In Gallant Company

by Alexander Kent

  Released to the wind the canvas erupted and flapped in wild confusion, while spread along the swaying yards like monkeys the topmen fought to bring it under control until the right moment.

  Sparke called, ‘Man your braces! Mr Bolitho, take that man’s name!’

  ‘Aye, sir!’

  Bolitho smiled into the drizzle. It was always the same with Sparke. Take that man’s name. There was nobody in particular, but it gave the seamen the idea that Sparke had eyes everywhere.

  Again the hoarse voice from the bows, ‘Anchor’s aweigh, sir!’

  Released from the ground, her first anchor already hoisted and catted, Trojan side-stepped heavily across the wind, her sails spreading and thundering like a bombardment as the men hauled at the braces, their bodies straining back, angled down almost to the deck.

  Round and further still, the yards swinging to hold the wind, the sails freed one by one to harden like steel breastplates until the ship was thrusting her shoulder in foam, her lower gunports awash along the lee side.

  Bolitho ran from one section to the next, his hat knocked awry, his ears ringing with the squeal of blocks and the boom of canvas, and above all the groaning and vibrating chorus from every stay and shroud.

  When he paused for breath he saw the outline of Sandy Hook sliding abeam, some men waiting in a small yawl to wave as the great ship stood over them.

  He heard Cairns’ voice again. ‘Get the t’gan’sls on her!’

  Bolitho peered up the length of the mainmast with its great bending yards. He saw midshipmen in the tops, and seamen racing each other to set more canvas. When he looked aft again he saw Bunce with his hands thrust behind him, his face like carved rock as he watched over his ship. Then he nodded very slowly. That was as near to satisfaction as Bolitho had ever seen him display.

  He pictured the ship as she would look from the land, her fierce, glaring figurehead, the Trojan warrior with the redcrested helmet. Spray bursting up and over the beakhead and bowsprit, the massive black and buff hull glistening and reflecting the cruising whitecaps alongside, as if to wash herself clean from the land.

  Probyn’s voice sounded raw as he shouted at his men to secure the second anchor. He would need plenty to drink after this, Bolitho thought.

  He looked aft, past his own seamen as they slid down stays and vaulted from the gangways to muster again below the mast. Then he saw the captain watching him. Along the ship, over all the bustle and haste their eyes seemed to meet.

  Self-consciously, Bolitho reached up and straightened his hat, and he imagined he saw the captain give a small but definite nod.

  But the mood was soon broken, for Trojan rarely gave much time for personal fancies.

  ‘Man the braces there! Stand by to come about!’

  Sparke was shouting, ‘Mr Bolitho!’

  Bolitho touched his hat. ‘Aye, I know, sir. Take that man’s name!’

  By the time they had laid the ship on her chosen tack to both the captain’s and Bunce’s satisfaction the land was swallowed in mist and rain astern.

  2

  A Wild Plan

  LIEUTENANT RICHARD BOLITHO crossed to the weather side of the quarterdeck and gripped the hammock nettings to hold his balance. Towering above and ahead of him, Trojan’s great pyramids of sails were impressive, even to one accustomed to the sight. Especially after all the frustration and pain in the last four and a half days, he thought.

  The wind which had followed them with such promise from Sandy Hook had changed within hours, as if driven or inspired by the devil himself. Backing and veering without warning, with all hands required to reef or reset the sails throughout each watch. It had taken one complete, miserable day just to work round and clear of the dreaded Nantucket shoals, with sea boiling beneath the long bowsprit as if heated by some force from hell.

  Then after raising their progress to four and even five knots the wind would alter yet again, bellowing with savage triumph while the breathless seamen fought to reef the hard canvas, fisting and grappling while their pitching world high above the decks went mad about them.

  But this was different. Trojan was standing almost due north, her yards braced round as far as they would to take and hold the wind, and along her lee side the water was creaming past as evidence of real progress.

  Bolitho ran his eyes over the upper gundeck. Below the quarterdeck rail he could see the hands resting and chatting, as was the custom while awaiting to see what the cook had produced for the midday meal. By the greasy plume which fell downwind from the galley funnel, Bolitho guessed that it was another concoction of boiled beef hacked from salted casks, mixed with a soggy assortment of ship’s biscuit, oatmeal and scraps saved from yesterday. George Triphook, the senior cook, was hated by almost everyone but his toadies, but unlike some he enjoyed the hatred, and seemed to relish the groans and curses at his efforts.

  Bolitho felt suddenly ravenous, but knew the wardroom fare would be little better when he was relieved to snatch his share of it.

  He thought of his mother and the great grey house in Falmouth. He walked away from Couzens, his watchful midshipman, who rarely took his eyes off him. How terrible the blow had been. In the Navy you could risk death a dozen ways in any day. Disease, shipwreck or the cannon’s roar, the walls of Falmouth church were covered with memorial plaques. The names and deeds of sea-officers, sons of Falmouth who had left port never to return.

  But his mother. Surely not her. Always youthful and vivacious. Ready to stand-in and shoulder the responsibility of house and land when her husband, Captain James Bolitho, was away, which was often.

  Bolitho and his brother, Hugh, his two sisters, Felicity and Nancy, had all loved her in their own different and special ways. When he had returned home from the Destiny, still shocked and suffering from his wound, he had needed her more than ever. The house had been like a tomb. She was dead. It was impossible to accept even now that she was not back in Falmouth, watching the sea beyond Pendennis Castle, laughing in the manner which was infectious enough to drive all despair aside.

  A chill, they had said. Then a sudden fever. It had been over in a matter of weeks.

  He could picture his father at this very moment. Captain James, as he was locally known, was well respected as a magistrate since losing his arm and being removed from active duty. The house in winter, the lanes clogged with mud, the news always late, the countryside too worried by pressures of cold and wet, of lost animals and marauding foxes to heed much for this far-off war. But his father would care. Brooding as a ship-of-war anchored or weighed in Carrick Roads. Needing, pining for the life which had rejected him, and now completely alone.

  It must be a million times worse for him, Bolitho thought sadly.

  Cairns appeared on deck, and after scrutinizing the compass and glancing at the slate on which a master’s mate made his half-hourly calculations he crossed to join Bolitho.

  Bolitho touched his hat. ‘She holds steady, sir. Nor’ by east, full and bye.’

  Cairns nodded. He had very pale eyes which could look right through a man.

  ‘We may have to reef if the wind gets up any more. We’re taking all we can manage, I think.’

  He shaded his eyes before he looked to larboard, for although there was no sun the glare was intent and harsh. It was difficult to see an edge between sea and sky, the water was a desert of restless steel fragments. But the rollers were further apart now, cruising down in serried ranks to lift under Trojan’s fat quarter to tilt her further and burst occasionally over the weather gangway before rolling on again towards the opposite horizon.

  They had the sea to themselves, for after beating clear of Nantucket and pushing on towards the entrance of Massachusetts Bay they were well clear of both land and local shipping. Somewhere, some sixty miles across the weather side, lay Boston. There were quite a few aboard Trojan who could remember Boston as it had once been before the bitterness and resentment had flared into anger and blood.

  The Bay itself was avoided b
y all but the foolhardy. It was the home of some of the most able privateers, and Bolitho wondered, not for the first time, if there were any stalking the powerful two-decker at this moment.

  Cairns had a muffler around his throat, and asked, ‘What make you of the weather, Dick?’

  Bolitho watched the men streaming to the hatches on their way to the galley and their cramped messes.

  He had taken over the watch as Bunce had been keeping a stern eye on the ritual taking of noon sights, although it was more a routine than to serve any real purpose in this poor visibility. The midshipmen lined up with their sextants, the master’s mates watching their progress, or their lack of it.

  Bolitho replied calmly, ‘Fog.’

  Cairns stared at him. ‘Is this one of your Celtic fantasies, man?’

  Bolitho smiled. ‘The master said fog.’

  The first lieutenant sighed. ‘Then fog it will be. Though in this half gale I see no chance of it!’

  ‘Deck there!’

  They looked up, caught off guard after so much isolation.

  Bolitho saw the shortened figure of the mainmast look-out, a tiny shape against the low clouds. It made him dizzy just to watch.

  ‘Sail on th’ weather beam, sir!’

  The two lieutenants snatched telescopes and climbed into the shrouds. But there was nothing. Just the wavecrests, angrier and steeper in the searching lens, and the hard, relentless glare.

  ‘Shall I inform the captain, sir?’

  Bolitho watched Cairns’ face as he returned to the deck. He could almost see his mind working. A sail. What did it mean? Unlikely to be friendly. Even a lost and confused ship’s master would not fail to understand the dangers hereabouts.

  ‘Not yet.’ Cairns glanced meaningly towards the poop. ‘He’ll have heard the masthead anyway. He’ll not fuss until we’re ready.’

  Bolitho thought about it. Another view of Captain Pears which he had not considered. But it was true. He never did rush on deck like some captains, afraid for their ships, or impatient for answers to unanswerable questions.

  He looked at Cairns’ quiet face again. It was also true that Cairns inspired such trust.

  Bolitho asked, ‘Shall I go aloft and see for myself?’

  Cairns shook his head. ‘No. I will. The captain will doubtless want a full report.’

  Bolitho watched the first lieutenant hurrying up the shrouds, the telescope slung over his shoulders like a musket. Up and up, around the futtock shrouds and past the hooded swivel gun there to the topmast and further still towards the look-out who sat so calmly on the crosstrees, as if he was on a comfortable village bench.

  He dragged his eyes away from Cairns’ progress. It was something he could never get used to or conquer. His hatred of heights. Each time he had to go aloft, which was mercifully rare, he felt the same nausea, the same dread of falling.

  He saw a familiar figure on the gundeck below the quarterdeck rail and felt something like affection for the big, ungainly man in checkered shirt and flapping white trousers. One more link with the little Destiny. Stockdale, the muscular prize-fighter he had rescued from a barker outside an inn when he and a dispirited recruiting party had been trying to drum up volunteers for the ship.

  Stockdale had taken to the sea in a manner born. As strong as five men, he never abused his power, and was more gentle than many. The angry barker had been hitting Stockdale with a length of chain for losing in a fight with one of Bolitho’s men. The man in question must have cheated in some way, for Bolitho had never seen Stockdale beaten since.

  He spoke very little, and when he did it was with effort, as his vocal chords had been cruelly damaged in countless barefist fights up and down every fair and pitch in the land.

  Seeing him then, stripped to the waist, cut about the back by the barker’s chain, had been too much for Bolitho. When he had asked Stockdale to enlist he had said it almost without thinking of the consequences. Stockdale had merely nodded, picked up his things and had followed him to the ship.

  And whenever Bolitho needed aid, or was in trouble, Stockdale was always there. Like that last time, when Bolitho had seen the screaming savage rushing at him with a cutlass snatched from a dying seaman. Later he had heard all about it. How Stockdale had rallied the retreating seamen, had picked him up like a child and had carried him to safety.

  When Bolitho’s appointment to Trojan had arrived, he had imagined that would be an end to their strange relationship. But somehow, then as now, Stockdale had managed it.

  He had wheezed, ‘One day, you’ll be a cap’n, sir. Reckon you’ll need a coxswain.’

  Bolitho smiled down at him. Stockdale could do almost anything. Splice, reef and steer if need be. But he was a gun captain now, on one of Trojan’s upper battery of thirty eighteen-pounders. And naturally he just happened to be in Bolitho’s own division.

  ‘What d’ you think, Stockdale?’

  The man’s battered face split into a wide grin. ‘They be watching us, Mr Bolitho.’

  Bolitho saw the painful movements of his throat. The sea’s bite was making it hard for Stockdale.

  ‘You think so, eh?’

  ‘Aye.’ He sounded very confident. ‘They’ll know what we’re about, an’ where we’re heading. I wager there’ll be other craft hull down where we can’t see ’em.’

  Cairns’ feet hit the deck as he slid down a stay with the agility of a midshipman.

  He said, ‘Schooner by the cut of her. Can barely make her out, it’s so damn hazy.’ He shivered in a sudden gust. ‘Same tack as ourselves.’ He saw Bolitho smile at Stockdale, and asked, ‘May I share the joke?’

  ‘Stockdale said that the other sail is watching us, sir. Keeping well up to wind’rd.’

  Cairns opened his mouth as if to contradict and then said, ‘I fear he may be right. Instead of a show of strength, Trojan may be leading the pack down on to the very booty we are trying to protect.’ He rubbed his chin. ‘By God, that is a sour thought. I had expected an attack to be on the convoy’s rear, the usual straggler cut out before the escort has had time to intervene.’

  ‘All the same.’ He rubbed his chin harder. ‘They’ll not try to attack with Trojan’s broadsides so near.’

  Bolitho recalled Pears’ voice at the conference. The hint of doubt. His suspicion then had now become more real.

  Cairns glanced aft, past the two helmsmen who stood straddle-legged by the great double wheel, their eyes moving from sail to compass.

  ‘It’s not much to tell the captain, Dick. He has his orders. Trojan is no frigate. If we lost time in some fruitless manoeuvres we might never reach the convoy in time. You have seen the wind’s perverse manners hereabouts. It could happen tomorrow. Or now.’

  Bolitho said quietly, ‘Remember what the Sage said. Fog.’ He watched the word hitting Cairns like a pistol ball. ‘If we have to lie to, we’ll be no use to anyone.’

  Cairns studied him searchingly. ‘I should have seen that. These privateersmen know more about local conditions than any of us.’ He gave a wry smile. ‘Except the Sage.’

  Lieutenant Quinn came on deck and touched his hat.

  ‘I’m to relieve you, sir.’

  He looked from Bolitho to the straining masses of canvas. Bolitho would only go for a quick meal, especially as he wanted to know about Pears’ reactions. But to the sixth lieutenant, eighteen years old, it would seem a lifetime of awesome responsibility, for to all intents and purposes he would control Trojan’s destiny for as long as he trod the quarterdeck.

  Bolitho made to reassure him but checked himself. Quinn must learn to stand on his own. Any officer who depended on help whenever things got awkward would be useless in a real crisis.

  He followed Cairns to the companionway, while Quinn made a big display of checking the compass and the notes in the log.

  Cairns said softly, ‘He’ll be fine. Given time.’

  Bolitho sat at the wardroom table while Mackenzie and Logan endeavoured to present the meal as best they could
. Boiled meat and gruel. Ship’s biscuit with black treacle, and as much cheese as anyone could face. But there was a generous supply of red wine which had arrived in New York with the last convoy. From the look on Probyn’s face he had made very good use of it.

  He peered across at Bolitho and asked thickly, ‘What was all that din about a sail? Somebody getting a bit nervous, eh?’ He leaned forward to peer at the others. ‘God, the Navy’s changing!’

  Bunce sat at the head of the table and intoned deeply without looking up, ‘It is not His doing, Mr Probyn. He has no time for the Godless.’

  Sparke said unfeelingly, ‘This bloody food is swill. I shall get a new cook at the first chance I can. That rogue should be dancing on a halter instead of poisoning us.’

  The deck tilted steeply, and hands reached out to seize plates and glasses until the ship rolled upright again.

  Bunce took out a watch and looked at it.

  Bolitho asked quietly, ‘The fog, Mr Bunce. Will it come?’

  Thorndike, the surgeon, heard him and laughed. He made a braying sound.

  ‘Really, Erasmus! Fog, when she pitches about in this wind!’

  Bunce ignored him and replied, ‘Tomorrow. We will have to lie to. There is too great a depth to anchor.’ He shook his massive head. ‘Time lost. More knots to recover.’

  He had spoken enough and stood up from the table. As he passed Probyn’s chair he said in his deep voice, ‘We will have time to see who is nervous then, I’m thinking.’

  Probyn snapped his fingers for some wine and exclaimed angrily, ‘He is becoming mad in his old age!’ He tried to laugh, but nothing happened.

  Captain D’Esterre eyed him calmly. ‘At least he seems to have our Lord on his side. What do you have, exactly?’

  In the cabin above, Captain Pears sat at his large table, a napkin tucked into his neckcloth. He caught the gust of laughter from the wardroom and said to Cairns, ‘They seem happier at sea, eh?’

  Cairns nodded. ‘So it would appear, sir.’ He watched Pears’ bowed head and waited for his conclusions or ideas.

  Pears said, ‘Alone or in company the schooner is a menace to us. If only we had been given a brig or a sloop to chase off these wolves. As it is . . .’ He shrugged.