Page 162 - The Pirate Coast (By Sir Charles Belgrave)

on the beach, with two six-pound pieces’. The troops formed
up, and advanced rapidly to some higher ground about ioo yards
ahead. ‘The people of the town were taken unawares, and did
not conceive that so many troops could be put ashore in so short
a time.’ By the evening all the stores, tents and equipment had
been landed, except the heavy ordnance which was to be brought
on shore later.
That night, an advance party pushed forward and took up a
position within range of the enemy’s front line defences, where
they set up the light guns; it was intended that the heavy guns
should be placed here when they were landed. On the morning
of December 3rd, the General and his staff visited the battery and
outposts. They were seen from the enemy lines, ‘which roused
a peppering of musketry from the defenders, as well as from their
ill-served guns. It was with great difficulty that the General
could be persuaded to retire.’ The earthworks were extended,
and sites for the heavy guns were prepared.
The guns had been brought in boats to the beach where the
troops had made their first landing. It was difficult to man-handle
them on the isthmus, so the boats were ordered to move along
the coast to a point as near as possible to the forward post, escorted
by gunboats. When they arrived, ‘the people’ began to unload
them. While the drag ropes were being put round them ‘ “rous­
ing them” up, according to the phrase’, Loch and Walpole ‘took
a turn towards the tower on the beach at the end of the wall,
when off went one of the enemy guns’.
‘I perceived the shot coming directly towards us. It struck
the ground about twenty yards in front, made a rebound, and I
had but time to give my friend Walpole a shove, and to bob my
own head, when it passed between us. It made another recouche,
and passed over the heads of about 200 seamen, without injuring
a single man.’ The mortars were landed and dragged under
cover, before the enemy fired another round. This incident re­
minded Loch of the siege of Gibraltar, when two boys were placed
in every battery to call out a warning when they saw shots or
shells emerging from the enemy cannon. Cannon balls of the
type which were used by the pirates, can still be found in many
places in the Gulf. They are round stones about eight inches in
diameter; in Bahrain they are sometimes used as garden ornaments.
On the morning of the 3rd, there was much activity around the
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