Caring only for the immediate and the things he knew best.
He tugged out his watch and studied it. Tyacke should be standing into his proper position by now, Miranda too. It was still stark in his mind, the way Tyacke had changed places with his friend. But it was more than a gesture to save his friend, to cast himself away. It was the act of a leader; what he had seen others do without a thought for the cost of it.
It did not occur to Bolitho that it was exactly what he would have done in Tyacke’s position.
Jenour, who had been moving restlessly by the stern windows, straightened up and exclaimed, “Gunfire, Sir Richard!”
Bolitho gave a last lingering glance over the chart. “So it was, Stephen.” He looked around the cabin which had been his hiding-place on the passage from England. From Catherine. After Miranda it was like a ship of the line. He faced Poland as feet clattered along the passageway towards the screen door.
“While others dare, we must wait, Captain.” His own words depressed him, and he added shortly, “You may beat to quarters when convenient.” He touched his hip as if to find his sword. “Tell Allday—”
Allday padded across the cabin. “I’m here, Sir Richard.” He grinned as Bolitho raised his arm for him to fix the scabbard in place. “Like always!”
Another far-off shot brought Allday’s words into sharp focus and Bolitho said quietly, “I am depending on it.”
Lieutenant Tyacke reluctantly lowered his glass. It would not be sensible to be seen watching the anchored ships rather than the pursuing Miranda. But in those last brief seconds he had seen the two large ships, and they certainly had all the appearances of Dutch Indiamen. The most important factor was that they were not moving with the wind and current. So Bolitho’s first impression had been right. They were anchored fore-and-aft to provide two fixed batteries of guns against any attacker, which would be in trouble enough beating against the northerly wind.
Dwyer exclaimed admiringly, “God, look at ’er go, Mr Segrave!” He was staring across the quarter at Miranda’s bulging sails as she came up into the wind yet again, cutting away the distance still further so that Segrave imagined he could see Simcox aft by the tiller, his unruly hair waving in the wind.
Another puff of smoke from her bow-chaser and this time the ball slammed down just a boat’s length clear. Some of the spray pattered across the deck and Sperry cursed violently. “Damn you, Elias Archer. Lay another ball like that an’ I’ll not forgive ’ee.”
Segrave licked his dry lips. Like Dwyer, the boatswain seemed to have forgotten for the moment what they were attempting to do; that it was unlikely he would get a chance to argue with Miranda’s gunner ever again.
A lookout clinging in the foremast shrouds yelled, “Guardboat, sir!”
Tyacke was watching the sails and the masthead pendant. “Stand by to wear ship, Mr Sperry!” He wiped his face again, gauging the distance and the power of the wind. It had taken over an hour to get this far and penetrate the bay without any apparent opposition, although there must be many glasses trained on the one ship fleeing from another. It seemed likely that the Dutch commander might already know the Albacora, while Miranda’s streaming ensign left little else to doubt.
Tyacke raised his glass again and peered at the boat just reported by the lookout. A small cutter, under a scrap of sail but with oars already angled from her rowlocks for extra power, was rounding the stern of the nearest merchantman. Metal gleamed in the sunshine, and he saw the gilt buttons of an officer in the sternsheets. The guardboat would challenge their presence. Tyacke frowned. There was only one chance.
He called, “You! Private Buller!” The marine turned away from his place by the halliards as Tyacke added harshly, “You’re supposed to be a bit of a marksman, I’m told?”
Buller met his tone with equal insolence. “Best shot in the company, sir!”
Tyacke grinned. “Right. Fetch your piece and prepare to mark down the officer in charge of the guardboat. They’ve got a swivel mounted in the bows, so you must not miss!”
He turned away as Buller stooped down to where his weapons were rolled up inside his telltale scarlet coat.
“All ready, sir!”
Tyacke looked steadily at Segrave. “Ready aft?”
Segrave nodded jerkily, his face pale despite the sun’s glare, but strangely determined.
Tyacke walked to the taffrail and made certain that the long-boat was towing clumsily astern. Once again he stared hard at the land, then across the larboard quarter where the moored store-ships appeared to be falling away into the distance. Even the guardboat seemed in no hurry to close with them, especially with Miranda charging in full pursuit.
“Ready about! Helm a-lee! Let go and haul, lads!” Tyacke’s voice harried them until they were sweating and gasping to perform the work normally done by twice the number of hands.
Segrave’s shoes slipped, then gripped on the tarred deckseams while he threw his weight on the tiller, his eyes blind to everything but the great swinging sails and the shriek of blocks, while the schooner continued to tack into and then across the eye of the wind.
Dwyer gasped, “Come round, you bloody bitch!” But he was grinning as the sails banged out on the opposite tack to thrust the deck over even more steeply. Where there had been empty land suddenly lay the anchorage, the ships clear and real in the sunlight, even their Dutch ensigns visible against the land mass beyond.
Tyacke was holding on for support but even he gave a quick smile. This was no Miranda, but she had been used to fast handling in her rotten trade. He studied the guardboat: her sails were flapping and losing wind, and as he watched he saw the oars begin to move ahead and astern, pulling the hull around until the bowgun was pointing, not at them but at Miranda.
Sperry gasped, “Miranda ’ll blow ’er clean out of the water. Wot’s their game?”
The lookout shouted, “Deck there! Th’ frigate’s under way!”
Tyacke swung round, his heart sickened as he saw the frigate’s topsails shaking out and hardening to the wind while she glided away from her inshore anchorage.
Sperry said hoarsely, “We’ll not stand a chance, sir.” He rubbed his eyes as if he could not believe what he saw. “She’s got th’ wind, God damn her!”
Tyacke said, “Let her fall off a point, Mr Segrave.” He raised his glass and felt a sudden pain, as if the breath had been knocked out of him. “It’s not us. It’s Miranda she’s going for!” Tyacke waved his arms and yelled at the top of his voice. “Run for it, Ben! In the name of Christ—come about!” Their very helplessness, and the fact that nobody aboard Miranda could possibly hear him, made his voice crack with emotion.
“Get out of it, Ben!”
Segrave asked in a whisper, “What’s happening?”
Dwyer flung at him, “Th’ frigate’s runnin’ for open sea, that’s what!”
Segrave watched. Miranda’s length began to shorten as she saw her danger and started to come about.
Tyacke trained his glass on the frigate. She was smaller than Truculent, but showed all the grace of her class as she changed tack, and her huge fore and main courses filled to the wind, pushing her over until he could plainly see the French Tricolour rippling from her peak. Getting away from the bay before she might be caught defending her ally’s supply ships, and be held as much a prisoner as they were.
Sickened, Tyacke saw the frigate’s ports open, could almost imagine the orders to aim their broadside. It was over a mile’s range, but with a controlled assault it was impossible to miss.
He saw the smoke belch along the frigate’s low hull, and even before he could swing his glass across the glistening water he heard the staccato crash of gunfire. The sea around and beyond the little Miranda seemed to boil, while spray burst skyward, standing in the sunlight like waterspouts—as if they were suddenly frozen and might never fall.
For one more second Tyacke clung to a spark of hope. At that range Miranda had somehow managed to escape the enemy’s iron
.
He heard some of his men groan as, with the suddenness of a great seabird settling to fold its wings, both of Miranda’s masts collapsed, burying the deck under a mass of writhing canvas and splintered spars.
The frigate did not fire again. She was already setting her royals, her yards alive with tiny figures as she pointed her jib boom towards the south-east, the wind carrying her speedily to open sea and freedom.
Tyacke wanted to look away but could not even lower his telescope. No wonder the French frigate had not fired a second broadside. Miranda’s hull had been blasted open in several places, and he saw smoke escaping from the fallen canvas to add to the horror of the men pinned beneath.
Then just as suddenly the fire was quenched, as quickly as it had begun.
Tyacke lowered the glass and stared into the sun until he could see nothing. The schooner, his Miranda, had gone. In trying to help him she had herself become a victim.
He realised that Segrave and some of the others were watching him. When he spoke again he was stunned by the calmness of his own voice.
“Shorten sail, Mr Sperry. The chase is over.” He pointed at the guardboat, where some of the oarsmen were waving and cheering towards the shabby schooner. “See? They bid us welcome!”
Slowly, like drunken men, the hands turned to, to give the appearance of reducing sail.
Tyacke stood beside Segrave and rested his hand on the boy’s until the tiller brought the bowsprit in line with the space between the two anchored ships.
“Hold her steady.” He looked at those nearest him and added, “Then you take to the boat.” He studied their faces, but was seeing others in their place. Ben Simcox, who would have been leaving the ship to obtain his position as Master. Bob Jay, and old Archer the gunner. So many faces. Gone in a moment. Those who had not died in the broadside would not escape the sharks.
He said, “Be ready, lads.” He cocked his head as a trumpet echoed across the water. “The alarm.” He glanced at the sudden activity in the guardboat as the oar blades churned up the water, and the boat began to swing round towards them.
Tyacke snapped, “Stand by, Private Buller!” He knew the marine was crouching by the bulwark, his long musket resting beside him. Tyacke said, “Think of what you just saw, Buller, and of the flogging you deserve but will never receive!
“Ready, Buller!”
He watched the officer in the guardboat as he got to his feet, his arm beating out the time to his confused oarsmen.
“Now!”
The musket bucked against Buller’s powerful shoulder, and Tyacke saw the Dutch officer’s arm halt in midair before he pitched over the side and floundered away from the hull.
The boat turned, out of command, while some of the crew attempted to reach their officer with an oar.
Segrave heard the sharp bang of the guardboat’s swivel and Dwyer cry out before he slithered to the deck, blood pouring down his neck and side. Buller’s musket cracked again and another man vanished inside the boat, its oars now in complete disarray.
Segrave saw Sperry the boatswain down on his knees, his teeth bared like fangs as he clutched his bulging stomach. He must have taken some of the guardboat’s deadly canister shot even while he was helping to trim the sails.
Tyacke’s eyes narrowed as he stared hard at the two big ships which seemed to lie across the bows barely yards away. In fact they were over half a cable distant—but nothing could save them now.
Segrave tore his eyes away as Sperry rolled kicking on to his back, his blood filling the scuppers while he choked out his life.
The Dutch sailors were probably wondering what the Albacora was doing, the boy thought wildly. As if reading his thoughts Tyacke shouted, “Let’s not leave them in suspense, eh?” He took the tiller and drew a pistol from his belt. “Get below, Mr Segrave and take the slow-match to the fuses!”
Even Segrave could sense the fear which had so suddenly replaced the wildness, the urge to kill. Men Tyacke knew and trusted could soon change once the fuses were lit, and they were standing on their own funeral pyre. Segrave ran past the dying boatswain, realising that his eyes were fixed on his as he hurried by, as if they alone were clinging to life.
In his dazed mind he seemed to hear more trumpets, the faroff squeal of gun-trucks as some of the Indiamen’s officers understood at last what they were witnessing.
He was sobbing and could not stop himself as he stumbled down into the stinking hull, still shocked by Miranda’s unexpected end, and Tyacke’s terrible grief and anger.
The man who had been his only friend and whom he had tried to save was dead, and the little schooner, which had been Tyacke’s very life, his one escape, had been sent to the bottom.
Segrave fell back with a gasp as the first fuse hissed into life like a malevolent serpent. He had not even seen himself lighting it. He reached the second one and stared at the slow-match in his fingers. His grip was so firm it did not even quiver when he ignited the fuse.
As he scurried back towards the sunlight at the foot of the ladder, he thought of his mother. Perhaps the admiral would be satisfied now. But neither bitterness nor tears would come, and when he reached the tiller he saw Tyacke exactly as he had left him, propped against the tiller as if he were part of the ship.
Tyacke nodded. “Look at ’em now!”
The Indiamen’s decks were swarming with sailors. Some were clambering aloft to the yards, others were in the bows, probably attempting to cut their cables.
There was a dull thud below their feet, and seconds later black greasy smoke surged up through the vents, followed by the first vicious tongues of flame.
Tyacke said, “Heave the boat alongside, handsomely now. I’ll shoot the first man who tries a run for it!”
Segrave watched flames darting through the deck-seams, his eyes glazed as he felt the whole hull heating up like a furnace.
A man yelled, “Ready in the boat, sir!” It was the one named Swayne, the deserter.
Segrave said in a strangely controlled voice, “Don’t stay with her, sir.” He waited for Tyacke to turn his terrible scars towards him. “Please.” He tried to shut out the growing roar beneath the deck and added, “They all died back there, sir. Let it not be a waste, for their sakes!”
Surprisingly, Tyacke stood up and grasped his shoulders. “I’ll see you a lieutenant yet, my lad.”
They clambered down into the boat and cast off. They had barely pulled out of Albacora’s shadow when, with a savage hiss of flames, the deck appeared to burst open, fires starting everywhere, as if lit by one man’s hand.
Tyacke rested his arm on the tiller bar. “Pull, lads. If we reach the headland, we may be able to get ashore and hide until we know what’s happening.”
One of the oarsmen exclaimed, “She’s struck, by Jesus!” His own eyes and face were shining in the reflected glare as the schooner, her rigging and sails already blowing away in ashes, crashed alongside the first Indiaman.
Tyacke swung round as the flames leapt up the moored ship’s tarred shrouds and darted out along the yards. Some of the men who had been working feverishly to loose the topsails found themselves trapped by the mounting fires. Tyacke watched without expression as their tiny figures fell to the decks below, rather than face that slower, more horrific death. The second Indiaman had managed to cut her stern moorings but she had freed her cable too late. Fires were already blazing on her forecastle and flowing along her hammock nettings like spurting red liquid.
Nobody spoke in the boat, so that the sounds of creaking oars and the men’s rasping breathing seemed to come from somewhere else.
So short a while ago, they had all expected to be dead. Now Fate had decided otherwise.
“Watch out for any place to beach when we get closer.”
Buller the Royal Marine paused, ramming home a ball into his musket, and swore with harsh disbelief. “You won’t need no beach, sir!”
Tyacke stared until his mind throbbed and his eyes were too blind to see; all tha
t remained was the memory. Miranda’s sails folding like broken wings.
He gripped Segrave’s wrist and said, “Truculent! She’s coming for us!”
The oars seemed to bend as with sudden hope they threw themselves on the looms. The boat headed away towards the frigate’s silhouette while she rounded the point, as they themselves had done just a few hours earlier.
Segrave turned to look astern, but there was only a towering wall of black smoke which appeared to be pursuing them, its heart still writhing with flames. He glanced at Tyacke. He knew the lieutenant had intended to stay at the helm and die. The pistol had been ready to prevent anyone dragging him to the boat by force; and for no other reason.
Then Segrave looked away and watched the frigate standing-off to receive them. His pleas had somehow given Tyacke the will to reach out for another chance. And for that, Segrave was suddenly grateful.
For if Tyacke had changed, so had he.
7 A CHANCE TO LIVE
BOLITHO walked to one of Themis’s open ports and rested his hand on the wooden muzzle of a quaker. In the afternoon sunlight it felt as hot as iron, as if it were a real gun which had just been fired.
The flagship seemed unusually quiet and motionless, and he could see Truculent anchored close by, making a perfect twin of her reflection on the calm water. At the cabin table, Yovell, his secretary, was writing busily, preparing more despatches which would in time reach all the senior officers of both squadrons, and others which might eventually end their journey on Sir Owen Godschale’s desk at the Admiralty. As the Themis swung very slightly to her cable, Bolitho saw part of the land, the unmoving haze above it, much of it dust. Occasionally he heard the distant bark of artillery and pictured the foot-soldiers pressing on towards Cape Town. The Admiralty seemed a million miles away from this place, he thought.
He saw Jenour dabbing his face and neck with a handkerchief while he leaned over Yovell’s plump shoulder to check something. He looked strained, as he had done since Miranda’s sudden and violent destruction. After picking up the crew of the fireship, Truculent had made off under full sail to seek out the French frigate, or at least to be in time to assist Captain Varian’s Zest when he confronted her. Placed as he was, Varian should have been in a perfect position to capture or attack any vessel which tried to escape the fireship’s terrible devastation.
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