Bolitho nodded. A frigate. Keen was probably right. There was not much time. Two hours at the most.
He said, “Heave to, if you please, and lower a cutter. Lieutenant in charge, and have the boat armed.”
Voices yelled around him and feet pounded across the sundried planking as Achates came reluctantly into the wind even as the boat was hoisted jerkily above the starboard gangway.
Knocker hovered at Keen’s elbow and muttered, “The inlet is a mere scratch, sir. Never get a ship in there!”
Tyrrell replied heavily, “Your chart says that. I say different!”
Bolitho watched Scott, the third lieutenant, hastily buckling on his hanger while the wardroom servant followed him with his pistol and cocked hat. From fretting torpor to urgent activity, how often Bolitho had known and shared that.
“Cutter alongside, sir!”
There was a thud as a swivel-gun was mounted in the boat’s bows, and two seamen began to ram a charge down its muzzle.
Bolitho said quietly, “Did you always know about this inlet, Jethro? These past two weeks and before, you knew this was the place? Yet in a moment or two we would have changed tack and the opportunity would have been lost.”
Tyrrell said, “You wanted that ship. I kept a bargain.”
Then he was gone, swinging his wooden leg in great strides as he made for the entry port.
Bolitho knew the truth at that moment, but something made him hurry to the nettings and call, “Take care, Jethro! And good luck!”
Tyrrell paused, his big hands grasping the lines of the stairs down the tumblehome as he stared aft at the quarterdeck, his eyes watering in the sunlight. For just a few moments the years fell away and they were back in Sparrow. Then Tyrrell swung himself out and down onto the cutter, his wooden stump jutting out like a tusk.
Keen murmured, “I wonder.”
The cutter pulled quickly away from the side, the oars rising and dipping to a fast stroke, her coxswain standing upright behind the lieutenant as he headed for the shore.
Bolitho bit his lip. “I trusted him. Perhaps it was too strong for him in the end.”
Keen shook his head. “I don’t understand, sir.”
Bolitho watched the boat swinging round in a tight arc as Tyrrell’s arm pointed to larboard in a new direction. He could see the swirl of an inshore current, the way the trees and thick scrub ran down to the water’s edge. It was hard to believe that the inlet was other than the chart had described.
There was a far-off bang and then the lookout called, “Frigate’s fired a shot, sir!”
Knocker remarked dourly, “Couldn’t hit Gibraltar from there!”
Bolitho glanced at Keen. Was it a warning to Achates to quit Spanish waters or a signal to someone else?
He said, “I suggest you beat to quarters. Clear for action without delay.” He turned to watch the cutter’s progress. “We’ll not be caught a second time.”
Around him men stood stiffly like crude statues, unable to believe what they had heard.
Then, as the drums rattled and voices barked hoarsely between decks, the truth became clear to everyone.
Keen folded his arms and looked down the length of his command. Men hurried along either gangway, tamping down the tightly packed hammocks in the nettings, while ship’s boys dashed among the guns and spread sand which might prevent a man from slipping if the blood started to flow. Big Harry Rooke, the boatswain, was yelling at some of his own party as they scrambled along the yards to rig chain-slings to prevent the spars from falling on the men below. Others tore down screens between decks to transform the great space from small, individual messes and cabins into one open battery from bow to stern.
Quantock looked up from the gun-deck and touched his hat.
“Cleared for action, sir!” He had learned Keen’s ways by now. Just as Keen had once learned them under Bolitho’s command. “Nine minutes, sir!”
Keen nodded. “That was well done, Mr Quantock.”
But there was nothing between them, and neither smiled because of the small compliment.
Bolitho raised a telescope and watched the distant cutter. What Lieutenant Scott and the others must be thinking he could only guess. The roll of drums as Achates beat to quarters, the bang of a cannon, and all the time they were pulling further and further from their ship, their home.
He heard Allday give a discreet cough and saw him holding out his coat for him while Ozzard fussed around behind with his sword. Adam was here too, clear-eyed and looking incredibly young and anxious.
“Orders, sir?”
Bolitho allowed Allday to clip on the old sword and was saddened by Adam’s formality.
He said, “I am sorry, Adam. I should have known. You have every right to be proud. In your place I would have felt the same.”
The youthful lieutenant took half a pace towards him.
“I would cut off a hand rather than hurt you, sir. It was just that . . .”
“It was just that you wanted to share it with me and I was too busy to listen.”
Keen said, “Ready, sir.”
He glanced from one to the other and felt strangely relieved. He looked directly at Allday but the coxswain did not even blink. Keen smiled. Allday was a fox.
“Very well.” Bolitho looked at his flag at the foremast truck. “Run up the colours, if you please. And then, Mr Bolitho, make a signal. Enemy in sight.” He saw Adam’s expression change from surprise to understanding as he added for the quarterdeck’s benefit, “We might as well give them the idea we are not totally alone, eh, lads?”
He looked at Keen. “Let’s be about it.”
Suppose there was nothing? That he had been wrong about Tyrrell, about everything else? He would be a laughingstock.
He saw the signals midshipman, Ferrier, with his assistants, and little Evans from the Sparrowhawk busy at the halliards, and then as the bright balls of bunting dashed up the yard and broke to the breeze there was an excited cheer from the men at the upper-deck eighteen-pounders.
Most of them could not distinguish one flag from another. But to them it meant more than words. It was a symbol. A part of them.
Keen watched Bolitho’s face and sighed. I should have known.
There was a sharp whiplash crack and several voices yelled, “They’ve fired on the cutter, the buggers!”
Cheers one instant, fury the next.
Bolitho snatched a glass and watched the cutter coming about, the oars in momentary confusion as the water around it leapt with vicious feathers of spray. He saw a corpse pushed roughly over the gunwale to give more space to the oarsmen, and heard a loud bang as the cutter’s swivel raked the trees nearest to the beach.
Keen was shouting, “We may have to leave the cutter, Mr Quantock! But signal Mr Scott to return with all haste!”
He glanced at Bolitho but saw that he was standing by the nettings, his eyes fixed on the partly hidden inlet as if he was expecting something to happen.
The cutter was moving slowly now, and Bolitho knew that more than one of the seamen had been hit, probably by musket fire. He shifted his gaze from the lively current which betrayed the inlet and saw Tyrrell standing at the boat’s tiller, waving a fist to drive the oarsmen to greater efforts.
The maintopsail lifted and cracked with sudden impatience.
Bolitho said, “Be ready to get the ship under way again, Mr Knocker. We have a few minutes yet.”
Quantock said, “The frigate’s holding on the same course, sir.”
Bolitho felt his mouth run dry as something moved beyond and through a long bank of trees. Like a serpent’s tail, yellow and red in the sunlight. The masthead pendant of a large ship, the remainder of her still hidden as she edged slowly through the concealed channel towards open water.
Then her tapering jib-boom and figurehead, blazing gold, and her forecastle and a tightly reefed topsail, her jib barely flapping as she moved sedately into the glare.
Another few moments and they would have lost her. They must have bee
n holding their breaths as Achates had sailed past, laughed at their pathetic efforts to find them. Bolitho clenched his fists behind his coat-tails. They would not laugh much longer.
The cutter was less than a cable away, and Keen said, “Grapnel ready. No time to hoist the boat now!”
He tore his eyes from the other vessel as it moved from cover until she seemed to fill the shoreline.
“Hell’s teeth, she’s the one right enough!”
Bolitho lifted the old sword two inches from its scabbard and then snapped it down again.
“Finally, Captain Keen, you are convinced.”
He heard shouts as the boat’s crew were hauled bodily up the side while the wounded were hoisted on bowlines, their anguished cries ignored in the haste to get them to safety.
Achates heeled more firmly in the wind, her hull brushing away the cutter like a piece of flotsam. Tyrrell remained standing at the tiller, his sole companion a dead seaman who crouched over an oar as if temporarily exhausted.
Bolitho exclaimed, “Throw him a line! I’ll not leave him!”
In his heart he knew Tyrrell intended to remain in the boat, to be carried away by the current. He had purposefully guided Achates from one false scent to another, and had even suggested that the boats should examine a cove directly alongside the other ship’s real hiding-place. Nobody would ever have known. But something at the very last moment had persuaded him to act as he had.
Now the truth would come out. He would be lucky to escape with his life for what he had done.
Bolitho saw a heaving-line snake over the drifting boat, watched Tyrrell’s uncertainty and anguish before he caught the line and took two turns around the abandoned swivel-gun.
Keen waited only long enough for Tyrrell to be seized by the waiting hands at the entry port before he yelled his orders and sent his men rushing aloft again to set the topgallant sails in what seemed like a rising wind.
Bolitho felt the ship shudder, the urgent clatter of blocks and rigging as Achates responded to the pressure.
Keen stared at him and said, “What was the damn fool trying to do anyway? What chance will—” But the rest of his words were lost in the jarring roar of gunfire.
Along the other ship’s side the heavy muzzles were jerking back into their ports and suddenly the air above Achates’ decks was filled with deadly iron. Several holes appeared in the tightly braced sails, and Bolitho felt the familiar jerk through his shoes as other balls struck hard into the hull.
He watched as Knocker’s helmsmen took control and very slowly at first, and then more confidently, the ship pointed her bowsprit towards the land, the wind pushing her over with an invisible hand. The other ship was following suit to take the maximum advantage of the wind.
Had Bolitho ordered Keen to beat up the Mona Passage to take advantage of this same wind on the other side of the islands, it would have taken days to reach San Felipe. The ship which was now almost bows on as she clawed away from the shallows would have beaten them with time to spare. The little Electra would have fought to the finish, but nothing could have stopped the inevitable.
Keen held out his arm. “Easy, Mr. Knocker! Easy now!”
Achates continued to turn, her sails bulging hard on the opposite tack as the seamen on braces and halliards threw their weight against the swing of the yards.
The master grunted over his shoulder and the helmsmen slowed the great spinning spokes of the wheel.
“Steady, sir! West by north!”
Bolitho licked his lips. The enemy’s ports were at too extreme an angle to fire. She had made her challenge prematurely. But she was a well-handled ship and was already responding to the wind as she came about.
“Starboard battery!” Keen’s sword came out of its scabbard with a hiss. “On the uproll!”
Down the Achates’ side and on the deck below the gun captains would be peering through their ports, trigger lines taut, as they watched their target swim into view.
The bright blade flashed down in the sunlight, and with a drawn-out roll of thunder the eighteen- and twenty-four-pounders of both decks hurled themselves inboard on their tackles.
The smoke billowed towards the bows and Bolitho watched as the enemy’s rigging and canvas danced wildly under the onslaught. Tall waterspouts lined the enemy’s bilge as other balls slammed hard down alongside, but she returned the fire even as she completed her manoeuvre.
Bolitho felt the deck shake and heard a terrible shriek from one of the hatchways.
Every gun crew was working like madmen, sponges, charges and rammers moving like parts of the men themselves. Finally those shining black balls from the shot-garlands, rammed home with a last tap for good measure. Each crew was racing its neigh-bour, and as every captain held up his hand Keen shouted hoarsely, “Broadside! Fire!”
This time there was no mistake, and at a range of barely two cables it was possible to see Achates’ weight of iron smashing into the other ship’s hull, splintering a gangway and bringing down a tangled heap of rigging from the mizzen.
But the enemy’s heavier thirty-two-pounders were already reloaded and poking through their ports like angry snouts. Again the stabbing line of orange tongues, the terrible commotion and crash between decks as many of the balls found their mark.
Bolitho saw a man hurled from his gun, his face a mask of blood. He also saw Midshipman Evans standing stiff and unmoving as he stared at the other ship. If he was afraid of the din of battle he did not show it, but in his pale features Bolitho saw the enemy through the boy’s own eyes. He was remembering her as he had last seen her, when his ship had been smashed and set ablaze, when Duncan had died beside him.
Bolitho called, “Walk about, Mr Evans!” He saw the boy look at him without understanding and added, “You are small but still a prime target.”
Evans gave what might have been a smile and then went to aid the fallen seaman.
The guns rolled inboard again on their tackles, the air cringed to their explosions and men gasped in the dense smoke and charred fragments which surrounded them.
Hallowes, the fourth lieutenant, strode behind the forward division of guns, his hanger across his shoulder as he peered at his crews.
“Stop your vents!”
“Sponge out!”
Several men ducked as hammocks burst from the nettings and metal screamed against one of the guns on the opposite side. Two men fell, another limped away and crouched below the gang-way like a frightened animal.
“Load!”
Hallowes pointed at the crouching seaman and shouted, “Back to your station, now!”
“Run out!”
Again the squeaking rumble of trucks as gun by gun the ship presented her full broadside to the enemy. The latter had changed tack slightly and was converging on Achates, her guns firing again and again.
Bolitho watched Keen moving from one side of the quarter-deck to the other. More shots hammered the side, and there was a great chorus from the lower gun-deck and Bolitho knew that a twenty-four-pounder had been upended or, worse still, had broken away from its tackles.
Both ships were evenly matched. Achates mounted more guns, but the enemy’s heavier broadside was taking a terrible toll. One lucky shot was all it would take. He stared at Keen’s shoulders, as if to will him to act. Close the range, Val. Get to grips before he dismasts you.
More cries and screams echoed through the crash and recoil of cannon, and a marine staggered away from the poop nettings, his hands to his face, his chest punctured by flying wood splinters.
“Jesus, what a mess!” Tyrrell limped between the trailing tackles and pieces of torn rigging which had found their way through the nets overhead.
Bolitho said, “Get below. You’re a civilian.”
Tyrrell winced as a ball shattered on the breech of a quarter-deck nine-pounder and splinters cracked around them and flung two more seamen into a puddle of their own blood.
Keen turned round and glared at Tyrrell. “What the hell are you doi
ng here?”
Tyrrell showed his teeth. “Get that bugger alongside, Captain, your people can’t keep up this pace!”
Keen looked at Bolitho. “They’ll know it’s your flagship, sir!”
So that was it. Bolitho pulled out his old sword. “Put the helm over. We’ll give them a fight,” he raised his voice, “eh, lads?”
He turned away as they cheered him. Half-naked, blackened by powder smoke, their sweat cutting channels through the grime, they were hardly the romantic heroes portrayed in the fine paintings he had seen in London.
He felt the madness welling up inside him. “Lively there!”
The yards swung slightly as the helm went over, and within minutes the range had fallen to a cable, then half as much; then as the other ship’s sails rose high above the nettings and muskets joined in the deafening onslaught, it was down to fifty yards and still closing.
The other captain had no choice. He could not turn and run. The land which had hidden him was now a deadly enemy, with breakers in plenty to show the lie of the reefs. If he tried to come about he would be all aback for those vital moments when Keen’s gun crews would rake him from end to end.
There was a loud, splintering crack and voices yelled, “Heads below there!” Part of the mizzen cross-jack yard ploughed through the nets, rebounded and crashed down in a welter of rigging, blocks and trailing canvas.
Bolitho felt a blow on the shoulder like an iron fist, then he was face down on the deck. His first thought was near to terror. Another wound. Fatal. Then he cursed into the smoke which had almost blinded him when his presence would be most missed.
He felt Adam holding his arm, his grimy face set in a grim stare, then Allday dragging something away from his back and easing him over on to his knees, then to his feet. A huge block, cut down by a shot through the mizzen rigging but swinging on its cordage like a bludgeon, had laid him low. He was not even cut, and he managed to force a grin as someone gave him his hat and another yelled, “You’ll show them buggers, sir!”
Bolitho faced the enemy, his eyes smarting, his shoulder throbbing from the blow. If it had struck his skull he would be dead at this very instant.
Musket shots punched into and through the packed hammocks, and wooden splinters flew from the quarterdeck or stood motionless like quill pens.
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