Honour This Day

by Alexander Kent

  Bolitho dropped his voice and turned to Parris. “Take some men and look below.” His eyes were growing used to the schooner’s deck and taut rigging. She mounted several guns, and there were swivels where they had rushed aboard, more aft by the tiller. They had been lucky. She did not have the cut of a privateer, and the Swedes usually kept clear of involvement with the fleets of France and England. A trader then? But well armed for such a small vessel.

  The master exclaimed, “Will you leave my ship, sir, and order your men to release mine!”

  “What are you doing here?”

  The sudden question took him off balance. “I am trading. It is all legal. I will no longer tolerate—”

  Parris came back and stood beside Jenour as he said quietly, “Apart from general cargo, Sir Richard, she is loaded with Spanish silver. For the Frogs, if I’m any judge.”

  Bolitho clasped his hands behind him. It made sense. How close they had been to failure. Might still be.

  He said, “You lied to me. Your vessel is already loaded for passage.” He saw the man’s shadow fall back a pace. “You are waiting to sail with the Spanish treasure convoy. Right? ”

  The man hesitated, then mumbled, “This is a neutral ship. You have no authority—”

  Bolitho waved his hand towards his men. “For the moment, Captain, I have just that! Now answer me!”

  Spica’s master shrugged. “There are many pirates in these waters.” He raised his chin angrily. “Enemy warships too!”

  “So you intended to stay in company with the Spanish vessels until you were on the high seas?” He waited, feeling the man’s earlier bombast giving way to fear. “It would be better if you told me now.”

  “The day after tomorrow.” He blurted it out. “The Spanish ships will leave when—”

  Bolitho hid his sudden excitement. More than one ship. The escort might well come from Havana, or already be in Puerto Cabello. Haven could run right into them if he lost his head. He felt Parris watching him. What would he have done?

  Bolitho said, “You will prepare to up-anchor, Captain.” He ignored the man’s immediate protest and said to Parris, “Pass the word to Mr Dalmaine, then bring your boats alongside and take them in tow.”

  The Swedish master shouted, “I will not do it! I want no part in this madness!” A note of triumph moved into his tone. “The Spanish guns will fire on us if I attempt to enter without orders!”

  “You do have a recognition signal?”

  Aasling stared at his feet. “Yes.”

  “Then use it, if you please.”

  He turned away as Jenour whispered anxiously, “Sweden may see this as an act of war, Sir Richard.”

  Bolitho peered at the black mass of land. “Neutrality can be a one-sided affair, Stephen. By the time Stockholm is told of it, I hope the deed will be done and forgotten!” He added harshly, “In war there are no neutrals! I’ve had a bellyful of this man’s sort, so put a good hand to guard him.” He raised his voice so that the master might hear. “One treacherous sign and I’ll have him run up to the yard where he can watch the results of his folly from the end of a halter!”

  He heard more seamen clambering aboard with their weapons. What did they care about neutrality and those who hid behind it so long as they could profit from it? To their simple reasoning, either you were a friend, or you were just as much a foe as Allday’s mounseers.

  “Space out your men, Mr Parris. If we are driven off at the first attempt—”

  Parris showed his teeth in the darkness. “After this, Sir Richard, I think I’d believe anything.”

  Bolitho massaged his eye. “You may have to.”

  Parris strode away and could be heard calling out each man by name. Bolitho noticed the familiar way they responded. No wonder the schooner’s small company were so cowed. The British sailors bustled about on the unfamiliar deck as if they had been doing it all their lives.

  Bolitho remembered what his father had once told him, with that same grave pride he had always displayed when it came to his seamen.

  “Put them on the deck of any ship in pitch darkness and they will be tripping aloft in minutes, so well do they ply their trade!”

  What would he make of this, he wondered?

  “Capstan’s manned, sir!”

  That was a midshipman named Hazlewood, who was aged thirteen, and on his first commission in Hyperion.

  Bolitho heard Parris telling him sharply to stay within call. “I don’t want any damned heroes today, Mr Hazlewood!”

  Like Adam had once been.

  “Heave away, lads!”

  Some wag called from the darkness, “Our Dick’ll get us Spanish gold for some grog, eh?” He was quickly silenced by an irate petty officer.

  Bolitho stood beside the vessel’s master and tried to contain the sympathy he really felt for the man.

  After this night his life would be changed. One thing was certain; he would never command any vessel again.

  “Anchor’s aweigh, sir!”

  “Braces, lads!” Bare feet skidded on damp planking as the schooner curtsied round, freed from the seabed, her mainsail filling above their crouched figures to make the stays hum and shiver to the strain.

  Bolitho clung to a backstay and made himself remain patiently silent until the schooner had gathered way, and with the boats veering astern, pointed her bowsprit to the east.

  Parris seemed to be everywhere. If the attack was successful, he might end up as the senior survivor. Bolitho was surprised that he could consider the possibility of dying without dispute.

  Parris crossed the deck to join him. “Permission to load, Sir Richard? I thought it best to double-shot the six-pounders, and it all takes time.”

  Bolitho nodded. It was a sensible precaution. “Yes, do it. And, Mr Parris, impress on your people to watch the crew. In all conscience, I could not batten them below in their own hull in case the batteries fire on us before we can fight free, but I’d not trust any man of them one inch!”

  Parris smiled. “My boatswain’s mate Dacie is a good hand at that, Sir Richard.”

  Figures flitted about the guns, and Bolitho heard some of the seamen whispering to one another as they rammed home the charges and shot. They were doing something they understood, which had been drummed into them every working day since they had walked or been dragged aboard a King’s ship.

  Jenour seemed to have a smattering of Swedish, and was speaking jerkily to the Spica’s mate. Eventually two large flags were produced, and quickly bent on to the halliards by Midshipman Hazlewood.

  Bolitho moved across the deck, picking out faces, watching where each man had been stationed. Above, Spica’s wide topsail was now set and billowing out from its yard, and Bolitho could feel a rising excitement which even the nervous chant of the leadsman could not disperse. He could picture the schooner’s slender hull as she plunged so confidently along the channel amongst the lurking sandbars, sometimes with only a few feet beneath her keel. If it was broad daylight they would be able to see Spica’s shadow keeping company with them on the bottom.

  “All guns loaded, sir!”

  “Very well.” He wondered how the abandoned Lieutenant Dalmaine was getting on with his two thirteen-inch mortars. If the attack failed, and Thor was unable to recover the men from the lighter, Dalmaine had orders to make his way ashore and surrender. Bolitho grimaced. He knew what he would do in those circumstances; what any sailor would attempt. Sailors mistrusted land. When others saw the sea as an enemy or a final barrier against escape, men like Dalmaine would take a chance, even in something as hopeless as a lighter.

  Jenour joined them by the tiller and said, “I was speaking with the Swedish mate, Sir Richard.”

  Bolitho smiled. The lieutenant could barely suppress his eagerness.

  “We are all ears.”

  Jenour pointed into the darkness. “He says we are past the battery. The biggest treasure-ship is anchored in line with the first fortress.” He added proudly, “She is the Ciuda
d de Sevilla. ”

  Bolitho touched his arm. “That was well done.” He pictured the marks on the chart. It was exactly as Price had described it, and the newly constructed fortress, which rose from the sea on a bed of rocks.

  The leadsman called sharply, “By th’ mark two!”

  Parris murmured, “Christ Almighty.”

  Bolitho said, “Let her fall off a point.” He peered into the black cluster of shapes by the compass box. “Who is that?”

  “Laker, sir!”

  Bolitho turned away. It would be. The seaman who was to have been flogged.

  Laker called, “Steady as she goes, sir! East-by-south!”

  “By th’ mark seven!”

  Bolitho clenched his fists. In the time it had taken for the leadsman to recover and then cast his line from the chains, the Spica had ploughed out of the shallows and into deeper water. But if the chart with its sparse information was wrong . . .

  “By th’ mark fifteen!” Even the leadsman’s voice sounded jubilant. It was not wrong. They were through.

  He walked aft to the taffrail and peered at the boats astern, the gurgle of spray around each stem where lively phosphorescence painted the sea.

  “Sun-up any minute, Sir Richard.” Allday sounded on edge. “I’ll be fair glad to see it go down again, an’ that’s no error.”

  Bolitho loosened the hanger in its scabbard. It felt strange without the old sword. He pictured Adam wearing it as his own, Belinda’s perfect face when she received the news that he had fallen.

  He said harshly, “Enough melancholy, old friend! We’ve faced worse odds!”

  Allday watched him, his craggy face hidden in darkness.

  “I knows it, Sir Richard. It’s just that sometimes I get—”

  His eyes shone suddenly and Bolitho grasped his thick forearm.

  “The sun. Friend or foe, I wonder?”

  “Stand by to come about!” Parris sounded untroubled. “Two more hands on the forebrace, Keats.”

  “Aye, aye, sir.”

  Bolitho tried to recall the petty officer’s face, but instead he saw other, older ones. Hyperion’s ghosts come back to watch him. They had waited over the years after their last battle. To claim him as their own, perhaps?

  The thought made a chill run down his spine. He unclipped the scabbard and tossed it aside while he tested the hanger’s balance in his hand.

  More light, seeping and spreading across the water. There was the land to starboard, sprawling and shapeless. The flash of sunlight on a window somewhere, a ship’s masthead pendant lifting to the first glow like the tip of a knight’s lance.

  The fortress was almost in line with the jib-boom, a stern, square contrast with the land beyond.

  Bolitho let the hanger drop to his side and found that he had thrust his other hand inside his shirt. He could feel his heart pounding beneath the hot, damp skin, and yet his whole being felt cold; raw like steel.

  “And there she lies!” He had seen the mastheads of the great ship below the fortress. She could be nothing else but Somervell’s galleon. But instead of Somervell he saw Catherine’s eyes watching him. Proud and captivating. Distant.

  To tear himself from the mood he slowly raised his left arm, until the early sunlight spilled down the hanger as if he had dipped it into molten gold.

  The sea noises intruded from every side. Wind and spray, the lively clatter of rigging and shrouds while the deck tilted to the change of tack.

  Bolitho called, “Look yonder, my lads! A reckoning indeed!”

  But nobody spoke, for only Hyperion’s ghosts understood.

  7 PERHAPS THE GREATEST VICTORY

  BOLITHO held up the folded chart and strained his eyes in the faint sunlight. He would have wished to take more time to study it in the security of the schooner’s tiny cabin, but every second was precious. It was all happening so swiftly, and when he glanced up again from the tilting compass-box he saw the grand road-stead opening up like some vast amphitheatre. More anchored shipping, the distance making them appear to be huddled together near the central fortress, then the coast itself, with white houses and the beginning of the twisting road which eventually led inland. Each mountain was brushed with sunshine, their blue-grey masses overlapping and reaching away, until they faded into mist and merged with the sky.

  He stared for several seconds at the big Spanish ship. In size she matched Hyperion. It must have taken a month or more to load her with the gold and silver which had been brought overland on pack-mules and in wagons, guarded every mile of the way by soldiers.

  At any minute now Lieutenant Dalmaine would open fire on the battery, before the sunlight reached out and betrayed Thor at her anchorage.

  He tore his eyes away to look along the schooner’s deck. Most of the Spica’s crew were sitting with their backs against the weather bulwark, their eyes fixed on the British seamen. No wonder they had offered no resistance. By contrast with the neat shirts of the Swedes, Hyperion’s men looked like pirates. He saw Dacie the boatswain’s mate, his head twisted at an angle so that he could watch his men and the Spica’s master at the same time. Dacie wore an eye patch to cover an empty socket; it gave him a villainous appearance. Parris had every right to have such confidence in him. Near the helm, Skilton, one of Hyperion’s master’s mates, in his familiar coat with the white piping, was the only one who showed any sort of uniformity.

  Even Jenour had followed his admiral’s example and had discarded his hat and coat. He was carrying a sword which his parents had given him, with a fine blue blade of German steel.

  Bolitho tried to relax as he studied the big Spanish ship. It was a far cry from that quiet room at the Admiralty when this plan had been discussed with all the delicacy of a conference at Lloyds.

  He looked at Parris, his shirt open to the waist, his dark hair streaming above his eyes in the lively offshore breeze. Was Haven right to suspect him, he wondered? It certainly made sense that any woman might prefer him to his colourless captain.

  A gull dived above the topsail yard, its mewing cry merging with the far-off blare of a trumpet. Ashore or at anchor, men were stirring, cooks groping for their pots and pans.

  Parris stared at him across the deck and grinned. “Rude awakening, Sir Richard!”

  The crash when it came was still a surprise. It was like a double thunderclap which echoed across the water and then rolled back from the land like a returned salute.

  Bolitho caught a sudden picture of Francis Inch when he had been given his first command of a bomb like Imrie’s. He could almost hear his voice, as with his horse-face set in a frown of concentration he had walked past his mortars, gauging the bearing and each fall of shot.

  “Run the mortar up! Muzzle to the right! Prime! Fire!”

  As if responding to the memory both mortars fired again. But it was not Inch. He was gone, with so many others.

  The double explosions sighed against the hull, and Bolitho tightened his grip on the hanger as flags broke from the big Spaniard’s yards. They were awake now, right enough.

  “Make the recognition signal, Mr Hazlewood!”

  The two flags soared aloft and broke stiffly to the wind. All they needed now was for it to drop and leave them helpless and becalmed.

  Parris yelled, “Jump about, you laggards! Wave your arms and point astern, damn your eyes!” He laughed wildly as some of the seamen capered around the deck.

  Bolitho waved. “Good work! We are supposed to be running from the din of war, eh?”

  He snatched up a glass and levelled it towards the anchored ship. Beyond her, about half a cable distant, was a second vessel. Smaller than the one named Ciudad de Sevilla but probably carrying enough booty to finance an army for months.

  Parris called, “She’s got boarding nets rigged, Sir Richard!” He nodded. “Alter course to cross her bows!” It would appear that they were heading towards the nearest fortress for protection.

  “Helm a-lee, sir!”

  “Steady as she goes, nor�
�-east-by-east!”

  Bolitho gripped a stay and watched the sails flapping and banging as the schooner lurched close to the wind; but she answered well. He winced as the mortars fired yet again, and still the shore battery remained silent. It seemed likely that the first shots had done their work, the massive balls falling to explode in a lethal flail of iron fragments and grape.

  Astern there was a lot of smoke, haze too, so that the shallows where they had felt their way into the anchorage had completely vanished. It might delay Thor’s entrance, but at least she would be safe from the battery.

  He said, “Keep those other hands out of sight, Mr Parris!”

  He saw Jenour watching him, remembering everything and perhaps feeling fear for the first time.

  A man yelled, “Guardboat, starboard bow, sir!”

  Bolitho trained his glass and watched the dark shape thrusting around the counter of an anchored merchantman.

  Just minutes earlier each man would have been thinking of his bed. Then some wine perhaps in the sunshine before the heat drove them all to their siesta.

  He saw the oars, painted bright red, pulling and backing to bring the long hull round in a tight turn.

  And far beyond he could make out the shape of a Spanish frigate, her masts like bare poles while she completed a refit, or like the Obdurate, repairs after a violent Caribbean storm.

  “Two points to starboard, Mr Parris!” Bolitho tried to steady the glass as the deck tilted yet again. He could hear more trumpet calls, most likely from the new fortress, and could imagine the startled artillerymen running to their stations, still unaware of what was happening.

  Explosions maybe, but there was nothing untoward immediately obvious, except for the appearance of the Swedish schooner which was, reasonably, running for shelter. No enemy fleet, no cutting-out raid, and in any case the other fortresses would have taken care of such daring stupidity.

  Bolitho watched the jib-boom swinging round until it seemed to impale the treasure-ship’s forecastle, although she still stood a cable away. The guardboat was pulling towards them unhurriedly, an officer rising now to peer towards the smoke and haze.