“It’s no use, sir!” Lakey’s lean face swam before him. “We’ll never get the helm rigged afore that bugger’s up to us!”
Bolitho looked at Herrick. “You know what you always said about this ship?” He drew his sword and tied the lanyard around his wrist.
“Aye.” Herrick watched him, fascinated and aghast. “She’s stout enough to take the heaviest battering. She’s not taken a drop of water in the well, in spite of all . . .” He ducked as more iron smashed through the nettings, hurling men and hammocks aside in scarlet profusion.
Bolitho nodded, gritting his teeth. The sight of the men nearest him, of Midshipman Fitzmaurice lying on his side staring wide-eyed at the blood which was soaking out and around his slight body, had decided him.
“Tell the hands to reload and then stand down!” He shook Herrick’s arm. “It’s our only chance. Narval can get on our stern and pound us to pieces. Without steerageway I can do nothing to stop it. Arm the people. Be ready!”
Herrick stared at him, seeing the torment and the feverish wildness in his grey eyes. But there was nothing he could do to stop him now.
He turned to Allday. “Keep with him.”
Then a silence seemed to engulf the drifting ship as the tattered sails whipped and curled without effect, while from astern the merciless bombardment ceased. It was replaced by a mingled roar of voices, rising above the cries of the wounded and dying until it was like one great, savage bellow of triumph.
Unaware of their own strength or numbers, Tempest’s company crouched or lay beneath the fallen debris, or hid under gangways beside the guns which were still hot from their firing. Pikes and cutlasses, axes and belaying pins. The men, deafened by cannonfire, almost out of their senses by the sights and horrors all around them, stared at the stout timbers which had protected them and waited for the nightmare to end.
A few muskets hammered across the water, and Bolitho could hear Billy-boy yelling abuse as he shot again and again at the enemy. He could tell from his voice that he was badly wounded, dying even as he kept up his firing.
Slowly, and then with frightening suddenness, the Narval’s sails and yards lifted over the starboard quarter.
Bolitho stood by the rail, his sword dangling from his wrist. So the horror was not yet done. He watched the other ship’s jib boom rise high above the nettings, the broken yard, and the untidy cluster of corpses. Dangling from the bowsprit, bobbing to the motion as if still alive, was the severed head of de Barras.
Bolitho felt the brittle strength coursing through him. He yelled, “Fire as you bear!”
Like rats and moles, his blackened seamen scrambled from hiding, and down the Tempest’s battered side every gun which could find a target exploded in an ear-shattering crescendo, the noise made twinfold by the double-shotted charges and the closeness of the other ship.
He felt the deck lurch as Narval’s jib boom drove through the foremast shrouds, the grinding crash of the two hulls dulled by the terrible screams of those who had been caught in the murderous broadside.
“Boarders away!”
Yelling and cheering like madmen, what was left of Tempest’s company hacked their way across to the other ship, some falling before they could find a handhold, others held and crushed between the two swaying hulls.
Bolitho found himself on Narval’s gangway with steel clanging on every side. He slipped on blood left by that last onslaught, and knew Allday had saved him from pitching over the side.
Marines ran past, with Prideaux leading the attack.
Sergeant Quare waved his musket. “At ’em, marines!” Then, he took a full charge of canister in the chest and stomach, ripping him to fragments.
Blissett saw the marines hesitate, their faces like stone as they stared at Quare’s corpse. He yelled, “Charge!” He was mad, exhilarated, and sad for Quare all in one brief second. Then he was amongst the defenders on the forecastle, his bayonet lunging and stabbing, while his companions closed around him in a tight, merciless group.
Bolitho reached the frigate’s quarterdeck, his mind clear again as he saw his own ship through the drifting smoke.
All around him men were reeling and staggering, crossing cutlasses or fighting with fists and anything they could find. He saw Miller slashing a path towards the poop with his axe, watched him suddenly fall, pinioned by a pike, and covered by his killer as a British seaman hacked him down.
And then, beside the abandoned wheel, his legs astride two dying seamen, he saw Mathias Tuke. He was amazed to find that he felt no sense of surprise, Tuke was exactly as he had imagined. As she had described him.
Now, with his chest heaving, his fist bright red from the blood which ran from his sword, Tuke was staring at him, his eyes blazing with hatred.
He said harshly, “Well, well, Captain! We meet at last! Did she tell you of the mark I put on her soft body, eh?” His mouth opened in his thick beard like an obscene hole and he laughed, throwing back his head, but keeping his eyes fixed on Bolitho.
From the opposite side of the deck Herrick saw it clearly, even as he cut down a screaming pirate and waited for his party of seamen to establish their hold of the gangway above the gun-deck.
From two crews they had broken into separate parties. Then into groups. Now into individual fragments of defence and attack.
He saw Bolitho step towards Tuke, watched the two blades circling each other warily, could feel the tension.
He barked, “Haul down their flag! Follow me!” With his fighting sword swinging before him, Herrick charged to the attack.
Bolitho saw none of them. Only Tuke. And even he seemed to be growing in size and stature, his body surrounded by enclosing darkness.
Tuke took a deep breath, startled by Bolitho’s failure to respond.
Then he bellowed, “Now!” And with a wild yell he lunged forward.
Bolitho saw the blade slicing towards his stomach and knew he could do nothing. The strength was gone from his arm, and he felt the deck jar his legs as he stumbled on to his knees. Men were cheering from the other end of the ship, and he knew the flag which was being waved and then thrown over the side was that of the enemy. But he could feel and do nothing.
His vision was obstructed by a white-clad leg, and he heard Allday’s voice break in a sob as he shouted, “Back!” There was a cling of steel. “And back, I say!” More clangs, and Bolitho was able to see Allday driving Tuke towards the side. He was holding the cutlass with both hands like a broadsword, something he had not seen before. He wanted to call to him, to stop his fury before he was cut down.
Allday was almost incoherent with anger and grief, oblivious to a cut on his shoulder and to everything but the towering man before him.
Between blows he gasped, “You bloody, cowardly, murdering bastard!” He saw the man show fear for the first time and brought the heavy cutlass against Tuke’s hilt with all his strength, hurling him to the deck. Then as he made a shadow fall across Tuke’s head and neck he sobbed, “I wish to God this was not so quick for you!” The cutlass swung down once, then twice.
As Herrick and the others rushed to drag him away, Allday hurled his cutlass over the nettings and ran to Bolitho’s side.
Bolitho gripped his arm, wanting more than anything to reassure him. But he was shaking violently and could barely whisper.
Allday said, “You’ll be all right, Captain.” He looked wretchedly at Herrick. “Won’t he, sir?”
Herrick replied, “Help him up. We must get him aboard Tempest.” He saw Keen running towards him. “Take command here.”
With Herrick and Allday guiding and half-carrying him, Bolitho returned to his own ship.
There were no more cheers, and his men parted to let him pass, their strained faces looking and searching for something.
Bolitho saw the shattered companion and knew he had somehow reached the Tempest. But the companion, and the place where he could hide his final shame from his men, still seemed a mile away.
He heard himself murmu
r, “See to the people, Thomas. After that we’ll . . .”
Herrick looked at him despairingly as the surgeon hurried to meet them, his butcher’s apron covered with the stains of his trade.
“After that, sir, we’ll be going home.”
Gwyther watched Allday lower the captain on to a cot. “He does not hear you, Mr Herrick.” He knelt down and loosened Bolitho’s neckcloth.
Allday looked at Herrick. “You go, sir. He’d want it. It’s your responsibility now. I’ll tell you when the captain’s feeling better.”
He said it so fervently that Herrick could only reply, “I’m depending on it.”
Above, the cheering was beginning at last, as the two drifting ships were secured, and those who had expected to die were made to accept that they had won a victory.
But to Herrick, as he paused in the square of sunlight below the companion, there was no such feeling, and only a sense of stricken disbelief.
Gwyther said, “There is little I can do.”
He was needed in a dozen places at once, and had already operated on more men than he could have believed possible in so short a time. Yet he could not move, and was held here by Allday’s simple belief.
He added quietly, “We can only wait. And hope. No man in his condition should have done what he has today.”
Allday looked at him and replied firmly, “But he’s not just any man.” He nodded. “I’ll watch over him.”
He heard the muffled cheering and said to Bolitho brokenly, “See, Captain? We did it. Just like we said.”
Silently, Gwyther turned and made for the orlop again. The surgeon had served with Bolitho for several years but had never really got to know him. After this, live or die, he knew he could never forget him.
EPILOGUE
ON A bright summer’s day in 1791, almost eighteen months since he had been carried more dead than alive to his ship from the captured Narval, Captain Richard Bolitho knew he had won the greatest fight of all.
Only those who had been with him, who had watched over his daily struggle against the fever, knew the whole story. To Bolitho it had been like one long nightmare, with brief moments of clarity and others of overwhelming suffering.
He remembered little of the voyage to New South Wales and his stay in the governor’s house. Or of his farewells to Herrick and the others who had visited him before Tempest had sailed for England. At a slower and less demanding pace Bolitho, with Allday ever at his side, had taken passage in an Indiaman.
Again the pictures in his mind were blurred and painful. Of his married sister, Nancy, organizing his reception in the old grey house below Pendennis Castle, being very brave and hiding her dismay at his gaunt appearance and inability to speak more than a few words to her. Of Mrs Ferguson, his housekeeper, red-eyed and fussing over him between bouts of weeping. Of Ferguson, his one-armed steward, helping Allday to settle him in the great bed. The one where if you sat up you could see the blue line of the horizon and a corner of the castle on the headland.
Except that nobody had really thought he would be able to leave his bed again. Nobody but Allday, that is.
But as the months dragged past, days and weeks of emptiness and nausea, he realized he was gaining new strength. He was able to ask about people, of what was happening in the world outside his bedroom.
At the first hint of better weather he took a few short walks, using Allday like a prop for most of the time.
And he had a visitor. Captain William Tremayne of the brig Pigeon came to the house within an hour of dropping anchor in Carrick Roads. It was like rolling back the months. Bolitho sat in a high-backed chair by the window, while Tremayne sat nearby, a goblet of wine in his big fist.
Pigeon had come home with despatches. Tremayne had brought it all back. The islands, the swaying palms and laughing girls. It seemed that Hardacre had been given permanent control of the Levu Islands as government agent. There had not been much choice in the matter, for Raymond had been found dead, apparently by his own hand.
The most unexpected news had been about Yves Genin, seized with the rest when Tempest had won her bloody battle against the Narval. Although the frigate had been handed over to a prize court, Genin had been allowed to return to France. More because he was an embarrassment than as a mark of goodwill towards the Revolutionary Government. Genin, who had done so much to pave the way for rebellion, was rewarded by a quick end on the guillotine. The new government took the view that a man who could plan a major uprising might well do it a second time.
And on this particular day Bolitho was standing by the open window, watching the various hues of green, the rippling fields which ran down the hillside towards the sea.
He thought a lot about Tempest and wondered where she was. He had heard she had been at Plymouth completing a refit and preparing to commission with a new company. His one wish was that he could have been with her before she had paid off. A few of the old hands were still aboard, and her captain should be grateful to have them. Lakey, the taciturn sailing master, Toby, the carpenter, Jury, the boatswain, and a few more beside.
The rest had scattered to the needs of a growing fleet, to ships which would be desperately needed again when the clouds of war eventually broke across the Channel. Even little Romney had found another ship, and Bolitho hoped he would be luckier this time. Keen, Swift, so many he had grown to know, were beginning all over again.
He sighed. And Thomas Herrick? He had not heard where he was, other than at sea.
He heard the clock chime above the Falmouth church of Charles the Martyr, and took his watch from his pocket and examined it slowly in the warm sunlight.
Behind him Allday opened the door, a bottle of wine balanced on a tray.
He stood very still, seeing it all. Bolitho’s silhouette against the sunlight, and the watch, her watch, in his hand. It needed no words to describe what Bolitho was thinking. Remembering.
Bolitho turned and saw him. He smiled and thrust the watch into his pocket.
“I thought we might take a longer walk today. There’s a frigate coming into the Roads. We can carry a telescope along with us, eh?”
Allday replied doubtfully, “We’ll see, Captain. It’s a fair way to the old battery on the headland. No sense in tiring yourself.”
Bolitho eyed him fondly. “Thank you for that. And so much more.”
“My pleasure, Captain.” Allday looked towards the sea. “It will need time. But we’ll walk a deck again, and that’s no error!” He grinned and added, “Come then, I’ll fetch your coat and a telescope.”
Bolitho walked slowly to the door and let his gaze linger on the room. She would have been happy here.
Then he said, “Lively now, and we’ll take some ale on the way back.”
The battle was won.
Passage to Mutiny Page 34
