They stood side-by-side at the entry port while Allday manoeuvred the barge alongside once again. Allday had never been caught out before and would be fuming about it.
Like everyone else he must have expected him to remain longer with his oldest friend.
Bolitho walked towards the entry port as the marine guard presented their muskets to the salute, the bayonets shining like ice in the glare.
He caught his shoe in a ring-bolt, and would have fallen but for a lieutenant who thrust out his arm to save him.
'Thank you, sir!'
He saw Herrick standing at him with sudden anxiety, the major of marines swaying beside the guard with his sword still rigid in his gloved hand.
Herrick exclaimed, 'Are you well, Sir Richard?'
Bolitho looked at the nearest ship and gritted his teeth as the mist partly covered his eye. A close thing. He had been so gripped with emotion and disappointment at this visit that he had allowed his guard to fall. As in a sword-fight, it only took a second.
He replied, 'Well enough, thank you.'
They looked at one another. 'It shall not happen again.'
Some seamen had climbed into the shrouds and began to cheer as the barge pulled strongly from the shadow and into the sunlight. Allday swung the tiller bar and glanced quickly at Bolitho's squared shoulders, the familiar ribbon which drew his hair back above the collar. Allday could remember it no other way.
He listened to the cheers, carried on by another of the seventy-fours close by.
Fools, he thought savagely. What the hell did they know? They had seen nothing, knew even less.
But he had watched, and had felt it even from the barge. Two friends with nothing to say, nothing to span the gap which had yawned between them like a moat around a fortress.
He saw the stroke oarsman watching Bolitho instead of his loom and glared at him until he paled under his stare.
Allday swore that he would never take anyone at face value again. For or against me, that'll be my measure of a man.
Bolitho twisted round suddenly and shaded his eyes to look at him.
'It's all right, Allday.' He saw his words sink in. 'So be easy.'
Allday forgot his watching bargemen and grinned awkwardly. Bolitho had read his thoughts even with his back turned.
Allday said, 'I was rememberin', Sir Richard.'
'I know that. But at the moment I am too full to speak on it.'
The barge glided to the main chains and Bolitho glanced up at the waiting side-party.
He hesitated. 'I sometimes think we may hope for too much, old friend.'
Then he was gone, and the shrill of calls announced his arrival on deck.
Allday shook his head and muttered, 'I never seen him like this afore.'
'What's that, Cox'n?'
Allday swung round, his eyes blazing. 'And youl Watch your stroke in future, or I'll have the hide off ye!'
He forgot the bargemen and stared hard at the towering tumblehome of the ship's side. Close to, you could see the gouged scars of battle beneath the smart buff and black paintwork.
Like us, he thought, suddenly troubled. Waiting for the last fight. When it came, you would need all the friends you could find.
15. A Time For Action
Bolitho leaned on one elbow and put his signature on yet another despatch for the Admiralty. In the great cabin the air was heavy and humid, and even with gunports and skylight open, he felt the sweat running down his spine. He had discarded his coat, and his shirt was open almost to his waist, but it made little difference.
He stared at the date on the next despatch which Yovell pushed discreetly before him. September; over three months since he had said his farewell to Catherine and returned to Gibraltar. He looked towards the open stern windows. To this. Hardly a ripple today, and the sea shone like glass, almost too painful to watch.
It seemed far longer. The endless days of beating up and down in the teeth of a raw Levantine, or lying becalmed without even a whisper of a breeze to fill the sails.
It could not go on. It was like sitting on a powder-keg and worse. Or was it all in his mind, a tension born of his own uncertainties? Fresh water was getting low again, and that might soon provoke trouble on the crowded messdecks.
Of the enemy there was no sign. Hyperion and her consorts lay to the west of Sardinia, while Herrick and his depleted squadron maintained their endless patrol from the Strait of Sicily to as far north as Naples Bay.
The other occupant of the cabin gave a polite cough. Bolitho glanced up and smiled. 'Routine, Sir Piers, but it will not take much longer.'
Sir Piers Blachford settled down in his chair and stretched out his long legs. To the officers in the squadron his arrival in the last courier-brig had been seen as another responsibility, a civilian sent to probe and investigate, a resented intruder.
It had not taken long for this strange man to alter all that. If they were honest, most of those who had taken offence at his arrival would be sorry to see him leave.
Blachford was a senior member of the College of Surgeons, one of the few who had volunteered to visit the navy's squadrons, no matter at what discomfort to themselves, to examine injuries and their treatment in the spartan and often horrific conditions of a man-of-war. He was a man of boundless energy and never seemed to tire as he was ferried from one ship to the other, to meet and reason with their surgeons, to instruct each captain on the better use of their meagre facilities for caring for the sick.
And yet he was some twenty years older than Bolitho, as thin as a ramrod, with the longest and most pointed nose Bolitho had ever seen. It was more like an instrument for his trade than part of his face. Also, he was very tall, and creeping about the different decks and peering into storerooms and sickbays must have taxed his strength and his patience, but he never complained. Bolitho would miss him. It was a rare treat to share a conversation at the end of a day with a man whose world was healing, rather than running an elusive enemy to ground.
Bolitho had received two letters from Catherine, both in the same parcel from a naval schooner.
She was safe and well in the Hampshire house which was owned by Keen's father. He was a powerful man in the City of London, and kept the country house as a retreat. He had welcomed Catherine there, just as he had Zenoria. The favour went two ways, because one of Keen's sisters was there also, her husband, a lieutenant with the Channel Fleet, having been lost at sea. A comfort, and a warning too.
He nodded to Yovell, who gathered up the papers and withdrew.
Bolitho said, 'I expect that your ship will meet with us soon. I hope we have helped in your research?'
Blachford eyed him thoughtfully. 'I am always amazed that casualties are not greater when I see the hell-holes in which they endure their suffering. It will take time to compare our findings at the College of Surgeons. It will be well spent. The recognition of wounds, the responses of the victims, a division of causes, be they gunshot or caused by thrusting or slashing blades. Immediate recognition can save time, and eventually lives. Mortification, gangrene and the terror it brings with it, each must be treated differently.'
Bolitho tried to imagine this same, reedy man with the wispy white hair in the midst of a battle. Surprisingly, it was not difficult.
He said, 'It is something we all dread.'
Blachford smiled faintly. 'That is very honest. I am afraid one tends to think of senior officers as glory-seeking men without heart.'
Bolitho smiled back. 'Both our worlds appear different from the outside. When I joined my first ship I was a boy. I had to learn that the packed, frightening world between decks was not just a mass, a mindless body. It took me a long time.' He stared at the glittering reflections that moved across one of the guns which shared the cabin, as Hyperion responded to a breath of wind. 'I am still learning.'