Darkening Sea (23 page)

Colour came seeping through the rigging: the marines' coats were scarlet again, their fixed bayonets glinting like ice.

He looked narrowly along his waiting gun crews, and at the others who would trim the yards, men and boys of all ages and from every background. He had asked some of them about themselves when he had done his rounds before dawn. Some had been shy, then eager to talk; others had crowded closer to listen. Many had just watched him: their captain, the symbol of their hardship, their captivity as they might see it. Men mostly from the south and western counties of England, from farms and villages, and a few who had been unlucky enough to be caught by the press-gangs in a sea-port.

The cry from the master's mate from the crosstrees was loud and clear.

“Breakers ahead!”

From the chains the leadsman cried, “No bottom, sir!”

Adam said, “Keep your eyes open, lads.” He saw Martin looking at him. “Put a good bosun's mate at each cathead, Mr Martin. If we have to anchor we will have to shift ourselves!”

“By the mark ten!”

Adam kept his face composed. Partridge was right; it had begun to shelve. From no bottom, where the lead would not even reach, to sixty feet.

He tore his mind from the picture of
Anemone
's keel cruising relentlessly toward the shallows.

Richie suddenly broke away and ran to the mizzen shrouds before anyone could move, and for a moment longer Adam thought he was casting himself to his death without even waiting to see their destruction.

But he pointed wildly as he clung to the tarred ratlines with his other hand.

“Lee bow, sir!” He seemed all excitement. “There's the place yonder!”

Adam snatched up a telescope and realised that his fingers were suddenly slippery with sweat.

He saw the gap in the reef immediately, spray bursting on either side and hanging in the air like a shimmering curtain. He felt his heart pounding. It looked about as wide as a farm gate.

The leadsman cried, “Deep eight!”

Adam looked at Richie. He wanted to ask him if he was certain but knew he could not. If his trust was proved false, it would have the same result as if Richie were mistaken.

The masthead called, “Let her fall off a point, sir!” He repeated it and Adam realised he had been unable to think or move.

He called, “Have the braces manned, Mr Martin. We will steer nor'-east by east!”

“By the mark seven!” As if he were unaware of or disinterested in the approaching shallows, the seaman sounded completely absorbed.

“Steady as she goes, sir! Nor'-east by east!”

Some men were staring at the island now, suddenly so near. Flat and undulating for the most part but with one hill clearly visible, leaning over like a broken cliff. A good place for a lookout.

Adam clenched his fists. What did it matter? They would never get through.
Anemone
was not like a brig: she drew nearly three fathoms.

As if to mock him the voice floated aft. “An' deep six!”

Adam said sharply, “Take in the stays'ls, Mr Martin!”

Their eyes met across the bare-backed seamen. It was already too late. “By th' mark ten!”

Adam stared at his first lieutenant, then shouted, “Belay that order!”

He raised his telescope again and saw the reef tumbling away on either bow. There was spray and spindrift everywhere so that the sailors' bodies, the guns and the sails shone as if in a tropical downpour.

For the first time Adam heard the reef, the roar and quivering thunder as each wave crashed across it.

He saw Richie clasping his hands together as if in prayer, the spray soaking his face and hair. But he seemed to need to watch, and when he saw Adam he called brokenly, “I was right, sir!
Right!
”

Adam nodded, barely trusting himself. “Prepare to wear ship, Mr Martin!”

“Man the braces there, lively now!”

Men seemed to come out of their stricken postures and ran wildly to the dripping, salt-hardened cordage.

The hull pitched and buffeted, and a great backwash from the reef 's undertow gripped the rudder like some underwater monster so that Partridge had to put three more men on the wheel.

The sun swept down on them, the sails releasing clouds of steam as the day's warmth began.

“Stand by to come about! Steer nor'-west by north!” It was as close as they could come up into the wind. But it was enough.

Adam stared until his mind throbbed at the two vessels that lay quietly to their anchors in water so calm that it was hard to believe what they had just gone through. One was a brig. Adam felt his mouth tighten. The other was a brigantine, her decks already alive with men as the frigate thrust through the falling spray, her masts steeply angled on her new tack.

Even before the sharp-eyed master's mate called down from his precarious perch, from which he had helplessly watched what he had thought was oncoming disaster, Adam knew it was the ship in his uncle's letter, the privateer
Tridente.

“We will engage on both sides at once, Mr Martin. There will be no time and little room for a second chance. Double-shotted, if you please, so load and run out!”

A moment longer and then he called out loudly, “A guinea to the first gun captain to bring down a spar!”

Martin lingered despite the bustle on every hand, the rammers tamping down the balls and the wads, racing one another as the captain had made them do.

“You never doubted it, did you, sir?”

Then he hurried away without hearing a reply, if there had been one. As the gun trucks squealed up to each open port Martin drew his hanger and glanced aft to the quarterdeck rail. He saw two things. He saw the captain fling the new cutlass over the side; and then he slapped the man Richie on the shoulder.

“As you bear!”

The gun captains were bent double behind the black breeches, each with his trigger-line pulled taut.

Like an avenger
Anemone
swept between the two vessels, neither of which had found time to up-anchor. They passed the brig at half a cable, and the brigantine
Tridente
was barely fifty yards abeam when Adam sliced down with his sword.

Trapped by the lagoon, the roar of the controlled broadside seemed to engulf them. Here and there a man fell, probably to musket fire, but the marines' response was swift and savage.

Tridente
lost her fore-topmast and her deck was littered with wreckage and fallen rigging.

“Stand by to come about!”

Martin forgot himself enough to grip his captain's arm as he yelled, “Look! They've struck! The bastards have surrendered!”

But Adam did not hear him. All he could hear was cheering. His own men were cheering him for the first time.

He was suddenly drained. “Anchor when you are ready and send away the boats.” Rear-Admiral Herrick might still be aboard the brigantine, but in his heart Adam knew he was not.

As the anchor splashed down he left the quarterdeck and walked amongst his men. Startled at what they had done, surprised that they were still alive, they nodded and grinned at him as he passed.

He found Lieutenant Dacre having his head bound with a bandage, where a splinter had narrowly missed his eye.

Adam touched his shoulder. “You did well, Robert.” He looked around at the peering faces. “You all did, and I'm proud of you, as England will be!”

Dacre winced as a surgeon's mate tightened the bandage.

He said, “There was a moment . . .”

Adam grinned, feeling the elation sweeping through him like a different madness.

“There are always those, Robert, as you will one day discover.”

Rum was being brought on deck. A seaman hesitated and then handed a full mug to the man Richie.

As he watched him drinking it he asked simply, “How was it done, mate?”

Richie smiled for the first time that he could remember. “It's called trust,” he said.

13
J
UST LIKE US

B
Y LATE
J
ANUARY
1810
Vice-Admiral Sir Richard Bolitho's little squadron was complete, and as far as the Admiralty was concerned no further reinforcements could be expected.

Bolitho was disappointed but hardly surprised. He had been heartened by the arrival at Cape Town of the last army transports, which had been escorted all the way from Portsmouth and the Downs by Commodore Keen's own ships. Fate had decreed that the two
74
s that had been the convoy's main protection had both served under Bolitho's flag in the Caribbean campaign, which had culminated in the capture of Martinique. One, the elderly
Matchless,
was commanded by the testy Irish earl, Lord Rathcullen, a difficult man at the best of times; but it had been he who had disobeyed orders and sailed in support of Bolitho's small force, which had been under attack and hopelessly outnumbered. By hoisting a rear-admiral's flag, Rathcullen had forced the enemy to believe that Herrick was also at sea with a much stronger squadron, when he had in fact remained ashore. Rathcullen's voice often twisted in Bolitho's mind, repeating what Herrick had said.
I'll not be blamed twice.
Only at Freetown, when he had dined with Herrick for the last time, had Bolitho truly known the strength of his bitterness.

The other two-decker was the
Glorious.
Keen had been wise to choose her for his flagship, Bolitho thought. Her captain, John Crowfoot, who had the appearance of a stooping village clergyman, would be easier to deal with on day-to-day matters than Rathcullen.

Keen's other escorts had returned with obvious haste to England. Perhaps their lordships had been afraid that Bolitho might overstep his authority and gather them under his flag.

Aboard the
Valkyrie,
his relations with Trevenen had not improved. When Adam arrived triumphantly with his captures, the American privateer
Tridente
as well as a useful French merchant brig which he had cut out at Lorraine Island, Trevenen had scarcely been able to contain his anger and envy.

Bolitho had sent the two prizes, along with the U.S. brig
Eaglet
to Freetown where a court would decide their eventual fate. The brig H.M.S.
Thruster,
which arrived eventually at the Cape in company with Jenour's
Orcadia,
had been sent with them. She would not be much use as a fighting escort but would serve as a daily reminder to the vessel's crews of the King's authority.

Bolitho had moved aboard
Valkyrie,
even though most flag officers would have preferred more comfortable quarters ashore with the garrison. He felt that his place was at sea, or to at least be able to up-anchor if any further news was received concerning Baratte's whereabouts. Of Herrick there had been no word at all. Did Baratte think that an attack would be launched to release him? Or was he being held as hostage for some other reason?

He looked at Yovell who was hunched over the small desk, his pen busily scraping out a fresh set of orders for the various captains. The ship was as quiet as usual, and yet he imagined he could feel a difference. A ship was said to be as good as her captain and no better. Trevenen had gone over to Keen's
Glorious,
where he would soon be joined by all the other captains.

He picked up his hat and said, “I shall go on deck. Come across with me when they call away my boat.”

He found Avery on the quarterdeck talking quietly with Allday. The barrier was down, it seemed, and Bolitho was thankful for both their sakes.

He shaded his eyes to stare at his little array of ships, dominated by the two
74
s.
Valkyrie
would seem as big as themselves to their lookouts and idlers, he thought. It was strange how old ships parted and eventually joined up together again.
The family.
In his last squadron, when he had flown his flag in
Black Prince,
there had been a
74
named
Valkyrie.
What had happened to her, he wondered? Wrecked, blown up in some unknown fight, or paid off into rotting old age like the ship at Freetown . . . ? He glanced along the frigate's wide deck and at the men who were working at the hundred and one tasks which daily needed doing.

Some of them looked up, and he thought one was the young sailor who had smiled at him.

Loyalty went from the top downwards. It was not merely Trevenen's fault that this was an unhappy ship.
It begins with me.

He looked towards the shore and the white-painted buildings and imagined the soldiers drilling in their constant cloud of dust.

They could not wait much longer. A regiment would eventually sail from India, while this force would approach the French islands from the south-west.

He began to pace slowly up and down, barely conscious of the heat across his shoulders.

The enemy must know of their preparations. With so many merchantmen and coastal traders coming and going it would be impossible to keep anything a secret for long. And what of the big U.S. frigate,
Unity?
Was she snug in harbour at Bourbon or Mauritius? She would certainly raise the enemy's hopes if she were.

He knew Allday had stopped talking to watch him. His concern both warmed and troubled Bolitho, and he wondered how soon it would be before Avery found out about his eye. Then what would he do? Write to Sillitoe perhaps to reveal a weakness in Bolitho he had known nothing about?

He thought of the letters he had received from Catherine. Vivid descriptions of the countryside, the preparations for Christmas, and her unexpected and personal venture into commerce with the purchase of the collier brig,
Maria José.
Poor Roxby must have been horrified at the idea, a woman's place being, in his view, very much in the home.

When he had first boarded Keen's flagship upon her arrival here, Bolitho had been astonished by the change in him. Still outwardly youthful, Keen had shown a new maturity, a pride in his promotion and all that it represented. When Bolitho had told him of Adam's successes and the taking of three prizes, he had felt his genuine pleasure.

“I told Lady Catherine before I left that he would do well. The scope of a whole ocean rather than clawing around Brest or Biscay is exactly what he needs!”

So far, so good, Bolitho thought. Adam would be over there right now with the others. Their first meeting since . . . since what?

Allday moved from the shadow of the hammock nettings. “The gig's coming alongside, Sir Richard.” He still sounded disgusted that Bolitho should have to make do with the captain's gig rather than a proper barge like the one in
Black Prince.

Avery joined him by the quarterdeck and watched Urquhart, the first lieutenant, speaking with the captain of marines while the side party mustered by the entry port.

“I was wondering, sir. Will the prizes that were sent to Freetown cause any friction with the Americans?”

Bolitho watched him. Avery was managing to drop the use of his title on these informal occasions, and Bolitho himself felt less distanced because of it, more approachable. Allday, of course, still refused to call him anything but Sir Richard.

He considered the question. Avery had been giving it some serious thought. Few others had, apparently. Theirs had been an “It's a knock at the Frenchies and to hell with all those who help them” attitude. Avery had weighed the possible consequences, and Bolitho was glad of his involvement.

“
Tridente
fired on and boarded a British vessel before removing Rear-Admiral Herrick as a prisoner. That is an act of war, with or without the presence of the French lieutenant who led the boarders.
Eaglet
was, or was not, about her lawful occasions, but she fired on
Anemone
and she was carrying English deserters or the like.” He smiled at the lieutenant's intent expression. “Doubtful? It will be up to the courts to decide the rights and wrongs of it. My nephew did well, and I will stand by his actions before the very highest authority. As for the French brig, she will raise a few guineas in prize-money or she may become an addition to the fleet.” He clapped his arm. “I do not think our countries will go to war over it.” He paused. “Not yet, in any case.”

They walked down to the entry port and Bolitho saw Yovell, complete with his weighty satchel of papers, already in the swaying boat.

He glanced at Urquhart. He was a good lieutenant, or could be. Bolitho hesitated and made certain that the captain of marines was out of earshot.

“A word, Mr Urquhart.” He saw him stiffen and stare at a point above his admiral's shoulder. “I understand that you have made it known that you would be prepared to act as prize-master in any future successes?”

Urquhart swallowed hard. “I—I did not speak with the captain, Sir Richard, I . . .”

Bolitho studied him. Young, experienced; it would be a waste as well as a loss to the fleet.

“I hear far more than people give me credit for.” He eyed him impassively. “It would mean the end of your hopes. To throw away a position on this proud new vessel would be seen as something more, I think.” He recalled Avery's bitterness at their first meeting. “You are a lieutenant, Mr Urquhart, and a lieutenant you would remain. You could be inviting oblivion.”

“It is only that . . .”

“
I do not wish to hear,
Mr Urquhart. You are committed: I am not. Whatever you may disagree with or find disagreeable, you must consider your part in it,
in this ship.
D'you understand what I am saying, man?”

“I think so, Sir Richard.” His eyes moved to meet Bolitho's. “I will take the matter no further.”

Bolitho nodded. “There is the brig
Orcadia
out yonder. She is commanded by a man who was once a lieutenant, and then a prize-master, but there was a difference. I ordered it, and now he holds a command. As a matter of fact, I got my first command after being given a prize to navigate. But remember:
it is so ordered.
You do not choose as you please.” He watched his uncertainty and wondered how Allday had discovered the lieutenant's secret.

Bolitho stepped away, and immediately the Royal Marines and side party sprang into action.

Allday knew what had just happened. Equally, he knew that the flag lieutenant did not. He followed Avery down into the gig and squeezed against the plump secretary. He did not even glance at the stiff-backed, wooden-faced crew. Allday was thankful he did not have to serve under someone like Trevenen. The first lieutenant had looked stunned by Bolitho's words: not advice this time, but a warning. He was a fool if he ignored it, Allday thought. But then, most lieutenants were.

He watched like a hawk as Bolitho descended into the gig, and almost raised one hand to his aid.

Avery saw it. He had noticed it before. He saw Yovell watching him, his eyes glinting behind his spectacles. He shared this unknown secret too, as did the uncommunicative servant, Ozzard.

“Bear off forrard! Out oars, give way all!”

Allday watched the lieutenant in charge of the boat, here out of necessity because there was a senior officer aboard, and as nervous as a cat because of it.

Bolitho shaded his eyes again to watch the
Anemone
as the boat pulled swiftly abeam. There were men on cradles over the tumblehome busy with paint and brushes where the
Tridente
's marksmen had fired on Adam's ship until
Anemone
's measured broadside had completely disabled her. She had left here towed by the captured
Eaglet.
Nobody could criticise Adam for risking an unsupported attack through a barely-known reef. There had been no other ship available. Bolitho smiled grimly. Had things gone against him, however, Adam more than anyone must have known what it would have cost him.

He studied the other vessels of his small command, the scarlet coats already assembled on
Glorious
's deck to receive him.

Not a fleet, but properly and aggressively used it might be enough. When
Thruster
returned and Tyacke arrived from his patrol, if he was free from other orders, they would be ready.

Allday murmured, “Fine-looking ship, Sir Richard.” He sounded wistful. Remembering how they had first met, Bolitho guessed, aboard the
Phalarope.
At first commanded by a tyrant like Trevenen, she had become a legend. Herrick had played a large part in it. The thought saddened him.

“Stand by, bowman!”

Bolitho was grateful for the ship's shadow as it towered above him. It was strange how he had never got used to this part of it. As a junior captain and now as a vice-admiral, he was always troubled by what those who now stood motionless in the sunlight might see in him, might find wanting. As ever, he had to insist to himself that they would be far more uncertain than he was.