CHAPTER VIII.

THE FIRESHIP.

While our vessels hauled up their courses, and swung round with their heads to the wind, the fireship, favoured by the obscurity which concealed her, and by a north-east wind, with all her sails and studding-sails set, ran right towards the boom, which closed the narrow _Strait_; for the promontory on which the town stands closes in the extremity of the outer harbour, and divides it from the inner fiörd. The boom itself was an enormous log of Memel timber, to which a number of masts, yards, and spars were lashed. At each end strong cables secured it to the shore. Immediately within it lay a number of ships full of Imperial stores, and on board of these the crews must have kept but a sleepy watch that night, or the northern mist had blinded them.

The warlike Christian had seen the fireship, which was about a hundred and fifty tons of burden, constructed under his own eye; she was crammed to the hatches with combustibles, and fitted with grappling irons, to seize and destroy the boom and shipping. She was fitted up with troughs full of powder and melted pitch; these communicated with her fire-barrels and chambers for blowing open the ports, at which the flames were to be emitted. Her decks were sheeted over with powder, rosin, sulphur, tar, pitch, and grease. Her gunwale was surrounded by bavins of brushwood, having the bushends all laid outwards, forming a thick hedge, which was saturated in the same conglomeration of inflammable matter with which she was loaded from keel to hatches; and with which her whole rigging and masts, sails and running cordage, were thickly coated; while barrels of oil and tar, powder and other preparations, were piled upon her deck.

Through the dark gloom we discerned--or imagined we could discern--this floating magazine of destruction standing steadily on towards the boom, at a safe distance from which our ships had come to anchor. All the large boats were lowered, and noiselessly two thousand armed men, with the old blades of our own regiment leading the van, slowly and with well-muffled oars put off towards the shore.

Ian with my company--once his own--composed entirely of brave men of his own name and kindred, led the way. Red M'Alpine and Kildon followed in the next boat, with their companies; then came the remainder of our Highlanders in pinnaces; then the Danish musketeers of the King's regiment, and the French companies of the gallant Count de Montgomerie.

The boats grounded at a distance from the shore; there was a murmur of discontent among the French and Danes; but now, as at Fehmarn, our bold Scottish lads slung their muskets, sprang overboard, formed line in the water, and, grasping each others' hands, led the way towards the shore.

"Softly and quickly, comrades!" cried Ian Dhu, whose head, surmounted by the entire eagle's wing, towered above all others, as he advanced to the front with a colour in his hand; "we shall be at them with our pikes before helmets are buckled or matches blown."

At that moment the fireship blew up!

After firing the train with his own royal hand, King Christian had dropped into a small boat, and been pulled on board of the _Anna Catharina_, on the poop of which he stood anxiously watching the effect of his skill.

The fireship reached the boom, and running full tilt against it, was retained there by her grapnels; the lighted trains rushed through all parts of the ship, and in a moment the troughs, the decks, the rigging and the tarred sails, were enveloped in one vast pyramid of roaring flame, which shed a lurid glow on the waters around it, and the shore before us. Brighter and brighter it grew; we could see in the foreground the whole outline of Eckernfiörd, then esteemed the prettiest town in Juteland, with its high old German gables and wooden spire, the long rows of trees that shaded its streets, and surrounded the half circular harbour; the barricades which closed its avenues; the palisaded breastwork we had come to storm, and the long bridge with its Tollbooth bristling with cannon. Brighter yet and broader grew that sheet of wavering light, and tipped with it, as they rose and fell, the waves of the Baltic rolled like billows of liquid fire; the low flat shore on which they broke was bathed in alternate glows of yellow flame and dusky-red, as the various combustibles ignited in succession.

We saw the white froth amid which the vast boom was surging and chafing; we saw distinctly the masts, spars, and rigging of the storeships within; we saw the casements of the town--even the gilt vane on the church spire shone in this glorious but terrible flush of flame; while the hoarse drums beat to arms, and we heard the loud and sudden murmur, as from a crowd of startled men, arise within the town. The Imperialists rushed to their posts, and in three minutes their helmets were seen glittering in lines behind the barricades, for the town, from which all the inhabitants had fled, was but rudely and hastily fortified.

Like a volcano showering a million of burning brands over the whole fiörd, the fireship blew up with a shock which made the waters vibrate and lash the level shore, while the concussion was felt at the bottom of every ship in the fleet.

The great boom broke in two like a withered reed. A momentary silence followed; then, from the vast height to which they had been shot by the explosion, we heard the burning pieces fall hissing into the water. But their expiring blaze was almost immediately renewed by the storeships, which caught fire, and enabled the Danish vessels to cannonade the town, from the falling roofs of which the bricks and tiles flew in showers through the air, as the round shot boomed among them.

Having formed in the water in three columns, under the Count de Montgomerie, with the Highlanders in front, we advanced pell-mell to storm the graff and stockade which enclosed the town, on that side where a gate opened towards the road from Kiel; from these works the enemy opened a brisk fire on us. Ian Dhu, an officer as skilful as he was brave, sent Captain-lieutenant Sir Patrick Mackay, with fifty musketeers of his own company, into a lofty house, from the windows of which their fire swept the stockades in flank. Under cover of this we stormed them with comparative ease, throwing ourselves into the graff, officers and men, pikes, musketeers, and colours; we rushed from thence up the rough glacis, climbing with one hand and fighting with the other, though, by the storm of lead which rained upon our ranks, many a brave fellow was swept back into the slough of the ditch to die among its mud and slime.

Torn down or hewn to pieces in some places, surmounted in others, the palisades were won, and Ian Dhu, though bleeding from three wounds, had the honour first to place St Andrew's cross on the summit, and, with a wild yell of triumph, the hardy Highlanders closed up beneath it, and broad over their heads its blue silk folds were rustling in the midnight blast. In the deadly melée that ensued here, the Austrians were overmatched by our Scottish cavaliers, who used their long claymores with both hands, hewing down with the edge, while the former only gave point with their slender rapiers, which were much less effective. I found this particularly the case when encountering a gigantic Spanish officer (for there were three companies of Castilians in the town). He lunged at me incessantly; but parrying one terrible thrust with my claymore, after narrowly escaping being run through by a demi-lance, I overthrew the Don by a backhanded blow from my dirk.

Another Spanish cavalier, a tall and powerful man, wearing a burganet of bright steel, was disarmed by Phadrig Mhor, at whom he discharged his pistols after surrender.

"Yield--yield!" cried Phadrig in Gaëlic, "or I'll run a yard of my halbert into your haggis-bag!"

"Quartel, señor Valoroso!" exclaimed the Spaniard; but the prayer came too late; for by one blow of his Lochaber axe, Phadrig, who was not blessed with over much patience, sliced his head in two like a Swedish turnip, cutting him through bone and steel helmet to the neck.

The Imperialists now gave way from the gate of Kiel along the whole line of ramparts, and retired through the streets with great precipitation to the church, which they entered in confusion, and followed so closely by our soldiers, that many Highlanders entered with them, and were shot or taken. Save a hundred or so, who were killed as they retired through the streets, all reached the church, got in, barricadoed the doors, and from every part of the edifice opened a terrible fire upon us.

Montgomerie's Frenchmen assailed one flank, the king's Danish regiment another, and Ian led us to the assault of the great door; but for a time we failed to make any impression upon it. The night was bleak, dark, and exceedingly stormy; the wind shook our standards and rustled our lofty plumes, and we heard it (during the pauses of the musketry) howling through the louvre-boarded spire of the church, and the high gables of the old houses; but the pauses in the fusilade were few and far between. Through the windows and from behind the planks and benches with which they had barricaded them, four or five companies of Imperialists continued to fire upon us; and the bright red streaks of flame, as they burst forth incessantly above, below, and on every side, lighted up the quaint façade of the old church, the greater part of which was of wood. Every moment our bullets tore away large splinters. A company of Irishmen in the belfry made a terrible slaughter among my company, on whom they shot down in security without receiving a ball in return, for their position was too elevated for our muskets to reach them. Ian became greatly excited by the loss of so many of his soldiers and kinsmen.

"Count of Montgomerie!" he exclaimed; "let cannon be brought and the door blown in! My brave followers--the children of my father's people--shall not perish thus!"

"Dioul, my colonel!" added Kildon, whose company united its efforts with mine to burst open the door, before which the dead encumbered the steps three deep, and which resounded beneath our mingled blows like the head of a gigantic drum; "let us blow the d--d kirk up, and, by my father's hand, I will place the first stone of your cairn."

"May the ashes of these Spaniards be scattered on the waters!" added M'Alpine in the same forcible language, and staggering as a bullet grazed his helmet; "for, by the grey stone of M'Gregor! I believe they are the same men who so cruelly slew old Dunbar and five hundred of our gallant hearts at Bredenburg."

"Yea--after surrender, in cold blood," said Lumsdaine, my lieutenant, the sole survivor of that affair; "I know them by the fashion of their doublets--forward then--let us cut to pieces this kennel of blood-hounds!"

"Tullach Ard!" cried the Mackenzies of Kildon's company.

"Cairn na cuimhne!" added my men of Strathdee.

"Revenge! remember Dunbar and Bredenburg!" cried the whole battalion, with a wild Highland hurrah; and the soldiers redoubled their efforts, while the dying and dead fell fast on every side.

Suddenly there arose a cry of--

"The vaults--the church vaults are full of powder--five hundred barrels--Bredenburg! Bredenburg mercy! let us blow them up!"

This proved to be actually the case. Whether it was a mere speculation of our soldiers, or that they had been informed of the circumstances by some wounded Holsteiner (who had been compelled to serve the Austrians), I know not; but it was immediately acted upon.

Heedless of the leaden storm which was poured upon them, Phadrig Mhor, and a score of the brave fellows, rushed close to the walls of the church, beat down the bars of certain wooden gratings which admitted air to the vaults, and threw in five or six fireballs--engines formed of every combustible. These filled the whole basement story with a deluge of light, as they blazed, roared, and rolled about like flaming dragons; and to the eyes of a few revealed, in the very centre of the place, a goodly pile of wooden powder barrels.

"Retire--retire!" was the cry, and our men fell back on all sides, dragging with them several of the wounded, who were unable to crawl away; but we had scarcely retreated fifty paces down the main street, each side of which was bordered by stately beech-trees, when the earth shook beneath our feet, a blaze of yellow light filled the windows of the church, its broad roof of slates was shot into the air and rent asunder, to descend like rain upon the streets; a mighty column of fire poured upwards from the crater formed by the walls; I saw them gape and rend, in every direction; the taper spire shook like a willow wand, then crumbled and vanished with a crash. One half the edifice was blown into the air, the other half fell inwards. In an instant all became dark (save where the store-ships, half-burned to the water-edge, shed a sickly light upon the half-ruined town), and we heard a shower of stones, beams, slates, and materials of every kind, falling on the tops of the houses and into the street around us. With these came down many a scorched and shattered fragment of a human form; for at least five hundred men had, in one moment, been blown into eternity.

Among these were a hundred stout-hearted Irishmen of Butler's regiment.

Many of our men were severely injured by the debris of the explosion; after which I remember little more of that night, being struck senseless by a piece of falling timber.

I have a dim recollection of being borne away somewhere; and then of feeling the soft hands of a woman chafing mine, and pouring a cooling essence on my brow.

I thought of Ernestine; and then, as if that dear thought had conjured up her image and her presence, I seemed to hear her voice murmuring in my ear, as she wept and mourned bitterly.

Book the Ninth