The Only Victor

by Alexander Kent

  Tyacke said harshly, “I am going in his place. So stay with him.” For a moment his voice softened. “And the ship.”

  Another figure appeared and Bolitho saw it was the midshipman, Segrave.

  Tyacke murmured, “He volunteered, sir, and I might need another officer, if things go badly.” He said more loudly, “Are you still eager, Mr Segrave? You can still fall out—no one would blame you after what you did for Mr Jay.”

  The youth’s face seemed to grow out of the shadows as the first pale sunlight reflected from the dripping sails and rigging. He said firmly, “I want to go, sir.”

  The lookout’s cry made them look up again. “She’s Truculent right enough, sir!” A further pause, then, “She’s shaken out some reefs an’ she’s comin’ about.”

  Tyacke said, “She’ll be sending a boat for you, sir.”

  “Yes.” Bolitho saw Allday with the small bag of clothing which they had brought with them from Themis. So like those other occasions, when suddenly there is no more time left. Lastly came Jenour, yawning hugely. He had slept through everything. The other figures had disappeared into the pitching boat alongside; Tyacke was eager to leave. To get it over.

  He said in a calm voice, “I’ll not let you down, sir.”

  Bolitho took his hand. It was hard like Thomas Herrick’s. He replied quietly, “You wouldn’t know how, Mr Tyacke.”

  Tyacke swung one leg over the bulwark, but paused as Simcox pulled himself along the side heedless of the sea sluicing along the scuppers, dragging at his legs.

  “You want me, Ben?”

  Simcox staggered and almost fell headlong, but Tyacke caught him with his arm. Watching from the mainmast bitts Bolitho saw and understood. It was like a last embrace.

  Tyacke said roughly, “You’ve too much to lose, Ben, and you know it. You’ll make a fine Master, with a proper captain to take care of, eh?”

  Simcox said something but it was lost in the drumming rigging and the turmoil alongside.

  When Bolitho looked again Tyacke had gone and the boat was surging away once more, spray flying from the oar blade like ragged silk.

  Bolitho said, “Get under way, Mr Simcox. The sooner we can meet with Truculent, the faster we can—” He left the rest unsaid.

  Allday said gruffly, “He’s all aback, an’ that’s no error!”

  Bolitho called, “Mr Simcox, once I am in Truculent you will follow the fireship.” He had not used her name. By accident or design, he wondered? Perhaps to make Simcox accept her brutal role. What it might well mean for her crew.

  Simcox stared at him. “Pretend to give chase, Sir Richard?” He sounded vague.

  “Yes. It is an old trick but it may well work, and give Mr Tyacke the opportunity to stand closer to the enemy.”

  He glanced at his cuff and saw the gold lace suddenly clear and bright; even felt the first warmth as the sunlight rolled down from the horizon.

  Jenour asked, “What are their chances, Sir Richard?”

  Bolitho looked at him, steadily. “Not good. With the wind against them they will have to lose valuable time tacking back and forth. After Mr Tyacke has fired the fuses he will have to pull away in the boat and head for the shore. They will fall into Dutch hands, but with our army so near I feel certain they will not be harmed.” He saw the doubt on Jenour’s young face. “If Mr Tyacke fails and is too late to get away, we will lose twelve good men. In a frontal attack we could lose every ship and every soul in the squadron.”

  Allday gazed towards the land. “Not a choice I’d care to make, Sir Richard.”

  Bolitho pushed the lock of hair from his forehead. Allday understood. One man or a thousand; life or death; it was a decision which was damned either way.

  Allday added, “I’ll lay odds at the Admiralty they never gives it a thought, nor lose a wink of sleep.”

  Bolitho saw patches of cloud scudding out from the land and imagined he could feel dust between his teeth.

  Allday was studying him grimly and said, “I was a mite bothered back there, Sir Richard. Knowin’ you, I did think once or twice that you might take charge o’ the fireship.”

  Bolitho looked at Simcox, who was still staring after Albacora as she laid herself over on her new course.

  “Not this time, old friend.”

  Allday watched Truculent’s pyramid of pale canvas rising above the departing shadows while she bore down on the schooner.

  His worry had been real enough, until he had remembered what Bolitho had said when they had been together. I want to go home. It was as if the words had been torn from his throat. Allday had shared most things with Bolitho but he had never heard him speak like that before. He released a huge sigh. But they were still a long way from England.

  Even as the deck planking began to steam in the first morning warmth, Truculent went about and then lowered the gig smartly from her quarter.

  Bolitho waited for Simcox to have his depleted company piped to halliards and braces to heave-to and await the boat, then said, “I wish you well, Mr Simcox. I have written a report which will not come amiss at your final interview.”

  Simcox nodded and replied, “I am grateful, Sir Richard.” He struggled for the right words. “Y’see, Sir Richard, we was friends, an’ I know why he’s doin’ this for me.”

  Bolitho said, “If anyone can do it, he can.” He thought of that last handshake, firm and hard like Herrick’s; and of Herrick’s Lady Luck in whom he had always believed so fervently.

  He saw the frigate’s boat pulling strongly towards them, a lieutenant trying to stand upright in the sternsheets while the hull bucked beneath him. So like Poland, he thought, everything correct and beyond criticism.

  To Simcox he said, “I hope we meet again. You have a good company and a fine little ship.” Even as he spoke he knew what was wrong. It was better not to know them, see and recognise their faces, before you made a decision which could kill them all. He had told himself often enough in the past, and after Hyperion’s end he had sworn it to himself again.

  “Stand by, on deck!”

  Bolitho nodded to those by the bulwark. Old Elias Archer the gunner, Jay the master’s mate who would probably take Simcox’s place when he quit the ship. Faces he had come to know in so short a while. He noticed that Sperry the boatswain was not here. It was good to know he would be with Tyacke. He wondered why the midshipman had insisted on going with the prize crew when he had just received orders to return to his old ship. Perhaps the one riddle answered the other? In Tyacke’s hands they might manage to reach the shore. He shut it from his thoughts like slamming a door.

  “And I shall not forget the beer, Mr Simcox!”

  Then he was down and into the boat, gripping the lieutenant’s shoulder and trying not to allow his legs to be caught by his sword.

  Only Allday saw his face when he made that last carefree comment.

  He was also the only one who knew what it had cost him.

  “So this is where it happened?” Tyacke stooped to peer into the Albacora’s cabin. “It’s like a pig-sty!”

  Midshipman Segrave darted a quick glance at the bunk as if he expected to see the naked slave-girl still chained there. Like the rest of the crew’s quarters, the cabin was full of inflammable material of every sort which had been piled or thrown on top of the original master’s possessions. The whole schooner stank of it. Oil, old canvas and oakum soaked in grease, wood dipped in tar which had been gathered from Warren’s two transports: anything which would transform Albacora into a raging torch. Segrave felt the air playing around his face from one of the jagged vent holes which had been cut in the deck to fan the flames. For the first time since he had pushed himself forward to volunteer he knew true fear.

  Tyacke’s voice helped to reassure him. He sounded completely absorbed in his own thoughts, almost matter-of-fact. As if he accepted the inevitability of his fate with the same coolness as he had changed roles with Simcox.

  Segrave said, “It seems easier, sir.”

&n
bsp; “What?” Again, so distant. “Yes, we’re closer inshore. But the wind’s as much an enemy as before.” He sat down unexpectedly on a cask and looked at the youth, his awful wound in shadow. “Mr Simcox told me about your other injuries.” He eyed him calmly, as if there was nothing to do, with all the time in the world to do it. “Beat you, did they? Because you were no use on board?”

  Segrave clenched his fists. Remembering the first time, and all the others which were to follow. The captain had been uninterested in what went on in the midshipmen’s berth, and as he had been heard to tell his first lieutenant on several occasions, he was only concerned with results. Another lieutenant had been chosen to divide the midshipmen into teams, and would set one against the other in all drills and exercises in seamanship, gunnery and boatwork. There were penalties for the laggards, minor awards for the winners.

  Tyacke was not far from the truth in his casual summing-up. Except that it was persecution of the worst kind. Segrave had been stripped naked and bent over a gun and flogged without mercy either by the lieutenant or some of the midshipmen. They had humiliated him in any way they could, had worked off a kind of madness in their cruelty. It was doubtful if he would ever lose the scars, any more than a sailor flogged at the gratings.

  Segrave found that he was blurting it out in short, desperate sentences although he did not recall beginning to speak at all.

  Tyacke said nothing until he had fallen silent. Then he said, “In any ship where such brutality is tolerated it is the fault of her captain. It is the way of things. Disinterest in how his lieutenants administer discipline or enforce his orders must lie at his door. No lieutenant would dare to act in this fashion without the full knowledge of his captain.” His eyes gleamed in the shadows. “The orders to return to your old ship in due course prompted you to volunteer, is that it?” When Segrave remained silent he said harshly, “By God, boy, you would have done better to kill that lieutenant, for the end will likely be the same, without the satisfaction!” He reached across suddenly and gripped his shoulder. “It was your choice.” He turned away and a shaft of sunlight filtered through the filthy skylight to lay bare his disfigurement. “As it was mine.”

  He twisted round as feet pattered along the deck overhead, and the boatswain’s hoarse bellow chased some of the crew to their stations for altering course.

  Segrave said simply, “I’m glad I came, sir.”

  He did not cringe as Tyacke pushed his face nearer and said, “Well spoken!”

  They went on deck together, and after the foul stench below the air tasted like wine.

  Tyacke glanced at the streaming masthead pendant, then at the compass. The wind was as before, but as the youth had noticed, it was less violent in the shelter of the land.

  As he removed a telescope from a rack beside the compass box he glanced quickly at the men on deck. Including himself there were twelve of them aboard. He saw the seaman named Swayne, the deserter, hauling on a halliard to take out some slack. He moved quickly and easily, a proper Jack, Tyacke thought. Now that he had accepted what he had done by coming here with the others, he even looked cheerful. While there was life there was still hope. Aboard the flagship an award of two hundred lashes or more, with the only other alternative being an agonising dance at the yardarm, left no room for hope.

  Tyacke stared at the other volunteer, a Royal Marine named Buller, under a similar sentence for striking a sergeant after getting fighting drunk on pilfered rum. When it came to such matters the “Royals” could be merciless with one of their own.

  The other faces he knew well. He saw the squat figure of George Sperry, the Miranda’s boatswain, calling to two hands who were working with chain slings on the foreyard. Once the fire was started, the tarred rigging would ignite in seconds, the sails too if the deed were done too soon. Chain would keep their sails in place just that much longer. Tyacke’s face twisted into a grimace. Or so he had been told. Like all sailors Tyacke hated the danger of fire more than anything. He touched his burned face and wondered if he would break at the last moment; knowing in the same breath he would not.

  He looked at Segrave, his hair ruffling in the wind, and thought of his faltering voice as he had stammered out his story. Tyacke had found his rage mounting to match the boy’s shame. Those others should be the ones to feel shame, he thought. There would always be scum like that, but only where their cruelty was condoned.

  Tyacke raised his glass and trained it past the midshipman’s shoulder. The land was hard abeam, the very tip of the point which guarded the entrance to the bay reaching out rocky and green in the pale sunshine. He felt the deck planking growing warm again; very soon the whole schooner would be as dry as tinder. God help them if the enemy had sited some long-range guns as far out as the point. He doubted it; it was an impossible place for a landing party to scale or even disembark. But the doubt remained. No ship was a match for land artillery, especially those with heated shot. Tyacke forced his mind away from the picture of a red-hot ball slamming into the crammed hull beneath his shoes.

  “Deck there!” The lookout was pointing astern. “Miranda’s tackin’ to the point, sir!”

  Tyacke turned his glass towards the open sea, where the water was a deeper blue as if unwilling to give up the night.

  He felt a lump in his throat as he saw Miranda’s huge courses swinging above the waves, her single topsail flapping wildly as she began to change tack. To all appearances it might well look as if she was in pursuit of the shabby Albacora.

  “Shake out all reefs, Mr Sperry! Lively there!” He saw the boatswain give his broken-toothed grin as he added, “We don’t want a King’s ship to catch us!” But he turned away in case Sperry saw, and understood, the lie.

  He said to Segrave, “Lend a hand at the helm. As far as I can calculate we shall have to make good some ten miles before we can attempt a final approach.”

  Segrave watched him as he voiced his thoughts aloud. He found he could do it now without revulsion. There was something compelling about the tall lieutenant, and something frightening too.

  Tyacke waved the telescope towards the full breadth of the bay as the point of land appeared to slide across the larboard quarter, like the opening of a giant gateway.

  “We shall beat up to the nor’-east where the bottom shelves to a few fathoms. The sort of thing any ship’s master might do if he was being chased by a man-o’-war. Then we’ll come about and lay her on the starboard tack and run straight for ’em.” He glanced at Segrave’s sensitive features. “That’s if they’re still there, of course.”

  Tyacke rubbed his chin and wished he had had a shave. The idea made him smile. As if it mattered now! He recalled the vice-admiral’s coxswain, Allday, with the morning ritual. He thought also of his own private talks with Bolitho. Such an easy man to speak with, to share confidences. Like the time when Bolitho had asked him about his face and the Nile, when he had found himself answering without his usual defence and resentment.

  And it was all true. There was no falseness in Bolitho, no using men as mere tools to complete some plan, or hiding indifference behind his rank.

  “Stand by to alter course, Mr Segrave.” He saw him start with surprise. “In a minute or so we shall steer nor’-east, so watch the mains’l no less than the compass!”

  Segrave swallowed hard then joined the helmsman who acknowledged him almost shyly. Segrave saw that it was the young seaman named Dwyer, the one who had tried to tie up his wound in the cabin beneath them.

  Dwyer said, “We’ll manage well enough, eh, Mr Segrave?”

  Segrave nodded and discovered he could even offer a smile. “We shall.”

  Tyacke turned as a shot echoed across the water, and was in time to see a faint puff of smoke shred away from Miranda’s bows. Simcox had started to play his part. It was to be hoped he did not over-play it and outrun the Albacora as Miranda had done before.

  Then he returned attention to the sailing of the fireship; but even as he signalled for Sperry to put
two of his hard-pressed men on the foremast boom, he found himself thinking of the girl he had known in Portsmouth. Marion. He dashed the sweat from his eyes with his grubby shirt sleeve and believed for an instant that he had said her name aloud. If only . . . Another shot echoed over the glittering water, and from a corner of his eye Tyacke saw the four-pound ball jag into the sea a good cable astern.

  “Steady she goes, sir! Nor’-east it is!” It was strange to hear Segrave call out when he was usually so quiet and withdrawn.

  Tyacke glanced at him sadly. We are both scarred, inwardly or out.

  Spray dashed over the side and swept over the patched and dirty deck like a tide. Tyacke saw the boatswain blink as another shot banged out astern, and the ball ploughed down a bit closer than the previous one. He glanced at the skylight and Tyacke knew he was thinking about the woman he had satisfied his lust with in the cabin. We all have only memories now.

  Tyacke gazed along the busy deck as the schooner leaned over still further under her full press of sail.

  Perhaps Marion would read about it someday. He gave a bitter smile. My last command.

  Captain Daniel Poland remained a little apart from Bolitho as he stood by the cabin table, and used some dividers to measure off the calculations on his chart.

  Bolitho said, half to himself, “As far as we know, there have been no new arrivals in the bay. If there had been, either you or Captain Varian in Zest would likely have sighted them. Likewise, the big ships and frigate must still be at anchor.” He looked up in time to see Poland’s doubtful expression. “Don’t you agree?”

  Poland responded, “It is a big area, Sir Richard. Four times the size of Table Bay.” He faltered under the grey stare. “But as you say, it is perhaps unlikely.”

  Bolitho watched the sunlight fanning through Truculent’s stern windows, swinging across the cabin like fiery bars as the frigate changed tack yet again.

  Poland bit his lip with annoyance as someone or something fell heavily on the deck above. “Clumsy oafs!”

  Bolitho half-smiled. Maybe it was better to be like Poland.