The Only Victor

by Alexander Kent

  Aft by the compass box her commander, Lieutenant James Tyacke, swayed and leaned with his ship, one hand in his pocket, the other gripping a slippery backstay. Like his men he was soaked to the skin, his eyes raw from spray and spindrift as he watched the tilting compass card, the flapping mainsail and pendant while his command plunged again, her bowsprit pointing due south.

  They had taken all night and part of the day to claw out of Saldanha Bay, away from the impressive formations of anchored men-of-war, supply ships, bombs, army transports and all the rest. Lieutenant Tyacke had used the time to beat as far out as possible to gain the sea-room he needed before heading back to Commodore Warren’s small squadron. There was another reason, which probably only his second-in-command had guessed. He wanted to put as much ocean as possible between Miranda and the squadron before someone signalled him to repair aboard the flagship yet again.

  He had done what he had been ordered, delivered the despatches to the army and the commodore. He had been glad to leave.

  Tyacke was thirty years old and had commanded the speedy Miranda for the last three of them. After her grace and intimacy, the flagship had seemed like a city, with the navy seemingly outnumbered by the red and scarlet of the military and the marines.

  It was not that he did not know what a big ship was like. He tightened his jaw, determined to hold the memory and the bitterness at bay. Eight years ago he had been serving as a lieutenant aboard the Majestic, a two-decker with Nelson’s fleet in the Mediterranean. He had been on the lower gundeck when Nelson had finally run the French to earth at Aboukir Bay, the Battle of the Nile as it was now called.

  It was too terrible to remember clearly, or to arrange the events in their proper order. With the passing of time they eluded him, or overlapped like insane acts in a nightmare.

  At the height of it his ship, Majestic, had come up against the French Tonnant of eighty guns, which had seemed to tower over them like a flaming cliff.

  The noise was still there to remember, if he let himself, the awful sights of men, and pieces of men, being flung about the bloody litter and gruel of the gundeck, a place which had become a hell all of its own. The wild eyes of the gun crews, white through their filthy skins, the cannon firing and recoiling, no longer as a controlled broadside but in divisions, then in ones and twos, while the ship shook and quaked around and above them. Unbeknown to the demented souls who sponged out, loaded and fired because it was all that they knew, their captain, Westcott, had already fallen dead, along with so many of his men. Their world was the lower gundeck. Nothing else mattered, could matter. Guns were upended and smashed by the enemy’s fire; men ran screaming to be driven back by equally terrified lieutenants and warrant officers.

  Run out! Point! Fire!

  He heard it still. It would never leave him. Others had told him he was lucky. Not because of the victory—only ignorant landsmen spoke of such things. But because he had survived when so many had fallen, the lucky to die, the others to cry out their lives under the surgeon’s saw, or to be pathetic cripples whom nobody wanted to see or remember.

  He watched the compass card steady and felt the keel slicing through the steep rollers as if they were nothing.

  He touched his face with his hand, feeling its roughness, seeing it in his mind as he was forced to do each day when he shaved himself.

  Again he could remember nothing. A gun had exploded, or a flaming wad had come inboard from one of Tonnant’s lower battery and sparked off a full charge nearby. It could have been either. Nobody had been left to tell him.

  But the whole of the right side of his face had been scored away, left like charred meat, half a face which people turned their heads not to see. How his eye had survived was the real miracle.

  He thought of his visit to the flagship. He had not seen the general or even the commodore, just a bored-looking colonel who had been carrying a glass of hock or something cool in one elegant hand. They had not even asked Tyacke to be seated, let alone to take a glass with them.

  As he had gone down the great ship’s side to his own long-boat, that same aide had come dashing after him.

  “I say, Lieutenant! Why did you not tell me the news? About Nelson and the victory?”

  Tyacke had looked up the ship’s curving black and buff hull and had not tried to conceal his contempt.

  “ ’Cause nobody asked me, sir!” God damn their eyes.

  Benjamin Simcox, master’s mate and acting-master of the schooner Miranda, lurched along the treacherous planking to join him. He was the same age as his captain, a seaman through and through who originally, like the schooner, had been in the merchant service. In such a small vessel—she was a bare sixty-five feet long with a company of thirty—you got to know a man very well. Love or hate and not much in between. With Bob Jay, another master’s mate, they ran the schooner to perform at her best. It was a matter of pride.

  Usually one of them was on watch, and when Simcox had spent a few watches below with the tall lieutenant he had got to know him well. Now, after three years, they were true friends, their separate ranks only intruding in rare moments of formality. Like Tyacke’s visit to the flagship for instance.

  Tyacke had looked at him, momentarily forgetting his hideous scars, and had said, “First time I’ve buckled on a sword for over a year, Ben!” It was good to hear him joke about it. It was rare too.

  Did he ever think about the girl in Portsmouth, Simcox wondered? One night in harbour he had been awakened in his tiny cabin by Tyacke’s pitiful, dreaming entreaties to the girl who had promised to wait for him, to marry him. Rather than wake the whole ship, Simcox had shaken his shoulder, but had not explained. Tyacke had understood, and had fetched a bottle of brandy which they had taken off a runner. When dawn had broken the bottle had been empty.

  Tyacke had not blamed the girl he had known for most of his life. Nobody would want to see his face every morning. But he had been deeply hurt; wounded no less severely than others at the Nile.

  Simcox shouted above the din, “Runnin’ well!” He jerked a thumb at a slight figure who was clinging to the companion hatch, a lifeline tied around his waist, his breeches and stockings soiled with vomit. “He’s not so good, though!”

  Mister Midshipman Roger Segrave had been in Miranda since they had taken on stores at Gibraltar. At the request of his captain he had been transferred from a big three-decker to complete his time as midshipman in a vessel where he might learn something more about practical seamanship and self-reliance. It had been said that the midshipman’s uncle, an admiral at Plymouth, had arranged the transfer, not merely for the youth’s sake but also for the family name. It would not look good to fail the lieutenant’s examination, especially in time of war when chances of promotion lay on every hand.

  Tyacke had made it clear he disliked the idea. Segrave’s presence had upset their tight routine, an intrusion, like an unwanted visitor.

  Simcox was one of the old school; the rope’s end or a clip round the ear were, in his book, worth far more than lengthy discussions on tradition and discipline.

  But he was not a hard man, and tried to explain to the midshipman what he might expect. Lieutenant Tyacke was the only commissioned officer aboard. He could not be expected to live in total isolation in a ninety-two-ton schooner; they were a team. But he knew that Segrave did not really understand. In the teeming world of a ship of the line everything was divided and sub-divided by rank, status and experience. At the top there was the captain, usually so remote he seemed like a god. The rest, though crammed together out of necessity, were totally separated.

  Segrave rolled over and leaned back against the hatchway with a deep groan. He was sixteen years old with fair, almost girlish good looks. He had perfect manners, was careful, even shy when dealing with the hands—not like some little monsters Simcox had heard about. And he tried hard at everything but, even Simcox had to agree, with very little success. He was staring up at the sky, seemingly oblivious to the spray which ripped over the dec
k like pellets, or the filthy state of his clothing.

  Lieutenant Tyacke looked at him coldly. “Free yourself and go below, Mr Segrave, and fetch some rum from the clerk. I can’t afford to let anyone useful stand-down until I change tack again.”

  As the youth clambered wretchedly down the ladder, Simcox grinned.

  “Bit hard on the lad, James.”

  Tyacke shrugged. “You think so?” He almost spat. “In a year or two he’ll be sending men to the gratings for a striped shirt, just for looking at him!”

  The master’s mate yelled, “Wind’s veered a piece!”

  “Bring her up a point. I think this is going to blow over. I want to get the tops’l spread if it does, and run with the wind under our coat-tails.”

  There was a sound of breaking pottery and someone vomiting from the deck below.

  Tyacke murmured, “I swear I shall kill that one.”

  Simcox asked, “What d’you reckon to Vice-Admiral Bolitho, James?”

  The lieutenant gripped the stay again and bent from the waist as the sea boiled over the weather bulwark in a solid flood. Amongst the streaming water and foam he saw his men, like half-naked urchins, nodding and grinning to each other. Making certain that no one had gone over.

  He replied, “A good man to all accounts. When I was at the—” He looked away, remembering the cheers despite the hell when Bolitho’s ship was reported engaging. He changed tack. “I’ve known plenty who’ve served with him—there used to be an old fellow who lived in Dover. I used to speak with him when I was a lad, down by the harbour.” He smiled suddenly. “Not far from where they built this schooner, as a matter of fact . . . He was serving under Richard Bolitho’s father when he lost his arm.”

  Simcox watched his strong profile. If you did not see the other side of his face, he was handsome enough to catch any girl’s fancy, he thought.

  He said, “You should tell him that, if you meet.”

  Tyacke wiped the spray from his face and throat. “He’s a vice-admiral now.”

  Simcox smiled but was uneasy. “God, you make him sound like the enemy, James!”

  “Do I? Well, there’s a thing!” He touched his dripping sleeve. “Now rouse these layabouts and stand by to change tack. We will steer south by east.”

  Within the hour the squall had fallen away, and with all sails filling well, their dark shadows riding across the waves alongside like huge fins, Miranda responded with her usual disdain.

  She had started life as a Dover mail packet, but had been taken by the navy before she had completed more than a few passages. Now at seventeen years, she was one of the many such vessels working under a naval ensign. She was not only a lively sailer; she was a delight to handle because of her simple sail-plan and deep keel. A large mainsail aft, with a forestaysail and jib and the one topsail on her foremast, she could out-manœuvre almost anything. The deep keel, even when she was closehauled, prevented her from losing leeway like a cutter or something heavier. Armed with only four 4 -pounders and some swivels, she was meant for carrying despatches, rather than taking part in any real skirmish.

  Smugglers and privateers were one thing; but half a broadside from some enemy frigate would change her from a lean thoroughbred to a total wreck.

  Between decks there was the strong smell of rum and tobacco, and the greasy aroma of the noon meal. As the watch below scrambled down to their messdeck, Tyacke and Simcox sat wedged on either side of the cabin table. Both men were tall, so that any movement in the cabin had to be performed bent double.

  The midshipman, repentant and anxious, sat at the other end of the table. Simcox could pity him, for even under reefed canvas the motion was violent, the sea surging astern from the sharply raked counter, the prospect of food another threat for any delicate stomach.

  Tyacke said suddenly, “If I do see him, the admiral I mean, I shall ask him about getting some beer. I saw some of the soldiers drinking their fill when I visited the flagship. So why not us? The water out here will kill more good sailors than Johnny Dutchman!”

  They both turned as the midshipman spoke up.

  Segrave said, “There was a lot of talk in London about Vice-Admiral Bolitho.”

  Tyacke’s tone was deceptively mild. “Oh, and what sort of talk was that?”

  Encouraged, his sickness momentarily quiescent, Segrave expounded willingly.

  “My mother said it was disgraceful how he behaved. How he left his lady for that woman. She said London was up in arms about it—” He got no further.

  “If you speak like that in front of the people I’ll put you under arrest— in bloody irons if need be!” Tyacke was shouting, and Simcox guessed that many of the offwatch seamen would hear. There was something terrible about his rage; pathetic too.

  Tyacke leaned over towards the pale-faced youth and added, “And if you speak such shite to me, I’ll damn well call you out, young and useless though you may be!”

  Simcox rested his hand on his wrist. “Be easy, James. He knows no better.”

  Tyacke shook his hand away. “God damn them, Ben, what do they want of us? How dare they condemn men who daily, hourly risk their lives so that they —” he pointed an accusing finger at Segrave “—can sip their tea and eat their cakes in comfort.” He was shaking, his voice almost a sob. “I’ve never met this Richard Bolitho, but God damn me, I’d lay down my life for him right now, if only to get back at those useless, gutless bastards!”

  In the sudden silence the sea intruded like a soothing chorus.

  Segrave said in a whisper, “I am very sorry, sir.”

  Surprisingly, Tyacke’s hideous face moved in a smile. “No. I abused you. That is wrong when you are unable to answer back.” He mopped his forehead with a crumpled handkerchief. “But I meant every bloody word, so be warned!”

  “Deck thar!” The masthead’s cry was shredded by the brisk north-westerly. “Sail on th’ starboard bow!”

  Simcox thrust his mug into a safe corner and began to slide towards the door.

  No matter what this proved to be, he thought, it had come along just in time.

  “Sou’-west-by-south, sir! Full an’ bye!”

  The Miranda’s deck tilted even more steeply as she responded to her rudder and the great span of main and staysails, water cascading around the bare-backed seamen while they sheeted home swollen halliards and dug with their toes at anything which would hold them.

  Lieutenant Tyacke lurched up to the weather rail, and watched the surf and spray leaping high from the stem to make the flap-ping jib glint in the sunshine like polished metal.

  Simcox nodded with approval as George Sperry, the tub-shaped boatswain, put two extra hands on the tiller. Miranda did not boast a wheel but had a long, ornately carved tiller bar, which took some handling in the brisk wind sweeping down on the starboard quarter.

  He saw Midshipman Segrave standing in the shadow of the heavily raked mainmast, his eyes wary as he tried to avoid men dashing past to take up the slack of the forebrace.

  Simcox called, “Over here!” He sighed when the youth all but fell, as a wave curled lazily over the lee bulwark and broke around him, leaving him spluttering and gasping, water pouring from his shirt and breeches as if he had just been pulled from the sea.

  “Just bide along o’ me, young feller, and watch the mains’l an’ compass. Get th’ feel of ’er , see?”

  He forgot Segrave as a line high above the deck cracked like a whip, and instantly began to unreeve itself as if it were alive.

  A sailor was already swarming aloft, another bending on some fresh cordage so that no time would be lost in repairs.

  Segrave clung to the bitts beneath the driver-boom and stared dully at the men working on the damaged rigging, paying no heed to the wind which tried to pluck them down. He could not recall when he had felt so wretched, so utterly miserable, and so unable to see his way out of it.

  Tyacke’s words still stung, and although it was not the first time the captain had given him the sharp s
ide of his tongue, the boy had never seen him so angry: as if he had lost control and wanted to strike him.

  Segrave had earnestly tried not to rouse Tyacke’s ire; had wanted nothing more than to keep out of his way. Both were impossible in so small a ship.

  He had nobody to talk to, really talk and understand. There had been plenty of midshipmen aboard his last ship—his only ship. He shuddered. What must he do?

  His father had been a hero, although Segrave could barely remember him. Even on his rare returns to their home he had seemed distant, vaguely disapproving, perhaps because he had but one son and three daughters. Then one day the news had been brought to that far-off Surrey house. Captain Segrave had been killed in battle, fighting under Admiral Dundas at Camperdown. His mother had told them, her face sad but composed. By then it was already too late for Roger Segrave. His uncle, a retired flagofficer in Plymouth, had decided to offer him his patronage—for his father’s memory, for the honour of the family. As soon as a ship could be found he was kitted out and packed off to sea. For Segrave it had been three years of hell.

  He looked despairingly at Simcox. His rough kindness had almost finished him. But he would understand no better than Segrave’s lieutenant in the three-decker. What would he say if he knew that Segrave hated the navy, and had never wanted to follow the family tradition. Never.

  He had intended to tell his mother on that last leave, when she had taken him to London to stay with some of her friends. They had clucked over him like hens. So sweet in his uniform as one of them had exclaimed. That had been when he had heard them discussing Nelson and another name, Richard Bolitho.

  Now the unthinkable had happened. Brave Nelson was dead. And the other name was here, with the squadron.

  Before he had left for Portsmouth to take passage to the Mediterranean, he had tried to explain to his mother.