Their eyes met, and Bolitho said quietly, ‘Ten minutes, then? It will be enough, I think.’
Tyacke closed the door behind him, and Yovell, too, prepared to leave.
Bolitho said, ‘Wait a moment, Daniel. Bring me a pen. Then you may put this letter in the strongbox.’
Yovell went to the desk where he kept his pens. Pipes shrilled, and he was surprised that he was unafraid.
‘All hands! Clear the lower deck and lay aft!’
He looked toward the tall figure by the table, remembering. It is their right. Then he pulled open a drawer, his mind clear. He would fetch his Bible; it had never failed to comfort him. He placed a fresh pen on the table and saw Bolitho press the letter between his hands. His profile was composed, as if he was able to detach himself and his mind from the din of running feet, and the voices calling to one another. Voices offering hope and reassurance, and he was moved by them.
And then there was utter silence again; he thought of the flag lieutenant up in the crosstrees with his telescope, probably looking down at the ship and the assembled seamen and marines, so rarely seen all together at one time.
Bolitho did not look up as Yovell padded quietly from the cabin. He read the first part of the letter very slowly, and hoped she would hear his voice when she read it. How could he be so sure that she would even receive it, or that they would be victorious today?
The pen hesitated above the letter, and then he smiled. There was nothing to add.
He wrote, I love thee, Kate, my rose. Then he kissed it, and sealed it with great care.
He was aware of the Royal Marine sentry outside the door, shuffling his feet and probably trying to hear what the captain was saying on deck.
The adjoining door opened and Allday entered, pausing only to close the skylight. His own way of holding the things he hated at bay. He said offhandedly, ‘Young Mr Singleton says there are two frigates, Sir Richard.’ He glanced at the eighteen-pounder gun near him. ‘They’ll not do much, no matter what they thinks, an’ that’s no error!’
Bolitho smiled at him, and hoped that there was no sadness in his heart.
But we know differently, my dear friend. We have done it ourselves. Can you not remember?
Instead he said, ‘We’ve a fine day for it, old friend.’ He saw Allday’s eyes move to the swords on their rack. ‘So let’s be about it!’
Ozzard was here also, Bolitho’s coat over his narrow shoulder. ‘This one, Sir Richard?’
‘Yes.’
It would be a hard fight, no matter what Allday thought about it. Frobisher’s company would need to see him. To know they were not alone, and that someone cared for them.
Then the drums began to rattle, urgent and insistent.
‘Hands to quarters! Clear for action!’
He slipped his arms into the sleeves and took his hat from Ozzard. The one she had persuaded him to buy in that other, timeless shop in St James’s.
My admiral of England.
He held out his arms and waited for Allday to fasten the old sword into position. Ozzard would take the glittering presentation blade with him when he went down to the orlop, when the guns began their deadly symphony.
Allday opened the door for him and the marine sentry slammed his heels together, waiting to be released from this duty so that he could be with his comrades.
Allday closed the door from habit, even though the ship would soon be cleared from bow to stern, screens and cabins torn down, personal possessions stowed away until they were recovered by their owners, or sold to their mates if fate turned against them.
He found time to notice that Bolitho did not look back.
Captain James Tyacke stood by the quarterdeck rail, his arms folded while he surveyed the ship, his ship, in this moment of instinct and experience when nothing could be overlooked. He could feel the first lieutenant watching him, perhaps seeking approval, or preparing for some sharp criticism. But he was a good officer, and he had done well. The chain slings had been rigged to the yards, and nets spread to protect men on the maindeck from falling debris. There were boarding nets also. They could not estimate the strength or the determination of the enemy. If fanatics from a chebeck could hack their way aboard, this was no time to take chances.
He looked along each line of guns, the eighteen-pounders which made up half of Frobisher’s artillery. Until action was joined, each remained a separate unit, the gun captains sorting over the rows of black balls in the shot garlands. A good gun captain could select a perfectly moulded shot just by turning it in his hands.
A glance aloft, to the small scarlet clusters in each fighting top: marine marksmen and others who could aim and fire the deadly swivel guns. Known by the Royals as daisy cutters, they could scythe anything more than an inch high to the ground, or to the deck. Most sailors hated the swivels; they were unpredictable, and could be equally dangerous to friend and foe alike.
The decks had been well sanded. It was said to prevent men from slipping in the heat of action, although everyone knew the real reason for it.
‘Well done, Mr Kellett.’ Tyacke took a telescope from the rack and raised it to his eye. Without looking, he knew that Kellett was smiling his deceptively gentle smile, satisfied.
He felt his jaw tighten as the first pyramid of sails appeared to rise out of the shark-blue water like a phantom. He moved the glass again. The second frigate had luffed, and was drawing away from her consort. Almost to himself, he said, ‘They hope to divide our fire.’
He lowered the glass slightly and glanced up at Frobisher’s spread of canvas, topsails and forecourse, flying and outer jib, with the big driver angled across the poop, the White Ensign streaming out from the peak. He knew that Tregidgo, the sailing master, was watching him. He ignored him. They all had their vital roles to play, but he was the captain. He must decide.
The wind was as before, from the north-west, not strong, but steady. Enough to change tack when required. She would handle even better when the order was given to slip the boats from their tow-lines astern; the main deck looked strangely clean and bare without them. Always a bad moment for sailors, when they saw their means of survival cast adrift. But the risk of flying splinters was far greater.
The sky was clearing, so different from the dawn. Long banks of pale clouds, but the sun already stronger and higher. He grimaced. A perfect setting.
He turned to face Kellett. ‘I want to make this quite clear. When we get to grips with those fellows, I want every available man at his station. Provided he can walk, I need him today, and I’ll not stand for carrying passengers! The lower gundeck is the key to any fight with faster vessels. Inform Mr Gage and Mr Armytage that I expect them to maintain rapid fire no matter what may be happening up here. Is that understood?’
Kellett nodded. He had heard about Tyacke’s experience at the Nile, when he had been on the lower gundeck with the big thirty-two pounders. Guns which, if properly laid and trained, could pierce nearly three feet of solid oak. Or so it was claimed.
Kellett had only served on a lower gundeck once, as a very junior lieutenant. The noise and the inferno of fire and smoke had been enough to drive some men to panic. It was a place and a time where only discipline and rigid training could overcome fear and madness. How it must have been for Tyacke ….
He remarked, ‘They wear no colours, sir.’ It was something to say, to ease the tension.
Tyacke raised his glass again. ‘They soon will. And by God they’ll lose them, too!’
He concentrated on the leading frigate. There was a fine display of gilded carving around her beakhead. He smiled, unconsciously. She was Spanish, or had been once. He wondered what had happened to Huntress; perhaps they had put her down after the failure to lure Tireless beneath her broadside. He thought of his own depleted company. He must keep the enemy at a distance, cripple at least one of them.
How easy it was to regard strange ships as enemies; he had been doing it for most of his life. He thought suddenly of Bolitho. He wa
s in the chart room, probably keeping out of the way, when every fibre in his body was tugging at him to take command, as a captain again. But there was neither fleet nor squadron this time, and some of the waiting seamen would be thinking as much. Their fate lay in the hands of three captains, and the man whose flag whipped out from the mainmast truck.
Tyacke heard Midshipman Singleton instructing his signals party by the halliards. The boy seemed different in some way, not yet mature, but indefinably different.
Tyacke moved to the compass box and gazed at the group there, the backbone of any company committed to action. The master and his mates, three midshipmen to carry messages, four helmsmen at the tall double wheel, and beyond them, the rest of the afterguard, the marines and nine-pounder crews. Protected by nothing more than tightly-packed hammocks in the nettings, they would be the first target for any sharpshooter.
He said, ‘Converging tack, Mr Tregidgo.’ He saw him nod; Tregidgo was not one to waste words. ‘We will engage from either side.’ He looked at their faces, stiff, empty. It was too late for anything else. I have decided.
He walked to the rail and gripped it. Warm, but nothing more. He smiled tightly. That would soon change. He looked along his command yet again, sobered by the thought that she might not be his for much longer. At the Nile, his own captain had fallen, and so many others on that bloody day. Could Kellett fight the ship if that happened? He shook himself angrily. It was not that. He had faced and accepted death many times. It was the navy’s way, perhaps the only way. To make men confront and accept what was, in truth, unacceptable.
It was Marion. The new belief, the hope that a hand had reached out for him. Something he had sometimes dreamed about, but too often dreaded. He thought of Portsmouth, gazing at the nearest gun’s crew. When all this had begun, when she had come to find him. With such quiet warmth, and such pride.
He thought of Bolitho’s unfinished letter, hidden by the chart in the great cabin. Marion could never have realised what strength he had found in her.
He heard Allday’s voice from the poop, and turned in readiness. He saw Bolitho, apparently quite calm, and Allday walking with him. As a friend, an equal. He smiled. No wonder it was so hard for people to understand, let alone share.
He touched his hat. ‘I would like to alter course, Sir Richard. Those two beauties will try to harry us, to use haste to avoid being dismasted.’ He waited while Bolitho took the big signals telescope from Midshipman Singleton, saw the way he held his head at an angle to obtain the best image. It was not possible to believe that he was blind in one eye.
‘They’m running up their colours, sir!’
Tyacke levelled his glass on the leading frigate. Had he really clung to a last doubt, a hope? He could see the Tricolour standing out to the wind. More than a gesture; it meant that this was war again, even if the rest of the world was ignorant of it. Napoleon had escaped from what had been, at best, a token captivity. He recalled Bolitho’s rare anger, his despair for the men he had led, who, in his eyes, had been betrayed by complacency. Tyacke glanced at him now, and saw the bitterness on his features as he returned the glass to Singleton.
Then he looked directly at his flag captain. ‘So it is war once more, James.’ There was a cold edge to his voice. ‘So much for the Bourbon Restoration.’ He looked around at the silent gun crews and the waiting seamen, and the marines, faces shadowed beneath their leather hats. Very quietly, he said, ‘Too much blood, too many good men.’
Then he smiled, his teeth very white in his tanned face, and only those close enough could see the pain and the anger which lay there.
‘So cast the boats adrift, Captain Tyacke, and let us give these scum a lesson, teach them that now, as before, we are here, and ready!’
Somebody gave a wild cheer, and it was carried along the deck to the forecastle and the men crouching at the carronades, although they could not have heard a single word.
It was infectious. A madness, and yet so much more.
Tyacke touched his hat with equal formality. ‘I am yours to command, Sir Richard.’
Allday watched the cluster of boats drift haphazardly away from the counter. There was no cheering now, nor would there be until the flag came down. Theirs or ours, the rules never changed.
He touched his chest as the pain moved through him like a warning. Then he grinned. One more time. And they were still together.
Bolitho stood beside Tyacke and watched the oncoming ships. The range was closing, and, at a guess, stood at about three miles. An hour and a half had passed since Frobisher had cleared for action; it felt like an eternity.
The two frigates were almost in line ahead, their sails overlapping, as if they were joined. It was the usual illusion; they were perhaps a mile apart, and pointing directly towards Frobisher’s larboard bow. The wind had not varied by a degree; it was still north-westerly, light but steady enough. The frigates were close-hauled on the starboard tack, probably as near to the wind as they could manage.
‘Shall I run out, Sir Richard?’
Bolitho glanced at him, at his burned profile, and the steady blue eye.
‘I think they intend to tackle us separately. They’d never risk a fight broadside-to-broadside, not against our armament. If I were in command, I would change tack at the last possible moment. The leader could then lie athwart our hawse and be able to rake us as he passes, and we’d not be able to bring a single gun to bear.’
Tyacke nodded slowly, seeing it. ‘If we try to follow him round, which we can do with the wind in our favour, the other one will go for our stern, and pour a broadside through us while we are engaged. I think we should run out now, and try to cripple one of them with our heavy battery.’ He looked at Bolitho. ‘What do you suggest? You’re a frigate captain, and always will be. I’d welcome your experience!’
Bolitho smiled. ‘That was bravely said. It is just a feeling.’ He could not keep the excitement out of his voice. ‘Those two captains are desperate, to engage us, to cripple us, above all to provoke close action. The wind is in our favour, but they can match our strength with their agility. I think that the unexpected will win the day. We can come about into the wind, be taken aback in all probability, but we can give each a broadside before either captain can stand away. What say you, James?’
Tyacke was staring at the two oncoming frigates, as if they were being drawn towards Frobisher by an invisible force, like a line on a chart.
‘I’ll pass the word.’
He looked down as Bolitho touched his sleeve. ‘When we turn, run out the upper guns, James. Keep the lower gundeck sealed. It will give them something to ponder over.’
Tyacke smiled. ‘It might just work, by God! Trick for trick!’
Bolitho saw Avery watching him, brushing threads of cordage from his breeches after his hasty descent to the deck.
‘I’ll send him, if I may, James. Captains and admirals should sometimes keep their distance.’
He saw Tyacke’s smile open into a grin. Because of the unlikely plan of action, or because he had not been too proud to ask for advice? But he was already calling to Kellett and the other lieutenants to outline what he required of them.
Avery listened to Bolitho without comment, his expression thoughtful, curious.
Bolitho repeated, ‘No double-shotting, no grape. I want every shot to find its target. Tell the lieutenant on the lower gundeck to keep firing, no matter what!’ His grey eyes moved towards the waiting gun crews. ‘Otherwise it will be bloody work up here.’
Avery looked at the other ships. Was it only his imagination, or were they much closer?
‘And Napoleon, Sir Richard? Where will he be, at this moment?’
Bolitho heard the crash of a solitary gun, but could see no telltale fall of shot. A signal, one ship to the other? A misfire, perhaps?
He answered, ‘He could be anywhere.’ He added quietly, ‘He may have gone to his home in Corsica, but a few miles from Elba. Can you imagine a more reckless place to imprison
such a man? But my guess is France, where his real strength lies, where people will rise up and follow him yet again.’
‘You admire him, don’t you, Sir Richard?’
‘Admire? That is too strong a word. He is the enemy.’ Then he gripped his arm, the mood changing again. ‘But if I were a Frenchman, I would be there to welcome him.’
He watched Avery move away, and said, ‘Take young Singleton, for the experience.’ He shaded his eye to look at the masthead. ‘I shall need no signals today.’
Avery hesitated, and saw some of the seamen running to the braces and halliards, Tyacke consulting the sailing master and his mates by the compass. In a moment the ship would alter course to larboard, into the wind, into the enemy. He looked at the distant pyramids of sails. Half an hour, at the most. He beckoned to the midshipman and together they hurried to the companion ladder.
After the brightness of the upper deck, the lower hull seemed like a musty vault.
When they reached the lower gundeck, Avery had to stand for several seconds to accustom his eyes to the gloom, and the sudden sense of danger. A little, feeble light filtered through the tiny observation ports on either bow, and from lanterns protected behind thick glass. The guns were manned and loaded, and he could see the eyes of some of the seamen glinting as they turned to watch him. Was that why Bolitho had told him to take Singleton with him? Because he was known to these men, young or not, and because as flag lieutenant he himself would be, and would remain, a stranger?
Objects were taking shape on either side, the great black humps of the breeches, the powerful thirty-two pounders, fourteen on either side. Tiny pin-pricks of light, like malevolent eyes, flickered in each match tub, slow matches in readiness if the more modern flintlock should fail or misfire.
He was joined by the two lieutenants in charge, ‘Holly’ Gage and Walter Armytage. He met them often enough in the wardroom, but it went no further than that.
He could feel the intensity of their concentration as he explained what was intended.
Gage said doubtfully, ‘Might work.’
His friend laughed, and some of his men leaned over to listen. ‘I shall tell our people we need a miracle today!’
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