He turned back to Keen as his ideas were translated into orders and action by the others.
“Was that all?”
Keen glanced at Herrick, but he was already calling the hands to the tackles to hoist the boat and to the braces in readiness for bringing the drifting ship under command again.
He said quietly, “As I was about to leave, sir, the lady, the wife of—”
“Yes, Mr Keen, I do know, please continue.”
“She called out to me. The passengers had been told who was in command of Tempest. She wished to be remembered to you. I think she might have said more, but I was about to take my leave.” He sounded apologetic.
Bolitho smiled gravely. “Did she look well?”
Keen nodded. “Very, sir.” He frowned. “But she did mention something I did not fully understand. Captain Lloyd interrupted her by asking me for information about the missing Bounty.”
Bolitho saw it once again in his mind’s eye. The little cameo. The three figures on Eurotas’s deck.
“Try and remember exactly.”
“Yes, sir.” Keen looked across at the other ship. “I was at the entry port when she called something like, I hope your captain was able to have his watch repaired.” He shrugged helplessly. “Then Captain Lloyd saw me to the side, sir. I am sorry I can tell you nothing more.”
Bolitho looked at him for several seconds. “You told me a great deal.”
He took the watch from his pocket and turned it over between his fingers. She had thought of the one thing which would make him suspicious. He chilled despite the sun as the reality crowded in on him. When his watch had stopped a musket ball it had saved his thigh from a bad wound, but it had been smashed to fragments in the process. She had known it, and had given him this one as a gift to replace it. It was the one thing she would remember.
He asked sharply, “Was Mr Raymond present?”
“Aye, sir. But he remained aft with some of the others.”
“I see.”
Herrick strode from the gangway and said, “Ready to get under way, sir. I have had word passed to Mr Starling of our intentions, and he will proceed ahead of us right away.” He sensed Bolitho’s mood. “Is something wrong?”
“Everything.” Bolitho thrust the watch into his pocket. He felt angry and sick at the same time. To think of her across the water, suffering God knew what torment, and trying to find a way of warning him through Keen.
She would never mention the watch in the presence of her husband. It was their own secret. And in any case, she would not have forgotten the truth of the story.
He said, “Then get under way, Mr Herrick.” He looked up at the masthead pendant. “It’s backed a point more by the look of it. We will try and stand clear of the islands before it gets worse.” He looked at the lieutenant and said simply, “The Eurotas is taken. We must land our people and attack before they know what we are about.”
They stared at him as if he had just gone raving mad.
“But, but . . .” Herrick floundered for words. “I heard most of what Mr Keen described, sir. I can find no hint of trouble there, especially as we have chased the attackers away.”
“I believe the real enemy is within that ship.” He dropped all formality and stood between them. “You both know about my watch, even though you are careful never to mention it. You both know, and none better than Mr Keen himself, that he was nursed by Viola Raymond after his cruel injury. She was, I believe, very good to you.” He looked at each in turn. “Do you honestly believe she would falsify one fact and omit to mention the other altogether?”
Keen answered, “No, sir, I do not.”
“Thomas?” Bolitho watched his friend, the emotions on his open face. “I must know.”
Herrick bit his lip. “Perhaps not, sir. But to assume the ship to be in wrong hands, well . . .”
Bolitho turned away. “Do any of us know Captain Lloyd? Have we ever spoken with Eurotas before?” He swung round, making Keen start. “There is no other reason for such careful deception!”
Herrick rubbed his chin. “That being the case, sir, I think we should make haste.” He sighed. “If you’re wrong . . .”
“And if I’m not?” He watched him gravely. “What then, Thomas?”
Lakey called, “All ready aft, sir!”
His voice broke the spell.
Bolitho said, “Once clear of the next headland I want you to set the t’gallants, Mr Herrick. Now send your topmen aloft and let us be about it, eh?”
Awkwardly at first, until her yards were braced round to receive the freshening wind, Tempest tilted to the pressure and began to turn her jib boom towards the next headland. High above the decks the seamen worked busily and expertly, untroubled by the menace which Viola Raymond’s message had thrown amongst them.
By early evening the Island of Five Hills lay sprawled far astern across the larboard quarter, its shape and outline lost in haze and reflected glare.
In the cabin Bolitho sat at his table, an untouched meal pushed to one side.
The wind had backed still further, and it would take some while to beat round the northern tip of the tiny island they had just left. But equally, the wind would prevent Eurotas from sailing.
He thought about the attacking war canoes. An accidental encounter, or an attempted settlement of past scores? But without them it was doubtful if they would have discovered Eurotas’s anchorage. Her captain, whoever he was, would have had lookouts ashore, and they must have seen Tempest’s patient and persistent search amongst the islands. If he had not been forced to fire guns at the canoes, and remained silent, Tempest might have missed the little island completely.
But there were too many ifs. Bolitho moved restlessly to the stern windows and sought out the dorsal fin close astern. There had been a firm link between the two ships which the other captain could not have suspected in any way. He touched the watch in his pocket.
The fear was that the brave gesture might already have cost her life.
4 AFTER THE STORM
TRUE to the sailing master’s prediction the weather began to worsen rapidly soon after midnight. The wind, although hot and without freshness, mounted in power, and as moon and stars vanished beyond low layers of scudding cloud Tempest prepared to fight it out.
Even Bolitho found it an eerie experience. After heat and searing glare, the slow and patient changes of tack to use what little wind they had had at their bidding, this violent motion, the distorted roar and hiss of waves were unnatural. Their world had shrunk again, confined to familiar objects and handholds about the decks, while beyond the bulwarks the water seethed and boiled like a cauldron before fading into the surrounding darkness.
He found plenty of time to pity the men working aloft on the quivering, thrumming yards and shrouds. Occasionally during a brief lull in the wind’s strange moaning he heard the topmen and their petty officers yelling to one another, high above the deck, voices distorted and wild, like demented spirits.
Herrick lurched up the tilting quarterdeck and shouted, “All secure, sir!” He waved one arm, his blurred outline gleaming dully with blown spray. “She should ride it out well enough if all holds together!” He ducked, cursing as a frothing wave rolled along the weather side and burst over the nettings, drenching everyone in reach. “With all respects to the late and lamented Captain Cook, sir, I think he was wrong to name these the Friendly Islands! God damn them, I say!”
Bolitho groped his way aft to where Lakey and his mates and three helmsmen who were lashed to the wheel swayed and bobbed in a tight, breathless group. He peered at the compass bowl, unnaturally bright in the tiny lamp, and tried not to consider what this delay might mean. He was thinking like the French captain he had fought. Le Chaumareys had started to plan too much beyond the present. At sea you could not take even the next minute for granted.
He pictured his command, reeling and plunging, with spars and cordage under savage pressure. He could have run with the wind, and even now might have be
en well clear of the worst of it. But if the wind continued to rise, Tempest might have been driven many miles to the north, with little hope of getting back to the island in time to act. These violent tropical storms were frequently followed by intense calms, and if that happened Bolitho knew the chances of a quick passage were destroyed. As it was, his ship was standing into the wind as well as could be expected. Under her great maintopsail only, shortened and under constant watch, she was lying-to like a floundering, glistening hulk.
He heard the occasional clank of pumps, but knew they were being used merely to clear the water which swept over the weather side and thundered along the gundeck like surf before finding its way below. Any other frigate Bolitho had known would have been working badly in this sea, and the pumps would have been manned and busy through each backbreaking minute. But Tempest, with all her faults in manoeuvrability, was as tight as a powder cask, and her stout teak timbers barely leaked a drop.
Bolitho watched the water sluicing down the lee side, cascading over each tethered twelve-pounder, eager to catch a spluttering, half-blinded seaman and knock him senseless into the scuppers as it passed.
He gripped the hammock nettings and tried to think, although he felt half-numbed by sea and wind.
The Eurotas should be safe in her sheltered anchorage. But if her cables carried away she could go aground and break up even there.
Suppose after all this he was wrong? That Keen had been mistaken in what Viola had said to him, or had tried to invent something just to please him. Maybe she had blended her message with sarcasm that only he would understand, so that should they meet again he would stand clear and keep his place.
Or perhaps she did want to see him, and thought such a message would bring him back anyway.
He pushed his hair from his eyes as the spume and ragged spray drifted through the mizzen ratlines like darts.
No. If he was right about her, he had to be equally so about Eurotas.
He felt Herrick lurching to the nettings beside him.
“Mr Lakey stakes his reputation that this’ll last till noon, sir!” Herrick waited, squinting into the darkness. “But at least we’ll be able to see what we’re about! I’ve trebled the lookouts, but we’re drifting too much for comfort!” He sounded raw from shouting orders. “Maybe we should’ve gone closer to the Eurotas. Grappled her, and to hell with the weather.” He was thinking aloud. But it sounded like criticism. “I’m not sure of anything now.”
Bolitho replied, “If I’m right, Thomas, I think both ships would have been in danger. The passengers, the convicts, who knows how many more might have been murdered, or killed in the attack.”
Herrick wiped his mouth with his sleeve. “Aye. I suppose so. My guess is that the convicts were released out of humanity when the ship struck, and then seized control.” He turned, waiting for Bolitho’s opinion.
“If the ship struck, Thomas. There’s something too clean about all this.”
Starling, one of the master’s mates by the compass, yelled, “I heard somethin’ carry away aloft, sir!”
As if to mark his warning two heavy blocks and some fifty feet of cordage clattered across the quarterdeck like a twin-headed snake.
Starling was already bellowing for extra hands to get up the treacherous shrouds and secure the damage. It was small enough, but if unchecked might spread to something worse.
Bolitho listened to the master’s mate and marvelled. Starling had been hoisted inboard with his cutter at the last possible moment so that his leadsman could give the ship as much speed as possible to clear the reefs. A misjudgement, or a man losing his nerve, and the cutter might have been left astern. In this sea it would be unlikely to survive.
And yet Starling, who had begun life as a drummer boy in a foot regiment, and had run off to join a King’s ship for preference, had showed little excitement when he had reported to the quarterdeck.
“Right on time, sir,” was all he had said, and now he was up and about, shouting and instructing the afterguard as if nothing had happened out of the ordinary.
Bolitho saw the legs and ragged trousers of one of the seamen hurrying up the ratlines, the bare feet moving rapidly like paddles. He recognized the man as Jenner before he vanished into the maze of rigging above the deck. Another piece of human flotsam. Jenner was an American, who had fought in the Revolutionary Navy against the British. A good seaman, although something of a dreamer, he had joined his old enemies as if he had become bored with the independence he had helped to win.
Just beneath the quarterdeck, ducking and jumping clear of the thundering crests which swept over the twelve-pounders, was another mystery. A giant Negro, he had been found half dead in a drifting longboat shortly after Bolitho had taken command. He had been naked and cruelly savaged by sun and thirst. Worse, when he was taken below to the surgeon, Gwyther had reported in his precise manner, “The fellow has no tongue. It has been cut out.”
In the drifting longboat they had discovered a metal disc. All it had cut on it was the name Orlando. The name of a ship, a man, a piece of cargo, nobody knew.
Bolitho suspected the boat had been from a slaver and that the big Negro had either tried to escape or had been cast adrift as a warning to others.
But when Tempest had reached land again their survivor did not want to be put ashore, despite all that was said to him in every language which the ship’s company could muster. And that was quite considerable. So, with his new name and rating entered on the muster book as Orlando, a landman, he had been accepted.
Because the American, Jenner, seemed to get on with him better than most, Herrick had put them both in the afterguard. The mizzen mast and its attendant sails and rigging was by far the least complicated of any square-rigged ship, and Orlando’s inability to speak and Jenner’s dreamy attitude, which even the touch of the boatswain’s rattan had failed to cure, would leave them less chance of suffering or causing an accident.
That was typical of Herrick, of course. Always watching over his men. As he had been when Bolitho had first met him in the Phalarope during the war. A ship beset with discontent and inhuman treatment, where a junior officer could reasonably be expected to keep his silence rather than provoke a tyrannical captain. Not so Herrick. His ideals, his stubborn yardstick of right and wrong, had more than once put him into real danger.
Bolitho always hoped that Herrick would get a chance of the promotion he richly deserved. But peace, the countless numbers of sailors thrown on the beach without work or hope had blocked his chances. He was lucky to be employed at all. Unlike Bolitho, whose family and upbringing had been set in tradition, with the sea and ships the only possible career, Herrick came from a poor family. What he had he had worked for because he needed it. The fact he loved the sea was a hard-won bonus.
“Sir! The fore t’gans’l is tearin’ adrift!”
Bolitho dashed the salt from his eyes and tried to see up through the rigging. Then he heard it, the irregular crack and thunder of canvas freeing itself from the yard, threatening to fill with wind and change the trim of the ship.
Herrick cupped his hands. “Mr Borlase! Send your people aloft! Mr Jury, stand by the main stays’l!”
He turned, panting, “If the t’gans’l carries away without ripping itself to pieces we’ll need the stays’l to give us balance.” He showed his teeth. “God, how quick the mind skips when you need it!”
Bolitho nodded. Herrick had acted well and without waiting for approval. If, as could still happen before the topmen fought their way up the foremast shrouds, the sail freed itself entirely, it would slew the bows round, and their situation in the rising gale could be suddenly critical.
He saw the boatswain mustering his men beneath the main-mast, others wading through waist-deep water to reach their stations. Familiarity, harsh, and sometimes unfair discipline had made them so. In pitch darkness, or in a raging storm, they could find their way about a ship as a blind man will know his own cottage.
Borlase was busy too,
his voice matching the wind as he urged the foretopmen into action. When he shouted his voice tended to be shrill and piercing, and Bolitho knew the midshipmen often made unflattering comments about it behind his back. It was strange that few people ever thought about the cabin skylight on the poop. Voices from the watchkeeping officers reached the captain very easily. Bolitho had learned his lesson early as a midshipman when his captain had called from the skylight, “I am sorry, I did not hear that. Where did you say you met the girl?”
All these things and more he had tried to describe to Viola Raymond when she had sailed with him as a passenger. He had expected her to be bored, or tolerantly patient. Perhaps from those first conversations had grown the ache he now felt for her safety with each dragging hour.
“I think they are in trouble, sir.” Herrick was leaning over the quarterdeck rail, his back and legs streaming with water. He yelled, “What is it?”
Borlase strode aft, his figure leaning over against the ship’s steep angle.
“Mr Romney, sir! He’s out on the fore t’gans’l yard!” Despite the din of wind and sea he sounded irritated. “There’s enough risk as it is without—”
Bolitho cut him short. “Send up a bosun’s mate! Or someone senior enough for him to trust!” He looked at Herrick, his voice bitter. “Midshipman Romney may never make a lieutenant, but he tries as hard as ten men. I’ll not have him fall because Mr Borlase has not the sense to see the danger.”
He swung away, trying to hold on to the picture of the island, their position and bearing from it. What he must do or avoid when the time came.
Yet all he could see was that terrified boy, clinging to a yard, some hundred and fifty feet above the deck, with a great billowing mass of wind-hardened canvas trying to smash him down and hurl him to certain death. A quick end if he hit the deck, slower by a little if he fell into the sea. He might live long enough to see his ship fade into the darkness, for no boat could be lowered now, and Tempest’s drift would outpace any swimmer.
Bolitho thought too of the shark which was there to greet each new day.
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