Run Them Ashore Read Free

dishonourable a word as spy, but knew that that was the truth of it.
    Hanley revelled in outwitting the enemy and often showed a ruthless streak in his willingness to gamble with the lives of others as if the higher the stakes the more satisfying the game. Williams sometimes doubted his friend’s judgement, and had even less faith in the men who gave Hanley his orders, sure that they would have no qualms about sending them all to their deaths for the sake of some grand deception. They were clearly behind all this, plucking them all away when they were travellingback to join the battalion and sending them off to make contact with the guerrilleros. Before that they had all formed part of a training mission attached to the Spanish armies further north, and that posting had seen them stranded inside the besieged town of Ciudad Rodrigo as a token gesture made by the British to their allies. They had helped Hanley hunt an enemy spy and then been hunted in turn by a determined and ruthless French officer. Only through sheer luck had they managed to escape, and now they were once again dispatched into enemy-held country.
    Williams suspected that there was far more behind their current orders than first met the eye. Sparrowhawk ’s captain was one of Billy Pringle’s older brothers, and what should have been a happy coincidence only made him more suspicious that this was no chance, but an element of some subtle scheme which he could not yet discern. Williams hoped and prayed that understanding would not come at too high a price, and felt himself being drawn ever further into the murky world in which Hanley took such evident delight. Still, at the moment it all seemed to be progressing most satisfactorily.
    ‘Something moving, sir! Mile away to larboard!’ Clegg had not quite shouted, but his report was given with a power no doubt intended to carry over the noise of weather and a working ship.
    Williams saw that the young sailor was pointing to the left, down along the coast road. He stared, but could see nothing, and so pulled his cocked hat down more tightly and held it there in the hope of shading his eyes from the moon.
    ‘Can you see what it is?’ he asked.
    ‘No, sir. Just a shade at this distance.’
    There was something, but Williams was staring so hard that he blinked and lost it. He scanned the thread-like line of the road and saw nothing.
    ‘See anything, Dob?’
    ‘No, but my eyes aren’t what they used to be.’
    ‘It’s there, sir,’ Clegg repeated in a tone of mild offence. ‘On the road.’ The lad gestured again.
    ‘If you would be kind enough to get my glass, Sergeant.’ Williams carried his long telescope strapped to the side of his backpack and it was easier for Dobson to slide it out than for him to reach it. Then it did not matter because he saw it. The moonlight glinted on something metal and then there was an obvious dark patch moving along the road. It was coming towards them.
    ‘You have fine eyesight, Clegg, fine eyesight indeed.’
    Now that he had spotted the movement, Williams found it easy to trace, and so waited before using his glass in the hope of seeing more detail.
    ‘Horsemen, sir?’ suggested the sailor.
    ‘I believe so. From the speed if nothing else, and coming this way.’
    ‘Ours or theirs?’ asked Dobson, although his tone contained little doubt that they were enemy. ‘Though I can’t say I can see them yet.’
    ‘Must be French,’ Williams said. ‘And there is no reason for them to stop, so if they keep coming they will be here in fifteen or twenty minutes and if we can see them at this distance they must be in some strength.
    ‘Well then,’ he continued, trying to think clearly as the ideas took shape in his mind. ‘Dob, I need you to go back to Mr Pringle and tell him I need the marines up here. Suggest that he hastens loading the mules as much as possible and then pushes on with them. Ask Mr Cassidy to take the Sparrowhawk back down to the beach and to wait