Relentless Pursuit

by Alexander Kent

  RELENTLESS

  PURSUIT

  Selected Historical Fiction Published by McBooks Press

  BY ALEXANDER KENT

  The Complete Midshipman Bolitho

  Stand Into Danger

  In Gallant Company

  Sloop of War

  To Glory We Steer

  Command a King’s Ship

  Passage to Mutiny

  With All Despatch

  Form Line of Battle!

  Enemy in Sight!

  The Flag Captain

  Signal–Close Action!

  The Inshore Squadron

  A Tradition of Victory

  Success to the Brave

  Colours Aloft!

  Honour This Day

  The Only Victor

  Beyond the Reef

  The Darkening Sea

  For My Country’s Freedom

  Cross of St George

  Sword of Honour

  Second to None

  Relentless Pursuit

  Man of War

  BY PHILIP MCCUTCHAN

  Halfhyde at the Bight of Benin

  Halfhyde’s Island

  Halfhyde and the Guns of Arrest

  Halfhyde to the Narrows

  Halfhyde for the Queen

  Halfhyde Ordered South

  Halfhyde on Zanatu

  BY R.F. DELDERFIELD

  Too Few for Drums

  Seven Men of Gascony

  BY JAMES L. NELSON

  The Only Life That Mattered

  BY DEWEY LAMBDIN

  The French Admiral

  The Gun Ketch

  Jester’s Fortune

  What Lies Buried

  BY JULIAN STOCKWIN

  Mutiny

  Quarterdeck

  Tenacious

  Command

  BY JAN NEEDLE

  A Fine Boy for Killing

  The Wicked Trade

  The Spithead Nymph

  BY DUDLEY POPE

  Ramage

  Ramage & The Drumbeat

  Ramage & The Freebooters

  Governor Ramage R.N.

  Ramage’s Prize

  Ramage & The Guillotine

  Ramage’s Diamond

  Ramage’s Mutiny

  Ramage & The Rebels

  The Ramage Touch

  Ramage’s Signal

  Ramage & The Renegades

  Ramage’s Devil

  Ramage’s Trial

  Ramage’s Challenge

  Ramage at Trafalgar

  Ramage & The Saracens

  Ramage & The Dido

  BY FREDERICK MARRYAT

  Frank Mildmay OR

  The Naval Officer

  Mr Midshipman Easy

  Newton Forster OR

  The Merchant Service

  Snarleyyow OR

  The Dog Fiend

  The Privateersman

  BY V.A. STUART

  Victors and Lords

  The Sepoy Mutiny

  Massacre at Cawnpore

  The Cannons of Lucknow

  The Heroic Garrison

  The Valiant Sailors

  The Brave Captains

  Hazard’s Command

  Hazard of Huntress

  Hazard in Circassia

  Victory at Sebastopol

  Guns to the Far East

  Escape from Hell

  BY JAMES DUFFY

  Sand of the Arena

  BY JOHN BIGGINS

  A Sailor of Austria

  The Emperor’s Coloured Coat

  The Two-Headed Eagle

  BY ALEXANDER FULLERTON

  Storm Force to Narvik

  Last Lift from Crete

  All the Drowning Seas

  A Share of Honour

  The Torch Bearers

  The Gatecrashers

  BY C.N. PARKINSON

  The Guernseyman

  Devil to Pay

  The Fireship

  Touch and Go

  So Near So Far

  Dead Reckoning

  The Life and Times of Horatio Hornblower

  BY NICHOLAS NICASTRO

  The Eighteenth Captain

  Between Two Fires

  BY DOUGLAS REEMAN

  Badge of Glory

  First to Land

  The Horizon

  Dust on the Sea

  Knife Edge

  Twelve Seconds to Live

  Battlecruiser

  The White Guns

  A Prayer for the Ship

  For Valour

  BY DAVID DONACHIE

  The Devil’s Own Luck

  The Dying Trade

  A Hanging Matter

  An Element of Chance

  The Scent of Betrayal

  A Game of Bones

  On a Making Tide

  Tested by Fate

  Breaking the Line

  BY BROOS CAMPBELL

  No Quarter

  The War of Knives

  Alexander Kent

  RELENTLESS PURSUIT

  the Bolitho novels: 25

  McBooks Press, Inc.

  www.mcbooks.com

  ITHACA, NY

  Published by McBooks Press 2002

  Copyright © 2001 by Bolitho Maritime Productions

  First published in the United Kingdom by William Heinemann Ltd. 2001

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or any portion

  thereof in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without

  the written permission of the publisher. Requests for such permissions

  should be addressed to McBooks Press, Inc., ID Booth Building,

  520 North Meadow St., Ithaca, NY 14850.

  Cover painting by Geoffrey Huband.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Kent, Alexander.

  Relentless pursuit / by Alexander Kent.

  p. cm. — (Richard Bolitho novels ; 25)

  ISBN 1-59013-026-X (alk. paper)

  1. Bolitho, Adam (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Great Britain, History, Naval— 19th century—Fiction. I. Title

  PR6061.E63 R4 2001

  823’.914—dc21

  2001045033

  All McBooks Press publications can be ordered by calling

  toll-free 1-888- BOOKS 11 (1-888-266-5711).

  Please call to request a free catalog.

  Visit the McBooks Press website at www.mcbooks.com.

  Printed in the United States of America

  9 8 7 6 5 4

  For you, Kim,

  With all my love,

  and a yellow rose . . .

  The sheets were frozen hard, and they cut the naked hand;

  The decks were like a slide, where a seaman scarce could stand . . .

  But all I could think of in the darkness and the cold

  Was just that I was leaving home and my folks were growing old.

  ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

  from Christmas at Sea

  1 NO TURNING BACK

  PLYMOUTH, always one of England’s most important and strategically situated seaports, seemed strangely quiet, subdued. Even Plymouth Sound, notorious for its fast tides and unexpectedly fierce squalls, was almost still but for some cruising catspaws from a light offshore breeze.

  But it was cold, the air bitter like a knife edge, and only a few small local craft seemed willing to contest it.

  It was mid-December, six months to the day since the news had broken of the victory at Waterloo, and the final surrender of the Corsican tyrant who had held power for so long. Boys had grown to manhood in the course of that same conflict, plough hands and stable lads alike had been transformed into sailors and soldiers.

  Now it was over, and seaports like Plymouth whic
h had given so much and so many were still numbed by the reality of peace and its aftermath.

  Even when the noon gun shattered the silence and rolled its echoes from the Hoe to the old battery at Penlee Point, only a few gulls rose screaming from the water, the spirits of dead Jacks, the sailors called them. Maybe they felt it too.

  From here great fleets and powerful squadrons had weighed anchor, and had headed out to every part of the world where England’s enemies were at large, and famous names, the Nile, Copenhagen, Trafalgar, had filled the hearts and minds, particularly of those who did not have to fight, and had no loved ones facing the merciless broadsides which took the lives of volunteers and pressed men without discrimination.

  At the end of the war the fleet had been at its strongest, with 240 ships of the line, some 317 frigates and countless other smaller vessels, ready and able to perform whatever task their lordships of Admiralty might dictate.

  There were ships here now, plenty of them. It was a Sunday, but in those other times it would have made no difference when the noon gun was fired. There had been signals to be exchanged, chronometers to be checked: the daily routine continued.

  But today many of those same ships were like ghosts, some with upper yards sent down and boats removed for storage ashore, and in some cases the scars of a last, desperate sea fight still unre-paired, as if their companies had been spirited away. Ships already laid up in ordinary, some waiting to be hulked or used for storing unwanted equipment; a few would become floating prisons. And some, perhaps, would live on to fight again.

  Only one small craft moved with any apparent purpose and direction. It was a gig, oars rising and falling precisely and unhurriedly, the crew smartly turned out in tarred hats and matching blue jackets, a coxswain with one hand on the tiller bar, a midshipman beside him, eyes on the passage among the silent ships, the phantom fleet.

  And in the sternsheets, boatcloak thrown back over his shoulders to reveal his gleaming epaulettes, was the captain, who needed no reminding of the significance of this day.

  Captain Adam Bolitho did not glance at the passing ships, but it was a moment he would never forget. He would know the names of some, even of many of them. Silent and deserted now, their gun ports empty like staring eyes, but he would hear the cries and the wild cheering, still audible amidst the darker memories of war at sea.

  The seaports were full of reminders, men crippled and blinded and others left to beg on the streets. And there would be many more now, thrown on the beach while the fleet was cut to the bone, their courage and sacrifice forgotten. Adam gripped the old sword beneath his cloak until his fingers throbbed. Emotion, pride, anger, it was all there on this bitter, cleansing day.

  He turned and looked up as the gig passed through the shadow of an anchored seventy-four, an old two-decker like Hyperion. Against the bleak, cloudless sky he saw a solitary figure standing on a gangway to watch the gig as they pulled past.

  Then very slowly he raised his hat, and held it above his head in salute until the jutting stern hid him from view. A watchman? Someone still finding refuge in the world which had rejected him? Or just another ghost?

  He heard the midshipman clear his throat. He was new; they had met for the first time when the gig had picked him up at the Queen’s Stairs. Another young hopeful, nervous with his captain in his care.

  Adam had seen the wary glance from Luke Jago, his coxswain. He would allow nothing to go wrong. No matter what he thought or said, he would know what this day meant to his captain. Just as Jago would have known where and when to collect him without a signal having been made, or any instructions given.

  He felt the tiller move slightly and looked along the boat, over the heads of the oarsmen, their breath hanging in the cold air like steam. Like that first day, just over a year ago, in this same place. He stared at his ship.

  When I took command.

  He had been away from the ship for two weeks and had barely had time to think over and remember that past year. The sea fights, the triumphs and the pain, official visits and others no less important, to him at least. And all the while he had looked forward to this moment. Coming back. Like being made whole again.

  It was something like a shock, nevertheless. The ship had been moved during his absence and now lay at her cable, well clear of all the other vessels, and even her appearance came as a surprise. The familiar buff paint around her hull had been replaced by white, so that her strakes and black gun ports along either side made an even sharper, chequered pattern, clean and fresh against the stained and deserted hulks nearby.

  His Britannic Majesty’s frigate Unrivalled of 46 guns was one of the first to wear the new peacetime colours. She was also the first ship of her name on the Navy List.

  He stood up in the boat as the hull rose above the tossed oars. And he was her first captain.

  It was enough. There was nothing else.

  The bowman had hooked on, and the side party would be waiting, faces, new or old, ready to receive him.

  What had I expected? That they would take her from me?

  He glanced at the midshipman, but the youth’s name would not come.

  “That was well done.”

  The boy blushed, and Jago remarked, “Mr Martyns is learning fast, sir.”

  Adam nodded. It was Jago’s way. He would remember next time.

  The calls squealed and he heard the slap of muskets as the Royal Marine guard presented arms in salute.

  It was all as he had expected. The ensign curling against the cold sky, the seamen, faces still tanned from Unrivalled’s service in the Mediterranean. The smell of fresh paint, like that other December day a year ago.

  He saw none of it.

  Being back was enough.

  Lieutenant Leigh Galbraith strode in from beneath Unrivalled’s poop and ran his eyes over the main deck. Everything was in order. He had made certain that nothing had been left to chance. Today the captain was returning; his own period of temporary command would soon be over.

  He frowned as the hard light reflected from the water. He had been pulled around the ship as soon as the hands had been piped to work, and had still been surprised by her appearance. The white paint took some getting used to, almost frivolous compared with the moored hulks nearby, and only the experienced eye could discern the new timbers which had repaired damage suffered in their savage exchange with the frigate Triton only months ago. Some of the repairs had been carried out at Gibraltar and the rest here at Plymouth, where Unrivalled’s life had begun. Where Galbraith himself had been given another chance. He was lucky and he knew it. And with the whole fleet being cut down, halved, some said, he should count his blessings and leave the bitterness to others less fortunate.

  Galbraith was 31, and he had spent nineteen years of his life in the navy. He knew and had wanted nothing else, except a command of his own. And that he had been granted. His previous captain had given him the highest recommendation, and his reward had been the little brig Vixen. Not a fifth-rate like Unrivalled, but his own, and the first step to the coveted post rank.

  He saw Partridge the boatswain, big fists on his hips as he explained forcefully what work he needed done in the foretop. Thank God for men like Partridge, he thought. The backbone of any man-of-war, they were the true professionals, Partridge, Stranace the gunner, probably the oldest man aboard, and Joshua Cristie the sailing master, the best Galbraith had known. A man who never wasted words, but when he spoke it was with authority and a complete understanding of the tides, stars and winds which were his world.

  As the frigate’s first lieutenant, Galbraith was most aware of and concerned with the shortages. They were more than fifty men under strength, despite their presence in this naval harbour. He smiled grimly. Or perhaps because of it.

  Apart from those they had lost, killed or badly wounded in the last battle, some had been paid off or had gone to other ships. But a few of the old hands had remained, even some of the hard men like Campbell, who had paid for his insolence and
contempt for authority with several floggings in this commission alone. He seemed to find some brutal satisfaction in displaying his scarred back, which looked as if it had been clawed by some savage beast. A dangerous man, and yet he had been one of the first to volunteer for the attack on the corsair’s chebecks when they had pulled alongside with enough explosives to kill every one of them. Campbell had been a tower of strength, but he would sneer openly at anyone who suggested he had acted out of a sense of duty or discipline.

  There were others like Campbell. Men who claimed to hate everything the navy represented, and more especially the officers who upheld it.

  So why did they stay, when they now had the chance to quit?

  Galbraith saw Luxmore, the captain of the Royal Marine detachment, speaking with one of his sergeants. Whatever went on around them, no matter how cramped the ship, they somehow remained a separate entity. Even their quarters were called “the barracks.” Luxmore had seen plenty of fighting, and he had a good rapport with his marines. Maybe that was enough. Galbraith looked away. Or was he congratulating himself on his advanced promotion? The debonair Captain Bosanquet had been killed that day. Like me, then. Thankful to have survived, and to have a ship, because of fear of the unknown.

  He saw the boy Napier, the cabin servant, pausing to stare at the land. He probably knew the captain’s thoughts better than anyone. Fourteen years old, serious and hard-working, and obviously devoted to Captain Adam Bolitho. An unusual relationship, he thought. Bolitho was not always the easiest man to understand, and had sometimes apologised for his own intolerance. As if something or somebody was driving him, forcing him on.

  And yet with Napier he always seemed to have time to explain, to describe, to elaborate. The only way he’ll learn, he once said. As if he saw something of his own youth in him. That must have been stormy enough, from what Galbraith had heard, and had seen for himself. Like that last engagement, when Bolitho had given chase to the enemy frigate captained by the renegade Spaniard, Martinez. He had deliberately misinterpreted their admiral’s signal to remain on station and leave the pursuit to a smaller frigate which had been outgunned and outsailed from the start, and they had saved the merchantman Aranmore, which had been carrying important passengers. He glanced at the companion ladder and remembered Bolitho holding the woman’s hand, kissing it. They could have been quite alone.

  Galbraith began to pace the deck, his hands clasped behind him. Was it that as well? Had she reminded him yet again of the girl he had hoped to marry, and had lost when he had put his brief command first?