Passage to Mutiny

by Alexander Kent

  He added, “According to the chart, we are once again due south of Tongatapu. If we come about and steer to take advantage of this wind, I think we could sight land early tomorrow.”

  Herrick waited. Reading his mind.

  Bolitho said, “I’ll not hazard the ship amidst the reefs, but we can put boats ashore. The local chief is alleged to be friendly. Our ships are not unknown to him, according to Mr Lakey.”

  Herrick grimaced. “I’ll take a loaded brace of pistols with me nevertheless, sir! There have been too many good sailors cut down without warning.”

  Bolitho turned to watch a sudden flurry in the sea alongside. A shark falling upon a smaller fish, the incident over in a second. Then the surface was smooth again, with just the occasional pointer of the shark’s fin to reveal their patient escort.

  He replied, “Some of these islands have had good reason to hate us.” He unconsciously touched the lock of hair which hung above his right eye.

  Herrick saw the movement. It was as familiar as Bolitho’s level grey eyes. Beneath the lock of hair was a deep, savage scar which ran right up his forehead. As a junior lieutenant Bolitho had been struck down and all but killed by a native when he had been on an island with his ship’s watering party.

  Herrick persisted, “I’ll shoot first, all the same, sir. I’ve come too far to have my brains spilled with a war club!”

  Bolitho was suddenly impatient. The thought that the Eurotas might have been overrun by warring islanders appalled him.

  “Call the master, Thomas. We’ll lay off a new course and decide what we must do.”

  Herrick watched him stride towards the poop, his face completely absorbed.

  He said to Keen, “Keep an eye on your watch. We will be needing all hands within the hour.”

  Keen did not answer. He remembered Viola Raymond. She had nursed him when he had been put ashore after being wounded. Like some of the others he knew about the captain’s involvement and what Herrick thought about it all. Keen was fond of them both, but especially so of Bolitho. If he was going to search for Viola Raymond, and more risk was to come from their reunion, then it was their business. He watched Herrick’s troubled face. Or was it?

  In the small chart room beneath the poop and adjoining the master’s cabin Bolitho leaned over the table watching Lakey’s fingers busy with brass dividers and rule.

  “If the wind holds. Noon tomorrow.” Lakey looked up from the table, his lean face silhouetted against an open port.

  Beyond it the sea was glittering and painful to look at. How much worse in a big transport loaded with convicts. If the Eurotas was aground somewhere, then the first fear would soon change to something more dangerous. The desire to escape, to be free with even the tiniest chance of survival, could make men do the impossible.

  If the wind holds. It must be engraved on every sea officer’s heart, Bolitho thought.

  He eyed Lakey thoughtfully. “So be it. One hundred and forty miles to Tongatapu. If we can log five knots and no more once we have changed course, I think your estimate a fair one.”

  Lakey shrugged. He rarely rose to either praise or doubt. “I’ll feel happier when I’ve examined our noon sights, sir.”

  Bolitho smiled. “Very well.”

  He turned on his heel and hurried to the quarterdeck, knowing Lakey would be there when he was needed.

  “Ah, Thomas, we will bring her about on the half-hour and steer nor’-west. That will allow us sea room when we are closer to the reefs. Also, if the wind veers we will be better placed to select one of the other islands in the group.”

  When a ship’s boy turned the half-hour glass beside the binnacle the hands manned the braces and hauled breathlessly at the frigate’s great yards.

  As Tempest wallowed round and allowed herself to be laid on the opposite tack Bolitho was very aware of the time it took to perform the change. Even allowing for the poor wind, he had every available man employed on deck and aloft. He knew the folly of allowing slackness and taking short-cuts even on routine work. In battle, with the biggest proportion of seamen required at the guns and repairing damage, the ship would have to be handled by far fewer. And yet Tempest had answered helm and canvas more with the slow dignity of a ship of the line than a frigate.

  It was so easy to get complacent, to put off the back-breaking and thankless work of gun and sail drill with a battle in mind. Out here, with sometimes months on end and no sight of any other man-of-war, it was hard to build up enthusiasm for such drills, especially when it was only too easy to turn your own back upon it.

  Bolitho had one bitter reminder, however. In the years when he had commanded Undine he had been forced into open conflict with a powerful French frigate, the Argus, commanded by Le Chaumareys, an experienced veteran of the war and one of Admiral Suffren’s most capable commanders. Although serving under a letter of marque for the self-styled prince, Muljadi, Le Chaumareys had remained a French officer in the best sense of the word. He had even warned Bolitho of the foolishness he would display in trying to fight his Argus, Muljadi’s pirate fleet and the dithering incompetence of governments on the other side of the world. Just two ships could decide the fate of a great area of the Indies. Bolitho’s little Undine and Le Chaumareys’ powerful forty-four.

  As in Tempest, Bolitho had been blessed with a motley collection of seamen, some of whom had been gathered from prison hulks to make his complement adequate.

  All he had had against the Frenchman’s experience and his equally well-trained company had been youth and a freshness of ideas. Le Chaumareys had been away from home for years. His work under another’s flag was to have been his last before returning honourably to his beloved France.

  It had been Le Chaumareys’ familiarity with an established routine, his reliance on the same old methods and manoeuvres, which had cost him a victory, and his life.

  Bolitho wondered how long it would take him to get too complacent, or so weary with endless patrols and chases after pirates that when a real challenge offered itself he would find himself without the steel to repel it. Or if indeed he would recognize the weakness if there was no one to tell him.

  “Course nor’-west, sir. Full and bye.” Herrick wiped his forehead with his wrist. “And no fresher on this tack either!”

  Bolitho took a telescope from Midshipman Swift and trained it beyond the bows. Through the taut rigging and shrouds and above the figurehead’s golden shoulder, on and on, to nothing.

  “Very well. Dismiss the watch below.” He stopped Herrick as he made to hurry away. “I believe Mr Borlase wishes you to punish a seaman today?”

  Herrick watched him gravely. “Aye, sir. Peterson. For insolence. He swore at a bosun’s mate.”

  “I see. Then warn the man yourself, Thomas. A flogging for such a triviality will do nothing to help matters.” He looked at some seamen on the deck below and along the gangways. Almost naked, and tanned in a dozen hues, they appeared strong enough, able to control any sudden flare-up of temper which could end in flogging, or worse. “Then have a word with Mr Borlase. I’ll not have him or any officer passing over responsibility in this manner. He was in charge of the watch. He should have dispersed the trouble as soon as he saw it.”

  Herrick watched him leave the deck and cursed himself for not stepping into the matter earlier. For letting Borlase get away with it, as he did so often, when you stopped to think about it. When you were tired, sun-dried and dying for a cool breeze it was often much easier to do the work yourself instead of following through the chain of command.

  Which is why I’ll never rise above lieutenant.

  As Herrick moved up and down the weather side of the deck he was watched for much of the time by Keen and Midshipman Swift.

  From midshipman in the Undine to Tempest’s third lieutenant. When Keen had been raised from acting rank and had passed his examination for lieutenant he had imagined that no reward could provide greater satisfaction.

  While he tried to stay under the shadow of the
mizzen top-sail he watched Herrick and wondered, not for the first time, where the next move would come. Some lieutenants seemed to soar to post rank and higher, like comets. Others remained at the same level year after year until rejected by the Navy and thrown on the beach.

  If only he had been old enough to have served with men like Bolitho and Herrick in the real way. Against the French, and the American Revolution, or anyone who faced them across the water and challenged a flag as well as a broadside.

  He heard Lakey’s step beside him. “I have been thinking—”

  The sailing master smiled grimly. “My old father on Tresco used to say, leave thinking to horses, Tobias. They’ve bigger heads than yours.” It seemed to amuse him. “We’ve a course to run out, Mr Keen. And no brooding or pining is going to change our captain’s intentions, not by one inch.”

  Keen grinned. He liked Lakey, although their worlds were so different.

  “I’ll try to contain myself.”

  Below in his day cabin Bolitho sat at his desk and worked slowly through the day’s affairs. As in most forenoon watches he received a regular stream of visitors.

  Bynoe, the purser, requesting a signature on his ledger of newly opened meat casks. Hard of eye, more so of heart, Bolitho suspected, the purser was better than many he had served with. His rations were fairly issued, and he did not dock a seaman’s meagre pay for some article he had not received and would not remember when the ship eventually paid off.

  The surgeon came with his daily sick report. The hands kept remarkably free of hurt and illness, Bolitho was thankful to discover. But when it struck it was without warning or mercy. As with the men lost overboard, and the two left in the care of the Dutch doctors at Coupang.

  While he studied each book and ledger placed before him by Cheadle, his clerk, he was conscious too of the life above and around him. They were all extensions of the ship herself. If a man died or was removed the ship lived on, gathering replacements to sustain herself.

  He heard the rumble of gun trucks as one by one each cannon, from the long twelve-pounders on the main deck to the snappy six-pounders aft, were hauled inboard and examined by Jack Brass, Tempest’s gunner. It was Brass’s routine arrangement that every week he would check each weapon, and God help the gun captain whose charge failed to reach his standards.

  Bolitho had been lucky with his warrant officers and more seasoned men, and was grateful for it. Even his four midshipmen, sent to him originally by parents who wished them to gain experience and advancement which was harder to get elsewhere in peacetime, were more like young lieutenants after two years’ continuous service. Swift and Pyper were seventeen, and already thinking of the time when they would be able to sit for promotion. Fitzmaurice, a pug-faced youth of sixteen, had had much of the arrogance knocked out of him. He came of a very rich family indeed, and had imagined apparently that his commission in Tempest was to be something akin to a courtesy cruise. Herrick and Lakey had taught him otherwise.

  The youngest, Evelyn Romney, was fifteen. They all made a change from the usual twelve- and thirteen-year-olds you found in most ships, Bolitho thought. Romney had improved the least. He was a naturally shy youth, and lacked the firmness required when dealing with men old enough to be his father. But if Fitzmaurice cursed his family for sending him packing to sea, Romney, who was less able to face up to the demands made on the “young gentlemen,” seemed desperately determined to do well. He obviously loved the Navy, and his attempts to overcome his shyness were pathetic to watch.

  Bolitho heard the measured tramp of boots as the marines trooped aft from their daily drills on the forecastle and in the tops. Prideaux would not be with them. He would leave the sweat and discomfort to his sergeant. Then later he would emerge and criticize, his foxy face peering at each of his men in turn. Bolitho had never heard him offer one word of encouragement or praise, even when a marine had been promoted.

  More muffled than the sounds near the quarterdeck, he heard the thump of hammers and the occasional rasp of a saw.

  Isaac Toby was the ship’s carpenter. Fat, slow-moving and rather vacant-looking, he had the appearance of an untidy owl. But as a carpenter he was an artist. With his own small crew he kept the repairs up to date, although with a vessel built of teak that was the least of his worries. At this moment he would be completing his latest challenge, the building of a new, additional jolly boat. It had been something of a joke to begin with, a casual remark made by the gunner about waste of valuable wood when a seaman had been caught throwing some offcuts over the side.

  Toby had taken it as a personal affront and had said he would build a boat with his own hands out of all the oddments which Brass could discover. The boat was nearly completed, and even Brass had had to admit it was far better than Tempest’s original one.

  Bolitho leaned back and ran his fingers through his hair.

  Cheadle gathered up the last document and made sure the signature was dry. The clerk was a strange, withdrawn man, as were many of his kind. He had deep, hollow eyes and large, uneven teeth, so that he appeared to be smiling, something he never did, as far as Bolitho knew. To discover anything of his past Bolitho had had to drag it from him word by word. He had been transferred from another ship which had been paid off in Bombay. His captain had assured Bolitho that Cheadle was a good clerk, if somewhat reticent. He had once worked in a grocer’s shop in Canterbury, and prided himself on his service to “the quality.” But so far, even after two years of daily contact, Bolitho had never heard him mention it.

  Noddall entered as the clerk left and placed a glass of wine on the desk. With fresh water so much in demand, and the uncertainty of supply a constant worry, Bolitho usually took wine as an easy alternative. He recalled when he had been guided to the famous shop in St James’s, how he had purchased the many fine bottles before his voyage to the other side of the world in Undine. The wine had been reduced to broken glass and spillage during his fight with the Argus, but the memory stayed with him. He touched the watch in his pocket. Like so many others.

  Allday sauntered through from the sleeping cabin and watched him gravely.

  “Reckon we’ll find ’em, Captain?”

  He stood with arms folded across his deep chest, his face and body relaxed. He was more like a companion than a subordinate. How much they had shared together. Bolitho often wondered if Allday missed England. He would certainly be missing the girls. Allday had always had a reputation with them, and more than once had been glad, if not eager, to set sail in haste for fear of husband or irate father.

  “I hope so.”

  Bolitho sipped the drink. Cheap and stale. Not like the French wine which Herrick had got for him. The Sydney garrison had probably bought a stock from a French ship, or some ambitious trader. If you were prepared to risk your fortune and your life, and pit your wits against fierce natives, pirates and the constant dangers of shipwreck you could sell anything out here.

  In the wake of navigators and explorers like Cook had come the others. On some islands, where the natives had lived in simple, idyllic surroundings, the ships had introduced disease and death. The merchant adventurers had set one tribe against another by offering shoddy goods and cheap cloth in exchange for secure moorings from which to barter.

  And now everyone was paying for it. Soon, some over-greedy trader would start supplying a tribe with muskets. Bolitho had seen it happen in the Americas, where the French had trained Indians to track and kill the British, and the British had done the same to them.

  Afterwards, with their independence won, and with both British and French gone from their newborn country, the Americans had been left with another army in their midst. A nation of Indian warriors which, if joined together, might still drive the settlers into the sea and isolate the new ports and cities.

  He added, “I doubt very much that we could have passed the Eurotas without sighting her. We have had double lookouts, and at night have shown enough lights for a blind man to see. Her captain would know of th
e concern for his late arrival and would try to make contact with any ship of size.”

  Allday’s eyes were distant as he watched the sea through the stern windows. With the wind across the larboard quarter the ship was leaning slightly under the pressure, so that the sea appeared to be on the slope. Like most professional seamen, Allday seemed able to stare at the sea without a blink, and yet the horizon was shining fiercely like a tautly stretched thread of gems.

  “My guess, Captain, is that she’s put in somewhere for water. Her supply might have gone foul, as ours did once.” He grimaced. “With a hull full of convicts and the like, her captain’d not want to add to his worries, and that’s no error.”

  “True.”

  Bolitho looked away, remembering the way she had looked. Their carefree disregard for discovery and what might have happened. At Madras, and afterwards. In that wretched, fever-infested colony to which Bolitho’s ship had been sent to lend authority to yet another governor. Often he had sweated at the thought of those possibilities. A door being flung open, her face and shoulders pale as he tried to hide her from her husband. But nobody had come to break their passions, and the ache of losing her was even harder to accept.

  He felt anger, too. What could James Raymond be thinking of to drag her out here again? European women found the climate cruel and demanding, and for Raymond there was no such need. His fine house, his authority, all he had gained at others’ expense would have made it easy to leave her in security and comfort amongst people and customs she understood.

  There was a rap at the door and Borlase peered through the screen, his face less mild than usual.

  “I was wondering if I might speak with you, sir.” He looked quickly at Allday. “But if it is inconvenient . . .”

  Bolitho gestured to Allday, and as he left the cabin said, “Be brief, Mr Borlase. I intend to exercise the twelve-pounders before noon.”