He glanced at the ensign as it curled away from the peak. It would not last. But while it did…
Deighton yelled down again. "Deck there!" He seemed to falter. "Something in the water, sir! Same bearing!"
"What the hell does he think he's doing?" Varlo had arrived.
Adam cupped his hands and waited as the sudden flurry of wind through canvas and shrouds eased into a sigh.
"Tell me. Take your time." Somehow he knew it was Sullivan up there. It was his watch, but he would have been there anyway. Would have known. The seaman who had fought at Trafalgar under Our Nel, and who was still working on a fine model of his old ship, the Spartiate. Strange how one thought linked to the other. Spartiate was a French prize taken by Nelson at the Nile, seven years before Trafalgar. His uncle's last flagship, Frobisher, had been a prize too. Did ships feel it…?
"Deck there!"
Adam stared up at the mainmast, seeing the midshipman's struggle, his efforts to remain calm.
"Some wreckage, sir. Very small, and…"
Adam said quietly, "Tell me. Between us!" He did not realise he had spoken aloud, nor did he see Galbraith's look of compassion.
"Blood, sir."
Cristie said, "How could it be? Even with a glass he could never see…" He broke off as his senior mate Rist retorted harshly, "He would, you know, if there's enough of it!"
Adam folded his arms. "Mr Cousens, go aloft and bring him down." He held the signals midshipman's eyes. "With care, do you understand?"
He did not turn. "Take in the t'gallants, Mr Galbraith, and have the jollyboat made ready for lowering." He counted the seconds and said, "Go yourself, Leigh."
Then he crossed to the quarterdeck rail and stood beside the sailing master.
"I shall take every care, Mr Cristie." He tried to smile. "But put a good leadsman in the chains if it will help to ease your mind."
All the unemployed hands turned to watch as Midshipman Deighton jumped down from the shrouds and walked across to his captain.
Adam said, "You did well, Deighton. Now tell me the rest. In your own time.
He saw Jago by the hatch. He would know what to do.
The midshipman said, "I-I thought it was the sea, sir, changing colour. But it was spreading, and spreading." He looked at the water, unable to believe it. "It was all alive, sir." He dropped his head and said in a small voice, "Sullivan said they were sharks, sir. Hundreds…"
Jago was here, guiding the youth to a fire bucket, roughly and without sympathy.
"Here, spew into this!"
Deighton would have cracked if he had offered gentleness.
It seemed to take an eternity, the ship gliding through the offshore current with scarcely a ripple beneath her stem. And all the while the sea seemed to open up across the bows, stained in drifting patterns of pink with tendrils of darker red reaching up like weed to wander amongst the surface litter of flotsam. Broken spars, an upturned boat, planks and scraps of canvas, most of which were charred.
And in the centre, as if there by accident, was a drifting hatch cover, and on it a human figure, stretched out, staring at the sun, as if crucified.
Varlo said thickly, "Must be dead too!"
And then Partridge, the boatswain, abrupt, angry. "Don't say that, sir! Th' poor devil wears your coat!"
Adam said, "Heave-to, if you please. Mr Varlo, take over the watch. Stand by to lower the jollyboat. Lawson, pick your crew, don't waste time asking for volunteers! It's running out!" He glanced over the nettings and saw the sea come alive again as two sharks or more broke surface, somehow lithe and graceful. Obscene in their frenzy.
He knew Midshipman Deighton was watching, nodding as if to reassure Jago, or himself.
Their eyes met and Adam smiled. He was sickened by it, but it was important, perhaps vital for this youth who would one day be a King's officer. And would remember.
Unrivalled came unsteadily into the wind, her sails scarcely flapping in protest, as if she was glad to be standing away from the invisible murders. Adam barely heard the boat pulling away from the quarter but saw Galbraith standing in the sternsheets, one arm outthrust, leaning over to speak with Lawson the coxswain.
Then he took a glass and levelled it with care. The Jollyboat, Galbraith's head and shoulders leaping into focus, one of the oarsmen squinting in the glare as he lay back on his loom. Then past and beyond, the small pieces of flotsam, and the hatch cover. Even as he watched he saw a shark thrusting against it, lifting it slightly in an effort to pitch the inert figure into the water. Partridge was right. The man was wearing a lieutenant's coat, like seeing yourself. Someone gave a gasp as the figure let his arm slip to the edge of the hatch cover. Another exclaimed, "'E's alive!"
The shark surged against the cover again, the cruel crescentshaped mouth starkly visible in the telescope lens.
A last hope or some lingering instinct, who could tell after what he must have seen and endured, But he moved his arm again, so that the shark scraped past, lashing at the misty water, turning instantly for another attack.
Adam lowered the glass and wiped his forehead. It was as if he had just climbed from the sea himself. The jollyboat was there, the sole survivor already manhandled across the stroke oarsman to the sternsheets.
Adam heard the surgeon's deep tones as he gave instructions to his assistants.
He moved to the compass box, his feet dragging on the melting pitch.
Perhaps they would discover what had happened, and why.
He shook himself impatiently. "When we recover the boat, you may bring her back to her original course." He glanced at the curling masthead pendant and saw Sullivan framed against the empty sky, looking down at him.
Adam raised his hand in a slow salute. Then turned towards Cristie again.
The rest would have to wait. The ship came first.
Cristie watched and was satisfied. For a short while he had been troubled; now it was past.
The captain was himself again.
And the ship came first.
Denis O'Beirne, Unrivalled's surgeon, had already rolled up his sleeves, and was gesturing unhurriedly as if to impress the need for care rather than haste.
Adam stood in one corner of the sickbay as the loblolly boys carried the survivor to the table, their faces intent but devoid of expression. They were hardened to it. They would not survive otherwise.
He hated the sounds and smells of this place; it was something he had never grown used to, in any ship. He had known men pray and plead to be left on deck to die after being wounded in battle, anything, rather than face the saw and knife on the orlop.
He half-listened to the sounds from overhead, muffled and somehow remote. Galbraith was in charge now, bringing the ship round to catch the feeble offshore airs. He had said quickly, "Name's Finlay, sir. Lieutenant in the Paradox. He was in charge of a prize crew aboard a slaver. He kept losing track of it, delirious. I don't think he knew what was happening when we pulled him on board."
Adam watched O'Beirne's hands, deft, busy, like extensions to his mind. A big man, awkward in many ways, but his hands were small, and very strong.
The figure on the table could already he dead, one arm hanging over the side as on the hatch cover which had saved him. Skin badly burned, a livid bruise on his forehead where he had been struck down.
Adam forced his brain to examine the few, hare facts at his command. Paradox was one of the antislavery schooners. For a few seconds he wondered why the name seemed familiar, then it came to him. She had been mentioned in Tyacke's notes, as the vessel Commodore Turnbull had been using to visit the limits of the patrol area. She was small, so this lieutenant was likely her senior officer. A rich prize, then. But where was Paradox now? And why had the captured slaver been left unescorted?
He heard a gasp and saw the man named Finlay trying to prevent O'Beirne's assistants from removing his coat. Perhaps in his tortured thoughts it represented a last link, his only identity.