Bolitho 19 - Beyond the Reef (26 page)

At the rear of the church Sir Paul Sillitoe picked up his hat and then turned as he saw the woman who had been just behind him. She was crying now, but not with grief.

He asked kindly, “Someone very dear to you, is he?”

She curtsied and wiped her eyes. “Just a man, sir.”

Sillitoe thought of Adam’s expression when he had reentered the church, of the sudden ache in his own heart when the news had broken over them like a great, unstoppable wave.

He smiled at her. “We are all just men, my dear. It is better not to forget that sometimes.”

He walked out into the jostling, noisy square and heard the peal of bells following him.

He thought of their first encounter at one of Godschale’s ridiculous receptions. Like no other woman he had ever met. But at this moment in Falmouth his own words to her were uppermost in his mind. She had protested that Bolitho was being ordered back to immediate duty after all he had suffered, and suggested angrily that some other flag officer be sent instead. Sillitoe seemed to hear himself, in memory. Fine leaders—they have the confidence of the whole fleet. But Sir Richard Bolitho holds their hearts.

He looked round for his carriage, at these simple, ordinary people who were a far cry from those he knew and directed.

Aloud he said, “As you, my dear Catherine, hold mine.”

His Britannic Majesty’s brig Larne of fourteen guns rolled untidily in a steep offshore swell, sailing so close to the wind that to any landsman her yards would appear to be braced almost fore-and-aft. The island lay enticingly abeam, its greenness shimmering in heat-haze, the nearest beaches pure white in the sunshine. But like an evil barrier between the island and the sturdy brig lay the protective reef, showing itself every so often in violent spurts of broken spray.

Right aft in Larne’s stern cabin her captain lay sprawled on the bench seat beneath the open windows, so that the quarter-wind stirred the stale air and gave his naked body a suggestion of refreshment. Commander James Tyacke was staring up at the dancing reflections that played across the low deckhead. The cabin was like a miniature of the stern cabin in a frigate, but to Tyacke it still seemed spacious. He had previously commanded the armed schooner Miranda and had taken part in the recapture of Cape Town, and it had been then that he had first served alongside Richard Bolitho. Tyacke had never held much respect for senior officers, but Bolitho had changed many of his views. When Miranda had been sunk by a French frigate and her crew left to die, Tyacke, who had already lost so much, had felt that he had nothing more to live for.

That was something else Bolitho had done to give him back his dignity and his pride: he had asked him to command the Larne.

Ordered to the newly formed anti-slavery patrols, Tyacke imagined that he had at last found the best life still had to offer him. Independent, free of the fleet’s apron strings and the whims of any admiral who chose to accost him, the role had suited him very well.

Larne was well-found and manned by some excellent seamen. And as for the wardroom, if you could rate it as such, Tyacke had three lieutenants and a sailing-master and rarest of all, a fullyqualified doctor who had accepted the poor rewards of service as a ship’s surgeon in order to enhance his knowledge of tropical diseases. Dealing with slaves and slavers alike, he was getting plenty of experience.

Larne even boasted five masters’ mates, although there were only two aboard at present, the others having been sent away as prize-masters in some of Tyacke’s captures.

And then, without any sort of warning, the news had hit him like a mailed fist. They had met with a courier schooner and Tyacke had learned of Bolitho’s loss at sea.

He knew them all: Valentine Keen, Allday, who had tried to help him, and of course Catherine Somervell. Tyacke had last spoken to her at Keen’s wedding at the start of the year. He had never forgotten her, or the way she had conversed with him so directly, and looked at him without flinching. Tyacke stood up abruptly and walked to the mirror above his sea-chest. He was thirty-one years old, tall and well built, and his left profile was strong, with the grave good looks which might catch any woman’s glance. But the other side … he touched it and felt only disgust. The Arab slavers called him the devil with half a face. Only the eye lived in it. A miracle, everyone told him. It could have been so much worse. But could it? Half his face burned away and he had no idea how it had happened. His world had exploded at the Nile, while all those about him had been killed. It could have been worse …

But Bolitho had somehow put him together again. A vice-admiral, one of England’s heroes even if he had outraged many of his contemporaries, who had taken passage in Tyacke’s tiny Miranda and never once complained at the discomfort, Bolitho had got to know him as a man, not as a victim, and had taken the trouble to care.

He turned away and walked aft to the open windows again. Ten days ago, while they had been searching for a well-known slaver who was said to be in the area, the lookouts had sighted a drifting longboat, the cutter from the Golden Plover. Andrew Livett, Larne’s surgeon, had earned his keep that day. The survivors had been almost finished, mostly because the cutter’s water supply had been inadequate, and they had been in too much of a hurry abandoning the wreck to replenish it.

Tyacke had sat, face in shadow, in this cabin and listened to the senior survivor, Luke Britton the boatswain, describing the mutiny, the sudden change of fortune while Bolitho had turned the tables on the men who had betrayed their master.

He had told of the jolly-boat entering the reef itself, while his own cutter, loaded as it was with some twenty hands, had been carried away to the other side. Tyacke had pictured it as the man blurted out each item of tragedy: the mutineers’ boat being smashed by falling spars, the sharks gorging on the floundering, screaming sailors.

All plans to capture the slaver, the notorious Raven, had gone. Instead, Tyacke had laid a new course in a giant triangle to search along the reef and look for signs of life on the small, scattered islands, or perhaps even smoke signals, which might indicate that some of the party had survived. There had been nothing, and Tyacke had been forced to admit what his first lieutenant, a Channel Islander named Paul Ozanne, had believed from the beginning. A fruitless search; and with two women on board, what hope could there be?

And now Larne was herself dangerously short of water and the fruit which any King’s ship needed to prevent scurvy in these sweltering waters.

He half-listened to the chant of his two leadsmen in the chains, watching out for the reefs while their best lookouts manned both mastheads for an hour at a time, before the glare rendered them useless.

What more can I do?

His people would not let him down; he knew that now. At first he had found this new command and her different company hard to know, but eventually he had won them over, just as he had done in his beloved Miranda. However, if anyone else discovered that he had abandoned his hunt for the Raven, they might be less understanding.

There was a tap at the screen door and Gallaway, one of the master’s mates, peered in at him.

“What is it?” He tried to keep the despair and grief out of his voice.

“The master sends ‘is respects, sir. It will be time to wear ship in about ‘alf an hour.” He showed no surprise at seeing his captain naked, nor did he drop his eyes when Tyacke looked directly at him. Not any more.

So it was over. When Larne came about he would have to take her to Freetown to receive new orders, to replenish stores and water supply. All the rest was a memory: one he would never lose, like the wound on his face.

“I’ll come up.” Tyacke pulled on a shirt and breeches and glanced at the cupboard where the thirteen-year-old cabin boy kept his rum and brandy. He rejected the idea. His men had to manage; so would he. Even that reminded him of Bolitho. Leadership by example, by a trust which he had insisted went both ways.

On deck it was scorching, and his shoes stuck to the tarred deck-seams. But the wind, as hot as if it blew across a desert, was strong enough. A glance at the compass, a critical examination of the yards and flapping canvas as his ship heeled over to the close-hauled sails, then he looked along the deck. Both watches were assembling in readiness to change tack. A few raw youngsters but mostly seamen, glad to get away from the harsh discipline of the fleet, or some tyrannical captain. He smiled sadly. And no midshipmen, none. There was no room on anti-slavery work for untrained, would-be admirals.

The first lieutenant was watching him, his face troubled. He knew about Tyacke and the vice-admiral. A powerful relationship, although Tyacke could rarely be drawn to speak of it. But Larne could not stand away from the land for much longer; they were on halved rations as it was. In the same breath, Ozanne knew that if his captain required it he and the others would drive the brig to eternity. Ozanne himself was no stranger to risk, or to dedication: he had once been the master of a lugger running out of St Peter Port in Guernsey, but French men-of-war and privateers had made trade impossible for such small craft, and he had gone into the navy, becoming a master’s mate, and eventually a lieutenant.

Tyacke did not notice his scrutiny. He was shading his eyes to study the nearest island. Nothing. He tried not to think of the sharks Golden Plover’s boatswain had described. Better that than to be taken by natives or Arab slavers, especially the two women. He wondered who the other one was—surely not Keen’s young wife?

He said, “Change the lookouts, Paul. I’d anchor inshore despite the danger and send a watering party over. But it would take more time.”

Ozanne pondered on it. What did the captain mean, “more time?” Did he still intend to carry on with the search? Some of the men would soon be getting worried, he thought. They had seen the state of the survivors from the cutter. One had already died, and another had gone since they had been snatched from the sea.

They were quite alone, and with three prize crews taking their captures back to Freetown they were short-handed. He trusted his men, but he never trusted what the sea might make them do.

Tyacke waited for the new lookouts to climb aloft and then said, “Both watches, if you please, Paul. We’ll come about and steer sou’-east-by-south.”

Ozanne stood his ground. He was older than Tyacke, and would never go any higher in the navy. But this suited him; and he found he wanted to comfort Tyacke in some way.

“You done your best, sir. It’s God’s will—I believe that.”

“Aye, mebbe.” He was thinking of the girl he had been hoping to marry. He persistently told himself that no one could blame her for rejecting him when he went home with his terrible scars. But it still hurt him deeply, more than he could rightly understand. Was that God’s will, too? What would all these sunburned seamen think of him if they knew he still had her portrait in his sea-chest, and the gown he had once bought for her in Lisbon?

He was suddenly angry with himself. “Stand by on deck!”

Pitcairn the sailing-master joined the first lieutenant by the wheel.

“Takin’ it badly, is he?”

“He’s … lost something. I’m not certain what.”

“Off tacks and sheets! Stand by! Man the braces, lively there!”

Men crouched and stooped over braces and halliards were suddenly changed into living statues as the distant crash of gunfire echoed across the reefs.

“Belay that order!” Tyacke snatched a telescope from the rack. “Get the t’gallants on her!”

“Hands aloft!” A master’s mate had to push one man bodily to the shrouds.

Tyacke studied the sweeping green arm of the island as it began to dip down towards the eye-searing water.

Another shot. He gritted his teeth. It might be anything. Come on, old lady, you can fly when it takes you thus!

“Deck there! Sail on the lee bow! Brig, she is!”

Tyacke shouted impatiently, “What other vessel?”

The man, even at that height, sounded puzzled. “None, sir!”

“They’ve sighted us, sir.”

Tyacke gripped his hands behind him until the pain steadied him.

“Clear away larboard battery! Stand fast all other hands!”

Men stumbled from their various stations and ran to the seven guns of the larboard battery.

Then, as the land fell completely away, Tyacke saw the other brig. He said almost in a whisper, “She’s the bloody Raven, by God.”

Ozanne rubbed his hands. “We’ll dish that bugger up afore he knows it!” He turned away and did not see Tyacke’s expression. “Run up the Colours! Mr Robyns, a shot across her snout, and the next into ‘er belly if she fails to heave-to!”

The forward gun lurched inboard and seconds later a ball splashed down some fifty feet beyond the Raven’s bowsprit.

But Tyacke had shifted his glass, the slaver almost forgotten as he saw the low shape of the jolly-boat.

“Raven’s shortening sail, sir!”

Tyacke moved the glass with elaborate care on to the pitching boat and flapping sail.

“It’s them. It can’t be, but it is.” He turned to the lieutenant, his eyes shining. “God’s will, after all!”

Ozanne shook his head. “I’ve been at sea too long. I just can’t take it in.”

Tyacke tried to drag his mind from the picture in his powerful telescope.