Midshipman Bolitho

by Alexander Kent

  Bolitho said, “He is the youngest, sir. Some of us have had more experience and …” He faltered, seeing the trap opening.

  Tregorren shook one finger. “I forgot about that, too. That our Mr Bolitho is always afraid that someone else will steal his thunder, deny him of honour, so that his high-and-mighty family might frown a bit!”

  “That is a lie, sir. And unfair!”

  Tregorren shrugged. “Is it? No matter. You are also going, and the clever Mr Dancer.” He put his huge hands on his hips and looked at each in turn. “The first lieutenant said only trained hands should be detailed. But we need experienced midshipmen for handling the ship. On a cutting-out raid we only require the right number!”

  He took out his pocket watch. “I want the full party mustered in an hour. Mr Hope will be my subordinate. Report to him when you are ready.”

  Dancer said bitterly, “Better Hope than Wellesley. He is as weak as watered milk.”

  They walked along the weather gangway, thinking of Grenfell and the others who had been lost in the shattered barquentine.

  Eden said fiercely, “I-I’m n-not afraid! R-really I’m not!” He looked at them wretchedly, his eyes filling his face. “It’s just that I d-don’t want to go with Mr T-Tregorren! H-he’ll be the d-death of us all!”

  Dancer looked down at him and tried to smile. “We’ll be with you, Tom. It may not be too bad.” He turned suddenly to Bolitho. “What is it like, Dick? You’ve done this sort of thing before.”

  Bolitho stared across the nettings towards the misty hump of land and the glittering expanse of water.

  “It’s quick. Everything depends on surprise.”

  He did not look at them. What could he say? Tell them of the fearful cries and curses of men fighting with cutlasses and knives, with axes and pikes. Of the touch of an enemy, the feel of his breath and his hatred. It was not like a sea fight, with the enemy just another ship. It was people. Flesh and blood.

  Dancer said quietly, “I can tell from your silence. Let us hope we are lucky.”

  Down on the orlop they found Pearce and two other midshipmen restoring the chests and well-used chairs to their proper places, the surgeon’s mates having removed their instruments and medicines as soon as the secure was piped.

  In its place against one of Gorgon’s great frames was Grenfell’s chest, his best hat and dirk hanging above it.

  Pearce said, “He always said he’d never rate lieutenant. He never will now.”

  Bolitho looked round as Midshipman Marrack entered, impeccable as ever in a clean shirt.

  Marrack said shortly, “Leave his gear alone. There may still be a chance.” He threw his coat on a chair and added, “You should have seen her go. The City ofAthens never stood a chance. She was actually shortening sail to close the brig when the fortress battery took her.” He stared at nothing. “She took fire and then turned turtle. I saw some of our people swimming. Then the sharks came.” He could not go on.

  Dancer looked at Bolitho. “I remember reading something about the Sandpiper.”

  Marrack said, “One thing is certain. Our captain will never allow a King’s ship to remain in enemy hands, no matter what it costs to recover her.” He reached into his chest and took out a leather case. “Take my pistols, Dick. They’re better than any others aboard. My father gave them to me.” He turned away, as if annoyed at showing a softer side to his nature. “See what confidence I have in you?”

  The small servant scuttled into the berth. “Beg pardon, sirs, but the fourth lieutenant is lookin’ for you, and yellin’ murder!”

  “That Tregorren!” Dancer was unusually bitter. “I agree with little Tom here. The damned bully is too full of himself for my liking!”

  They made for the companion ladder, and only then realized that Eden was still by the side. He was staring at Grenfell’s chest and his dirk which swung easily to the ship’s movements.

  Bolitho said gently, “Come on, Tom. There’s a lot to be done before sunset.”

  To himself he added, and after.

  6

  FACE TO FACE

  “EASY THERE! Watch your stroke!” Hope, the Gorgon’s fifth lieutenant, hissed in the darkness, craning foward from the sternsheets as if to seek out the noise.

  Bolitho crouched beside him and turned to peer astern. Only an occasional feather of white spray or a trailing glow of phosphorescence around the oars betrayed the position of the other cutter. It was very dark, and after the cloudless day, surprisingly cold. Which was just as well, he thought, for they had come a long way. The boats had been lowered and manned before dusk, and while Gorgon made more sail and went about to leave them to their own resources they had settled down to a long, steady pull towards the slab of headland.

  When darkness had arrived it had been sudden, like the fall of a curtain, and Bolitho found himself wondering what was going on in the lieutenant’s mind. It was a far cry indeed from the time when he had thrown open the door of the Blue Posts at Portsmouth and bellowed at the midshipmen. He remembered what Grenfell had said then about Hope’s worries of promotion. The memory saddened him. Grenfell was dead, and Hope would indeed be moving up a place when the captain chose to accept that the lieutenant who had been in charge of the City ofAthens was also killed.

  Eden was leaning against him, his head lowered almost to the gunwale.

  Bolitho said quietly, “Still a way to go yet, Tom.”

  It was an eerie sensation. The cutter thrusting jerkily across the inshore currents, the oars rising and falling on either beam like pale bones, their usual noise muffled by rags and thick layers of grease.

  Ahead of the boat there was a darker wedge to show the division between sea and sky, and Bolitho thought he could smell the earth, sense its nearness.

  In the bows, bent over the stem and a vicious-looking swivel gun, was a leadsman, his boat’s lead and line sounding the way above sandbars and hidden rocks.

  Turnbull, the master, had explained to the two lieutenants that it was best to creep right inshore, so that once around the headland they would lie somewhere between the beach and the anchored ships.

  It had all sounded so easy. Not now, as a man caught his foot in a cutlass and set it clattering across the bottom-boards, and Hope snarled, “God, Rogers, I’ll have you beaten senseless if you make another sound!”

  Bolitho looked at his profile, a shadow against the oars’ spray alongside. A lieutenant. A man who knew that Tregorren was following close astern, depending on his ability to lead the way. Thirty men. For a press-gang, or for manning a couple of heavy guns, it was ample. For taking a ship against odds, and without surprise, it was disaster.

  A strong eddy pushed the hull aside, so that the coxswain had to use his strength at the tiller to bring it back on course. The air felt different again and the sea across the larboard beam looked livelier.

  Bolitho ventured, “We are round the headland, sir.”

  Hope swung on him and then said, “Yes. You’d know, of course. You must have grown up with rocks like these in Cornwall.” He seemed to be studying him in the darkness. “But a long pull yet.”

  Bolitho hesitated, unwilling to break the little contact between them. “Will the marines attack the battery, sir?”

  “Some mad scheme like that.” Hope wiped his face as spray lanced into the boat. “The captain will tack as close as he dares to the seaward end of the island and pretend to attempt a landing. Plenty of noise. Major Dewar will be good at that, he’s got plenty to say in the wardroom!”

  The whisper came back along the oarsmen. “Vessel at anchor on th’ starboard bow, sir!”

  Hope nodded. “Steer a point or so to larboard.” He twisted round to make sure the other boat was following. “That must be the first of’em. The brig is anchored beyond her, a couple of cables yet.”

  Someone groaned, more worried apparently at the prospect of pulling a heavy oar for another four hundred yards than the possible closeness of death.

  “Watch out!” T
he bowman dropped his lead and line and seized a boat hook.

  The oars went into momentary confusion as something large and black, like a sleeping whale, loomed over the cutter, banging into the blades and making what seemed like a tremendous noise.

  Eden murmured shakily, “It’s p-part of the b-barquentine, Dick!”

  “Yes.”

  Bolitho could smell the charred timbers, could even recognize a part of the City ofAthens’s taffrail before it lurched away into the darkness.

  The unexpected appearance of part of the wreck had quite an effect on the seamen. There was something like a low growl, and tired though they were, the oarsmen started putting an extra power into their stroke.

  Hope said softly, “These are seasoned hands, Bolitho. They have been in Gorgon together for a long while and had plenty of friends aboard the prize.” He stiffened as the sweeping masts and yards of an anchored vessel passed slowly abeam. “There she goes. Nary a damn sound.”

  Bolitho peered at the darkened ship. Moored alongside the Gorgon she would look dwarfed. Out here, and from the cutter, she appeared enormous.

  Hope was thinking aloud. “Small frigate most likely. Not English. Too much rake on her masts.” He sounded completely absorbed. “This devil has gathered quite a fleet, it seems.”

  “Ease the stroke!” The coxswain whispered fiercely, “Here comes t’other one!”

  Hope rose to his feet, steadying himself on Bolitho’s shoulder. Bolitho could feel the power of his grip, could imagine his anxieties at this moment.

  Hope said, “If only I could look at my watch.”

  The coswain grinned. “Might as well send the devils a signal, sir.

  “Aye.” Hope sighed. “Let’s pray that Major Dewar and his bullocks are punctual.”

  He peered over the gunwale, watching the swirl of the current, testing the wind against his face.

  He seemed satisfied. “Easy all!”

  The oars rose dripping from the water and stayed motionless, the cutter moving steadily ahead in complete silence.

  Bolitho saw the anchored brig for the first time. Swinging stern-on, her gilded cabin windows showing more brightly than the lower hull as she pivoted very slowly away from the land.

  He could just make out her two masts and furled sails, the blacker angles of her shrouds, before they too merged with the night.

  Bolitho tried to put himself in the place of those aboard. They had fought and captured the barquentine, robbed her holds and killed her crew. At the sight of a large man-of-war they had sheered off and come back here to count their gains. Gorgon’s appearance offshore would have caused a lot of speculation, but under the guns of the old fortress they would have felt secure enough. The fortress had been here for a few hundred years, the captain had said. It had changed hands several times by treaty, or because of a trading agreement, but had never been taken by force. Just a few men at those carefully sited guns, some heated shot, and the rest was easy. Even if Captain Conway had commanded several small, agile ships, and ten times as many men, the fortress would still have held the key to victory. And in time of peace it was doubtful if either the Admiralty or the men of Parliament would be prepared to condone a full-scale siege on this tiny pinprick of Africa, with all the losses entailed. Equally, they would expect Captain Conway to do something. To recapture the brig for a beginning.

  A shaft of silver ran up the brig’s foremast shrouds, and Hope snapped, “The anchor watch in the bows! Checking the cable!”

  The lantern’s beam died away just as quickly.

  The drift of the current was taking the cutter crabwise towards the brig’s counter. Hope must have realized there was no more time left. He said quietly, “Boat your oars! Stand by, bowman!”

  The oars rumbled across the thwarts, but Bolitho knew from experience that the noise which seemed deafening on the cool breeze would be nothing to a man up on the brig’s forecastle.

  Eden whispered, “What’s Mr T-Tregorren going to do?”

  Bolitho could feel his spine chilling under the tension. He heard Hope drawing his sword very carefully from its scabbard, crouching to peer up at the brig’s poop as it rose steadily above the boat.

  He replied, “Once we have boarded her, he will attack from the bows, cut the cable and-”

  Hope snapped, “Ready, lads!”

  There was a sudden explosion which seemed to come from far out to sea. A dull red glow spread and glittered on the water, making each part of the swell shine like silk. Another explosion, and still another.

  Hope exclaimed, “Dewar’s marines have started already!”

  He staggered and all but fell as the cutter ground into the brig’s quarter and the bowman hurled his grapnel up and over the rail.

  At ‘em, lads!” Hope’s voice, after the stealth and the suspense, was like a thunderclap. “Come on!”

  Scrambling and yelling like madmen they swarmed up the side and open gunports in a solid mass of bodies. Someone encountered a loosely rigged boarding net, but even as voices shouted with alarm from below the net was severed, and with Hope and his coxswain in the lead they swept on to the unfamiliar deck.

  It was like a scene from an inferno. The British seamen charging across the deck, their faces and wild eyes revealed in the reflected red flashes and the exploding charges at the end of the island.

  Two figures ran from the forecastle and a pistol cracked out from a companion-way. A seaman fell sobbing, another jabbed down one of the running figures with his cutlass and hacked him across the neck as he fell for good measure.

  More shots now, the balls slamming into the planking or hissing away over the sea. The brig’s crew were crowding through the two main hatches, and a ragged volley of pistol and musket fire cut down several of Hope’s men.

  The lieutenant yelled, “Bring the swivel from the cutter!”

  He caught a man who was hurled aside by a musket ball and lowered him roughly to the deck, adding between gasps, “Where is that bloody Tregorren?”

  The forepart of the brig now seemed full of men, pale and crouching. Darting between familiar objects to take cover and fire on the retreating boarding party.

  Hope said desperately, “If we can’t get to grips, we’re done for!”

  With a pistol in his left hand, his curved hanger in the other, he shouted, “Close quarters, lads!” Then he charged along the deck and threw himself amongst the nearest marksmen. Shouts of surprise gave way to screams and yells as Hope fired his pistol into a man’s chest and slashed another with his hanger. Cursing and cheering, the remaining boarders followed him, striking out at anything which moved.

  Bolitho fired both of Marrack’s pistols into the crowd and thrust them into his belt. He drew his own hanger and parried away a pike which plunged towards him like a spear.

  Despite all the danger and terror he found he was able to remember his first boarding attack. A lieutenant had taken away his midshipman’s dirk and had said scornfully, “That’s only fit for playing games. You need a man’s weapon for this kind of work!” He thought of Grenfell’s dirk hanging in the Gorgon. He had left his behind, too.

  A face loomed above him, the man screaming like a fiend, although in what language Bolitho could not tell. He felt a violent blow on the side of his head and saw the man’s arm going up, his sword pale against the black sky.

  Bolitho twisted his body round and struck upwards with the hanger. He felt the pain of the blow lance up his arm, saw the man and sword fall into the gasping, struggling figures as if swallowed up.

  He heard a shrill cry and saw Eden groping on the deck, while above him a figure swung a musket like a club.

  A pistol exploded, revealing the man’s glaring eyes, his fierce concentration giving way to a distorted mask of agony as a pistol ball flung him down.

  Bolitho dragged Eden to his feet, hacking out at a running figure, but feeling the blade slice through the air.

  Hope shouted, “Swivel gun!” He gestured to the little rail across the poo
p. “Lively there! Fall back!”

  They needed no bidding. Parrying and slashing, dragging the wounded as best they could, the survivors fought their way aft to the poop.

  Hope bellowed, “Down, lads!” He thrust at a charging man with his hanger even as the coxswain put a match to the swivel gun which he had mounted on the rail.

  The man cut down by Hope’s sword must have been carrying a loaded pistol, for as the swivel let out a savage bang and sent a packed charge of canister shot into the advancing shadows the pistol hit the deck and fired even though its owner was dead. The ball struck the lieutenant in the shoulder and he fell beside the smoking swivel without a sound.

  As their ears recovered from the swivel’s vicious detonation Bolitho heard the cries and screams of men caught in the deadly canister. No wonder old seamen called a swivel “the daisy-cutter.”

  Then from right forward in the beakhead he heard the familiar harsh tones of Lieutenant Tregorren, the sudden rush of feet and the cheers of the other boat’s crew.

  It was more than enough for the brig’s company. Sharks or not, they were leaping overboard, ignoring the yells and curses of their comrades who were too badly hurt to follow.

  Tregorren strode aft, pausing merely to bring a belaying pin down on the skull of someone trying to climb on to the main chains.

  He peered at the men by the rail. “Take care of Mr Hope!” The belaying pin pointed and gestured like an obscene fist. “Two men on the wheel! Mr Dancer, pass the word to cut the cable!” He rocked back on his heels, his eyes searching amongst the rigging. “Hands aloft and loose tops’ls! Come along, jump about, my children, if you don’t want to run ashore!”

  Bolitho knelt beside the wounded lieutenant, feeling his pain, his strength ebbing away.

  He said, “That was a brave thing you did, sir.”

  Hope said between his teeth, “Nothing else I could do.” He tried to pat Bolitho’s arm. “You’ll know what I mean one day.”