Second to None

by Alexander Kent

  Adam walked to the rail and watched the nearest vessel, the brig. Like his old Firefly. Well handled, leaning over while she changed tack. Probably steering south-east. He thought of Cristie. By guess and by God. He measured the range, surprised still that he could do it without hesitation. The Tetrarch had taken in her fore and main courses and was preparing to await her chance, poised across the starboard bow as if nothing could prevent a collision.

  There was a dull bang, and seconds later a hole appeared in the main topsail. A sighting shot. He clenched his fists. Not yet, not yet. Another shot came from somewhere, sharper, one of the brig’s bow-chasers probably. He saw the feathers of spray dart from wave to wave, like flying fish. Still short.

  ‘Forecourse, Mr Galbraith!’ He strode to the opposite side. ‘Lay for the mainmast, Mr Massie! On the uproll!’

  The enemy might be expecting a ragged broadside, and be waiting for a chance to close the range before Unrivalled could reload.

  Adam heard Massie yell, ‘Ready! Fire!’

  He kept his eyes fixed on the other ship. Massie was managing on his own, pausing at each breech, one hand on the gun captain’s shoulder, the trigger-line taut, ready, the target framed in the open port like a painting come to life.

  ‘Fire!’

  Gun by gun, the full length of Unrivalled’s spray-dashed hull, each one hurling itself inboard on its tackles to be seized, sponged out and reloaded, the men racing one another to run out again, whilst on the opposite side the crews waited their turn, with only the empty sea to distract them from the regular crash of gunfire.

  Someone gave a wild cheer.

  ‘Thar goes ’er main topmast! B’ Jesus, look at ’er, mates!’

  But the other ship was firing now, iron hammering into Unrivalled’s lower hull, a stray ball slamming through a port and breaking into splinters.

  Adam tore his eyes from the spouting orange tongues of fire, feeling the blows beneath his feet like wounds to his own body. Men were down, one rolling across the deck, kicking and coughing blood, another crouched against a gun, fingers interlaced across his stomach, his final scream dying as he was dragged aside and the gun run up to its port again.

  Galbraith yelled, ‘He’s standing off, sir!’ He flinched as a powder monkey spun round, his leg severed by another haphazard shot. Adam saw another run and snatch up the fallen charge, eyes terrified, and averted from someone who had probably been his friend.

  He turned. ‘Wouldn’t you? If you were full to the gills with powder and shot?’ He shut them from his mind. ‘Stand by on the quarterdeck!’ There was smoke everywhere, choking, stinging, blinding.

  He could no longer see the other ship; the forecourse was filled to the wind, blotting out the enemy’s intentions.

  ‘Put the helm down!’ He dashed his wrist across his eyes and thought he saw the ship’s head already answering the helm, swinging bowsprit and flapping jib across the wind.

  ‘Helm’s a’ lee, sir!’

  Adam heard someone cry out and knew a ball had missed him by inches.

  Come on! Come on! If Unrivalled was caught aback across the eye of the wind she would be helpless, doomed. He felt the deck planking jump again and knew the ship had been hit.

  ‘Off tacks and sheets!’ He walked level with the quarterdeck rail, his hand brushing against the smooth woodwork. Without seeing, he knew the forward sails were writhing in confusion, spilling the wind, allowing the bows to swing still further, unhampered.

  ‘Fores’l haul! Haul, lads!’

  One man slipped on blood and another dragged him to his feet. Neither spoke, nor looked at one another.

  She was answering. Adam gripped the rail, and felt her standing into the opposite tack, sails filling and booming, the yards being hauled round until to an onlooker they would appear almost fore-and-aft.

  ‘Hold her! Steer east-by-south!’ Adam glanced swiftly at Cristie. Only a second, but it was enough to see a wild satisfaction. The pride might come later.

  ‘Starboard battery!’ Massie was there now, his sword in the air, his face a mask of concentration as he watched the brig swinging away, caught and unprepared for Unrivalled’s change of tack.

  ‘Fire!’

  It must have been like an avalanche, an avalanche of iron. When the whirling smoke, swept aside by the wind, laid bare the other vessel it was hard to recognise her, almost mastless, her shattered stumps and rigging dragging outboard like weed. She was a wreck.

  Adam took a telescope from Midshipman Fielding, and felt the youth’s hand shaking. Or is it mine?

  ‘Again, Mr Cristie! Man the braces and stand by to wear ship!’ He tried to calm himself and steady the glass.

  The terrier was dead. The real target could never outpace them.

  ‘All loaded, sir!’

  He watched the other ship. Saw the scars left by Unrivalled’s first controlled broadside, the holes punched in her darkly tanned canvas.

  Galbraith called, ‘Ready, sir!’ He sounded hoarse.

  ‘Bring her about and lay her on the starboard tack.’ He glanced up at the forecourse, at scorched holes which had not been there earlier. Earlier? On my birthday.

  Galbraith’s voice again. ‘We could call on him to strike, sir.’

  ‘No. I know what that feels like. We will open fire when we are in position.’ The smile would not come. ‘The wind will not help him now.’ He saw Midshipman Bellairs watching him fixedly, and said, ‘Signal the brig to lie-to. We will board her presently.’

  Bellairs beckoned to his signals party. ‘A prize, sir?’ Like Galbraith he sounded parched, as if he could scarcely speak.

  ‘No. A trophy, Mr Bellairs.’ He looked at Galbraith. ‘Bring her about and take in the t’gallants. We shall commence firing.’ He measured the distance again. ‘A mile, would you say? Close enough. Then we will see.’

  He watched the sudden activity on deck, the shadows swinging across the flapping sails while the frigate continued to turn, the grim faces of the nearest gun crews.

  It was neither a contest nor a game, and they must know it.

  He saw Massie pointing with his sword and passing his orders, the words lost in the din of canvas and tackles.

  Unless that flag came down, it would be murder.

  Using the wind across his quarter to best advantage, Tetrarch’s captain had decided to wear ship, not to close the range but to outmanoeuvre and avoid Unrivalled’s challenge.

  Adam observed it in silence, able to ignore the bark of commands, the sudden protesting bang of canvas as his ship came as close to the wind as she could manage.

  He raised his telescope again and trained it on the other vessel as she began to come about; he could even discern her figurehead, scarred and rendered almost shapeless by time and weather, but once a proud Roman governor with a garland of laurel around his head. Her captain might try to elude his adversary until nightfall. But there was little chance of that. It would only prolong the inevitable. He stared at the other ship’s outline, shortening, the masts overlapping while she continued to turn.

  He could sense Galbraith and some of the others watching him, all probably full of their own ideas and solutions.

  If they came too close and the other ship caught fire, her lethal cargo could destroy all of them. Adam had done it himself. Jago had been there then, also.

  He said sharply, ‘Stand by to starboard as before, Mr Massie! Gun by gun!’

  He wiped his eye and looked again. The enemy was bowson, and in the powerful lens it looked as if her bowsprit would parry with Unrivalled’s jib boom.

  ‘As you bear!’

  He saw the Tetrarch’s canvas billow and fill, the bright Tricolour showing itself briefly beyond the braced driver. What did the flag mean to those men, he wondered? A symbol of something which might already have been defeated.

  He thought of Frobisher, the cruel twist of fate which had brought her and her admiral to an unplanned rendezvous with two such ships as this one.

  ‘Fire!’
He watched the first shots tearing through the enemy’s forecourse and topsails, and felt although he could not hear the sickening crash of falling spars and rigging.

  Like Anemone . . .

  But she continued to turn, exposing her broadside and the bright flashes from her most forward guns. Some hit Unrivalled’s hull, others hurled waterspouts over the side, where gun crews were working like fiends to sponge out and reload.

  He heard Lieutenant Luxmore of the Royal Marines yelling a name as one of his marksmen in the maintop fired his Brown Bess at the enemy without waiting for the order. At this range, it was like throwing a pike at a church steeple. The madness. No one could completely contain it.

  There was a wild cheer as with tired dignity Tetrarch’s fore topmast appeared to stagger, held upright only by the rigging. Adam watched, unable to blink, as the mast seemed to gain control, tearing shrouds and running rigging alike as if the stout cordage were made of mere twine, the sails adding to the confusion and destruction until the entire mast with upper spars and reeling foretop spilled down into the smoke.

  Only a part of his mind recorded the shouts from the gun captains, yelling like men possessed as each eighteen-pounder slammed against its open port. Ready to fire.

  He moved the glass very slightly. There was a thin plume of smoke from the maindeck of the other ship. Any fire was dangerous, in a fight or otherwise, but with holds full of gunpowder it was certain death. He glanced at Unrivalled’s upper yards and the whipping masthead pendant.

  ‘Fall off a point!’

  He saw Massie staring aft towards him, his sword already half raised.

  There was no room for doubt, less for compassion. Because that captain could be me.

  Tetrarch was still turning, her bows dragging at the mass of fallen spars and cordage. There were men too, struggling in the water, calling for help which would never come.

  The next slow broadside would finish her. At almost full range, high-angled to the rise of the deck, it would smash through the remaining masts and canvas before Tetrarch’s main battery could be brought to bear.

  ‘As you bear!’ It was not even his own voice. He thought he saw the sun lance from Massie’s upraised blade, and somehow knew that the gun crews on the larboard side had left their stations to watch, their own danger forgotten.

  He stiffened and steadied the glass again. This time, he knew it was his own hand shaking.

  ‘Belay that order!’

  There was too much smoke, but certain things stood out as clearly as if the enemy had been alongside.

  The forward guns were unmanned, and there were figures running across the ship’s poop and halfdeck, apparently out of control. For an instant he imagined that the fire had taken control, and the ship’s company were making a frantic attempt to escape the imminent explosion.

  And then he saw it. The French flag, the only patch of colour on that broken ship, was falling, seemingly quite slowly, until somebody hacked the halliards apart so that it drifted across the water like a dying sea bird.

  Cristie grunted, ‘Sensible man, I’d say!’

  Someone else said harshly, ‘A lucky one too, God damn his eyes!’

  Tetrarch was falling downwind, her maincourse and mizzen already being brailed up, as if to confirm her submission.

  Adam raised the glass again. There were small groups of men standing around the decks; others, dead or wounded it was impossible to tell, lay unheeded by the abandoned guns.

  Midshipman Bellairs called, ‘White flag, sir!’ Even he seemed unable to grasp what was happening, even less that he was a part of it.

  ‘Heave to, if you please!’ Adam lowered the glass. He had seen someone on that other deck watching him. With despair, hate; he needed no reminding. ‘Take the quarter-boat, Mr Galbraith, and pick your boarding party. If you find it safe for us to come alongside, then signal me. At any sign of treachery, you know what to do.’

  Their eyes held. Know what to do. Unrivalled would fire that final broadside. Any boarding party would be butchered.

  Galbraith said steadily, ‘I shall be ready, sir!’

  ‘A close thing.’

  ‘We would have run them down, sir. The way you handled her . . .’

  Adam touched his sleeve. ‘Not that, Leigh. I wanted them dead.’

  Galbraith turned away, beckoning urgently to one of his petty officers. Even when the quarter-boat had been warped alongside and men were clambering down the frigate’s tumblehome, he was still reliving it.

  The Captain had called him by his first name, like an old and trusted friend. But more, he remembered and was disturbed by the look of pain on the dark features. Anguish, as if he had almost betrayed something. Or someone.

  ‘Bear off forrard! Give way all!’

  They were dipping and rising over the choppy water, the boat’s stem already clattering through drifting flotsam and lolling corpses. Galbraith shaded his eyes to look up at the other vessel, huge now as they pulled past her bows, seeing the damage which Unrivalled’s guns had inflicted.

  ‘Marines, take the poop! Creagh, put your party below!’ He saw the boatswain’s mate nod, his weatherbeaten face unusually grim. He was the man who had first recognised Tetrarch, and perhaps remembered the blackest moment in her life, when she had been surrendered to the enemy.

  Sergeant Everett of the marines called, ‘Watch yer back, sir! I’d not trust a one of ’em!’

  Galbraith thought of the captain again. It might have been us. Then he lurched to his feet, one hand on the shoulder of an oarsman in this overcrowded boat, his mind empty of everything but the grapnel thudding into the scarred timbers and the hull grating alongside.

  ‘With me, lads!’

  Within a second he might be dead, or floating out there with the other corpses.

  And then he was up and over the first gunport lid, tearing his leg on something jagged but feeling nothing.

  There were more people on deck than he had expected. For the most part ragged and outwardly undisciplined, the sweepings of a dozen countries, renegades and deserters, and yet . . . He stared around, taking in the discarded weapons, the sprawled shapes of men killed by Unrivalled’s slow and accurate fire. It would need more than greed or some obscure cause to weld this rabble into one company, to stand and fight a King’s ship which for all they knew might have been expecting support from other men-of-war.

  He thought of the hand on his sleeve, and pointed with his hanger.

  ‘Where is your captain?’ He could not recall having drawn the blade as he had scrambled aboard.

  A man stepped or was pushed towards him. An officer of sorts, his uniform coat without facings or rank.

  He said huskily, ‘He is dying.’ He spread his hands. ‘We pulled down the flag. It was necessary!’

  One of Creagh’s seamen shouted, ‘Fire’s out!’ He glared at the silent figures below the poop as if he would have cut each one down himself. ‘Lantern, sir! Knocked over!’

  The ship was safe. Galbraith said, ‘Run up our flag.’ He glanced at Unrivalled, moving so slowly, the guns like black teeth along her side. Then he looked up at the squad of Royal Marines with their bayoneted muskets. They had even managed to depress a swivel gun towards the listless men who were now their prisoners. A blast of canister shot would deter any last-minute resistance.

  Sergeant Everett called, ‘Captain’s up here, sir!’

  Galbraith sheathed his hanger. It would be useless in any case if some hothead tried to retake the ship. The groups of men parted to allow him through, and he saw defeat in their strained features. The will to fight was gone, if it had ever been there. Apathy, despair, fear, the face of surrender and all it represented.

  Tetrarch’s captain was not what he had expected. Propped between one of his officers and a pale-faced youth, he was at a guess about Galbraith’s age. He had fair hair, tied in an old-style queue, and there was blood on his waistcoat, which the officer was attempting to staunch.

  Galbraith said, ‘M’sie
ur, I must tell you . . .’

  The eyes opened and stared up at him, a clear hazel. The breathing was sharp and painful.

  ‘No formalities, Lieutenant. I speak English.’ He coughed, and blood ran over the other man’s fingers. ‘I suppose I am English. So strange, that it should come to this.’

  Galbraith stared around. ‘Surgeon?’

  ‘None. So many shortages.’

  ‘I will take you to my ship. Can you manage that?’

  What did it matter? A renegade Englishman; there was a slight accent, possibly American. Perhaps one of the original privateers. And yet he did not seem old enough. He stood up; he was wasting time.

  ‘Rig a bosun’s chair. You, Corporal Sykes, attend this officer’s wound.’ He saw the doubt in the marine’s eyes. ‘It is important!’

  Creagh shouted, ‘’Nother boat shovin’ off, sir!’

  Galbraith nodded. Captain Bolitho had seen or guessed what was happening. A prize crew, then. And there was still the dismasted brig to deal with. He needed to act quickly, to organise his boarding party, to have the prisoners searched for concealed weapons.

  But something made him ask, ‘What is your name, Captain?’

  He lay back against the others, his eyes quite calm despite the pain.

  ‘Lovatt.’ He attempted to smile. ‘Roddie – Lovatt.’

  ‘Bosun’s chair rigged, sir!’

  Galbraith said, ‘We have a good surgeon. What is the nature of your wound?’

  He could hear the other boat hooking on, voices shouting to one another, thankful that reinforcements had arrived. All danger forgotten, perhaps until the night watches, when there would be thoughts for all men.

  Lovatt did not conceal his contempt as he said bitterly, ‘A pistol ball. From one of my gallant sailors yonder. When I refused to haul down the flag.’

  Galbraith put his hand on the shoulder of the boy, who had not left the wounded man.

  ‘Go with the others!’

  His mind was full. An English captain who was probably an American; a ship which had been handed to the enemy after a mutiny; and a French flag.

  The boy tried to free himself and Lovatt said quietly, ‘Please, Lieutenant. Paul is my son.’