He said, “I believe we shall fight. The main attack will be carried out by the flagship and Prince Rupert, and at the right moment by the bomb vessel Atlas. Perhaps this is merely a gesture, one worth risking ships and lives. It is not my place to judge.” He held the bitterness at bay, like an enemy. “ Unrivalled’s place will be up to wind’rd. Ours is the fastest vessel, and apart from the two liners the best armed.” He smiled, as he had done in the cutter to give his oarsmen heart for the return pull. “I do not need to add, the best ship! ”
Rhodes would have his way. The bombardment would be carried out without delay after yet another reported attack on helpless fishermen and the murder of their crews. It might make a fitting beginning to the admiral’s appointment.
He thought of the Dutch frigate again. Expedience, greed, who could say? The great minds who planned such transactions never had to face the brutal consequences of close action. Maybe the Dutch government had fresh plans for expansion overseas. They already held territories in the West and East Indies, so why not Africa, where rulers like the Dey could obstruct even the strongest moves of empire?
Such deals were left to men like Bazeley… his mind faltered for a second… and Sillitoe. He saw Lieutenant Wynter watching him fixedly. Or his father in the House of Commons and those like him.
“The Dutch frigate Triton, or whatever she may now be called, is a powerful vessel…”
He heard Rhodes again, his confidence and bluster returning like a strong squall.
“They would not dare! I could blow that ship out of the water!”
He continued, “I know not what to expect. I merely wanted to share it with you.” He paused, and saw O’Beirne glance around as if he expected to see a newcomer in the cabin. “For we are of one company.”
He had already seen the doubt on Massie’s dark countenance. He knew the chart, the notes in Cristie’s log, and now he knew
Unrivalled’s holding station, well up to windward. Rhodes could not have made it plainer.
“Be content to watch the flank for a change!”
Even the flag captain had warned him openly before he had climbed down to the pitching cutter.
“You’ve made an enemy there, Bolitho! You sail too close to the wind!”
He would, of course, deny any such remark at a court martial.
They were filing out of the cabin now, and Usher bowed his head in a fit of coughing.
O’Beirne was the last to leave, as Adam had known he would be. They faced one another, like two men meeting unexpectedly in a lane or on some busy street.
O’Beirne said, “I am glad I wear a sword only for the adornment, sir. I consider myself a fair man and a competent surgeon.” He tried to smile. “But command? I can only watch at a distance, and be thankful!”
The surgeon walked out into the daylight, and was surprised to see the planking steaming in the warm wind as if the very ship were burning. There was so much he had wanted to say, to share. And now it was too late. Before sailing from England he had met Frobisher’s previous surgeon, Paul Lefroy; they had known one another for years. He smiled sadly. Lefroy was completely bald now, his head like polished mahogany. A good doctor, and a firm friend. He had been with Sir Richard Bolitho when he had died. O’Beirne had pictured it in his friend’s words, just as he had seen some of it in his youthful captain’s face, and he glanced aft now as if he expected to see him.
Lefroy had said, “When he died, I felt I had lost a part of myself.”
He shook his head. For a ship’s surgeon, even after several glasses of rum, that was indeed something.
But for some reason the levity did not help. The image remained.
Napier, the captain’s servant, watched O’Beirne leave, and knew his captain would be alone, perhaps needing a drink, or simply to talk, as he did sometimes. Perhaps the captain did not understand what it meant to him. The boy who had wanted to go to sea, to become someone.
And now he was.
He touched his pocket and felt the broken watch, its guard punched in two by a musket ball, where the little mermaid had been engraved.
The captain had seemed surprised when he had asked if he could keep it, instead of pitching it outboard.
He turned as he heard the sound of a grindstone and the rasp of steel. The gunner was back, too, supervising the sharpening of cutlasses and the deadly boarding-axes.
He found that he could face it. Accept it.
He touched the broken watch again and smiled gravely. He was no longer alone.
Joseph Sullivan, the seaman who had taken part in the Battle of Trafalgar and who was Unrivalled’s most experienced lookout, paused in his climb to the crosstrees and glanced down at the ship. It took some men years to become used to the height from the deck, the quivering shrouds and treacherous rigging; some never did. Others were never afforded the chance. Falls were common, and even if the unfortunate lookout fell into the sea it was unlikely that he would recover. If the ship hove-to in time.
Sullivan was completely at ease working aloft, and always had been. He looked briefly into the fighting-top he had just passed, where some Royal Marines were occupied with a swivel-gun and checking their arms and powder. Marines were always busy, he thought.
Sullivan took the weight on his bare soles, so hardened and calloused over the years that he scarcely felt the tarred ratlines, and linked an arm through the shrouds.
The ship had been up and about since before first light, as he had known she would be. He could still taste the rum on his tongue, the pork in his belly. It was a hard life, but he was as content as any true sailor could be.
He peered up at the black shrouds, the big maintopsail filling and emptying while the wind tried to make up its mind. No need to hurry. It was too dark to see more than a few yards. He shifted the knife which he carried across his spine like most seamen, where it could not snare anything, but could be drawn in a second.
He smiled. Like the Jack in the shantyman’s song when they had weighed anchor, he thought. Sullivan had been in the navy for as long as he could remember. Good ships and foul ones. Fair captains and tyrants. Like the shanty. The old knife was about the only possession he still owned from those first days at sea.
He could smell smoke and grease and heard a splash alongside. The galley fire had been doused; the ship was cleared for action. He sighed. From what he had heard, Unrivalled would be well out of it when the guns started to roar. He thought of the captain’s face. He was feeling it. He grinned. A real goer, like his uncle to all accounts. But a man. Not afraid to stop and ask one of his men what he was doing, or how he felt. Rare, then.
He began the final climb, pleased that he was not breathless like some half his age. He saw the masthead pendant streaming away to leeward towards the larboard bow. Lifting, then curling again, undecided. He grinned again. Like the bloody admiral.
He reached his position in the crosstrees and hooked his leg around a stay. The wind was steady enough, from the north-east, but the bluster had gone out of it. That would mean that overnight the other ships would have drifted off their stations.
A bombardment, they said. He rubbed his chin doubtfully. It was to be hoped that the admiral knew what he was about. A two-decker made a fine target. It only needed some heated shot to upset the best-laid plans.
He shaded his eyes as the first sunlight played across the sails and braced yards; it was a view which never failed to stir him. People you knew, moving about the deck like ants, and other, isolated scarlet coats like those in the maintop. Marks of discipline, like the blue and white uniforms on the quarterdeck and down by the foremast at the first division of eighteen-pounders. His eyes crinkled as he recalled his captain climbing up to join him. No fuss, no swagger. He had just sat here with him. Not too many could say that.