The Darkening Sea

by Alexander Kent

  Lewis croaked, ‘Fever!’

  ‘As you say, Mr Lewis.’ His voice hardened. ‘Feared and hated by sailors even more than fire.’

  Lieutenant Baldwin came on deck, his eyes everywhere as he buttoned his scarlet coat.

  Adam said, ‘We will bear up to wind’rd of her and lower a boat.’ He saw the quick exchange of glances. ‘I shall call for volunteers and go across myself.’

  ‘You’ll not put aboard her, sir?’ Dacre was staring around as if he could see the horror of it already in this crowded frigate.

  ‘I will decide later.’

  Marines were emerging from below deck, all armed, ready to fight and kill if necessary to retain order.

  Martin watched the realisation running through the ship as the fear became a certainty.

  He said, ‘Her commander is a friend of Sir Richard’s, I believe?’

  ‘Mine too.’ He was thinking of the Jenour he had known, trusting, loyal and likeable. Adam had thought him dead with all the others when he had gone to the memorial service at Falmouth. When his first lieutenant, Sargeant, and this same Aubrey Martin had galloped all the way from Plymouth to tell him the people most dear to him had survived. When he had lost Zenoria for all time.

  ‘Will you take her in tow, sir?’

  When Adam faced him again Martin was shocked to see tears in his eyes, running uncontrollably down his face to mingle with the spray.

  ‘In God’s name, Aubrey, you know I dare not!’ It was another captain whom Martin had never seen.

  Adam turned to Dunwoody, oblivious to those nearby. ‘But Jenour comes from my uncle. It must be important.’ He stared hard at the distant brig until his eyes were too blurred to see.

  He heard Martin call, ‘Hands aloft! Shorten sail, Mr Lewis!’

  But only Dunwoody heard his captain’s voice as he whispered, ‘Dear God, forgive me for what I must do.’

  Closer, and closer still to the stricken Orcadia until every telescope on the Anemone’s quarterdeck would recognise the vessel’s absolute desolation: the double wheel untended and jerking this way and that while the brig drifted and rolled to the pressure of sea and wind. Near the compass box Adam saw two men lying as if asleep, their bodies moving only to the brig’s violent motion. There was another corpse trapped by a line against the splintered boat alongside, and as Anemone worked nearer, her yards braced almost fore-and-aft as close-hauled as she could respond, he saw the other spray-soaked bundles who had once been Orcadia’s company.

  He heard the surgeon say, ‘It must have been of the worst kind, sir. In a small vessel like her it would spread like wildfire.’

  Adam did not reply. He had heard of such virulent plagues in these waters, but had never seen them. Men falling at their stations, some dying before they had realised what was happening. The infection could have begun anywhere, in a vessel suspected of slavery perhaps. It had not been unknown for such ships, crammed to the deck beams with human cargo by captains who had put numbers before all else, to arrive at their destinations with most of the slaves dead and many of the crew soon to follow.

  He said, ‘Near enough, Mr Martin.’ He sounded clipped and, to those who did not know him, without emotion.

  Both watches were standing-to, some staring at the deserted brig as if it had harboured some kind of destructive force. A ghost-ship returned to avenge some past horror.

  Several faces turned aft as Adam called, ‘I want volunteers to crew the gig.’

  He watched the mixed expressions: fearful, hostile, some filled with an overriding dread.

  Nobody moved as he continued, ‘She is one of us, as was the Thruster. Orcadia is a victim of war as much as any who fall to the enemy’s iron. I have to know if anybody is left alive.’ He saw McKillop the surgeon give a brief shake of his head. It only added to his sense of hopelessness, and his own profound foreboding.

  ‘Orcadia was sailing with despatches for the squadron. They must be vital or my unc … or Sir Richard would not have spared her. Her captain was a friend to all of us. Must this suffering be for nothing?’

  His coxswain George Starr said bluntly, ‘I won’t leave you, sir.’

  Another shouted, ‘Put me down!’ It was Tom Richie, Eaglet’s boatswain, who had changed sides despite the risk to himself.

  Adam said coolly, ‘Still with us, Richie?’

  A seaman whose name he could not remember banged his big hands together and even managed to grin. ‘Never volunteer, they said! Look where it got me!’

  Nervously, defiantly, one by one they came aft until Starr whispered, ‘Full crew, sir.’

  Adam turned as Dunwoody said, ‘I’ll come, sir.’ He lifted his chin but it made him appear even younger.

  Adam said gently, ‘No. Stay with the first lieutenant. He’ll need your loyalty.’

  He looked over to Martin. ‘Still want a command, Aubrey?’ He smiled, but it did not reach his eyes.

  My ship. My lovely Anemone … and I am leaving you.

  He watched the gig being lowered and brought alongside under the frigate’s lee.

  Several men gasped at the sound of a single shot. Others flung their heads up as if expecting to see a hold punched in the reefed topsails.

  Adam remarked to no one in particular, ‘Yes, I think I would end it like that.’ He touched the pistol in his belt, wondering how it would be.

  Starr called, ‘Ready, sir!’

  Adam left the quarterdeck and walked to the port. He stopped as some sailors reached out to touch him. As if they were seeing him for the last time.

  ‘Good luck, sir!’

  ‘Watch out if they tries to board you, sir!’ That from an older seaman, who could judge the real danger of close contact. He had made Orcadia seem like one of the enemy in just a few simple words.

  ‘Out oars, shove off forrard! Give way all!’

  Adam thought of Allday as the boat turned away and came under command. There was another shot, and the stroke was momentarily lost as one of the oarsmen peered nervously over his shoulder.

  But the man Richie called between pulls, ‘They tells me you’re a pretty good shot with a pistol, Cap’n?’

  Adam looked at him. Glad he had thrown the cutlass, the evidence, into the sea. It felt like a thousand years ago.

  He said, ‘When provoked!’

  Then he gripped Starr’s sleeve. ‘Under her stern, but don’t stand in too close. We could be dragged against her rudder by the undertow.’ All the while he had the feeling that Anemone was close by, watching their progress, and when he turned in the sternsheets he was shocked to see that when she dipped into a deep trough she appeared to be a great distance away, the sea rising to her gunports as if to swallow her.

  He took a speaking trumpet. ‘Orcadia, ahoy! This is Captain Bolitho of the Anemone!’ He felt sick as he cried out, as if he were betraying them by offering hope when there was none.

  Starr muttered, ‘No use, sir. You done your best.’

  ‘Round again.’ He did not even try to conceal his distress. ‘Then we’ll go back.’

  He saw two of the oarsmen glance uneasily at one another. The fire of volunteering was sifting away. His words had given them the relief they needed.

  Starr thrust over the tiller bar, then exclaimed, ‘Look, sir! In the cabin!’

  The gig rose and fell in deep, nauseating swoops, the oars barely able to keep steerage way.

  But Adam forgot the danger as he stared at the open stern window. The cabin was probably a twin of the one in his first command, the fourteen-gun Firefly.

  There was someone there, a shadow more than any human form, and Adam felt something like fear as it moved very slowly towards the salt-caked glass. Whoever it was, he must have heard his voice through the speaking trumpet, and the sound had penetrated the mists of agony and disgust enough to rouse him to consciousness.

  Adam knew it was Jenour without understanding why he did. Dying even as he sheltered there, dying as his little brig had battled on while men dropped unti
l the last helmsman abandoned the wheel. Some must have tried to get away in the capsized boat: there may even have been a last attempt to restore order when it was already too late.

  A seaman gasped, ‘A bag, sir!’ His eyes were almost starting from his head as he stared at the small leather satchel suddenly dangling from the cabin.

  It must have taken all his strength: maybe his last, and if it fell now it would be lost forever.

  ‘Hold on, Starr!’

  Adam clambered forward over the looms, gripping a shoulder here and there to prevent himself from being hurled outboard. He could feel their fear at even so brief a contact.

  As he reached the bows he seized the bag and tugged it over the gunwale.

  ‘Back water! Together!’ Starr was watching the bag, the brig’s counter rising over the boat ready to smash it to fragments in the next trough. He thought afterwards that it was fortunate the boat’s crew had their backs to the stricken vessel. Whoever it was must have tied the bag to his wrist, and the force of Adam’s grip on the line had dragged him almost over the sill.

  Like Adam, he could only stare at it. A commander’s single epaulette, but surely nothing human and still alive?

  Like something rotten. A face from the grave.

  Adam cut the line and saw the figure vanish into the cabin.

  He called out, ‘God be with you, Stephen!’ But only the scream of gulls came back to mock him.

  Starr swung over the tiller bar once more and breathed out very slowly as Anemone’s topsails rose to greet him.

  But Adam was staring at the Orcadia, and said brokenly, ‘God? What does he care for the likes of us?’

  He barely remembered their return to Anemone’s lee. Many hands reached out to help him, and someone raised a cheer for him, or for the volunteers, he did not know.

  And then it was dark, and the deck was steady again under the pressure of more canvas.

  Lieutenant Martin sat with him in the cabin, watching his captain drink glass after glass of brandy without any apparent effect. The leather satchel still lay on the table unopened, like something evil.

  The second lieutenant entered the cabin and after a questioning glance at Martin said, ‘We’ve lost her, sir. In these waters she could be adrift for months, years even.’

  Adam said, ‘Open the despatches.’ He stared at his empty glass but could barely remember drinking from it. Like that time when she had come to him in the night at Falmouth. And had stayed with him.

  Martin unfolded the crisp despatch, and Adam recognised Yovell’s familiar round handwriting.

  ‘This was for Commodore Keen, sir. He was to find you and to tell the squadron to delay sailing. Sir Richard believes that Baratte is on the move.’

  ‘Jenour found us after all.’ He tried to thrust the memory from his mind. ‘And there is no time to make contact with the commodore.’ He stared at the stern windows, at the swirling phosphorescence from the rudder and the beginning of a moon on the water.

  Perhaps there never had been enough time.

  He said, ‘We will rejoin Sir Richard. Instruct Mr Partridge to lay off a new course and have the hands change tack.’ He said nothing more, and eventually his head lolled, and he did not feel the others lift his legs on to the bench seat. Nor did he hear Martin murmur, ‘I will deal with that, my captain. Just this once, you come first.’

  * * *

  17

  All Is Not Lost

  * * *

  BOLITHO TOOK A mug of coffee from Ozzard and returned once again to his chart. Avery and Yovell watched him in silence, each knowing that he was thinking of Herrick below in the sickbay.

  Bolitho sipped the hot coffee. Catherine had sent it to the ship for him. There could not be much more of it left.

  He tapped the chart with his dividers and said, ‘At least we have more time now that Commodore Keen knows what we are about. Major-General Drummond will have enough to trouble him with seasick soldiers and horses that can barely stand, without the threat of a sea-attack.’

  As the others suspected his thoughts were of Herrick. He had visited him several times in spite of the need to remain in close contact with his little group of ships, and he had been shocked by what he had found. As Minchin the surgeon had said from the start, ‘Rear-Admiral Herrick is too strong in character to submit. Most men either faint from the pain or drink themselves into a stupor. Not him, Sir Richard. Even under the knife he was fighting me.’

  Herrick had seemed somehow defenceless and vulnerable on the last visit, his normally weathered features already like death. In between periods of insensibility he had been elsewhere, in other ships, shouting orders and demanding answers to questions nobody had been able to understand. Once he had called out the name of their first ship together, Phalarope, and several times he had spoken in an almost matter-of-fact tone of his beloved Dulcie.

  Bolitho’s mind came back with a jolt as Avery said, ‘Baratte will not know about your despatches, sir. But he will not wish to wait too long before he moves.’

  Bolitho agreed. ‘To the north of Mauritius there is an area littered with smaller islands, Gunners Quoin, for instance. It would take a whole squadron to search amongst them.’ He rapped the chart again. ‘It is my belief that Baratte and his murderous friend will bide their time there until he can gain intelligence of the first convoy.’

  Avery held out his mug to Ozzard. ‘It is our only advantage.’

  ‘You sound troubled.’

  Avery shrugged. ‘It is beyond my experience, sir.’

  Bolitho would have questioned him further but at that moment there were voices at the door. He turned, his spine like ice as Ozzard opened the screen and he saw Minchin’s grey head in the entrance.

  ‘What …?’

  Minchin came in rubbing his hands on his apron. He almost grinned as he said, ‘Into safe waters, Sir Richard. A very close-run thing.’

  ‘You mean he is all right?’ He had been prepared, but not for this.

  Minchin nodded. ‘It’ll take a while, but the fever is falling away. I’m quite surprised.’

  ‘May I see him?’

  Minchin stood aside. ‘He was asking for you in actual fact, Sir Richard.’ He beamed, and there was a strong odour of rum. ‘My surgeon’s mate must take all the credit. He reads medicine and surgery, morning, noon an’ night. He’ll make as good a surgeon as many an’ better than most, in my opinion!’

  Bolitho hurried down the two ladders to the sickbay. After all that had happened it was the best news he could have hoped for.

  Herrick looked up at him from his cot and tried to smile.

  ‘You told me we would win,’ he said faintly, and closed his eyes.

  Allday was grinning, a glass of brandy in his fist; and the surgeon’s mate, Lovelace, a pale, rather effeminate young man who had an almost prison pallor as if he rarely left the sickbay, said, ‘The ship held steady, Sir Richard, so I used the double skin-flap method. It is more severe, but lessens the chances of gangrene.’

  Bolitho eyed him gravely. ‘I an indebted to you, and I shall see that you receive mention in my next despatches.’

  They waited for Lovelace to leave, then Herrick said, ‘Enjoys his trade, that one.’ He winced as he moved, but he seemed lucid and composed, as if he had accepted it. As an afterthought he asked, ‘What of the enemy and that bloody renegade Englishman? I heard that Commodore Keen’s convoy has been ordered to stand fast – is that true?’

  Bolitho said lightly, ‘Are there no secrets in a ship, Thomas? But you are correct. I thought it best.’

  He turned as shoes clattered on the companion ladder, and a midshipman’s pale breeches seemed to glow in the orlop deck’s poor light.

  ‘The captain’s respects, Sir Richard …’ His eyes moved unwillingly to the cot and the bandages where Herrick’s forearm had once been.

  ‘We are all agog, Mr Harris.’

  The youth flushed under his admiral’s gaze and blurted out, ‘The masthead has reported gunfire,
he thinks to the south’rd.’

  Bolitho controlled his instinct to hurry to the quarterdeck. It was common enough for masthead lookouts to hear far-off sounds, just as they would see another sail before anybody else. But this was from the wrong direction. Otherwise Tyacke’s Larne would have reported it.

  ‘I shall come up.’ He looked at Herrick. ‘I cannot say what this means to me.’

  Herrick watched him thoughtfully, as if he were still grappling with something. But he said, ‘Is this something unexpected, Richard? Are we a match for them?’

  Herrick’s we warmed him more than he could have believed possible. He rested one hand on Herrick’s uninjured arm. ‘I have often been a flag officer with only two ships to command. This is the first time I have had one ship with two admirals in charge!’

  Allday said anxiously, ‘I’d best go, sir.’

  Herrick was becoming drowsy: something Minchin had given him, or perhaps it was due more to Allday’s brandy. He said quietly, ‘I’ll not forget, you rogue!’

  Allday grinned. ‘There, sir, your old self already!’

  Bolitho found Trevenen and his lieutenants at the quarterdeck rail, each with a telescope as they stared at the eye-watering horizon.

  ‘Deck there! Sail to the south’rd!’

  Trevenen looked grim. ‘We had better clear for action, Sir Richard.’

  Bolitho wiped his eye with his fingers. Clear for action so soon? Why was he so on edge? Laertes’s pale canvas made the tiniest mark on the horizon, with Larne staying well up to windward. In contact, within sight of each vigilant lookout.

  Trevenen continued, ‘A broadside, I think, Sir Richard.’ He was puzzled, and he could not hide it. ‘Only one.’

  ‘Well, this stranger must have sighted us, Captain Trevenen. She seems to hold her course.’ He trained his telescope very carefully by resting it on Midshipman Harris’s shoulder. It would make a good story for the dog watches, he thought.

  ‘Deck there! She’s a frigate, sir!’

  Avery said, ‘But which one?’

  Someone murmured, ‘By God, her captain knows how to make a ship take wings!’