A Tradition of Victory

by Alexander Kent

  His senses returned instantly as he saw Allday bending over him.

  “What is it?”

  Allday placed a mug of coffee carefully on the table.

  “Wind’s freshening, sir, and it’ll be first light in half an hour.”

  He stood back, his head bowed between the deckhead beams, and eyed Bolitho critically. “Thought you’d want a shave before dawn.”

  Bolitho stretched his legs and sipped the coffee. Allday never forgot anything.

  Now, as the deck lifted and quivered beneath the chair, he found it hard to believe that in the hours since they had burst upon the anchorage they had made contact with the brig Rapid, which in turn had hurried away to complete the link in the chain of command with Phalarope.

  The rest had been much easier than expected. Turning once more to take full advantage of the wind, the two frigates had steered south-east, while Rapid had continued her search for Duncan’s Sparrowhawk.

  It was not much of a flotilla, Bolitho conceded, but what it lacked in numbers it certainly made up for in agility and fire power. He had seen it in Styx, the wildness which was akin to some kind of insanity when the guns had roared out their challenge. If they could find and get amongst the enemy invasion craft just once again, the panic they had already created would spread like a forest fire.

  Then he could make his report to the Admiralty: Beauchamp’s wishes had been carried out.

  There was a tap at the door, but this time it was Neale, his round face flushed from the wind and spray.

  “Phalarope’s in sight astern, sir. Sky’s brightening, but the wind’s backed to north by west. I’ve sent the people to breakfast early. I have a feeling we shall be busy today. If the Frogs have sailed, that is.”

  Bolitho nodded. “If they have not, we shall repeat yesterday’s tactics, only this time we shall have Phalarope’s carronades.”

  He sensed Allday’s sudden stiffness, the way the razor had stilled in mid-air.

  Neale cocked his head as voices echoed along the upper deck.

  He did not see Allday’s apprehension as he hurried away to his duties.

  Bolitho lay back in the chair and said quietly, “The sea is empty, Allday. We shall destroy those craft today, come what may.

  After that …”

  Allday continued to shave him without comment.

  It was strange to realize that Phalarope was sailing somewhere astern, in sight as yet only to the keen-eyed masthead lookouts.

  The ship which had changed everything for him, for Allday, and others who were so near to him. It was also unnerving to accept he was probably more excited about seeing Phalarope under full sail and awaiting his wishes than he was at the prospect of destroying helpless craft which could not hit back. But their menace was real enough, as Beauchamp had seen for many months. He sighed and thought instead of Belinda. What would she be doing at this moment? Lying in her bed, listening to the first birds, the early farm carts on the move down the lanes? Thinking of him perhaps, or the future? After today things might be different. Again, he could find himself ordered to the other side of the world.

  Belinda’s late husband had hated being a soldier and had resigned his commission to serve with the Honourable East India Company. Would she equally hate being married to a sailor?

  Another tap at the door broke his thoughts and he was almost grateful. Almost.

  It was Browne, all sickness gone, and as impeccable as if he was about to carry a despatch to Parliament itself.

  “Is it time?”

  Browne nodded. “Dawn’s coming up, sir.”

  He glanced at Allday and saw him shrug. It was not like him to look so disconsolate.

  Bolitho stood and felt the ship’s eager thrusting movement.

  The wind had backed again, Neale had said. They would have to watch out they did not run on a lee shore. He smiled grimly. So would the French.

  He slipped into his coat. “I am ready.” He looked at Allday again. “Another dawn.”

  Allday made a great effort. “Aye, sir. I hope when we greet the next one the taffrail will be pointing at France. I hate this bay, and all it means to a seaman.”

  Bolitho let it lie there. When Allday was having a rare mood, it was best left well alone. There were other things at stake today.

  After the sealed warmth of the cabin the quarterdeck felt almost icy. Bolitho returned Neale’s greeting and nodded to the other officers on watch. The ship was cleared for action, or would be once the last screen between Neale’s quarters and the gun-deck had been removed, but there was little hint of it yet.

  The gun crews lounged in the shadows beneath the gangways, and the men in the tops were hidden by the black rigging and lively canvas.

  Bolitho walked aft to the taffrail, aware of the marines resting by the nettings on either side, their muskets propped against the packed hammocks. How pale their crossbelts looked in the weird light, while their uniforms appeared to be black.

  He tensed as for the first time he saw the old frigate following astern.

  Her topgallant yards and masthead pendant held the first light on them, while the rest of the sails and the hull itself were lost in darkness. A ghost ship indeed.

  He shook himself out of his doldrums and thought instead about the rest of his command. Rapid may have found Duncan by now. Other ships might be on their way to assist as Beauchamp had originally directed. Like Browne, he doubted it.

  Neale joined him by the rail and together they watched the dawn spreading and spilling over from the land. A fiery red dawn.

  Bolitho smiled and remembered his mother. Red sky at morning, shepherds warning. He felt a sudden chill at his spine and turned to look for Allday. Allday had been a shepherd when the press-gang had seized him. Bolitho swung round again, furious with himself and with his fantasy.

  He said, “As soon as you can, make contact with Phalarope.

  Signal her to maintain station to windward.”

  As Browne hurried away to prepare his signal, Bolitho said to Neale, “When Phalarope has acknowledged, we shall stand closer inshore.”

  Neale hesitated. “We shall be seen at once, sir.”

  Bolitho shrugged. “By then it will be too late.”

  He wished suddenly that Herrick was here with him. Like a rock. Part of himself. And ready to argue in his stubborn way.

  Neale would follow him to and through the gates of hell without a murmur, but not Herrick. If there was a flaw in the plan he would see it.

  Bolitho looked up at the masthead pendant and then at his own flag. Stiff, like banners. The wind was still rising.

  Unconsciously his fingers played with the worn pommel of his sword. He was being unfair. To Neale and to Allday, to Herrick, who was not even present.

  It was his flag at the mizzen masthead, and the responsibility was his alone.

  Surprisingly, he felt more at ease after that, and when he took his regular walk along the side of the quarterdeck there was nothing to betray the fear that he had almost lost his confidence.

  Bolitho saw Styx’s first lieutenant cross to the compass and glance at it before studying each sail in turn.

  Nothing was said, nor was there need. The professionals in the frigate’s company knew their ship like they knew each other.

  Any comment from Pickthorn that the wind had backed another point would have been resented by the master, and judged by Neale to be a display of nerves.

  Bolitho had seen it all before, and had endured it too. He walked aft again, watching the colour spreading across the sea and its endless parade of white-horses. Salt stung his mouth and cheeks but he barely noticed it. He stared towards Phalarope as she plunged obediently to windward, squarely on Styx’s starboard quarter. She looked splendid, with her closed gunports making a chequered line along her side. The gilded figurehead was bright in the early sunlight, and he could just make out a knot of blue figures on her quarterdeck. One of them would be Adam, he thought. Like Pickthorn, watching over his sails, ready
to order men here or there to keep each piece of canvas filled and hard to the wind. Phalarope was heeling heavily towards him, pushed over by the press of sails and the occasional steep crest under her keel.

  How this ship must look.

  Bolitho turned and walked down to the quarterdeck rail again.

  The gun crews were still at their stations, the tension gone as daylight laid bare an empty sea. The second and third lieutenants were chatting together, swords sheathed, their attitudes of men at ease in a park.

  Neale was moving his telescope across the larboard nettings, studying the undulating, slate-coloured slopes of the mainland.

  They were standing some five miles out, but many eyes would have seen them.

  Neale tossed his glass to a midshipman and commented glumly, “Not a damn thing.”

  Browne joined Bolitho by the rail. “She’s really flying, sir.”

  Bolitho looked at him and smiled. Browne was more stirred by the lively ship beneath him as she lifted and plunged through the white-horses than he was troubled by the inaction.

  “Yes. My nephew will have his hands full but will enjoy every second, no doubt.”

  “I don’t envy him that, sir!” Browne was careful never to mention Phalarope’s captain. “A raw company, lieutenants no more than boys, I’ll be content with my duties here!”

  Bundy called, “Mist ahead, sir!”

  Neale grunted. He had seen it already, seeping low down like pale smoke. The fact the master had mentioned it implied he was troubled. In a moment or so the lookouts would see the southern headland of the Loire Estuary. After that, the next report would be sighting the Ile d’Yeu. Right back where they had started, except that they were much closer inshore.

  He looked over at Bolitho, who stood with his hands behind his back, his legs apart to take the deck’s uneven roll. He will never turn back. Not in a thousand years.

  Neale felt strangely sorry for Bolitho at this moment. Disturbed that what had started as a daring piece of strategy had seemingly gone wrong.

  “Deck there! Sails on the larboard bow!”

  Neale climbed into the shrouds and beckoned urgently for his telescope.

  Bolitho folded his arms across his chest, certain that if he did not everyone around him would see them shaking with anxiety.

  The mist dipped and swirled as the wind found it and drove it inshore. And there they were, like a phalanx of Roman soldiers A

  on the march, six lines of small vessels under sail. In the bright glare even the pendants and ensigns looked stiff, like lances.

  Browne breathed out slowly. “In daylight there look even more of them.”

  Bolitho nodded, his lips suddenly like dust. The fleet of small vessels was making hard going of it, tacking back and forth in an effort to retain formation and to gain some progress against the wind.

  Neale exclaimed, “What will they do now? Scatter and run?”

  Bolitho said, “Make more sail, Captain Neale, every stitch you can carry, and let us not give the enemy a chance to decide!”

  He turned and saw Browne smiling broadly while men dashed past him to obey the shrill pipe to loose more canvas. The great studding-sails would be run out on either beam like huge ears to carry them faster and still faster towards the mass of slow-moving hulls.

  Across the starboard quarter Bolitho saw Phalarope’s pyramid of pale canvas tilt more steeply as she followed suit, and he thought he could hear the scrape of a fiddle as her seamen were urged to greater efforts to keep station on the rear-admiral’s flag.

  Midshipman Kilburne, who had managed to keep his glass trained on the other frigate in spite of the bustle around him, called, “From Phalarope, sir! Sail to the nor’-west! ”

  Neale barely turned. “That’ll be Rapid, most likely.”

  Bolitho gripped the rail as the ship slid deeply beneath him.

  The decks were running with spray, as if it was pouring rain, and some of the bare-backed gun crews looked drenched as Styx plunged towards the widening array of vessels.

  The bearing would be right for Rapid. She must have found Sparrowhawk and was coming to join the fight. He bit his lip.

  Slaughter, more likely.

  “Load and run out, if you please. We will engage on either beam.”

  Bolitho tugged out his watch and opened the guard. Exactly eight in the morning. Even as the thought touched him the bells chimed out from the forecastle. Even there, a ship’s boy had managed to remember his part of the pattern which made a ship work.

  “The enemy is dividing into two flotillas, sir.” Pickthorn shook his head. “They’ll not outrun us now, and there are only rocks or the beach beyond them!” Even he sounded dismayed at the enemy’s helplessness.

  Kilburne jammed the big signals telescope against his eye until the pain made it water. Bolitho was barely two feet from him and he did not want to disturb his thoughts by making a stupid mistake. He blinked hard and tried again, seeing Phalarope’s iron-hard canvas swoop across the lens, the bright hoist of flags at her yard.

  He was not mistaken. Shakily he called, “From Phalarope, sir.

  She’s made Rapid ’s number.”

  Bolitho turned. It was common practice for one ship to repeat another’s signal, but something in the midshipman’s tone warned him of sudden danger.

  “From Rapid, sir. Enemy in sight to the nor’-west! ”

  Browne murmured softly, “Hell’s teeth!”

  “Any orders, sir?” Neale looked at Bolitho, his face and eyes calm. As if he already knew, and accepted it.

  Bolitho shook his head. “We will attack. Alter course to larboard and head off any of the leaders who try to break past us.”

  He turned on his heel as once again the men dashed to the braces and halliards, most of them oblivious to the menace hidden below the horizon.

  Allday pushed himself away from the nettings and strode deliberately to Bolitho’s side.

  Bolitho eyed him thoughtfully. “Well, perhaps you were right after all, old friend. But there’s no getting round it.”

  Allday stared past him towards the converging array of sails A

  and low hulls, hating what he saw, what it might cost.

  But he said simply, “We’ll dish ’em up, sir. One way or the other.”

  Some muskets and a few swivels crackled from the leading vessels, their puny challenge blanketed by the roar of Styx’s first broadside.

  Neale cupped his hands. “Mr Pickthorn! Shorten sail! Get the royals and t’gan’s’ls off her!” He watched as the studding-sail booms were hauled bodily inboard to their yards, men calling to one another as guns crashed out and recoiled below them, and a few musket balls and enemy canister scythed wickedly between the shrouds.

  Bolitho said, “Mr Browne. Make to Phalarope. Engage the enemy. ”

  There was still time. With Styx riding astride the channel to part and scatter the enemy’s neat columns, Phalarope’s massive armament of carronades would demolish the van and centre and give them room to beat clear and join Rapid to seaward. But Phalarope was already making another signal.

  Midshipman Kilburne shouted in between the explosions from each battery, “Repeated from Rapid, sir! Estimate three enemy sail to the nor’-west. ” His lips moved painfully as the gun below the quarterdeck rail crashed inboard on its tackles, its crew already darting around it with fresh powder and shot. He continued,

  “Estimate one ship of the line.”

  Allday’s palm rasped over his jaw. “Is that all?”

  As if to add to the torment, the masthead lookout yelled,

  “Deck there! Land on th’ starboard bow!”

  Bundy nodded, his eyes like stones. The Ile d’Yeu. Like the lower jaw of a great trap.

  Pickthorn dropped his speaking trumpet as his topmen came swarming down the ratlines again. “Phalarope’s shortening sail, sir.”

  Bolitho glanced up at Styx’s last hoist of flags. His order to Captain Emes to close with the enemy formation and engage
them.

  He heard Browne snap angrily, “Has she not seen the signal, Mr Kilburne?”

  Kilburne lowered his glass only to reply. “She has acknowledged it, sir.”

  Browne looked at Bolitho, his face white with disbelief.

  “Acknowledged!”

  Canister screamed over the quarterdeck and punched the hammock nettings like invisible fists.

  A marine dropped to his knees, blood pouring from his face, as two of his comrades dragged him to safety. Their first casualty.

  A blazing lugger, ungainly and out of command, with flames darting from weapon ports like red tongues, passed dangerously down the larboard side, where the boatswain and his men waited with water buckets and axes to quench any outbreak of fire in the tarred rigging and vulnerable canvas.

  Neale said flatly, “Phalarope is not responding, sir.”

  “Signal Phalarope to make more sail. ” Bolitho felt some of the men watching him, still unwilling or unable to believe what was happening.

  “She’s acknowledged, sir.”

  It was almost impossible to think with guns firing and the decks filled with choking smoke.

  Bolitho looked at Neale. If he broke off the action now and abandoned the enemy, they could come about and with luck fight clear. If not, Styx could not hope to destroy more than a handful of vessels, and only then at the cost of her own people.

  He stared at the other frigate as she fell further and further astern, until his eyes and mind throbbed with pain and anger.

  Browne had been right from the beginning. Now there was no chance left, and it was certainly not worth losing a whole ship and her company.

  He cleared his throat and said, “Discontinue the action, Captain Neale. Bring her about. It is finished.”

  Neale stared at him, his face filled with dismay.

  “But, sir, we can still hit them! Single-handed if we must!”

  The masthead lookout’s voice shattered the sudden silence even as the guns ceased firing.