Colours Aloft!

by Alexander Kent

  Bolitho rubbed his chin. That was strange. Nobody had mentioned it before.

  Keen said bitterly, “Afraid to put his money in a man-of-war, is he? In case we have to fight for him, damn his eyes!”

  Ozzard hovered by the other screen door. He had heard everything but would keep it to himself. He had known all about the gold, as did most of the squadron. It was funny that the officers were always the last to hear such matters, he thought.

  “Dinner is served, Sir Richard,” he said meekly.

  When Bolitho went on deck the following morning he saw the disarray in his ships after a mounting overnight gale. Now, as each captain endeavoured to place his ship on the required station, the wind just as mischievously dropped to a wet breeze, to leave the heavier vessels rolling uncomfortably in the troughs, their sails flapping and banging in confusion.

  Keen glared across at the Orontes. Quite rightly Inch had cast off the tow during the night to avoid a collision and now it would have to begin all over again.

  Keen sounded exasperated. “Call away the gig. I shall go over to her.” He took a glass from the midshipman-of-the-watch and trained it on the drifting transport. Half to himself he said, “I have already had words with my carpenter, Sir Richard. With his aid I intend to coax Orontes ’ master into rigging a jury rudder.”

  Bolitho raised his own telescope and studied the other vessel. Her decks seemed to be full of people, crew or convicts it was impossible to tell. No one appeared to be working and he said quietly, “Take some marines with you, Val.”

  Keen lowered his glass and looked at him. “Aye, sir.” He sounded uneasy. “Some of their people are drinking. At this time of the day!”

  The gig and then a cutter were lowered alongside while the flagship came into the wind and lay hove-to, her reefed canvas flapping wetly in the spray.

  Keen hurried to the entry port and Bolitho said, “Go with him, Mr Stayt. You may learn something less basic then seamanship today.”

  Keen waited impatiently as a squad of Royal Marines clattered down into the cutter with their junior officer Lieutenant Orde. He was a haughty young man who obviously resented the idea of soaking his immaculate scarlet coat on the crossing Keen touched his hat to the quarterdeck and then hurried down the side where Hogg waited with his gig.

  Keen had no doubts in his mind that the next months would be crucial as England and her old enemy circled one another to seek out and exploit a first weakness. He wanted to begin, to use his ship where she was most needed. For Keen it was like a driving force. He had nothing else.

  Once he glanced astern and saw his ship riding easily in the swell and Bolitho’s straight figure by the quarterdeck rail. Argonaute would serve him well, Keen thought. I owe him that and so much more.

  The coxswain swore silently as the gig shuddered alongside and hooked onto the main-chains. The cutter, caught on a sudden crest, was carried past, the marines watching with amusement as the oarsmen fought to regain control.

  Stayt stood aside to allow Keen to climb the ladder. After the lively motion and stinging spray the Orontes ’ broad deck seemed almost sluggish and without wind.

  There were figures everywhere, on the deck and gangways, even in the tops overhead. A few carried weapons, guards probably, the rest looked like the sweepings of a jail.

  But Keen saw only the drama being enacted below the poop. The rigged grating, a great brute of a boatswain’s mate with what looked like a long whip in his hand as he stared at the figure seized up for flogging.

  Keen hated the savage ritual of a flogging, more so the occasional need for it. Ever since he had seen his first punishment as a young midshipman, like most sea officers he had fought to conceal his revulsion for the sake of discipline. Others, it seemed, could watch it without turning a hair.

  But this was different. He felt his spine go cold as he stared at the spreadeagled form on the grating.

  A seaman exclaimed behind him, “Christ A’mighty, sir, it’s a girl!”

  She was stripped almost to her buttocks, her face and shoulders hidden by her hair, her arms stretched out as if she had been crucified.

  Keen stepped forward but before he could speak the boatswain’s mate drew back his arm and curled the whip across the girl’s back with the sound of a pistol shot.

  Keen saw her arch her body, her torn clothing falling still further. But she did not scream for the force of the blow had smashed the breath from her body. Then, after what seemed like several seconds, a bright scarlet line showed itself from one bare shoulder to the opposite hip and then the blood ran down her back, and as the man drew back his arm she began to struggle.

  Keen said sharply, “Belay that!” He felt Stayt beside him but did not take his eyes from the scene. Around and above him he could hear a baying chorus of voices. Anger, disappointment— they had wanted to watch her flogged.

  In the sudden silence Keen said, “Mr Stayt! If that man so much as lifts his whip I order you to shoot him dead!”

  Stayt stepped forward, the pistol already cocked in his hand. He raised his arm, not like a man going into battle, but as a duellist would balance his weapon for that one, vital shot.

  A portly figure in a blue coat pushed towards Keen, his jowls jogging with fury.

  Keen regarded him calmly although he was feeling cold anger sweeping through him, blinding him to everything but the desire to smash this man, the master, in the face.

  “What the hell do you think you’re about, blast you!” The man was almost incoherent with rage and drink.

  Keen met his angry glare. “I am Sir Richard Bolitho’s flagcaptain. You abuse your authority, sir.” He felt his relief as he heard the marines scrambling up the side. At last. Inch had obviously withdrawn his own men before the squall. In another moment, he, Stayt and the others might have been overwhelmed. Most of the crew looked too drunk to be able to think, let alone take orders.

  Lieutenant Orde seemed unable to respond to what he saw, but Blackburn, his big sergeant, rasped, “Fix bayonets, Marines! If they moves, cut ’em down!” Blackburn did not trust anyone who did not wear the scarlet coat of the Corps.

  The rasp of steel seemed to shock the vessel’s ungainly master.

  He said in a conciliatory tone, “She’s a damned thief, that’s what. No better than a common whore! I must have order and discipline in my ship! If I had my way—”

  He broke off as Keen said gently, “Cut her down. Cover her with something.”

  A seaman called, “She’m fainted, sir!”

  Keen made himself cross to the grating. He saw the way her slight figure was dragging on her bound wrists, the blood running down her spine. Her breasts were pressed into the grating, and he could see where her heart pumped against the scrubbed wood.

  She had fainted, but the pain would be waiting for her.

  Hogg had appeared on deck and Keen heard him sheathe his cutlass. He must have thought the worst to quit his gig and come aboard without an order. A riot, a mutiny, Hogg was ready to save his captain. Like Allday had done for Bolitho.

  Hogg strode over and cut the bonds and caught her as she fell, the last of her blood-spattered clothing gathered up in his arms as he hid her body from the silent onlookers. The ship’s master said thickly, “I have a surgeon.”

  Keen eyed him. “I can well imagine.” It must have been the way he looked rather than what he said, because the master fell back as if he had seen his own danger in Keen’s eyes.

  “Take her to the gig, Hogg, and return to the ship. You go with the boat, Mr Stayt. I have work to do here.” He saw the barest hint of resentment in the lieutenant’s dark eyes. He wanted to shoot, to kill the man with the whip. Anyone. Keen knew that look. Perhaps I have it also?

  “Now, Captain Latimer.” Keen was surprised he had remembered the man’s name, when moments earlier he had wanted to smash him to the deck. “I intend that you shall put your best hands to work on a jury rudder. I will supply more men when required, but you will waste no more time, do
you understand?”

  “The girl?” The earlier anger showed itself. “I’m responsible for every living soul aboard.”

  Keen eyed him coldly. “Then God help them. There are women in Captain Inch’s ship, wives of the Gibraltar garrison officers. They can take care of the girl for the present, after my surgeon has examined her.”

  The other man knew his authority was dwindling with each second.

  “It must be said, Captain, you’ve not heard the last o’ this.”

  Keen raised one hand and saw the man flinch. But he tapped his blue lapel and said, “Nor you, I can promise that.”

  Another boat ground alongside and he heard Argonaute’s carpenter and his selected crew climbing aboard.

  Keen turned away; he was needed aboard the flagship for a dozen things, but some last warning made him turn.

  “If you are thinking, Captain Latimer, that it is a long, long way to New South Wales, let me assure you that you will not even see Gibraltar if you abuse your authority again.”

  He climbed down into the cutter and waited to be pulled back to the ship.

  He was breathing hard and thought his hands must be shaking. He saw the cutter’s midshipman staring at him. He must have seen most of it.

  Keen said, “You are all eyes today, Mr Hext.”

  Hext, just thirteen years old, nodded and swallowed hard.

  “I—I’m sorry, sir. But, but—”

  “Go on, Mr Hext.”

  Hext flushed crimson, knowing that the oarsmen were watching as they pushed and pulled on their looms.

  “When I saw it, sir, I—I wanted to stand with you—”

  Keen smiled, moved by the boy’s sincerity. It was probably hero-worship and nothing deeper, but it did more to steady Keen’s mood than he could have believed possible.

  He had heard it said that Hext wrote many letters to his parents although there was little time to post any of them.

  He said, “Never be afraid to help the helpless, Mr Hext. Think on it.”

  The midshipman clung to the tiller bar and stared blindly at the towering masts and rigging of the flagship.

  He would write about it in his next letter.

  “Toss your oars!” he piped.

  It was a moment he would never lose.

  3 NO DEADLIER ENEMY

  BOLITHO was leaning on the sill of the great stern windows when Keen entered his cabin, his hat beneath one arm.

  Astern of Argonaute the other ships tilted over on the larboard tack, the courses and topsails braced round to hold the wind. Apart, and yet still with her escort, the Orontes was making better progress with her jury rudder, but the squadron’s speed was still severely reduced.

  The ship felt cold and damp. Bolitho thought of the Mediterranean and the warmth they would find there.

  It was a full day since the trouble aboard Orontes and Bolitho could imagine the speculation on the lower deck, wardroom too, about the girl in the sickbay.

  Keen looked at him and asked, “You wished to see me, Sir Richard?”

  It would not be lost on Keen that Ozzard and the others were absent. It was to be a private conversation.

  “Yes. A letter has been sent to me by Orontes’ master.”

  Keen nodded. “My cox’n collected it, sir.”

  “In it he protests at your behaviour, our behaviour since you are under my command, and threatens to take the matter to higher authority.”

  Keen said softly, “I am sorry. I did not mean to involve you—”

  Bolitho said, “I would have expected no other action from you, Val. I am not troubled by that oaf ’s threat. If I were to press home a claim from his employers for salvage Captain Latimer would be on the beach before he knew it. His sort are scum, they work for blood-money, like their counterparts in slavery.”

  Keen waited, half surprised that Bolitho had not taken him to task for interfering in the first place. He should have known.

  Bolitho asked, “Have you spoken to this girl?”

  Keen shrugged. “Well, no, sir. I thought it best to leave her with the surgeon until she recovers. You should have seen the whip, the size of the man who struck her—”

  Bolitho was thinking aloud. “She will have to be cared for by another woman. I did consider Inch’s ship after your suggestion, but I’m not sure. Officers’ wives and a girl sentenced to transportation, though for what crime we cannot yet know. I will ask Latimer for details of her warrant.”

  Keen said, “It is good of you to take the trouble, sir. If I had only known—”

  Bolitho smiled gravely. “You would still have acted as you did.”

  Feet thudded overhead and blocks squealed as the officer-of-the-watch yelled for the braces to be manned.

  In a crowded King’s ship a solitary woman could be seen as many things, not least bad luck. Landsmen might scoff at such beliefs. If they went to sea they would soon know differently.

  “See the girl yourself, Val. Then tell me what you think. At Gibraltar we can shift her to the Philomela. From what you say, Latimer would certainly take his revenge otherwise.”

  Keen made to withdraw. He had meant to visit the girl and speak with the surgeon further about her. No matter what she had done in her young life, she did not deserve the agony and humiliation of a flogging.

  Bolitho waited for the door to close and then sat down again beneath the stern windows.

  Time and time again he kept thinking of Falmouth, of the sheer happiness of his home-coming, holding his new and only child Elizabeth in his arms, so awkwardly that Belinda had laughed at him.

  Bolitho had always understood how difficult it must be for any woman to cross the threshold of the Bolitho home. Too many shadows and memories, so much expected of a newcomer. And in Belinda’s case she had been replacing Cheney, or so it would seem to her.

  It had hit Bolitho hardest when he had discovered that Cheney’s portrait, the companion to the one she had had done of him, had been removed from the room where the two pictures once hung together. She with the headland behind her, her eyes like the sea, and he in his white-lapelled coat, as the captain she had loved so much. His portrait now hung with the others, alongside that of his father, Captain James.

  He had said nothing; he had not wanted to hurt her, but it still disturbed him. Like a betrayal.

  He kept telling himself that Belinda only wanted to help him, to make others appreciate his worth to the country.

  But Falmouth was his home, not London. He could almost hear the words so harsh in that quiet room.

  He sighed and turned his thoughts to Allday. He had probably felt the new atmosphere at Falmouth. It was impossible to guess what he made of it. Or maybe Allday had been so concerned with the discovery of his son that he had had no time for speculation.

  He pictured the two of them as they had stood here in the cabin. Allday, powerful, proud in his blue jacket with the prized gilt buttons, head cocked to listen and watch as Bolitho spoke with the young sailor, John Bankart.

  Bolitho could remember when Allday had been brought aboard his frigate Phalarope, a victim of the press-gang. It was twenty years ago although it did not seem possible. Ferguson, Bolitho’s steward now at Falmouth, had been dragged aboard with him. No wonder they had remained so close.

  Allday had been very like this young sailor. Clear-eyed, honestlooking, with a sort of defiance just below the surface. He had met with a recruiting party and signed on with little hesitation when he was around eighteen. He disliked farm life, and knew that as a volunteer he would get better treatment than pressed men in a King’s ship.

  His mother had never married. Allday had hinted uncomfortably that the farmer had often taken her to his bed, under the threat that otherwise he would get rid of her and her bastard son.

  It had touched a nerve for Bolitho. The memory of Adam’s arrival on board his ship after walking all the way from Penzance when his mother had died. It was too similar not to move him.

  Bankart had already proved himself a
good seaman and could reef, splice and steer, equal to many his senior in age and service. As second coxswain he would have little contact with his admiral. His duties would be confined to maintaining the readiness and appearance of the barge, going on errands to ships and the shore, and helping Allday in any way that he could. It seemed a satisfactory solution for the present.

  He got up and walked into his sleeping compartment, then, after a slight hesitation, he opened a drawer and took out the beautiful oval miniature. The artist had caught her expression perfectly. Bolitho replaced it under his shirts.

  What was the matter with him?

  He was happy. He had a lovely wife ten years his junior, and now a daughter. And yet—

  He turned away and re-entered the day cabin.

  When they joined the fleet things would be different. Action, danger, and the rewards of victory.

  He stared at his reflection in the salt-encrusted windows and smiled wryly.

  Sir Richard, yet at the actual moment the King had seemingly forgotten his name.

  Bolitho tried to gather his thoughts for the months ahead, how Lapish would react the first time the squadron’s only frigate was called to arms, but it eluded him.

  He thought instead of the portrait which had gone from the room which looked towards the sea, and wished suddenly he had brought it with him.

  Far beneath Bolitho’s spacious quarters and the view astern from its gilded gallery, Argonaute’s sickbay seemed airless. For the orlop deck, below the level of the waterline, was completely sealed, a place of leaping shadows from the swaying, spiralling lanterns where the massive deckhead beams were so low a man could not stand upright. From the day the ship had been built, the orlop had not, and would never see the light of day.

  Tiny hutchlike cabins lined part of the deck where warrant officers clung to their privacy with barely room to move. Nearby was the midshipmen’s berth where the “young gentlemen” lived their disordered lives and were expected to study for promotion by the light of a glim, an oiled wick in a shell or an old tin.