Stand Into Danger

by Alexander Kent

  He said, “Something to tell your father about, Mr Bolitho. It would appeal to him.”

  A seaman tramped past carrying a great coil of rope across his shoulder like a bundle of dead snakes. It was Stockdale. As the captain vanished below he wheezed, “We goin’ to fight that one, sir?”

  Bolitho shrugged. “I—I think so.”

  Stockdale nodded heavily. “I’ll grind an edge on my blade, then.” That was all it apparently meant to him.

  Left alone to his thoughts, Bolitho crossed to the rail and looked down at the men already working to free the launch from the other boats on the tier. Did Slade, he wondered, yet realize what might become of him? If the wind rose after they had dropped the launch, Slade could be driven miles off course. It would be harder than finding a pin in a haystack.

  Jury came on deck, and after some hesitation joined him by the rail.

  Bolitho stared at him. “I thought you were sent aft to do poor Lockyer’s work?”

  Jury met his gaze. “I asked the first lieutenant if he would send Mr Midshipman Ingrave instead.” Some of his composure collapsed under Bolitho’s gaze. “I’d prefer to stay in your watch, sir.”

  Bolitho clapped him on the shoulder. “On your head be it.” But he felt pleased all the same.

  The boatswain’s mates hurried from hatchway to hatchway, their silver calls trilling in between their hoarse cries for the watch below to assist in swaying out the launch.

  Jury listened to the shrill whistles and said, “The Spithead nightingales are in full cry this evening, sir.”

  Bolitho hid a smile. Jury spoke like an old sailor, a real sea-dog.

  He faced him gravely, “You’d better go and see what is being done about the lanterns. Otherwise Mr Palliser will have the both of us in full cry, I’m thinking.”

  As dusk came down to conceal their preparations the masthead lookout reported that the other sail was still in sight.

  Palliser touched his hat as the captain came on deck. “All ready, sir.”

  “Very well.” Dumaresq’s eyes shone in the reflected glare from the array of lanterns. “Shorten sail and stand by to lower the boat.” He looked up as the main-topsail filled and boomed sullenly from its yard. “After that, every stitch she can carry. If that ferret back there is a friend, and merely seeking our protection on the high seas, we shall know it. If not, Mr Palliser, he shall know that, I promise you!”

  An anonymous voice whispered, “Cap’n’s comin’ up, sir!”

  Palliser turned and waited for Dumaresq to join him by the quarterdeck rail.

  Gulliver’s shadow moved through the gloom. “South by east, sir. Full and bye.”

  Dumaresq gave a grunt. “You were right about the clouds, Mr Gulliver, though the wind’s fresher than I expected.”

  Bolitho stood with Rhodes and three midshipmen at the lee side of the quarterdeck ready to execute any sudden order. More to the point, they were able to share the drama and the tension. Dumaresq’s comment had sounded as if he blamed the master for the wind.

  He looked up and shivered. Destiny, after thrashing and beating her way to windward for what had seemed like an eternity, had come about as Dumaresq had planned. With a stiff wind sweeping over the larboard quarter she was plunging across a procession of breaking white-horses, the spray rising above the weather rigging and sweeping on to the crouching seamen like tropical rain.

  Destiny had been stripped down to her topsails and jib with her big forecourse holding two reefs in readiness for a swift change of tack.

  Rhodes murmured, “That other vessel is out there somewhere, Dick.”

  Bolitho nodded and tried not to think of the launch as it had vanished into a deepening darkness, the lanterns making a lively show on the water.

  It was an eerie feeling, with the ship so quiet around him. Nobody spoke, and the heavily greased gear was without its usual din and clatter. Just the sweeping sea alongside, the occasional rush of water through the lee scuppers as Destiny dropped her bows into a deep trough.

  Bolitho wanted to forget what was happening around him and to concentrate on what he had to do. Palliser had selected the best seamen in the ship for a boarding party if it came to that. But the sudden upsurge of wind might have changed Dumaresq’s ideas, he thought.

  He heard Jury moving restlessly by the nettings, and Rhodes’ midshipman, Mr Cowdroy, who had been in the ship for two years. He was a haughty, bad-tempered youth of sixteen who would be impossible as a lieutenant. Rhodes had had cause to report him to the captain more than once, and the last time he had been ignominiously caned across a six-pounder by the boatswain. It did not seem to have changed him. Little Merrett made up the trio, trying to keep out of sight, as usual.

  Rhodes said softly, “Soon now, Dick.” He loosened the hanger in his belt. “Might be a slaver, who knows?”

  Yeames, master’s mate of the watch, said cheerfully, “Not likely, sir. You’d smell a blackbirder by now!”

  Palliser snapped, “Be silent there!”

  Bolitho watched the sea curling above the dipping side in a frothing white bank. Beyond it there was nothing but an occasional jagged crest. As black as a boot, as Colpoys had remarked. His marksmen were already aloft in the tops, trying to keep their muskets dry and watching for the first sight of the stranger.

  If the captain and Gulliver had timed it correctly, the stranger should appear on Destiny’s starboard bow. The frigate would hold the wind-gage and the other vessel would have no chance of slipping away. The men at the starboard battery were ready, the gun captains on their knees as they prepared to run out as soon as the word came from aft.

  To a civilian sitting by his hearth in England it might all seem like a kind of madness. But to Captain Dumaresq it was something else entirely, and it mattered. The other vessel, whatever she was, was interfering with the King’s affairs. That made it personal, not to be taken lightly.

  Bolitho gave another shiver as he recalled his first meeting with the captain. To me, to this ship, and to His Brittanic Majesty, in that order!

  Destiny raised her quivering jib-boom like a lance and seemed to hang motionless on the edge of another trough before she plunged forward and down, her bows smashing through solid water and flinging spray high above the forecastle.

  From one corner of his eye Bolitho saw something fall from overhead. It hit the deck and exploded with a loud bang.

  Rhodes ducked as a ball whined dangerously past his face and gasped, “A damned bullock has dropped his musket!”

  Startled voices and harsh accusations erupted from the gun-deck, and Lieutenant Colpoys ran to the quarterdeck ladder in his haste to deal with the culprit.

  It all happened in a swift sequence of events. The sudden explosion as Destiny ploughed her way towards the next array of crests, the attention of officers and seamen distracted for just a few moments.

  Palliser said angrily, “Stop that noise, damn your eyes!”

  Bolitho turned and then froze as out of the darkness, running with the wind, came the other vessel. Not safely downwind to starboard, but right here, rising above the larboard side like a phantom.

  “Put up your helm!” Dumaresq’s powerful voice stopped some of the startled men in their tracks. “Man the braces there, stand by on the quarterdeck!”

  Rearing and plunging, her sails booming and thundering in wild confusion, Destiny began to swing away from the oncoming vessel. Gun crews who minutes earlier had been nursing their weapons in readiness for a fight were caught totally unawares, and even now were tumbling across to help the men on the opposite side where the twelve-pounders still pointed at their sealed ports.

  More spray burst over the quarterdeck as another sea surged jubilantly across the nettings and drenched the men nearby. Order was being restored, and Bolitho saw seamen straining back on the braces until they seemed to be touching the deck itself.

  He shouted, “Stand to, men!” He was groping for his hanger even as he realized that Rhodes and his midshipman ha
d already gone running to the bows. “She’ll be into us directly!”

  A shot echoed above the din of sea and wind, but whether fired by accident or by whom, Bolitho did not know or care.

  He felt Jury by his side.

  “What’ll we do, sir?”

  He sounded frightened. As well he might, Bolitho thought. Merrett was clinging to the nettings as if nothing would ever shift him.

  Bolitho used something like physical strength to control his stampeding thoughts. He was in charge. Nobody else was here to lead, to advise. Everyone on the upper deck was too occupied with his own role.

  He managed to shout, “Stay with me.” He pointed at a running figure. “You, clear the starboard battery and prepare to repel boarders!”

  As men floundered cursing and shouting in all directions, Bolitho heard Dumaresq’s voice. He was on the opposite side of the deck, yet seemed to be speaking into Bolitho’s ear.

  “Board, Mr Bolitho!” He swung round as Palliser sent more men to shorten sail in a last attempt to delay the impact of collision. “She must not escape!”

  Bolitho stared at him, his eyes wild. “Aye, sir!”

  He was about to draw his hanger when with a thundering crash the other vessel drove hard alongside. But for Dumaresq’s quick action she would have rammed into the Destiny’s broadside like a giant axe.

  Yells changed to screams as a rumbling mass of cordage and broken spars crashed on and between the two hulls. Men were knocked from their feet as the sea lifted the vessels together yet again, bringing down another tangle of rigging and blocks. Some men had fallen, too, and Bolitho had to drag Jury by the arm as he shouted, “Follow me!” He waved his hanger, keeping his eyes away from the sea which appeared to be boiling between the two snared hulls. One slip and it would all be over.

  He saw Little brandishing a boarding axe, and of course Stockdale holding his cutlass like a dirk against his massive frame.

  Bolitho gritted his teeth and leapt for the other vessel’s shrouds, his legs kicking in space as he struck out seeking a foothold. His hanger had gone from his hand and swung dangerously from his wrist as he gasped and struggled to hold on. More men were on either side of him, and he retched as someone fell between the two vessels, the man’s scream cut off abruptly like a great door being slammed shut.

  As he dropped to the unfamiliar deck he heard other voices and saw vague shapes rushing across the fallen wreckage, some with blades in their fists, while from aft came the sharp crack of a pistol.

  He groped for his hanger and shouted, “Drop your weapons in the King’s name!”

  The roar of voices which greeted his puny demand was almost worse than the danger. Perhaps he had been expecting Frenchmen or Spaniards, but the voices which yelled derision at his upraised hanger were as English as his own.

  A spar plunged straight down into the deck, momentarily separating the two opposing groups and smashing one of the figures to pulp. With a final quiver the two vessels wrenched themselves apart, and even as a sword-blade darted from the shadows towards him, Bolitho realized that Destiny had left him to fend for himself.

  4 BLADE TO BLADE

  CALLING to each other by name, and matching curses with their unknown adversaries, the Destiny’s small boarding party struggled to hold together. All the while the deck was flung about by the sea, the motion made worse by fallen spars and great creepers of rigging which trailed over the bulwarks and pulled the hull into each trough like a sea-anchor.

  Bolitho slashed out at someone opposite him, his blade jarring against steel as he parried away another thrust. Bolitho was a good swordsman, but a hanger was a poor match for a straight blade. Around him men were yelling and gasping, bodies interlocked while they fought with cutlass and dirk, boarding axe and anything which they could lay hands on.

  Little bellowed, “Aft, lads! Come on!” He charged along the littered deck, hacking down a crouching shadow with his axe as he ran, and followed by half of the party.

  Near Bolitho a man slipped and fell, and then rolled over, protecting his face from the one who stood astride him with a raised cutlass. Bolitho heard the swish of steel, the sickening thud of the blade driving into bone. But when he turned he saw Stockdale wrenching his own blade free before tossing the dead man unceremoniously over the side.

  It was a wild, jumbled nightmare. Nothing seemed real, and Bolitho could feel the numbness thrusting through his limbs as he fought off another attacker who had slithered down the shrouds like an agile ape.

  He ducked, and felt the man slice above his head, the breath rasping out of him from the force of his swing. Bolitho punched him in the stomach with the knuckle-bow of his hanger, and as he reeled away hacked him hard across the neck, the pain lancing up his arm as if he had been the one to be cut down.

  Despite the horror and the danger, Bolitho’s mind continued to respond, but like that of an onlooker, somebody uninvolved with the bloody hand-to-hand fighting around him. The vessel was a brigantine, her yards in disarray as she continued to fall downwind. There was a smell of newness about her, a freshly built craft. Her crew must have been dumbfounded when Destiny’s canvas had loomed across their bows, and that shock was the only thing which had so far saved the depleted boarding party.

  A man bounded forward, regardless of the slashing figures and sobbing wounded who were being trampled underfoot.

  Through his reeling mind one more thought came to Bolitho. This gaunt figure in a blue coat and brass buttons must be the vessel’s master.

  The brigantine was temporarily out of control, but within hours that could be put right. And Destiny was nowhere to be seen. Perhaps her damage was much worse than they had thought. You never really considered it might happen to your own ship. Always to another.

  Bolitho saw the dull glint of steel and guessed dawn was not far away. Surprisingly, he thought of his mother, glad that she would not see his body when he fell.

  The gaunt man yelled, “Drop your sword, rot you!”

  Bolitho tried to shout back at him, to rally his men, to give himself a last spur of defiance.

  Then the blades crossed, and Bolitho felt the strength of the man through the steel as if it was an extension of his own arm.

  Clash, clash, clash, Bolitho parried and cut at the other man, who took every advantage to press and follow each attack.

  There was a clang, and Bolitho felt the hanger torn from his fingers, the lanyard around his wrist severed by the force of the blow.

  He heard a frantic voice yell, “Here, sir!” It was Jury, as he hurled a sword across the writhing bodies hilt-first.

  Bolitho’s desperation came to his aid. Somehow he caught it, twisting it in his grip as he felt its balance and length. Tiny pictures flashed through his mind. His father teaching him and his brother Hugh in the walled kitchen-garden at Falmouth. Then later, matching careful movements against each other.

  He sobbed as the other man’s sword cut through his sleeve just below his armpit. Another inch and. . . . He felt the fury sweeping everything else aside, an insanity which seemed to give him back his strength, even his hope.

  Bolitho locked blades again, feeling his opponent’s hatred, smelling his strength and his sweat.

  He heard Stockdale calling in his strange, husky voice and knew he was being pressed too hard to reach his side. Others had stopped fighting, their wind broken as they stared with glazed eyes at the two swordsmen in their midst.

  From another world, or so it seemed, came the crash of a single cannon. A ball hissed over the deck and slammed through a flapping sail like an iron fist. Destiny was nearby, and her captain had taken the risk of killing some of his own men to make his presence felt and understood.

  Some of the brigantine’s men threw down their weapons instantly. Others were less fortunate and were felled by the inflamed boarders even as they tried to grasp what was happening.

  Bolitho’s adversary shouted wildly, “Too late for you, sir! ”

  He thrust Bolitho back with
his fist, measured the distance and lunged.

  Bolitho heard Jury cry out, saw Little running towards him, his teeth bared like a wild animal.

  After all the agony and the hate, it was too easy and without any sort of dignity. He held his balance and did not even have to guide his feet and arms as he stepped aside, using the other man’s charge to flick his blade in one ringing encounter and then drive his own beneath the lost guard and into his chest.

  Little dragged the man away and raised his bloodied axe as he tried to struggle free.

  Bolitho shouted, “Belay that! Let him be!”

  He looked round, feeling dazed and sick, as some of his men gave a wild cheer.

  Little let the man fall to the deck and wiped his face with the back of his wrist, as if he too was slowly but reluctantly letting go of the madness. Until the next time.

  Bolitho saw Jury sitting with his back against a broken spar, his hands clasped across his stomach. He knelt down and tried to drag Jury’s fingers away. Not him, he thought. Not so soon.

  A seaman Bolitho recognized as one of his best maintopmen bent down and jerked the midshipman’s hands apart.

  Bolitho swallowed hard and tore the shirt open, remembering Jury’s fear and his trust at the moment of boarding. Bolitho was young, but he had done this sort of thing before.

  He peered at the wound and felt like praying. A blade must have been stopped by the large gilt plate on Jury’s cross-belt, he could see the scored metal even in the poor light. It had taken the real force, and the attacker had only managed to scar the youth’s stomach.

  The seaman grinned and fashioned a wad from Jury’s torn shirt. “He’ll be all right, sir. Just a nick.”

  Bolitho got shakily to his feet, one hand resting on the man’s shoulder for support.

  “Thank you, Murray. That was well said.”

  The man looked up at him as if trying to understand something.

  “I saw him throw that sword to you, sir. It was then that some other bugger made his play.” He wiped his cutlass absently on a piece of sailcloth. “It was the last bloody thing he did do on this earth!”