The first of the wounded were being swayed up through one of the hatchways. A few cried out as their wounds touched the coaming or the tackles, but most of them just stared like the dead Rimer; they had never expected to see daylight again.
Allday reappeared by his side; he had brought Ozzard with him.
He said, ”He was still in the hold, Sir Richard.” He forced a grin. ”Didn’t know the fight was over, bless ‘im!”
He did not say that he had found Ozzard sitting on the hold’s ladder, Bolitho’s fine presentation sword clutched against his chest, staring at the last lantern’s reflections on the black water which was creeping slowly towards him. He had not intended to leave.
Bolitho touched the little man’s shoulder. ”I am very glad to see you.”
Ozzard said, ”But all that furniture, the wine cabinet from her ladyship -” He sighed. ”All gone.”
Keen limped over and said, ”I hate to trouble you, Sir Richard, but Bolitho faced him. ”I know, Val. You continue your work. I shall attend the ship.” He saw the protest the on Keen’s lips as he added, ”I know her somewhat better than you.”
Keen stood back. ”Aye, aye, Sir Richard.” He glanced at the tautening hawsers to the ship alongside. There may not be long. ”I know. Single-up your lines.” Then almost to himself he added, ”I have never lost a ship before.”
He saw Minchin and one of his assistants, coming on deck with their clothing dark with blood, each carrying a bag.
Minchin approached Bolitho and said, ”Permission to leave with the wounded, Sir RichardF
”Yes, and thank you.”
Minchin forced a grin to his ruined face. ”Even the rats have gone.”
Bolitho said to Ozzard, ”Leave with the others.” Ozzard clutched the bright sword. No, Sir Richard, I’m staying -
Bolitho nodded. ”Then remain here, on deck.”
He looked at Allday. Are you coming with me?”
Allday watched him despairingly. Must you go doum there?
Aloud he said, ”Have I ever left you?”
They walked beneath the poop and down the first cOmpanionway to the lower gundeck. The ports were still sealed, but most of those on the larboard side had been blasted open, their guns hurled from their breechings. There were few dead here.
Mercifully Keen had cleared the deck to storm the Spaniard alongside. But there were some. Lolling figures, eyes slitted as if because of the smoky sunlight, watching as they passed half a man, chopped neatly in two by a single ball even as he had run with his sponge to the nearest gun. Blood everywhere; no wonder the sides were painted red, but it still showed itself. Lieutenant Priddie, second-in-command of the lower gundeck, lay face down, his back pierced with long splinters which had been blasted from the planking. He was still holding his sword.
Down another ladder, to the orlop, where Bolitho had to duck beneath each low beam. There were still one or two lanterns -cloth.
alight here. The dead lay in neat rows covered by sail Others remained around the bloodied table, where they had died while they waited. Above their heads a heavy object fell to the able along the deck, and then after a few seconds began to rum scarred planking, like something alive.
Christ!’
Allday whispered, ”In the name of Bolitho looked at him. It must be a thirty-two pounder ball which had broken free of its garland and was now rolling putposefully down towards the bows.
They paused by the last hatchway and Allday dragged back the cover. It was one of the holds, where Ozzard always kept his vigil when the ship was in action.
Bolitho dropped to his knees and peered down while Allday lowered a lantern beside him.
He had expected to see water amongst the casks and crates, the chests and the furniture, but it was already awash from side to side. Barrels floated on the dark water, and lapped around a marine who had been clinging to a ladder when he had died. A sentry Put to guard against terrified men running below in battle.
He might have been killed by one of them, or like Ozzard had been trying to find refuge from the hell on deck.
The deck quivered again, and he heard heavy fragments booming against the carpenter’s walk where more of his men had been trapped and drowned.
The orlop, and the holds and magazines beneath it, places which had remained in total darkness for all of Hyperion’s thirty-three years. When they had returned the old ship to service after a hasty refit, it was more than likely the dockyard had missed something. Probably down there, where the first heavy broadside had smashed into the hull, there had still been some rot, unseen and undiscovered. Gnawing at the timbers and frames as far down as the keelson. San Mateo’s last bombardment had dealt the mortal blow.
Bolitho watched Allday shut the hatch and made his way back to the ladder.
So many memories would go with this ship. Adam as a midshipman; Chaney whom he had loved in this same hull. So many names and faces. Some would be out there now in the battered squadron where they waited to secure the prizes after their victory. Bolitho thought of them watching Hyperion, remembering her perhaps as she had once been, while the younger ones like Midshipman Springert. . . . He cursed and held his hand to his eyes. No, he was gone too, with so many others he could not even remember.
Alldy murmured, ”I think we’d better get a move on, sir.”
The hull shook once more, and Bolitho thought he saw the gleam of water in the reflected light, creeping through the deck scams; soon it would cover the blood around Minchin’s table.
They climbed to the next deck, then threw themselves to one side as a great thirty-two pounder gun came to life and squealed down the deck, as if propelled by invisible hands. Load! Run out!
Fire! Bolitho could almost hear the orders being screamed above the roar of battle.
On the quarterdeck once more Bolitho found Keen and Jenour waiting for him.
Keen said quietly, ”The ship is cleared, Sir Richard.” His eyes moved up to the flag, so clean in the afternoon sunlight.
”Shall I have it hauled down?”
Bolitho walked to the quarterdeck rail and grasped it as he had so many times as captain and now as her admiral.
”No, if you please, Val. She fought under my flag. She will always wear it.”
He looked at the Spanish Asturias. He could see much more of her damage, her side pitted by Hyperion’s own broadsides. She appeared much higher in the water now.
Bolitho looked at the sprawled figures, Parris’s outflung arm with the pistol he had chosen as his final escape.
They had succeeded in driving off and scattering the enemy.
Looking at the drifting ships and abandoned corpses, it seemed like a hollow victory.
Bolitho said, ”You are my ship.”
The others stood near him but he seemed quite alone as he spoke.
”No more as a hulk. This time with honour.” He swung away from the rail. ”I am ready.”
It took another hour for Hyperion to disapear. She dipped slowly by the bows, and standing on the Spaniard’s poop Bolitho heard the sea rushing through the ports, sweeping away wreckage, eager for the kill.
Even the Spanish prisoners who gathered along the bulwarks to watch were strangely silent.
Hammocks floated free of the nettings, and a corpse by the wheel rolled over as if it had been only feigning death.
Bolitho found that he was gripping his sword, pressing it against the fan in his pocket with all his strength.
He held his breath as the sea rolled relentlessly aft towards the quarterdeck until only the poop, and the opposite end of the ship, his flag above the sinking masthead, marked her presence.
He remembered the words of the dying sailor.
Hyperion cleared the way, as she always had.
He said aloud, ”There’ll be none better than you, old lady!”
When he looked again she had gone, and only bubbles and the scum of flotsam remained as she made her last voyage to the seabed.
Keen glanced at
the stricken survivors around him and was inclined to agree.
Epilogue
Bolitho paused near the edge of the cliff and stared hard Falmouth Bay. There was no snow on the ground, but the which swept the cliffs and hurled spume high above the to below was bitterly cold, and the low dark-bellied clouds hinted sleet before dusk.
Bolitho felt his hair whipping in the wind, drenched with and rain. He had been watching a- small brig beating up from Helford River, but had lost sight of her in the wintry spray wh blew from the sea like smoke.
It was hard to believe that tomorrow was the first day another year, that even after returning here he was still grip by a sense of disbelief and loss. ed to con When Hyperion had gone down he had tri himself that she had not made a vain sacrifice, nor had the who had died that day in the Mediterranean sunshine.
Had the Spanish squadron been able to join with Combined Fleet at Cadiz, Nelson might well have been into submission.
Bolitho had transferred to the frigate Tybalt for pass Gibraltar and had left Herrick in command of the squa although most of the ships would need dockyard care with delay.
een stunned by the news- The Comb At the Rock he had b Fleet had broken out without waiting for more support, outnumbered or not, Nelson had won a resounding victory;
single battle had smashed the enemy, had destroyed or captured two-thirds of their fleet, and by so doing had laid low any hope Napoleon still held of invading England.
But the battle, fought in unruly seas off Cape Trafalgar, had cost Nelson his life. Grief transmitted itself through the whole fleet, and aboard Tybalt where none of the men had ever set eyes on him, they were shocked beyond belief, as if they had known him as a friend. The battle itself was completely overshadowed by Nelson’s death, and when to Bolitho eventually reached Plymouth he discovered it was the same wherever he went.
Bolitho watched the sea boil over the rocks, then tugged his cloak closer about his body.
He thought of Nelson, the man he had so wanted to meet, to walk and talk with him as sailor to sailor. How dose their lives had been. Like parallel lines on a chart He recalled seeing Nelson just once during the ill-fated attack on Toulon. It was curious to recall that he had seen Nelson only at a distance aboard the flagship; he had waved to Bolitho, a rather shabby young captain who was to change their world. Stranger still, the flagship Nelson had been visiting for orders was that same Victory. He thought also of the few letters he had received from him, and all in the last months aboard Hyperion. Written in his odd, sloping hand, self-taught after losing his right arm, There you may discover bow well they fight thew wars with words and paper instead of ordnance and good steel. He had never spared words for pompous authority.
And the words which had meant so much to Bolitho when he had asked for, and had been reluctantly given, Hyperion as his flagship. Give Bolitbo, any ship be wants. He is a sailor, not a lmdsman. Bolitho was glad that Adam had met him, and been known by him.
He glanced back along the winding diff path towards Pendennis Castle. The battlements were partly hidden by mist, like low cloud; everything was grey and threatening. He could not remember how long he had been walking or why he had come.
Nor did he remember when he had ever felt so alone.
Upon returning to England he had paid a brief visit to the Admiralty with his report. No senior had been available to see him. They were all engaged in preparing for Nelson’s funeral, apparently. Bolitho had ignored the obvious snub, and had been glad to leave London for Falmouth. There were no letters for him from Catherine. It was like losing her again. But Keen would see her when he joined Zenoria in Hampshire.
Then I shall write to her. It was surprising how nervous it made like the first time. How would she see him feel. Unsure of himself, him after their separation?
He walked on into the wind, his boots squeaking in the sodden with all the pomp and grass. Nelson would be buried at St Paul’s, ceremony which could be arranged. It made him bitter to think that those who would be singing, would be the very same who had hymns of praise the loudest, envied and disdained him the most.
He thought of the house now hidden by the brow of the hill. He had been glad that Christmas had been over when he reached home. His moods of loneliness and loss would have cast a wet blanket over all festivities. He had seen no one, and he imagined Allday back at the house, yarning with Ferguson about the battle, adding bits here and there as he always did.
Bolitho had thought often of the battle. At least there had been no mourning in Falmouth- Only three of Hyperion’s company had come from the port, and all had survived.
There had been a letter from Adam waiting for him. The one shining light to mark his return.
Adam was at Chatham. He had been appointed captain, in completing in the Royal Dock command of a new fifth-rate now yard there. He had got his wish. He had earned it.
He stopped again, suddenly tired, and realising he had eaten nothing since breakfast. Now it was afternoon, and darkness would soon arrive to make this path a dangerous place to walk.
He turned, his cloak swirling about him like a sail.
How well his men had fought that day. The Gazette had summed it up in a few lines, overshadowed by a nation’s sense of mourning. On 1 October last, some hundred miles to the East of Cartagena ships of the Mediterranean squadron under the flag of Vice-Admiral Sir Richard Bolitho, KB encounters a superiorSpanish force of twelve sail-of-the-line. After a fierce engagement leaving six prizes in British hands, the enemy withdrew, God Save The King. Hyperion was not mentioned, nor the men now lay with her in peace. Bolitho quickened his pace and almost stumbled, not from any blindness, but because of the emotion which blurred his eyes.
God damn them all, he thought. Those same hypocrites would praise the little admiral now that they no longer had to fear his honesty. But the true people would remember his name, and so would ensure that it lived forever. For Adam’s new navy, and the ones which would follow.
A figure was approaching by way of the path which ran closest to the edge. He peered through the mist and rain and saw the person wore a blue cloak like his own.
In an hour, maybe less, it would be dangerous here. A stranger perhaps?
She came towards him very slowly, her hair, as dark as his own, strearning untied in the bitter wind off the sea.
Allday must have told her. He was the only one in the house who knew about this walk. This particular walk they had both taken after his fever, a thousand years ago.
He hurried towards her, held her at arms’ length and watched her laughing and crying all in one. She was dressed -in the old boat-cloak he kept at the house for touring the grounds in cold weather. A button missing, a rent near the hem. When it lifted to the wind he saw she was wearing a plain dark red gown beneath.
So far a cry from the fine carriage and the life she had once shared.
Then Bolitho clutched her against his body, feeling her wet hair on his face, the touch of her hands. They were like ice, but neither of them noticed.
”I was going to write...” He could not go on.
She studied him closely, then gently stroked his brow near his injured eye.
”Val told me everything.”
She pressed her face against his, while the wind flung their cloaks about them. ”My dearest of men, how terrible it must have been. For you and your old ship.” Bolitho turned her and put his arm over her shoulders. As they mounted the path over the hill he saw the old grey house, light already gleaming in some of the windows.
She said, ”They say I am a sailor’s woman. How could I stay away?”
Bolitho squeezed her shoulder, his heart too full to speak.
Then he said, ”Come, I’ll take you home.”
He paused at the bottom to help her over the familiar old stile-gate where he had played as a child with his brother and sisters.
She looked down at him from the stile, her hands on his shoulders. ”I love thee, Richard.”
He made the mom
ent last, sensing that peace like a reward had come to them in the guise of fate.
He said simply, ”Now it’s your home, too.”
The one-legged ex-sailor named Vanzell touched his hat as they passed; but they did not see him.
End
Alexander Kent - Bolitho 17 Page 30