Success to the Brave

by Alexander Kent

  A French petty officer, wounded in one arm, saw the figures burst through the smoke and opened his mouth to yell a warning.

  Hallowes hacked him across the face with his hanger and ran on towards the great trunk of the ship’s mainmast. It was huge, like a smooth pillar, and when Adam leaned on it to regain his breath he felt it trembling under all its weight of topmast, rigging and spars as if it were alive.

  Crocker bent down without hesitation and with a gunner’s mate made a quick lashing around the mast with bags of powder arranged at intervals like a necklace.

  Figures swayed through the haze and a pistol ball smacked into one of the British seamen like a metal fist. He dropped without making a sound.

  Crocker swivelled his good eye. “Slow-match, matey!”

  He pressed it to the short fuse and made to back away.

  Hallowes aimed his pistol and fired into the nearest group of shadows. “We’ll hold ’em off! The buggers’ll cut the fuse otherwise!”

  Adam bounded forward to touch blades with a French officer. He felt the man’s breath on his face as they reeled against one of the guns, the hatred giving way to fear as he pushed him clear with the hanger’s stirrup-hilt and then cut him down with a blow across the shoulder.

  Hallowes darted past him and hurled his empty pistol into a man’s face, and when he staggered hacked him down with two quick slashes across arm and neck.

  But more men were clambering down a ladder from the deck above, their legs pale against the trapped smoke and dark paint-work. One of Hallowes’ seamen stabbed through the ladder with a pike and sent one of them screaming on top of his companions, but a pistol shot killed him before he could recover his balance.

  Adam strained his eyes through the choking smoke. But he could see none of the others. Crocker had probably run aft before his charges exploded, and of Hallowes there was no sign.

  Two French seamen loomed around an abandoned gun. One raised a pistol but Adam knocked it upwards so that the ball cracked into a deckhead beam. The second man hurled himself the last few feet and smashed Adam on to his back. The lanyard around his wrist snapped and he heard his hanger fly clattering across the deck.

  The seaman was big and extremely powerful. He held Adam’s wrists, his tarred fingers like steel as he forced them out on to the planking, as if he were being crucified.

  Adam could feel his knee smashing up between his legs to find his groin and cripple him before he could struggle free.

  He tried again but it was hopeless, and knew that despite the battle which raged over both ships this man was enjoying the moment.

  Adam heard himself cry out in agony as the man’s knee jammed into his groin. He tried not to show his pain and despair, but lights flashed before his eyes as he hit him again.

  A small shadow rose above the man’s shoulders and then all the pain ceased as the French seaman rolled sideways on to the deck.

  Midshipman Evans stared at the man with disbelief. Then, as Adam tried to get to his feet, he lowered the hanger with which he had hit his attacker and said urgently, “This way, sir! I’ve found a place—”

  The rest of his words were drowned by one terrible bang.

  Adam got to his knees, the pain searing through his loins like hot iron. He was blinded by smoke and flying dust and his ears had lost all sense of hearing.

  He grasped the boy’s shoulder and lurched through the choking fog, only partly aware of what was happening.

  He felt Evans pull at his torn coat and wanted to protest as he lost his balance and fell headlong between two of the guns. Through his dazed and confused thoughts he knew he could see sunlight where there should be none.

  Then as Evans crouched down beside him he saw a great jagged spar which had crashed through the deck above and then the planking within a yard of where he had been standing.

  It was made worse by the complete silence. He saw Hallowes staggering through the dust and pausing to stare up at the seemingly endless length of mast and broken shrouds which poked through the hole like a battering-ram.

  Hallowes saw him and yelled something, his face set in a crazy grin as he waved his blade at Crocker’s handiwork.

  Adam dragged himself to his feet and leaned on the midshipman’s shoulder. His hearing was returning and he realized that the din, if possible, was worse than before.

  Hallowes shouted, “That’ll give them something to ponder about!”

  Now that he had completely given up the idea of staying alive he seemed beyond fear.

  Evans thrust the fifth lieutenant’s hanger into Adam’s hand and they stared at each other like confused strangers.

  Like his hearing, his memory came back with brutal urgency.

  He heard himself say sharply, “Come on then, let’s be about it!”

  Even that reminded him of his uncle so that he knew instantly what he must do.

  Tyrrell yelled, “Can’t hold ’em back any longer!”

  He brought his belaying-pin down on the head of a man trying to wriggle over the torn hammock-nettings and struck out at another with his cutlass.

  Bolitho did not waste his breath to reply. His lungs were on fire and his sword-arm felt like lead as he drove off another boarder and saw him fall on to the mizzen-chains.

  It was hopeless. Had been from the beginning. The whole of the upper gun-deck seemed full of the enemy, while Achates’ men rallied again on poop and quarterdeck, their eyes blazing, their chests heaving from their efforts.

  He saw Allday raise his cutlass as a French seaman clambered up through the quarterdeck rail, the terror on the man’s face giving way to triumph as he realized that for some reason the English coxswain was unable to move.

  Bolitho jumped over a wounded marine and drove his blade blindly beneath the rail. He felt the point jar into the man’s shoulder-blade and then slide easily into his body before he fell screaming out of sight.

  Bolitho thrust his arm around Allday and dragged him away from the rail.

  “Easy, man!” He waited for Midshipman Ferrier to run to his aid as he added, “You’ve done enough!”

  Allday twisted his head to stare at him, his eyes blurred and wretched.

  “It’s my right to . . .”

  A ball ripped through Bolitho’s coat and he vaguely saw Langtry, the master-at-arms, cut down the marksman with a boarding axe.

  They were all dying. And for what?

  A new explosion made both ships roll and groan together, and for an instant Bolitho imagined that a magazine had caught fire, that both ships would be joined in one terrible pyre.

  Swords and cutlasses hovered in midair, marines paused in their desperate efforts to reload their muskets, as like a towering forest giant the Frenchman’s mainmast began to topple. It seemed to take an eternity, so that even some of the wounded tried to prop themselves up to watch, or called to their friends to discover what was happening.

  Bolitho let his arm fall to his side, the pain tearing at his muscles as if they were exposed.

  Knocker yelled hoarsely, “There it goes, by Jesus!”

  Slowly, and then with greater haste, the mast began to drop. Topmast and topgallant, spars and loosely brailed canvas tore apart as shrouds and stays snapped like threads, unable to hold the tremendous weight or restrain its fall. The fighting-top, complete with swivel-guns, barricades and men, split in halves, hurling its occupants to the deck below, or carrying them down with the topmast as it crashed through timber, rigging and guns into the hull beneath.

  Even in Achates Bolitho could feel the weight and power of the fallen mast, the way the deck beneath his feet tilted steeply to the new pressure.

  A trumpet blared through the rising smoke and some of the boarders retreated into a larger group near the forecastle. It was the usual sailor’s instinct to save his own ship no matter what.

  Bolitho cleared his raw throat and shouted, “To me, Achates!”

  It was their only chance, if a precious frail one.

  But from forward cam
e a sharp command and then a sparkling line of musket-fire. Bolitho stared, unable to believe it. It was like the moment at San Felipe when Dewar had chosen his moment on the track to the fortress. The neat lines of scarlet, the muskets ready and waiting. But now Dewar was dead, his face shot away, his body trampled on a dozen times as they had fought back and forth across him. And the marines had not been waiting, gauging the moment. They had been in action since the first shots.

  And yet they were doing it. He could see Hawtayne’s hat above the smoke, hear his shrill voice as he shouted, “Rear rank, advance! Present! Fire!”

  The shots raked through the packed mass of French boarders.

  There would be no time to reload.

  Bolitho dashed down one of the quarterdeck ladders, the pain of his wound forgotten as he ran through the litter of bodies and fallen rigging, his eyes fixed on the enemy.

  Hawtayne was calling, “Advance!” The bayonets glittered in the hazy light as the marines moved into the attack.

  Bolitho saw a young officer running to meet his challenge. He was about the same age as Adam, with similar dark good looks. The steel clanged against steel and Bolitho was almost blinded by the realization that his nephew was very likely dead.

  The young French officer lost his stance as Bolitho parried his blade away. Just for the merest split-second he saw the officer’s eyes widen with understanding or acceptance. Then he was down. Bolitho pulled the sword free and felt his men surge past him, their voices strengthened by the sudden change of roles.

  Lieutenant Scott waved his sword. “Boarders away!”

  Cheering, cursing, and sometimes dying, a tide of seamen and marines fought their way across to the other ship.

  Bolitho hacked another officer to one side but could barely raise his sword now. How long could they hold out?

  He was on the gangway, carried part of the way along by his men as they rushed aft to seize the poop.

  Small pictures flashed across Bolitho’s mind. Adam’s face when he had tried to tell him about the girl in Boston. Tyrrell’s old pride returning as he had stepped aboard the ship for passage to a country he had never seen. Little Evans, watching the burning Spanish ship, or following him like a small shadow. And Allday, trying to protect him when his own terrible wound was tearing him apart. Pulling him down like a fallen oak.

  Shouts and screams exploded across the broad quarterdeck and bodies were flung about in bloody bundles from a murderous blast of canister.

  Bolitho wiped the sweat from his eyes with his forearm and stared up at the poop.

  He must really be mad. But surely it was Adam and another lieutenant up there with some of Achates’ men? The smoking swivel, depressed on to the mass of defending seamen and their officers, had had the same effect as the sight of the marines charging from the smoke with their levelled bayonets.

  Lieutenant Scott forgot all his usual self-control and clapped Bolitho hard across the shoulder.

  “By God, it’s the flag-lieutenant, sir! The young devil’s blown the heart out of ’em!”

  He ran after his men but paused to look back at his vice-admiral. It was just a glance, but it spoke more than a thousand words.

  The enemy still outnumbered Achates’ men and at any moment a leader would emerge, one for them to follow, to renew the fight.

  Bolitho looked at his gasping, gashed and bruised seamen, the way they leaned on their cutlasses and pikes. They could not take another battle.

  Lieutenant Trevenen marched across the deck and touched his hat with the hilt of his sword.

  Achates’ junior lieutenant, who had been a hostage in Rivers’ fortress.

  Seconds ago he had been fighting with his men and working the guns in his division.

  Now, filthy but bright-eyed, he was a boy again, and his eyes shone with emotion as he reported, “They have hauled down their colours, sir.” He fell silent as the seamen and marines crowded closer to hear. Then he tried again, “Mr Knocker has sent a messenger across . . .” He looked down, the tears running unheeded on his grimy cheeks.

  Bolitho said quietly, “You’ve done well, Mr Trevenen. Please continue.”

  The lieutenant looked at him. “A ship has been sighted to the south’rd, sir. One of our seventy-fours!”

  Bolitho moved through his men, hearing them cheering and slapping each other. It was as if it was all somewhere else and he was a mere spectator.

  He found the French rear-admiral by the wheel. He had been slightly wounded in the arm and was supported by two of his officers.

  They stood and faced each other.

  Then Jobert said simply, “I should have known when I saw it was your ship.” He tried to shrug but the pain made him wince. He added, “You were to give me an island.” He struggled with his sword. “Now I must give you this.”

  Bolitho shook his head. “No, M’sieu. You’ve earned the right to it.”

  He turned and walked back towards the side, his ears ringing to the shouts and wild huzzas.

  Hands reached out to assist him across to the Achates’ torn and littered deck, and he saw Midshipman Ferrier and Rooke, the boatswain, watching him, grinning and waving their hats.

  If only they would stop.

  He glanced at the figures on the gun-deck, ones who would never cheer now. How sleep the brave? And he thought of the others on the orlop who were paying the price of his victory.

  He turned as he heard Allday’s painful, dragging steps and saw that he was carrying Jobert’s flag over his shoulder.

  Bolitho gripped his arm. “You old dog! Will you never do as I say?”

  Allday shook his head, his breath wheezing. But he managed to grin as he replied, “Doubt it, sir. Too long in th’ tooth now.”

  Bolitho walked blindly to the rail where Keen was sitting propped in a chipped and blood-stained chair while Tuson examined his wound.

  Keen said huskily, “We did it, sir. I’m told the ship which is heading this way is a seventy-four.” He tried to smile. “You’ll be able to shift your flag to her and be home long before us.”

  Bolitho heard the cheering again and again. Three to one. Yes, they had won, and all England would soon know about it.

  He said, “No, Val. My flag stays here. We’ll sail home together.” He smiled sadly. “With Old Katie.”

  EPILOGUE

  BOLITHO’S home-coming was more than he had dared to hope for during the long months he had been away. In other ways it was sad, as he knew it would be. The farewells at Plymouth were as moving as the welcome when the scarred and battered Achates had dropped her anchor, her prize, the Argonaute, given immediately into the hands of the dockyard.

  It must have been Old Katie’s finest hour, Bolitho thought, with her pumps going as they had every hour of the day since that terrible battle. Even her ill-matched jury-rig had somehow managed to look rakish with his flag fluttering at half its proper height. She had brought crowds to the Hoe which few could remember.

  Adam had watched Bolitho’s grave features as he had walked from beneath the splintered poop to say good-bye to those who had become so familiar to him since they had sailed from the Beaulieu River a year ago.

  Scott and Trevenen, Hawtayne and young Ferrier. And Tuson, the surgeon, who had removed a metal splinter from Keen’s side the size of a man’s thumb. And little Evans, who in his own way had become a man.

  Bolitho had been thinking of those he would not see again, who could not share in the home-coming.

  The captured seventy-four would be under the British ensign in a matter of months, a very valuable addition to the depleted fleet. But Achates had taken the battle badly. It was unlikely she would ever feel the blue waters of the Caribbean again, and would probably end her days as a hulk.

  It had been a slow and painful passage up the Channel, and they had sailed so near to the Cornish coast that Adam had shinned aloft to the mizzen crosstrees with a glass to see it for himself.

  When he had returned to the deck he had said simply, “I saw p
art of the house, Uncle.” It had seemed to bring to him then and there how near he had been to not seeing it again. “There are crowds on the headland, all the way to St Anthony.”

  So slow had been their progress in the warm spring airs that a carriage had been sent to Plymouth in time to meet him.

  He was thankful Belinda had not come herself. He had made her promise because of Allday, and if she had seen the ship, listing and blackened, she would have been deeply distressed.

  Keen had accompanied him in the barge for the last time. The crowds on the waterfront had cheered and thrown their hats in the air, and women had held up their babies to see Bolitho. The news of his victory had preceded him like a rainbow. He had noticed there were few young men in the crowds.

  Once again England was at war with the old enemy, and the press-gangs would be quick to snatch any suitable hands left over by the recruiting parties.

  He had also said good-bye to Tyrrell. That had been harder than he had expected. But Tyrrell’s dogged independence forced them apart.

  Tyrrell had grasped his hands in both of his own and had said, “I’ll be lookin’ around for a while, Dick. Just to discover if I like what I see.”

  Bolitho had persisted. “Come to Falmouth soon. Don’t forget us.”

  Tyrrell had slung his bag over his shoulder and had said, “I never forgot you, Dick. Nor will I. Ever.”

  That had been a week ago. Now, as Bolitho stood by a window and looked out across the flowers and shady trees, he could still scarcely believe it.

  Their first meeting had been one of joy and tears.

  Belinda had pressed her face into his coat and had whispered, “I made Ferguson take me to the headland. I saw you sail past. That poor little ship. I was so afraid, and yet so proud.” She had looked up at him, searching out the strain on his face. “There were people everywhere. They began to cheer. You couldn’t hear them of course, but they seemed to want you to know they were there.”