Relentless Pursuit

by Alexander Kent

  The bowman stumbled aft to help push the stroke oarsman over the gunwale and take his place. It all took time. Galbraith glanced at the corpse as it floated astern, turning slightly on one shoulder as if to watch them press on without him.

  More shots now, from overhead.

  Galbraith gasped as a blow flung him hard against the tiller bar. As if a white-hot bar of iron had been dragged across his back; he could even smell the cloth of his coat burning, then Jago’s hard hands as he tore it away and slapped a wad of rags across the wound. But no pain. Just breathlessness, as though he had been kicked.

  Jago said sharply, “Easy, Mr Galbraith. We’ll get you fixed up, good as new!” He turned as the jolly-boat passed abeam, oars rising and falling without cease, as if they had only now cast off from the ship’s side. “Frank Rist can manage.” He felt Galbraith turn to listen, to understand, and added, “He always wanted a bloody command of ’is own, anyway!”

  Then the pain did come, and Galbraith found himself lying by the first stretcher, his head propped on somebody’s hat. He was alive. But all he could think of was that he had failed.

  Jago held out a hand. “Oars!” He gauged the overhanging stern. Young Deighton would have enjoyed this, he thought vaguely. But his mind was still like ice. “Ready in the bows!” He heard the hiss of steel being drawn, and knew a couple of them were armed with boarding-axes. He trusted that the grapnel had been thrown, and lurched to his feet as the gig came under the counter with a violent jerk. A swivel gun exploded, it seemed only a few feet away, and for an instant he imagined that the schooner’s crew had been ready and waiting for them. Instead he heard a wild whoop and knew it was Williams, the mad Welshman. “At ’em, lads!” Then he was clawing his way up and over the stern with all the others.

  He paused only to peer down at the gig, where Galbraith lay where he had been dragged into a safer position. He even grinned. Bloody officers!

  Frank Rist, master’s mate, had heard the burst of firing and the swivel gun’s murderous response. As ordered, he had brought the jolly-boat alongside. He knew he would have done it in any case. Even if a friend is cut down in battle, don’t offer your hand. Or it’s your turn next.

  He rubbed his stinging eyes; the smoke was everywhere. Miles and miles of it. He swore silently as his boots skidded on blood and fragments of flesh. There had only been one man to challenge them, and he had taken the full blast of canister, all on his own. Some other whimpering shapes had been seized without even a struggle. The anchor watch were alone on board, eight men in all. One had tried to escape, but a boarding-axe had stopped him in his tracks. A splash alongside told the rest.

  He found that he could relax, albeit holding his nerves on a leash. He heard the battle roaring in the background, men being killed and maimed, ships disabled or sunk. It was all meaningless in the distance and the smoke.

  And Unrivalled’s guns had stopped firing. With her two consorts, she would be waiting. He stared around the unfamiliar deck, scarcely able to believe it. Because of us.

  He heard Williams calling to one of his mates, pictured his nimble fingers twisting and fixing fuses, like that other time with the chebecks. Galbraith had been there then.

  He thought Williams was humming to himself, unconcerned about everything beyond his immediate reach. Rist felt himself smile. The madness of a fight. Williams would probably lay a bet on the outcome of this raid, down to the last minute. Although he was a powerful man, he made his strength seem effortless; Rist had seen him pick up a handspike and use it to train an eighteen-pounder gun to explain something to a green landman at Plymouth. He had used no more effort than somebody moving a chair up to a table. But a gentle man in many ways, despite his trade of gunner’s mate. Like the time he had carried the young black girl in his arms, on board that damned slaver when her master had recognised him, or thought he had, from the past. The girl had been abused so badly that it was unlikely she would recover. It was common enough. But she had not said a word or protested once when Williams had carried her to her own people, when by rights she should have seen him as just another white devil.

  Williams could have been promoted long ago, but for his love of gambling. With him it was like lust, and, discipline or not, nothing would change him. Dice, or simply laying odds on the most common daily occurrence: how many knots sailed in a single watch, or how much rum would be consumed in one mess in the course of a week. He had a loyal group of fellow gamblers, his clutch, as he called them, and as he was able to read and write he was the one who kept a tally of the wins and, more likely, the losses. Rist had heard some of them say they had already laid down their slave- and prize-bounty in Williams’ care, and they had not even received it yet!

  Williams was his own man. If he liked you, it was enough. If you pushed him too far, then beware.

  It had all been so quick. If Mister bloody Sandell had not been nosing around between decks when he should have been standing watch, it would not have happened. Maybe the midshipman had heard something and was out to prove himself. But he was there that morning, when Williams had been returning to his mess after yet another secret session with the clutch.

  Sandell had probably attempted to seize the list of bets, or even some of the money, as evidence. It was all so fast, you would never know for sure. One moment there had been the two of them, Williams towering over the irate, gesticulating midshipman, then there was only Williams. Sandell had fallen back against one of the carronades, his head striking the iron “smasher.” Dead or unconscious, the sea had received him. And bloody good riddance.

  He swung round guiltily as Williams shouted, “Done, Frank! Cut the cable, and we’ll be going!”

  Rist hurried forward and called, “Cut it, lads!” He stared ahead at the overlapping shapes of anchored vessels. They would soon do the same when they saw a fireship drifting down on them.

  A seaman shouted, “Look out!” It was almost a scream.

  One of the anchor watch must have hidden below, undiscovered, when the boarding party had swarmed up from the boats. He just seemed to rise out of the deck, from a small hatch which nobody had cared to investigate.

  Rist aimed his pistol; he did not even recall having drawn it. The two shots sounded as one. He ran to help Williams, who had fallen to his knees; the other man had no time even to cry out as a cutlass smashed into his skull.

  “Where is it, Owen?” Other hands were helping, but Rist and Williams were completely alone.

  Williams said thickly, “It’s a bad one, Frank. This time, I think . . .” His head lolled, and he groaned, as if to bite back the agony. Rist could feel the blood on his hand, running over his wrist. A bad one. He had seen enough of them.

  “We’ll get you to the boat.”

  Williams tried to protest but the pain held it back. Then he said in an almost normal tone, “You too busy to see the wind, man? It’s shifted. Not much. But a bit. Enough, see?”

  Rist stared around. “I don’t give a damn!”

  With sudden strength Williams pulled himself up to the schooner’s wheel. Gasping with pain, he slowly wrapped and fastened the old-style crossbelt he always wore around and through the spokes, so that it took his weight.

  “Get to the boats, Frank. Time to move, see? Nothing more you can do. The ship’ll need you now!”

  Somebody asked, “What d’ you say, Mr Rist?”

  For a moment longer he stared up at the masts, and the loosely flapping jib. A command of his own. What he had always wanted. He shrugged, as if to the world. What Galbraith wanted too, although he would never admit it.

  He looked down as a hand gripped his.

  Rist lowered his head until their faces almost touched. Feeling the agony, the sudden determination.

  “What is it, Owen?”

  Williams gripped his hand harder. “You saw me, Frank, that morning. I knew you did.” He fought a bout of coughing. There was blood on his shirt. Rist heard the distant guns. It could not last. He had others to think of.


  “Yes, I saw it.”

  “And you never said?” He tried to smile, but it only made it worse. “Save yourself, see? Time to go, cut the cable. Now!” He reached out suddenly and Rist heard the sharp click of his flint-lock. The realisation seemed to freeze him, but he could see it stark and clear in his mind. Williams had fired the fuse.

  “Cut the cable, Billy! Into the boats, the rest of you!”

  The deck was deserted, the only sound the regular thud of a heavy axe. He heard Williams mutter, “A life for a life, see, Frank? So I was taught!”

  “Cut!” The seaman was already running aft to the waiting boats.

  Rist stood motionless, seeing the wheel respond to the hands, the jib hardening enough to swing the hull very slightly. Adrift, and at any second the fuses would blow.

  Then he ran aft, his leg over the rail even as the first muffled explosion spurted sparks through the forehatch.

  Voices were yelling at him to jump; he thought he had heard Galbraith too, but all he could think of was the figure strapped to the schooner’s wheel. And how strong his Welsh accent had sounded, in the face of death itself.

  Someone thrust a bottle into his hands. It was rum, like fire in his throat. He raised the bottle again and murmured, “All bets down, my friend!”

  Then the world exploded.

  “Hold your fire!” Adam had to shout twice to gain Varlo’s attention. The guns had fired three broadsides, the havoc on the other frigate’s deck easy to see despite the smoke and confusion. Perhaps their forecastle party had been cut down in the first double-shotted onslaught, when Unrivalled had come about to show her true intention. The ship was swinging now, moored only by her forward cable, the stream anchor aft having been cut to escape the second broadside. Purpose or panic, it mattered little now, but the blazing schooner Galbraith and his two boats had boarded had been enough for the crowded shipping which had been relying on the warships’ moored broadsides.

  The fireship had become entangled with another schooner and both were now drifting like one huge torch.

  Even as he watched, Adam saw another, smaller vessel catch fire, the flames leaping up the sun-dried rigging and turning the sails into scattered ashes. He heard warning shouts from the main-top and saw two oared galleys sweeping past the other ships, turning as one towards Unrivalled and increasing speed to the urgent beat of a drum.

  Such fanatical daring should have achieved a better settlement. But the brig Magpie was ready, and raked the leading galley with canister and grape, in an instant changing it to a shattered wreck. The second paid no heed and met with more grape from Unrivalled’s larboard carronades.

  The long sweeps splintered like boxwood as the galley lurched and shuddered alongside. In the next instant figures were swarming up and over the gangway, only to be confronted by the boarding nets, probably something they had never before encountered.

  Men snatched up cutlasses and axes, while others dragged the deadly boarding-pikes from the racks and impaled the screaming, crazed attackers before they had even cut through the nets.

  And yet there were a few who managed to hack their way past the defences. One, a bearded giant, marked out from the others by a scarlet robe, reached the quarterdeck ladder, his eyes fixed on the man he recognised as captain.

  Adam had his sword balanced in his hand, loosely, some of the others might have thought. As if he no longer cared . . .

  He saw the great blade swing down, heard someone, Napier perhaps, yell out a warning. Like being someone else, able to measure the weight and force of the blow. He felt it lance through his arm, heard the scream of steel as the two blades crossed, the heavier blade sliding down to lock against the hilt of his sword. He could even smell his attacker, feel the overwhelming hate which excluded everything else.

  He stepped aside, gasping as pain seared his wounded side, but keeping his balance as the giant lunged forward.

  It was the madness. The moment when risk and caution meant nothing. If anything, he felt light-headed, and knew only that he wanted to kill this man.

  A shadow sliced across the smoky sunshine and he saw the giant reel aside, eyes still blazing as he pitched down the ladder.

  The hard man, Campbell, wielding a cutlass with both hands like a claymore, had almost severed his head from his body.

  Campbell turned now, showing his mutilated back, the evidence of a dozen or more floggings, with something like a gladiator’s triumph.

  Adam raised the old sword to him.

  “Thank you!”

  Campbell, streaked with blood, his own or that of his victims, gave a mock bow.

  “Your servant, Cap’n!”

  And then, all at once, impossible though it was, it was over. Like a sudden deafness left when the last broadsides have exploded.

  Adam grasped the quarterdeck rail and stared along his command. The dead lay where they had dropped, as if they had fallen asleep. Others reached out as grim-faced seamen and marines hurried around and over them: the wretched wounded. A captain’s legacy, so that he should not forget.

  Midshipman Deighton shouted, “From Flag, sir! Discontinue the action!”

  Adam tried to sheathe his sword, but it was sticky with blood. The signal made no sense. Someone had removed the sword and was wiping it clean with a piece of rag.

  He looked at Napier and wanted to smile, but his lips would not move. “You did well, David. Your mother . . .” He made another attempt. “I am proud of you!”

  Small but stark pictures stood out. Like those first moments, the waiting. The aftermath was even worse.

  Bellairs, sitting on a water barricoe, his face in his hands, the fine sword his parents had given him to mark his commission as lieutenant discarded at his feet, its blade also stained with blood. And now Yovell, coming from below for the first time, from the orlop where he had been helping the surgeon with the wounded and the dying. Staring around, a length of soiled bandage trailing from one pocket. A man wrestling with his beliefs.

  And the boats returning alongside, Rist hurrying to the quarterdeck, peering at the planking, pock-marked with musket balls from the enemy’s sharpshooters, and at the dark bloodstains where men had stood together and had died. Lastly he had looked at Cristie, the old sailing-master, and remarked almost casually, “You got through it, then?”

  And Cristie, looking and feeling his age, who had never quit this deck throughout the attack, had smiled, perhaps because he knew what Rist had expected, and replied, “Got through what, Mr Rist?”

  Adam walked to the hammock nettings, his hand feeling the torn canvas where musket balls had cut through the tightly-packed bedding. Some had been meant for him.

  The bombardment was over. Through the pall of drifting smoke he could see the freshly set sails: Lord Exmouth’s fleet on the move again. Withdrawing. The casualties would be terrible, but not a ship had been lost. On the shore there were fires raging, and the guns were silent. Many must have been buried with their crews when the old fortifications had crumbled under Exmouth’s barrage.

  He recalled his own relief when he had seen Galbraith being helped aboard, in pain, but quietly determined, like a man who had discovered something in himself which he had not suspected.

  And the moment when Galbraith, his wounded shoulders covered by a seaman’s jacket, had paused by Varlo, at the place where he had controlled every gun and every man of the full broadside.

  Galbraith had said, “You did well.”

  Varlo had half-smiled, and retorted, “Go to hell!”

  And now they were leaving this place. Many vessels had been destroyed or left abandoned. The enemy barque had not been one of them. They would meet again. He gripped the nettings until the pain in his side reawakened. And tomorrow Lord Exmouth would demand that all his previous terms be met. The Dey would have no choice.

  He turned away from the smoke and the fires.

  “Turn the hands to, Mr Bellairs! We will prepare to get under way.”

  He stared along the s
hip yet again. The first in, the last to leave. And they had done it.

  He looked at the dead where some had been dragged from the places they had lain to clear the guns’ recoil. One was a marine officer, his face covered with a bloodied cloth. Lieutenant Cochrane. Unrivalled was his first ship.

  “Move yourselves!” He walked to the rail again. A captain must never show weakness. His authority was his armour. It was all he had.

  Bellairs called, “Shall we put them over, sir?”

  Adam stared down at him. So simply asked. Was that all it took?

  He said, “No. We’ll bury them when we clear the land.” He saw Yovell watching him. “Perhaps you could read a suitable prayer, Mr Yovell?”

  Afterwards, he thought it was like seeing Yovell’s despair clear away. Another memory had been sparked. All he needed.

  “For all of us, sir.”

  And tomorrow . . .

  Galbraith straightened his back in spite of the bandage, and said quietly, “Here comes Halcyon.”

  Adam walked to the opposite side, feeling their eyes following him. The helmsman, Sergeant Bloxham, leaning on a musket on which the bayonet was still fixed. Midshipman Deighton, his telescope still trained on the distant ships, gnawing his lip to make a lie of his composure.

  And Jago, watching the slow-moving frigate, feeling her pain. Sharing it. Foremast shot away, sails riddled with holes, the hull gouged by gunfire at close quarters.

  Magpie was following astern; she had been in the thick of it, but looked unmarked by comparison.

  The second ensign Halcyon had hoisted when the flagship had made the signal Prepare for battle had been lowered to half-mast, for the man who had been Tyacke’s midshipman at the Nile, and had loved his ship above all else. Both ship and captain had fought their last fight.

  Adam climbed into the shrouds as if something had snapped, releasing him from frozen immobility, and shouted, “A cheer, lads! Give them all you have!”

  He waved, and imagined he saw a telescope being trained from Halcyon’s splintered quarterdeck.

  Then he climbed down and felt Jago’s hand steady his arm. It must be the smoke. The fight had continued all afternoon. It would soon be dusk.