The Only Victor

by Alexander Kent

  With every minute the daylight revealed the awful evidence of a lost fight. Spars, hatch-covers, drifting boats, and further out, the long dark keel of a vessel which had capsized under the bombardment. As the darkness continued to retreat they sighted other ships. Some were partly dismasted, others outwardly undamaged. All flew the French Tricolour above their English flags, mocking patches of gaiety in a panorama of disaster.

  Of the second escort which Tyacke had described there was no sign at all. Under Herrick’s flag she would have gone down, too, rather than strike.

  Taverner’s voice was controlled again. “Deck there! They’ve discontinued their fire!”

  Keen raised his speaking-trumpet almost desperately. “Have they struck?”

  Taverner was watching from his private eyrie. All his years in ships under every kind of captain; but always learning, stowing it all away like rhino in a ditty-box.

  He called, “The big ship’s standin’ away and makin’ more sail, sir!”

  Bolitho gripped Keen’s arm. “They’ve sighted us, Val. They’re coming!”

  He saw his nephew, Midshipman Vincent, staring wildly over the nettings as far-off screams ebbed and flowed through the lengthening pall of dense smoke from one or more of the wrecks.

  Tojohns said between his teeth, “What’s that, in Hell’s name?”

  Keen looked at him and answered flatly, “Horses. Caught below decks when their ship was torn apart.”

  He saw Bolitho touch his injured eye. Remembering too. The awful cries of army mounts dying in terror and in darkness until the sea finally ended it.

  Bolitho noticed some of the seamen staring at each other with anger and sick dismay. Men who would barely turn a hair when they saw an enemy fall, or even one of their own if the time was wrong. But a helpless animal—that was always different.

  “May I, Val?” Then all at once he found himself at the rail again, his voice surprisingly level and controlled as every man turned aft towards him.

  “That ship is coming for us, lads! Whatever you may think or feel, you must stay your hand! Behind each port is a double-shotted gun with Englishmen to use them when I give the word!” He hesitated as he saw Ozzard’s tiny shape scurrying along the starboard gangway towards the forecastle with one of the big signals telescopes over his shoulder like a mace.

  He dragged his mind away from what it must have been like here. Helpless ships; Herrick standing like a rock between them and impossible odds. Perhaps Herrick was dead. In the same breath he knew he was not.

  “Stand together! This is our ship and those people yonder were our kin! But this is not revenge! It is justice!”

  He fell silent, exhausted, empty. He said quietly, “They don’t have the heart for it, Val.”

  “Right, lads! Huzza for Our Dick!” The ship seemed to shiver to the sudden wild burst of cheering. “An’ huzza for our Cap’n whose bride’s waitin’ for ’m in England!”

  Keen turned, his eyes full of tears. “There’s your answer— they’ll give you all they have! You should never have doubted it!”

  Allday seized Ozzard and cursed the men for cheering when they had no minds for what they were facing.

  “What the hell were you doin’? I thought you’d run dizzy like them natives do in the sun!”

  Ozzard put down the telescope and stared at him. He seemed very composed. More so than Allday could ever recall.

  He said, “I heard what Sir Richard just told them. That it’s not revenge.” He looked at the powerful telescope. “I don’t know much about ships, but I know that one right enough. How could I forget?”

  “How d’you mean, matey?” But the throbbing pain in his chest had already warned him.

  Ozzard glanced towards Bolitho and the captain. “I don’t care what they call her or what flag she flies. She’s the same one that destroyed our Hyperion. It will be revenge all right!” He peered at his friend, his courage gone. “What shall we do, John?”

  For once there was no answer.

  Midshipman Roger Segrave pressed his palms on the quarterdeck rail and took in great gulps of air, as if he were being suffocated. His whole body was like taut wire, and when he looked at his hands and arms he expected to see them shaking uncontrollably. He glanced quickly at the figures around him. The master and his mates by the compass, the four helmsmen, with extra hands standing by but pretending to look like men with nothing to do. It was like a madness. The larboard gangway, the one which was nearest to the tall enemy three-decker, was packed with sailors, all unarmed, apparently chatting to each other and occasionally pointing at the other ships as if they were not involved. Segrave dropped his eyes and saw the lie revealed. Beneath the gangway and matched by the two decks below that, the gun crews were crammed against their weapons. Handspikes, rammers and sponges were close to hand, and even the breechings were cast off to avoid even a second’s delay.

  He looked at Bolitho who was standing with Captain Keen, hands on hips, sometimes pointing at the other ships but mostly keeping his eyes inboard. Even without their uniforms they stood out from the rest, Segrave thought wildly. The lordly Midshipman Bosanquet was speaking with the flag lieutenant and Segrave saw signal flags rolled and ready to bend on, partly hidden by some hammocks stretched out to dry in the sunshine. Only the marines made no pretence of hiding their true identities. Their scarlet coats filled the maintop by the depressed swivel guns, and two more squads were properly deployed with fixed bayonets on the forecastle and aft near the poop.

  Segrave heard Bolitho say, “Mr Julyan, you are supposed to be the captain today!”

  The tall sailing-master gave a broad grin. “I feels different already, Sir Richard!”

  Segrave felt his breathing and heartbeat steady. He must accept it, as they did.

  Bolitho added in the same easy way, “I know that our Danish opposites dress somewhat more soberly than we do, but I think a hat might make all the difference.”

  More grins as Julyan tried first Keen’s cocked hat and then Bolitho’s, which fitted him perfectly.

  Bolitho glanced around the quarterdeck and Segrave tensed as the grey eyes rested momentarily on him. “The waiting’s over. Stand by!”

  Segrave looked again at the enemy. The second large ship, a two-decker, was falling downwind and changing tack, flags rising and vanishing from her yards as she exchanged signals with her superior. She would confront Nicator, which was making full sail as if to head off any attack on her “prize.”

  Keen watched his former ship and murmured, “She was a good old girl.” Was.

  Segrave jumped as the first lieutenant’s harsh voice smashed through his thoughts.

  “Lower gundeck, Mr Segrave! Report to the third lieutenant there!” He glared round the darkly shadowed deck. “That bloody Vincent should have been here by now! Tell him I want him if you see him!” His eyes fell on Segrave and something perhaps from an old memory made him say, “Easy, young fellow. Men will die today, but only if chosen.” His hard features cracked into a smile. “You’ve proved your worth—it’ll not be your turn yet!”

  Segrave ran to the ladder and suddenly remembered the rough kindness shown to him in Tyacke’s Miranda before she had been blown to pieces. He was a year older. He had lived a full lifetime since then.

  He paused for a last glance before losing himself in the hull’s darkness. A captured scene, which he would never forget. Bolitho, his frilled shirt blowing in the fresh breeze, one hand on the old sword, with his coxswain just behind him. Keen, Jenour, Bosanquet, master’s mates and seamen, people now, more real than any he knew at home.

  As he turned he felt his mouth go dry. Beyond the larboard gangway was a solitary flag, like a lance-pendant above an armoured knight in one of his old storybooks.

  As close as that. He knew it was the foremast truck of the enemy ship.

  Someone shouted, “She’s luffed! She wants to speak!” There was no defiant response, no ironic jeers such as he had heard from sailors in danger. It was like a sin
gle animal growl, as if the ship were speaking for them.

  He found himself hurrying down, deck by deck, ladder by ladder, past wary marine sentries posted to prevent men from running below, and ship’s boys as they ran with fresh powder for the guns which had yet to be fired.

  He saw a midshipman cowering by the carpenter’s extra stock of wedges and plugs, and knew it was Vincent.

  He said, “Mr Cazalet wants you on deck!”

  Vincent seemed to shrink into the heap of repairing gear and sobbed, “Go away, damn you to hell! I hope they kill you!”

  Segrave hurried on, shocked more than anything by what he had seen. Vincent was finished. He had not even begun.

  The lower gundeck was in total darkness, and yet Segrave could feel the mass of men who crouched there. In places chinks of sunlight probed down the gunports to touch a naked, sweating shoulder, or a pair of eyes white and staring like a blind man’s.

  Flemyng, the third lieutenant, commanded here. This was the main power of Black Prince’s artillery, where twenty-eight 32 -pounders and their crews lived, trained and waited for just this moment.

  Flemyng was a tall man, and was crouched over with his face pressed against the massive hull by the first division of guns. Only when he looked inboard did Segrave see the small round observation port, no bigger than a sailor’s basin, where the lieutenant could watch the nearness of an enemy before any one else.

  “Segrave? Stay with me.” His voice was clipped, sharp. He was usually one of the easiest of the lieutenants. “Gunner’s Mate! See to Mr Segrave!” He dismissed him and turned back to his little port.

  Segrave’s eyes were getting used to the darkness and he could see the individual guns nearest him, the black breeches resting on the buff-painted trucks, men crowded around them as if in some strange ceremony, their backs shining like steel.

  The gunner’s mate said, “’Ere, Mr Segrave.” He thrust two pistols into his hands. “Both loaded. Just cock an’ fire, see?”

  Segrave stared at the closed gunports. Would the enemy come swarming in here? Into the ship herself?

  The gunner’s mate had gone, and Segrave jumped as somebody touched his leg and murmured, “Come to see ’ow the poor live, Mr Segrave?”

  Segrave got down by the gun. It was the man he had saved from a flogging, the one Vincent had discovered in the hold below them at this moment.

  He exclaimed, “Jim Fittock! I didn’t know this was your station!”

  A voice barked, “Silence on the gundeck!”

  Fittock chuckled. “You got yer pieces then?”

  Segrave thrust them into his belt. “They’ll not be allowed to get that close!”

  Fittock nodded to his mates on the opposite side of the great thirty-two-pounder. It said that this young officer was all right. The reasons were unnecessary.

  “Aye, we’ll rake the buggers after what they done!” He saw a sliver of sunlight glance off one of the pistols and gave a bitter smile. How could he explain to such an innocent that the pistols were for shooting any poor Jack who tried to run when the slaughter began?

  A whistle shrilled and a voice piped from the companion ladder, “Right traverse, sir!”

  Someone growled, “She’s that close, eh?” Handspikes rasped across the deck to move the guns to a steeper angle; this division would be firing directly from the larboard bow.

  Lieutenant Flemyng had drawn his hanger. “Ready, lads!” He peered through the darkness as if he were seeing each of his men. “They’ve been calling to us to heave-to!” His voice sounded wild. “All nice and friendly!” As he turned back to look through his observation port, the sunlight, which had held his face suspended against the darkness like a mask, was cut off. It was as if a great hand had been laid across the port like a shutter.

  Fittock hissed, “Keep with us!”

  Segrave heard no more as the whistles shrilled and Flemyng yelled, “Open the ports! Run out!”

  The air was filled with the squeak of trucks as the seamen threw themselves on their tackles and ran the great, lumbering guns up to the waiting sunshine. Gun-captains crouched and took the slack from their trigger-lines, faces, eyes, hands in various attitudes of hate and prayer while they cringed and waited for the order; it was like one vast incomplete painting.

  Segrave stared with disbelief at the high beakhead and ornate gilded carving—a ship’s tall side already smoke-stained from bombardment and conquest.

  It was like being held in time. No voice, nor motion, as if the ship, too, was stricken.

  Flemyng’s hanger slashed down. “Fire!”

  As each gun came lurching inboard to be seized, sponged out and reloaded in the only fashion they knew, Segrave stood gasping and retching, the smoke funnelling around him and blotting out everything. And yet it was there. Frozen to his mind. The lines of enemy guns pointing at him, some with men peering around them, watching their latest capture until the massive weight of iron smashed into them at less than fifty yards’ range.

  The ship was swaying over as deck by deck the full broadside was fired across the smoky water. Men were cheering and cursing, racing one another to run out the guns and hold up their hands in the swirling mist of powder smoke.

  “Run out! Aim! Fire!”

  A ragged crash thundered against the side and somewhere a gun rolled inboard and overturned like a wounded beast. Men screamed and fell in the choking mist and Segrave saw a severed hand lying near the next gun like a discarded glove. No wonder they painted the sides red. It managed to hide some of the horror.

  “Cease firing!” Flemyng turned away as another midshipman was dragged towards the hatchway which would take him to the orlop. From what he could see he had lost an arm and a leg. There was not much point . . .

  Segrave also tore his eyes away. The same age as himself. The same uniform. A thing. Not a person any more.

  “Open the starboard ports!”

  Fittock punched his arm. “Come on, sir! The Cap’n’s comin’ about and we’ll engage the buggers to starboard!” They scrambled across the deck, stumbling over fallen gear and slipping on blood as sunlight poured through the other ports and the enemy seemed to slide past, her sails in complete disorder. Unless engaged on both sides together, the gun crews usually helped each other to keep the broadsides timed and regular.

  “Ready, sir!”

  “On the uproll, lads!” Flemyng was hatless and there was blood splashed like paint on his forehead. “Fire!”

  Men were cheering and hugging each other. “’Er bloody fore-mast’s comin’ down!”

  By one of the guns a seaman held his mate in his arms, and frantically pushed the hair from his eyes as he babbled, “Nearly done, Tim! The buggers are dismasted!” But his friend did not respond. Together they had lived and yarned by this one gun. Every waking hour it had been here—waiting.

  A gunner’s mate said roughly, “Take that man an’ put ’im over! ’E’s done for!” He was not an unduly hard man, but death was terrible enough without seeing it lingering on.

  The seaman clutched his friend closer to him so that his head lolled across his shoulder as if to confide something. “You won’t put ’im over, you bastards!”

  Segrave felt Fittock’s hard hand helping him to his feet as he called, “Leave them, Gunner’s Mate!” He did not recognise himself. “There is enough to do!”

  Fittock glanced across at his own crew, his teeth very white in his grimy face.

  “Told you, eh? Right little terrier!” Then he guided Segrave to the curve of one great timber so that the others should not see his distress. He added, “One of the best!”

  Throughout the ship men stood or crouched at their tasks, bodies streaked with sweat, ears bandaged against the deafening roar of cannon fire, fingers raw from hauling, ramming and running-out again and again.

  It took time for the marine’s trumpet call to penetrate each deck, and then the cheering clawed its way up towards the smoky sunlight, that other place where it had all begun.
r />   Bolitho stood by the quarterdeck rail and watched the enemy ship. As she drifted downwind she turned her high stern towards him, the name San Mateo still so bright in the sunlight. He had thought it would never stop, and yet he knew that the whole action, from the time the Danish flag had been hauled down and his own run up to the fore, had lasted barely thirty minutes.

  He said, “I knew we could do it.” He felt Allday near him, heard Keen yell, “Stand by to starboard!”

  There had been casualties. Men killed when seconds before they had been waiting to start the game.

  “Nicator’s signalling, sir!” Jenour sounded hoarse.

  Bolitho raised a hand in acknowledgment. Thank God. Jenour was safe too. Black Prince must have fired three broadsides before the enemy had gathered wits enough to return a ragged response. By then it was already too late.

  He said. “Signal Nicator to close with the convoy. Make certain that she tells the boarding parties that if they try to scuttle our ships or harm the crews, they will have to swim home!” He heard men muttering with approval and knew that had he so much as suggested it, they would have run every French prisoner up to the mainyard.

  It was what war dictated. A madness. A need to hurt and kill those who had brought fear to you.

  He thought suddenly of Ozzard. So innocuous, and yet he had known, had recognised that it was that same ship which had so brutally destroyed Hyperion. Maybe it was the ship, and not the men who crewed her? French flag, Spanish, and now if she surrendered, an addition to His Britannic Majesty’s fleet. Would she, the ship, remain unchanged, like something untamed?

  It still sickened him to recall how San Mateo had poured her broadsides into Hyperion, regardless of the destruction and murder she was causing to her own consorts, which were unable to move clear. The ship then.

  Keen walked round to face him.

  “Sir?” He watched quietly. Feeling it. Sharing it. There was pride too. More than he had dared to hope for.

  Bolitho seemed to rouse himself. “Has she struck yet?” Is that me? So cold, so impersonal . . . An executioner.

  Keen answered gently, “I believe her steering is shot away, sir. But their guns are still, and I think many of her people are dead.”