The Bidassoa at its mouth is wide, and the tides rose sixteen feet.
But on the night of October 7—a night wild with rain and sleet—Wellington's troops marched silently to their assigned posts on the banks of the river. When day broke, at a signal-gun seven columns could be seen moving at once in a line of five miles, and before Soult could detect Wellington's plan the river was crossed, the French entrenched camps on the Bidassoa won! The next morning the heights were attacked. The Rifles carried the Boar's Back with a single effort. The Bayonette Crest, a huge spur guarded by battery above battery, and crowned by a great redoubt, was attacked by Colborne's brigade and some Portuguese. The tale of how the hill was climbed, and the batteries carried in swift succession, cannot be told here. It was a warlike feat of the most splendid quality. Other columns moving along the flanks of the great hill alarmed the French lest they should be cut off, and they abandoned the redoubt on the summit. Colborne, accompanied by only one of his staff and half-a-dozen files of riflemen, came suddenly round a shoulder of the hill on the whole garrison of the redoubt, 300 strong, in retreat. With great presence of mind, he ordered them, in the sharpest tones of authority, to "lay down their arms," and, believing themselves cut off, they obeyed!
A column of Spanish troops moving up the flanks of the great Rhune found their way barred by a strong line of abattis and the fire of two French regiments. The column halted, and their officers vainly strove to get the Spaniards to attack. An officer of the 43rd named Havelock—a name yet more famous in later wars—attached to Alten's staff, was sent to see what caused the stoppage of the column. He found the Spaniards checked by the great abattis, through which flashed, fierce and fast, the fire of the French. Waving his hat, he shouted to the Spaniards to "follow him," and, putting his horse at the abattis, at one leap went headlong amongst the French. There is a swift contagion in valour. He was only a light-haired lad, and the Spaniards with one vehement shout for "el chico blanco"—"the fair lad"—swept over abattis and French together!
FAMOUS CUTTING-OUT EXPEDITIONS
"We have fed our sea for a thousand years,
And she calls us, still unfed,
Though there's never a wave of all her waves
But marks our English dead;
We have strawed our best to the weed's unrest,
To the shark and the sheering gull.
If blood be the price of admiralty,
Lord God, we ha' paid in full!
There's never a flood goes shoreward now
But lifts a keel we manned;
There's never an ebb goes seaward now
But drops our dead on the sand.
******
We must feed our sea for a thousand years,
For that is our doom and pride,
As it was when they sailed with the Golden Hind,
Or the wreck that struck last tide—
Or the wreck that lies on the spouting reef
Where the ghastly blue lights flare.
If blood be the price of admiralty,
If blood be the price of admiralty,
If blood be the price of admiralty,
Lord God, we ha' bought it fair!"
—KIPLING.
As illustrations of cool daring, of the courage that does not count numbers or depend on noise, nor flinch from flame or steel, few things are more wonderful than the many cutting-out stories to be found in the history of the British navy. The soldier in the forlorn hope, scrambling up the breach swept by grape and barred by a triple line of steadfast bayonets, must be a brave man. But it may be doubted whether he shows a courage so cool and high as that of a boat's crew of sailors in a cutting-out expedition.
The ship to be attacked lies, perhaps, floating in a tropic haze five miles off, and the attacking party must pull slowly, in a sweltering heat, up to the iron lips of her guns. The greedy, restless sea is under them, and a single shot may turn the eager boat's crew at any instant into a cluster of drowning wretches. When the ship is reached, officers and men must clamber over bulwarks and boarding-netting, exposed, almost helplessly, as they climb, to thrust of pike and shot of musket, and then leap down, singly and without order, on to the deck crowded with foes. Or, perhaps, the ship to be cut out lies in a hostile port under the guard of powerful batteries, and the boats must dash in through the darkness, and their crews tumble, at three or four separate points, on to the deck of the foe, cut her cables, let fall her sails, and—while the mad fight still rages on her deck and the great battery booms from the cliff overhead—carry the ship out of the harbour. These, surely, are deeds of which only a sailor's courage is capable! Let a few such stories be taken from faded naval records and told afresh to a new generation.
In July 1800 the 14-gun cutter Viper, commanded by acting-Lieutenant Jeremiah Coghlan, was attached to Sir Edward Pellew's squadron off Port Louis. Coghlan, as his name tells, was of Irish blood. He had just emerged from the chrysalis stage of a midshipman, and, flushed with the joy of an independent command, was eager for adventure. The entrance to Port Louis was watched by a number of gunboats constantly on sentry-go, and Coghlan conceived the idea of jumping suddenly on one of these, and carrying her off from under the guns of the enemy's fleet. He persuaded Sir Edward Pellew to lend him the flagship's ten-oared cutter, with twelve volunteers. Having got this reinforcement, and having persuaded the Amethyst frigate to lend him a boat and crew, Mr. Jeremiah Coghlan proceeded to carry out another and very different plan from that he had ventured to suggest to his admiral. A French gun-brig, named the Cerbère, was lying in the harbour of St. Louis. She mounted three long 24 and four 6-pounders, and was moored, with springs in her cables, within pistol-shot of three batteries. A French seventy-four and two frigates were within gunshot of her. She had a crew of eighty-six men, sixteen of whom were soldiers. It was upon this brig, lying under three powerful batteries, within a hostile and difficult port, that Mr. Jeremiah Coghlan proposed, in the darkness of night, to make a dash. He added the Viper's solitary midshipman, with himself and six of his crew, to the twelve volunteers on board the flagship's cutter, raising its crew to twenty men, and, with the Amethyst's boat and a small boat from the Viper, pulled off in the blackness of the night on this daring adventure.