In Gallant Company

by Alexander Kent

  And aft, his face like stone, Pears watched all of it, giving his orders, not even flinching as splinters whipped past him to bring down more of the crouching gun crews.

  Midshipman Huss appeared on deck, his eyes white with fear. He saw Bolitho and shouted frantically, ‘Mr Dalyell’s fallen, sir! I – I can’t find . . .’ He spun round, his face gaping with astonishment and freezing there as he pitched forward at Bolitho’s feet.

  Bolitho shouted, ‘Get below, James! Take command of the lower gundeck!’

  But Quinn was staring transfixed at the midshipman. Blood was pouring from a great hole in his back, but one hand still moved, as if it and nothing else was holding on to life.

  A seaman turned the boy over and rasped, ‘Done for, sir.’

  ‘Did you hear?’ Bolitho gripped Quinn’s arm, Huss and all else forgotten. ‘Get below!’

  Quinn half turned, his eyes widening as more cries and screams came up from the other gundeck.

  He stammered, ‘Can’t. Can’t . . . do . . . it.’

  His head fell forward, and Bolitho saw tears running down his face, cutting pale furrows through the grime of gunsmoke.

  An unfamiliar voice snapped, ‘I’ll go.’ It was Ackerman, the immaculate flag lieutenant. ‘I can manage.’ He stared at Quinn as if he could not believe what he saw. ‘The admiral sent me.’

  Bolitho peered aft, shocked by Quinn’s collapse, stunned by the horror and bloody shambles all around him.

  Through the drifting smoke and dangling creeper of severed rigging their eyes met. Then Coutts gave a slight wave and what could have been a shrug.

  The deck shivered, and Bolitho knew that the broken mast had been hacked free.

  Trojan was turning to windward, laying her enemy in the sights again, seemingly unreachable and beyond hurt.

  ‘Fire!’

  The men sprang back, groping for their rammers and spikes, cursing and cheering like mad things from bedlam.

  Quinn stood as before, oblivious to the hiss of iron overhead, to the crawling wounded, to the danger of his position as the enemy’s mizzen and then mainmast towered high above the nettings.

  Fifty yards, certainly no more, Bolitho thought wildly. Both ships were firing blindly through the churning smoke which was trapped between them as if to cushion the hammer blows.

  A seaman ran from his gun, crazed by the din and slaughter, trying to reach a hatchway. To go deeper and deeper until he found the keel, like a terrified animal going to ground. A marine sentry raised his musket as if to club him down, but let it fall, as if he too was past reason and hope.

  Couzens was tugging Bolitho’s sleeve, his round face screwed up as if to shut out the awful sights.

  ‘Yes?’ Bolitho had no idea how long he had been there. ‘What is it?’

  The midshipman tore his eyes from Huss’s corpse. ‘The captain says that the enemy intends to board us!’ He stared at Quinn. ‘You are to take charge forrard.’ He showed his old stubbornness. ‘I will assist.’

  Bolitho gripped his shoulder. Through the thin blue coat the boy’s body was hot, as if burning with fever.

  ‘Go and get some men from below.’ As the boy made to run he called, ‘Walk, Mr Couzens. Show the people how calm you are.’ He forced a grin. ‘No matter how you may feel.’

  He turned back to the guns, astounded he could speak like that when at any second he would be dead. Worse, he might be lying pinned on the surgeon’s table, waiting for the first touch of his knife.

  He watched the set of the enemy’s yards, the way the angle was more acute as both ships idled closer together. The guns showed no sign of lessening, even though they were firing at point-blank range, some hurling blazing wads through the smoke which were almost as much danger as the balls.

  There were new sounds now. The distant crack of muskets, the thuds of shots hitting deck and gangway, or ripping harmlessly into the packed hammock nettings.

  From the maintop he heard the bark of a swivel and saw a cluster of marksmen drop from the enemy’s mizzen-top, swept aside like dead fruit by a hail of canister.

  Individual faces stood out on the Argonaute’s decks, and he saw a petty officer pointing him out to another sharpshooter on the gangway. But he was felled by one of D’Esterre’s marines even as he raised his musket to shoot.

  He heard men scrambling up from the lower gundeck, the rasp of steel as they seized their cutlasses. Balleine, the boatswain’s mate, stood by the mainmast rack, issuing the boarding pikes to anyone who came near him.

  ‘We will touch bow to bow.’ Bolitho had spoken aloud without knowing it. ‘Not much time.’ He drew his curved hanger and waved it over his head. ‘Clear the larboard battery! Come with me!’

  A single ball crashed through an open port and beheaded a seaman even as he ran to obey. For a few moments the headless corpse stood stock-still, as if undecided what to do. Then it fell, and was forgotten as swearing and cheering the seamen dashed towards the forecastle, nothing in their minds but the towering bank of pockmarked sails alongside, the crimson stab of musket-fire.

  Bolitho stared, watching the other ship’s great bowsprit and jib boom poking through the smoke, thrusting above the forecastle and beakhead as if nothing could stop it. There were men already there, firing down at Trojan’s deck, brandishing their weapons, while beneath them their fierce-eyed figurehead watched the scene with incredible menace.

  Then with a violent shudder both hulls ground together. Hacking and stabbing, Trojan’s men swarmed to repel boarders, and from aft D’Esterre’s men kept up a withering fire on the enemy’s quarterdeck and poop.

  Bolitho jumped over a fallen seaman and yelled, ‘Here they come!’

  A French seaman tried to scramble on to the cathead, but a blow with a belaying pin knocked him aside, and a lunge from a pike sent him down between the hulls.

  Bolitho found himself face to face with a young lieutenant. His sword-arm came up, the two blades circled warily and with care, despite the surging press of fighting figures all around.

  The French officer lunged, his eyes widening with fear as Bolitho side-stepped and knocked his arm aside with his hanger, seeing the sleeve open up, the blood spurting out like paint.

  Bolitho hesitated and then hacked him across the collar-bone, seeing him die before he hit the water alongside.

  More men were hurrying to his aid, but when he twisted his head he saw Quinn standing by his guns as before, as if he would never move again.

  Smoke swirled and then enveloped the gasping and struggling men, and Bolitho realized that the wind was strengthening, pushing the ships along in a terrible embrace.

  Another figure blocked his path, and again the clang of steel dominated everything else.

  He watched the man’s face, detached, without feeling, meeting each thrust, testing his strength, expecting an agonizing blade through his stomach if he lost his balance.

  There were others beside him. Raye of the marines, Joby Scales, the carpenter, wielding a great hammer, Varlo, the seaman who had been crossed in love, Dunwoody, the miller’s son, and of course Stockdale, whose cutlass was taking a terrible toll.

  Something struck him on the head and he felt blood running down his neck. But the pain only helped to tighten his guard, to make him examine his enemy’s moves like an onlooker.

  A dying seaman fell whimpering against the other man, making him dart a quick glance to his right. Just a second, no more than a flash of his eyes in the misty sunlight. It was enough, and Bolitho leapt over the corpse, his hanger still red as he rallied his men around the forecastle. He could not even remember driving the blade into flesh and bone.

  Somebody slipped in a pool of blood and crashed into his spine. He fell sprawling, only retaining his hanger because of the lanyard around his wrist.

  As he struggled to rise he saw with amazement that there was a glint of water below him, and as he stared down he could see it was widening. The ships were drifting apart.

  The French boarders had
realized it too, and while some tried to climb back on to the overlapping bowsprit, others made to jump, only to fall headlong into the sea to join the bobbing litter of corpses and frantic swimmers.

  A few threw up their hands in surrender, but when a marine was shot dead by an enemy marksman, they too were driven bodily over the side.

  Bolitho felt the strength ebbing out of him, and he had to hold on to the bulwark for support. A few guns were still firing haphazardly through the smoke, but it was over. The Argonaute’s sails were coming about, and very slowly she began to stand away, her stern turning towards Trojan’s poop like the hinges of a gate.

  Bolitho realized that he was on his back, looking at the sky, which seemed unnaturally clear and blue. So clean, too. Far away. His thoughts were drifting like the smoke and the two badly mauled ships.

  A shadow loomed over him and he realized that Stockdale was kneeling beside him, his battered face lined with anxiety.

  He tried to tell him he was all right. That he was resting.

  A voice shouted, ‘Take Mr Bolitho to the orlop at once!’

  Then he did try to protest, but the effort was too much and with it came the darkness.

  Bolitho opened his eyes and blinked rapidly to clear his vision. As the pain returned to his head he realized he was down on the orlop deck, a place of semi-darkness at the best of times. Now, with deckhead lanterns swinging to the ship’s heavy motion, and others being carried this way and that, it was like looking at hell.

  He was propped against Trojan’s great timbers, and through his shirt he could feel the hull working through a deep swell. As his eyes grew used to the gloom he saw that the whole area from the sickbay to the hanging magazine was filled with men. Some lay quite still and were probably dead, others rocked back and forth, crouching like terrified animals as they nursed their private pain.

  In the centre of the deck, directly below the largest number of lanterns, Thorndike and his assistants worked in grim silence on an unconscious seaman, while one of the surgeon’s loblolly boys dashed away with a bucket from which protruded an amputated arm.

  Bolitho reached up and felt his head. It was crusted in blood, and there was a lump like an egg. He felt the relief welling from his taut stomach muscles like a flood, stinging the back of his eyes so that he could feel tears running down his face. As another figure was carried to the table and stripped of his blackened clothing, Bolitho felt ashamed. He had been terrified of what would happen, but compared with the man who was whimpering and pleading with the surgeon he was unhurt.

  ‘Please, sir!’ The man was sobbing uncontrollably, so that even some of the other wounded forgot their pain and watched.

  Thorndike turned from a locker, wiping his mouth. He looked like a stranger, and his hands, like his long apron, were red with blood.

  ‘I am sorry.’

  Thorndike nodded to his assistant, and Bolitho saw the injured man’s shattered leg for the first time and realized it was one of his own gun crews who had been pinned under a cannon.

  He was still pleading, ‘Not me leg, sir!’

  A bottle was thrust to his lips, and as he let his head fall back, choking and gasping on neat rum, a leather strap was put between his teeth.

  Bolitho saw the glitter of the knife and turned his face away. It was wrong for a man to suffer like this, to scream and choke on his own vomit while his stricken messmates watched in silence.

  Thorndike snapped, ‘Too late. Take him on deck.’ He reached out for his bottle again. ‘Next!’

  A seaman was kneeling beside Bolitho while some wood splinters were plucked from his back.

  It was the masthead look-out, Buller.

  He winced and then said, ‘Reckon I’m a lucky one today, zur. That was all he said, but it spoke volumes.

  ‘You all right, sir?’ It was Midshipman Couzens. ‘I was sent by the first lieutenant.’ He flinched as someone started to scream. ‘Oh God, sir!’

  Bolitho reached out. ‘Help me up. Must get out of here.’ He staggered to his feet and clung to the boy’s shoulder like a drunken sailor. ‘I’ll not forget this, ever.’

  Stockdale strode to meet them, ducking beneath the deckhead beams, his face creased with worry.

  ‘Let me take him!’

  The journey to the upper deck was in itself another part of the nightmare. The lower gundeck was still wreathed in trapped smoke, the red-painted sides only hiding some of the battle’s agony.

  He saw Lieutenant Dalyell with his two remaining midshipmen, Lunn and Burslem, discussing with the gun captains what had to be done.

  Dalyell saw Bolitho and hurried over, his open face filled with obvious pleasure.

  ‘Thank God, Dick! I had heard you were done for!’

  Bolitho tried to smile, but the pain in his skull stopped it.

  ‘I heard much the same about you!’

  ‘Aye. A gun exploded. I was stunned by the blast. But for the men nearby, I would be dead.’ He shook his head. ‘Poor Huss. He was a brave lad.’

  Bolitho nodded slowly. They had begun with nine midshipmen. One promoted, one taken prisoner, and now one killed. The midshipman’s berth would be a sad place after this.

  Dalyell looked away. ‘So much for the admiral’s strategy. A very high price for what we have done.’

  Bolitho continued with his two helpers to the upper gundeck, and stood for several moments sucking in the air and looking up at the clear sky above the severed topgallant mast.

  Men were being carried below, and Bolitho wondered how Thorndike could go on. Cutting, sawing and stitching. He shuddered violently. Others were being dragged beneath the gangways, limp and without identity, to await the sailmaker and his mates, who would sew them up in their hammocks for the last journey. How far had Bunce said it was? One thousand five hundred fathoms hereabouts. A long, dark passage. Perhaps there was peace there.

  He shook himself and winced at the stabbing pain. He was getting hazy again. It had to stop.

  Cairns said, ‘Good to see you, Dick.’ He looked tired and drained. ‘I could do with some help,’ he hesitated, ‘if you feel up to it?’

  Bolitho nodded, moved that this man who carried so much had found time to ask about him and how he was faring on the orlop.

  ‘It will be good for me.’

  He made himself look along the torn and splintered deck where he had been such a short while ago. Upended guns, great coils of fallen cordage and ripped canvas. Men picking their way amongst it like survivors from a shipwreck. How could any man have lived through it? To see such chaos made it seem impossible.

  He asked, ‘How is James?’

  Cairns’ eyes were bleak. ‘The fourth lieutenant is alive, I believe.’ He patted Bolitho’s arm. ‘I must be off. You remain here and assist the boatswain.’

  Bolitho crossed to the first division of eighteen-pounders, where he had been for most of the battle. He could see the Argonaute, stern on and a good three miles downwind. Even if they could complete some temporary repairs in time, they would not catch the Frenchman now.

  Stockdale spoke for both of them. ‘Anyways, we beat ’em off. Short-handed though we was, sir, we gave as good as we got.’

  Couzens said huskily, ‘But the brig got away.’

  The sailing master towered above the quarterdeck rail and boomed, ‘Come now, Mr Bolitho, this will not do! I have a ship to steer, a course to lay! To do that I need sails and more halliards than I can see at present!’ His black brows descended over his deepset eyes and he added, ‘You did well today. I saw.’ He nodded firmly, as if he had said far too much.

  For the rest of the day the ship’s company went about the work of putting Trojan to rights as best they could. The dead were buried and the wounded made as comfortable as possible. Samuel Pinhorn, the sailmaker, had kept plenty of spare canvas on deck, knowing that more would die before reaching port.

  It was amazing that men could work after what they had been through. Perhaps it was work which saved them, for no ship c
an sail without care and constant attention.

  A jury-mast was hoisted to replace the topgallant, and as the seamen bustled far above the deck the cordage dangled down on either side like weed.

  Hammers and saws, tar and paint, needles and twine.

  The only thing which happened to make them stop, to stare abeam and remember, was the sudden appearance of the schooner from the anchorage at Isla San Bernardo. Spite had been abandoned as a hopeless wreck, then set alight to make sure no pirate or privateer would lay hands on her.

  In a short and savage boat action, Cunningham attacked and took the schooner. The one reward of the whole operation.

  But Bolitho was certain of one thing. The prize, no matter what secrets she disclosed, would not remove the ache from Cunningham’s heart as he had ordered his men to abandon his own command.

  At sunset, Cairns ordered a halt. A double ration of spirits was issued to all hands, and after shortening sail for the night Trojan was content to reflect and lick her wounds.

  Bolitho received a summons to the great cabin without curiosity. Like most of the company, he was drained, and too shocked to care.

  But as he made his way aft, ducking his h ad beneath the poop, he heard Pears’ voice, clearly audible through two sets of screen doors.

  ‘I know your father, otherwise I would have you stripped of your appointment at this very moment!’

  Bolitho hesitated outside the door, feeling the sentry’s eyes watching him.

  It was Quinn of course. Poor, broken Quinn. He could still see him, standing on the gundeck amongst the litter of dead and dying. Stricken, unable to think or move.

  The sentry looked at him. ‘Sir?’

  Bolitho nodded wearily, and the marine banged his musket on the deck and called, ‘Second lieutenant, sir!’

  The door opened and Teakle, the clerk, ushered Bolitho inside. He had a bandage on his wrist and looked very shaken. Bolitho wondered why he had never thought of a clerk being in as much danger as any of them.

  Quinn came from the cabin, his face as white as a sheet. He saw Bolitho and looked as if he were about to speak. Then with a gasp he blundered past him into the shadows.