‘Haul down the Colours!’ He shouted, ‘That is an order!’
The guns fell silent, and above the crackle of a blazing supply ship and the mingled cries of the wounded they heard the beginning of a French cheer.
They’re getting ready to board. Bolitho sheathed his sword and looked at those around him. At least their lives would be spared.
The smoke lifted again to a tremendous roar of cannon fire, and Bolitho imagined for an instant that the French were making certain of a victory with one last murderous broadside at point-blank range. He saw some of Lysander’s shrouds tearing away like weeds as balls shrieked above the deck, and then turned as Herrick shouted wildly, ‘It’s Nicator! She’s firing into the Frenchman from t’ other beam!’
Because of the smoke and the drifting supply ships, some of which were adding their own pyres to the surrounding fog, nobody had seen Nicator’s slow and careful approach. Every gun was firing on the Frenchman, which pivoting between the savage broadsides and Lysander’s starboard quarter, could do nothing to escape.
Bolitho said, ‘Tell our people to stay off the gangways!’
He heard some of Nictator’s shots lashing through the rigging above him.
Herrick pointed at Saxby, who was capering around the halliards which held Bolitho’s broad pendant. Neither it nor the ensign had been hauled down.
It was soon over, and as the cheering seamen and marines surged on to the French ship’s deck, the tricolour vanished into the smoke.
One of Nicator’s lieutenants arrived aboard some fifteen minutes later, as grappled the three vessels drifted downwind, the victors and vanquished working together to help the wounded.
The lieutenant looked around Lysander’s decks and removed his hat.
‘I – I am deeply sorry, sir. We were late again.’ He watched the wounded marines being carried down from the poop. ‘I have never seen a fight like yours, sir.’
Herrick said harshly, ‘And Captain Probyn?’
‘Dead, sir.’ The lieutenant lifted his chin. ‘Brought down by a marksman. He died instantly.’
A man cried out in terror as he was carried to the orlop, and Bolitho remembered Luce, and Farquhar, and Javal. And so many others.
He asked, ‘Was that before or after you came to our aid?’
The lieutenant looked wretched. ‘Before, sir. But I’m certain that . . .’
Bolitho looked at Herrick. Nicator had been too far off to be reached by any musket. At an enquiry it would be hard to explain, impossible to prove. But someone, driven by shame and anguish, had shot Probyn down as he had stood watching Lysander and Immortalité fighting unsupported.
He smiled gravely at the pale-faced lieutenant. ‘Well, you came.’
The young officer turned as Pascoe appeared on the quarter-deck. ‘We had to, sir.’
As Bolitho crossed the deck and clasped his nephew tightly, the unknown lieutenant looked up at a clearing patch of blue sky and at Bolitho’s signal which was still flying.
He said quietly, ‘We saw the signal. Close action. That was enough.’
Bolitho looked at him. To Herrick he said, ‘Cast off the French ship as soon as Mr. Grubb’s hands have repaired our steering. She fought well, and I’ve no use for another prize with De Brueys and his fleet so near.’
Herrick walked to the rail and repeated his order to Lieutenant Steere who had emerged from the lower gun deck.
Grubb shambled beneath the poop, his ruined face smudged in smoke and grime.
‘She’ll answer the ’elm now, sir! Ready to get under way!’
Herrick said quietly, ‘He won’t hear you, Mr. Grubb.’ He looked sadly towards Bolitho. ‘He’s looking at the signal and thinking of those who can’t see it, and never will now. I know him so well.’
As the sailing master moved away to his helmsmen, Herrick said to Pascoe, ‘Go to him, Adam. I can manage without you for a while.’ He watched Pascoe’s face and was moved to add, ‘Try and tell him. They didn’t do it for any signal. It was for him.’
Epilogue
Captain Thomas Herrick entered the cabin and waited for Bolitho to look up from his table.
‘The masthead has just sighted the Rock to the nor’-west, sir. With luck we should be anchored under Gibraltar’s battery before sunset.’
‘Thank you, Thomas. I did hear the hail.’ He sounded distant. ‘You had better prepare a gun salute for the admiral.’
Herrick watched him sadly. ‘And then you’ll be leaving Lysander, sir.’
Bolitho stood up and walked slowly to the windows. There was Nicator about half a mile astern, her topsails and jib very pale in the sunlight. Beyond her he could see the untidy formation of captured supply ships, and a French frigate which they had taken in tow until some of her damage could be put right.
Leaving Lysander. That was the very crux of it. All the weeks and months. The disappointments and moments of elation or pride. The heartbreaking work, the horrors of battle. Now it was behind him. Until the next time.
He heard the bang of hammers and the crisp sound of an adze, and pictured the work continuing about the ship. As it had from the moment that Grubb had reported the helm answering once more and they had cast off the French two-decker. It still seemed like some sort of miracle that the main French fleet had continued south-east towards Egypt. Perhaps de Brueys had still believed that Bolitho’s little force had attacked his well-defended supply convoy as a further delaying tactic, and that some other fleet was already gathering across his path to Alexandria.
Battered and holed, her hull filling with water with each painful mile, Lysander had sailed with the wind, doing makeshift repairs, burying her dead, and tending the wounded, of whom there were many.
Then, with Nicator in company, they had sailed westward again, dreading another series of squalls almost as much as an enemy attack. But the French had other things on their minds, and days later when Lysander’s lookouts had sighted a small pyramid of sails, Bolitho and the companies of both ships had watched with a mixture of awe and emotion as Harebell had run down towards them. In her wake, black and buff in the bright sunshine, had followed not a squadron but a fleet.
It had been a coincidence, and yet it was hard to accept that miracles had played no part.
Lieutenant Gilchrist in the badly damaged frigate Buzzard had not sailed directly to Gibraltar as ordered. Instead, and for no reason which had yet come to light, he had broken his passage at Syracuse. And there, resting and disillusioned after its fruitless sweep to Alexandria, was the fleet, with Nelson’s flagship Vanguard in its centre.
Nelson had apparently needed no more than a hazy report to set him going once again. To Alexandria, where he had discovered the remaining French transports sheltering in the harbour. But to the north-east, anchored with rigid and formidable precision, much as Herrick had predicted, lay the French fleet.
With half of her company dead or wounded, Lysander had remained on the fringe of the fight. The Battle of the Nile, as everyone was calling it. It began in the evening and raged all night, and when dawn came up there were so many wrecks, so many corpses, that Bolitho could only marvel at man’s ferocity.
Undeterred by the French line, and the fact that many of the ships were held together with cables to prevent a break-through, Nelson sailed around the end of the French defences and attacked them from the shoreside. For there was no heavy siege guns on the land to prevent him, and he was able to concentrate his skill and his energy against an equally determined enemy.
Although the French fleet was the larger, by dawn all but two of de Brueys’s ships had struck or been destroyed. The remaining two had slipped away in the night after witnessing the most horrific sight of the whole battle. L’Orient, de Brueys’s great flagship of one hundred and twenty guns, had exploded, damaging several vessels nearby, and having such an effect on both sides that momentarily the firing ceased.
De Brueys went with her, but the memory of his courage and endurance were as proudly remembere
d in the British ships as anywhere. With both legs shot off, the stumps bound with tourniquets, de Brueys had ordered that he be propped upright in a chair, facing his old enemy, and commanding his defences until the end.
Bonaparte’s dream was ended. He had lost his entire fleet and over five thousand men, six times as many as the British. And his army stood at the mouth of the Nile, undefended and marooned.
It had been a great victory, and as he had watched the closing stages of the battle, the angry red flashes across the sea and sky, Bolitho had felt justly proud of Lysander’s part in it.
Later, when he had sent his own report to the flagship, Bolitho had waited to discover the rear-admiral’s reactions.
With his usual vigour, Nelson was preparing to put his fleet to sea again, but sent an officer by boat to Lysander with a short but warm reply.
You are a man after my own heart, Bolitho. The risk justifies the deed.
He had instructed Bolitho to escort the handful of prizes to Gibraltar and there take passage to England and report once more to the Admiralty. At no time did Nelson mention Captain Probyn’s death. Which was just as well, as Herrick had pointed out.
He turned and looked at Herrick. ‘It is a strange thing, Thomas, but Francis Inch is still the only one among us to have met “Our Nel”.’
Herrick nodded. ‘But his influence is here, nonetheless, sir. That letter from him and the fact that a broad pendant still flies above this ship, is far better than any handshake.’
Bolitho said, ‘After all we’ve been through, I shall miss Lysander, Thomas.’
‘Aye.’ His round face saddened. ‘Once at anchor, I will get the more serious work done. Although I fear she may never again stand in the line of battle.’
‘When you arrive in England, Thomas.’ He smiled. ‘But then, I don’t have to remind you, do I? I will always need a loyal friend.’
‘Never fear.’ Herrick turned to watch a yawl surging past the quarter windows, its crew waving and cheering the battered seventy-four, their voices lost beyond the thick glass. ‘If I can come, I’ll come.’
Bolitho saw Ozzard locking his two large sea chests in readiness to be taken to a boat.
He said, ‘I’ve made a lot of bad mistakes, Thomas. Too many.’
‘But you found the answers, sir. That’s all that matters.’
‘Is it?’ He smiled. ‘I wonder. I’ve certainly learned that it’s no easier to decide who lives or dies just because you fly your flag above the end result.’
He glanced at the polished wine cabinet as two seamen started to wrap it around with sailcloth. Would he see her in London? Would there be anything more between them?
Some hours later, after the drawn-out crash of the salutes, the anchoring, and the necessary business of signing documents, Bolitho went on deck for the last time.
In the sunset, Gibraltar looked like a vast slab of coral, and the ship’s yards and furled sails had a similar tint.
He walked slowly along the line of assembled faces, trying to stay impassive as he shook a hand here, spoke a name there.
Major Leroux, his arm in a sling. Old Ben Grubb, as fierce as ever as he mumbled, ‘Good luck to ’e, sir.’ Mewse, the purser, Lieutenant Steere, the midshipmen, no longer so nervous, but tanned and somehow aged in the months at sea.
He paused by the entry port and glanced down. Allday was already in the barge, very upright in his blue coat and nankeen breeches, as he watched over the oarsmen. They, too, looked different. In neat checked shirts and tarred hats, they were making a special effort for him.
Also in the boat was Ozzard, a small bundle of belongings in his thin arms, his eyes upturned to the ship. When Bolitho had asked him if he would like to be his permanent servant, he had been unable to answer. He had merely nodded, unable to accept that his life of hiding in one ship after another was over.
He turned and looked at Pascoe. ‘Goodbye, Adam. I hope to see you again soon.’ He gave the youth a quick handshake and to Herrick added, ‘Take care of each other, eh?’
Then he raised his hat to the side party and climbed down into the barge. As it pulled strongly beneath Lysander’s great shadow he turned to look at her again.
Allday watched him, saw his expression as he listened to the cheering which burst from Lysander’s deck and shrouds.
Bolitho said, ‘There were a lot of faces missing back there.’
Allday replied, ‘Never you fret on it, sir. We showed ’em, and that’s no error!’
As the barge wended its way around another anchored man of war, Herrick, who had watched it until it was hidden from view, walked slowly aft to the poop deck, his shoes catching on the many splinter holes yet to be repaired. He turned as Pascoe came after him, the stained and torn broad pendant draped over his shoulder.
Pascoe smiled, but the sadness remained in his dark eyes.
‘I thought you would want it, sir?’
Herrick looked around his ship. Remembering.
‘I’ve got all this, Adam.’ He took the pendant. ‘I’ll send it to Captain Farquhar’s mother. She has nothing left now.’
Pascoe left him by the broken nettings and crossed to the other side. But there was no sign of the barge and the Rock was already in deep shadow.
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
Epub ISBN: 9781407010021
Version 1.0
www.randomhouse.co.uk
First Published by Arrow Books in 1976
This edition published by Arrow Books in 2006
3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4
Copyright © Alexander Kent 1974
Alexander Kent has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988 to be identified as the author of this work
This novel is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental
First published in Great Britain in 1980 by Hutchinson
Random House, 20 Vauxhall Bridge Road,
London, SW1V 2SA
www.randomhouse.co.uk
Addresses for companies within The Random House Group Limited can be found at: www.randomhouse.co.uk/offices.htm
The Random House Group Limited Reg. No. 954009
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 9780099497639
Signal Close Action Page 36