Adam looked up at the topsails, writhing and cracking, with the yards braced round so tightly they would appear to any outsider to be almost fore-and-aft.
He gritted his teeth. The only outsider was the barque, so much bigger now and angled almost across Lotus’s bowsprit. Two miles? No more.
He heard a helmsman shout something, and then the sailing-master’s response. To Pointer he said, “She’s as close to the wind as she’ll come, sir. If the wind backs we’ll be in irons!”
Pointer’s eyes flickered briefly to Adam. “Let her fall off a point.”
Adam walked to the nettings and clung to a lashing while the deck tilted over again. It was taking too long. If the Spaniard held his course he would be in safe waters, and any further action would be taken very seriously when it reached Havana, and later Madrid. The “alliance” between the old enemies was already fragile enough.
He glanced along the deck. The starboard guns loaded and manned, their crews crouched and hidden below the bulwarks. One of the cutters had been swayed from the boat tier, its crew and lowering party hauling on the tackle, supervised by the boatswain, making it obvious that they were preparing a boarding party. He did not need a chart. Soon they would be on a lee shore, with shallows for an added hazard.
He could feel the sailing-master’s anxiety like something physical. Pointer, he knew, would be equally worried.
He looked over at Jago, who was standing near the helmsmen, arms folded, feet well apart to accept the angle of the deck. What might he be thinking?
“Make the signal! Heave-to!” Like hearing somebody else. He measured the bearing and the range with his eye until it smarted. But he could see every detail of the sails, comfortably filling in the wind across her quarter. A few tiny figures in the lower shrouds, a flash of light from a telescope. He wiped his eye and raised the glass again. There were more men on the Spaniard’s deck. Not running about or pointing at the sloop as might be expected. It was as if . . . The picture seemed to freeze in the glass. Past a boat tier to the poop and the wheel. Except that there was no wheel, and the raised poop appeared to be deserted.
“They’re not shortening sail, sir.”
Adam said, “Fire the warning shot!” He held up one hand and sensed that Pointer had turned to watch him. “Then we come about.” They had to know, be ready. There’d be no second chance.
The crash of the foremost gun seemed muffled by the din of canvas overhead. He saw the gun’s crew sponging out and ramming home another ball, like a drill, part of the routine.
“They’re shortening sail, sir!” Somebody even laughed.
Adam’s fingers throbbed from the force of his grip as he steadied the glass, his feet moving without thought as the hull lifted and dipped, while the sound of thrashing canvas was like that of giant sea birds, spreading their wings in flight.
He blinked, but it was no error, or the effect of strain. The barque’s poop was moving, even as he watched, folding like painted canvas, as if controlled by a single hand.
There were men in plenty now, in teams, bowed over as they hauled at invisible tackles, even as three gunports opened below her mizzen mast and the driver boom which had first troubled the keen-eyed lookout.
Adam yelled, “Now, Roger! Show them your teeth!”
With the helm hard over and every spare hand hauling on braces and halliards, Lotus began to swing wildly to larboard. Spray burst over the scrambling gun crews as the ports opened as one, and her broadside of eight 12 -pounders squealed into the sunlight.
“Steady she goes! West by south!”
Adam watched the other ship, now almost broadside on, near enough to mark every detail. He saw smoke fanning across the barque’s ports and the spitting orange tongues from two of them, heard the smack of a ball punching through the maintopsail, within feet of the fighting top where the swivel gun’s crew had called out to him. A split second later he felt the sickening crash of a ball as it smashed into the lower hull. All in seconds, and yet in so short a space of time he heard the words of Celeste’s only survivor before he, too, paid the price.
Fired into us at point-blank range, double-shotted by the feel of it!
They had all felt it now.
Pointer was gripping the rail, his battered hat still in place, his voice strangely calm.
“As you bear, lads! On the uproll . . .” He glanced only briefly at two running seamen, or perhaps at the sound of pumps. “Fire!”
Adam saw the carefully prepared broadside smash into the barque’s poop, double-shotted and with grape for good measure. Pointer’s gun captains knew their work well. In small ships, you needed to.
He saw thin scarlet streaks running from the barque’s scuppers, as if she and not her sailors was bleeding to death.
There was more smoke in the air now; men were yelling below decks, and there were sounds of axes, and the clank of pumps.
But at each gun nothing moved. Every twelve-pounder was loaded and run out again, each gun captain faced aft, his hand raised.
“Ready, sir!”
Adam watched the other vessel. Perhaps that carefully prepared broadside had damaged her steering; her topsails were in confusion and she was falling slightly downwind.
He could still feel the force and weight of the ball which had crashed into Lotus’s hull. Like the ones which had fired into Celeste when she had been asking for medical help.
And all those other pictures which came crowding into his mind. On the African patrols when they had found another survivor, from a prize-crew put aboard a slaver. The slavers had somehow overpowered the prize-crew, and with the slaves still on board threw them to the sharks. Pointer had seen it, too. A sea of blood.
What had warned him this time? Fate? Or was it part of the legend he had heard sailors talk of?
He made himself lift the glass to his eye again.
He saw the splintered timbers and torn sails, some corpses sprawled where they had fallen. But the third gun was still thrust through its port, manned or not he could not tell. A big gun. Perhaps a thirty-two-pounder. Even Athena did not carry such massive weapons.
Pointer was still by the rail, waiting. Perhaps he thought he had not heard him. He said, “Their flag still flies, sir.”
He turned as his first lieutenant appeared through the companion hatch.
“We’re holding it, sir! She’ll live to fight again!” He stared around at the silent gun crews.
Pointer asked sharply, “What is the bill?”
Ellis spread his hands. “We lost one killed, sir.” He looked at, and through, Adam as if he did not see him. “Mr Bellamy, sir.”
The only midshipman who had never wanted to leave this ship.
Adam shouted, “Broadside!”
It seemed louder than before, and the smoke less eager to clear. He gripped his hands behind his back to contain the anger and emotion. He stared at the other vessel, the poop clawed away as if by some giant.
“Their flag is down now, Roger.” Jago was beside him although he had not seen him move. “Prepare to board. But have the guns loaded and be ready. If he attempts to trick us or resists us this time he will drown in his own sea of blood!”
Jago followed him to the main deck where the boatswain’s party were once again preparing to sway out and lower boats for boarding.
He knew he had to stay close to the captain. They had shared and done far worse, but he could not recall seeing him so moved. He thought suddenly of the girl in the portrait and wondered what she would feel if she saw her man like this.
“Boats alongside, sir!”
Pointer was gazing at the starboard side gun crews. But for Bolitho’s instinct, second sight, or whatever it was, Lotus and most of these men would be dead.
And he was going across in one of the boats. Again, as if something or somebody was driving him.
He realized that Bolitho had paused with his leg over the side, and was looking up at him.
“Take care, sir!”
Adam
shaded his eyes. “You will need a prize-crew, Roger. They might listen to us in future!”
“Cast off! Bear off forrard!” The boats were moving away from the side, some of the seamen peering at their ship, looking for the hole where cannon had smashed through the hull, and had killed one of their own. Others gripped their cutlasses and boarding axes and stared ahead at the unexpected enemy, ready to fight and kill if any one opposed them.
The sailing-master murmured, “Close thing, sir.”
Pointer pulled his mind together. “We were ready for that scum.” He beckoned to a boatswain’s mate, still hearing the inner voice. But I was not.
Both boats were pulling strongly so that within minutes the drifting barque seemed to tower over them like a cliff. Adam crouched beside Jago and the boat’s coxswain, his sword pinned between his legs. Two of the seamen were armed with muskets which they held trained on the barque, ready for a last show of force. He found time to think it strange not to have Royal Marines in either boat, but Lotus’s men were experienced in this sort of work. Over the months since the anti-slavery laws had grudgingly been accepted, they must have stopped and boarded many suspected slavers, some without result, and others which had been allowed to go free because of slackness in the wording of some regulations. Adam had heard of a case where a ship had been seized with only one slave still on board. Enough evidence, any sane person might have thought. But the Act stated any vessel carrying slaves, in the plural, so the vessel was released without charge. That clause, at least, had now been changed.
He peered across at the other boat. Lotus’s second lieutenant, Jack Grimes, was in charge. He was an old hand at the work, who had come up the hard way to gain his commission, from the lower deck. As someone had once said of such promotions, if he was good there was none better. And if not, then watch out!
Faces had appeared on the barque’s forecastle and above the creak of oars and the sluice of water he could hear someone screaming.
Jago loosened his blade and muttered, “’Ere we go, lads!”
“Grapnels!”
The boat surged alongside, the oars vanishing as if by magic. Hands snatched up weapons. Todd, the boatswain’s mate in charge, yelled, “Ready, sir?”
Adam felt Jago’s hand on his arm. “I’ll get no thanks from Sir Graham if I lets you get killed first, Cap’n!” He thrust past him and flung himself up into the forechains before any one could stop him. The second boat was already grappling the mainchains, and Adam managed to see Lieutenant Grimes, hanger in one hand as he shouted something to the men close behind him.
He did not recall climbing up and over the side. One shot was fired, and somewhere a man cried out in anguish. But suddenly the barque’s broad deck was theirs . . . Individual seamen ran to their allotted tasks as if they knew the ship like their own. One was already at a swivel gun and training it aft toward the poop and the blood-spattered aftermath of Lotus’s second broadside, others were rounding up some of the barque’s people, and weapons clattered on the deck or were pitched over the side. Lotus’s men were in no mood for argument, and those who had reached the poop and had found the powerful guns half buried by the false superstructure needed no words of command to keep them fully alert, and ready to hack down any opposition. Had Lotus not played trick-for-trick and been ready to open fire, their little sloop would now be lying fathoms deep.
Seven of the barque’s company had been killed in the broadsides; several others had been badly cut and wounded by flying splinters. Lieutenant Grimes made the first discovery. With one of his men he brought the barque’s master to Adam from his hiding place in a spirit store in the poop.
He said harshly, “We must mount a guard there, sir. Enough grog stored to float the flagship!” He pushed the ship’s master forward. “His name’s Cousens, sir. English, God help us!”
Adam said, “We have already met, Mister Cousens, have we not?” Even the brig’s name, Albatroz, was ice-clear in his mind. Like a storm passing: the madness of the attack, each second expecting the jarring agony of musket ball or the blade of a cutlass, then this. A sudden calm which was almost worse.
A year ago, Unrivalled had put a boarding party aboard a suspected slaver. No slaves were found, but his men had discovered chains and manacles slyly hidden in a cask of boiling pitch. Evidence enough, his boarding party had believed.
But once delivered in harbour to face charges, the brig’s master, this same man, must have laughed at them, and had walked free.
Cousens looked him up and down. “You look as if you’ve fallen on hard times, Captain. An’ once again, you’ll find nothing.”
The calmness remained, although something deep inside him wanted to cut this man down, here and now.
He said, “You intended that we should reach Havana ahead of you. So that we might be ‘detained’ long enough for you to land your cargo.”
“I don’t have to say anything until . . .”
He gasped as Jago seized his arm and twisted it behind his back.
“Sir, when you speak to a King’s officer, you scum!”
Todd, the boatswain’s mate, was hurrying aft, his face split in a great grin despite the blood and corpses around him.
“Captain, sir! Found the cargo!” Somewhere along the way he had had his two front teeth knocked out. The grin made it worse. “Can’t get right into it, sir, more locks and bolts than a Chatham whorehouse, but it’s gold right enough, tons of it!”
Grimes scowled. “Something else we will have to mount a guard on.”
Cousens exclaimed, “Not my fault! I was under orders!”
Adam turned away and watched the Lotus slowly coming about, her gunports closed, and from this bearing only the spreading tear in her main topsail to mark what had happened.
And the midshipman, I don’t want to leave this ship, had been killed.
It gave him time. But there was never enough when you needed it so badly.
He said, “Put this man in irons, and prepare to get the ship underway. We will ask Lotus for some more hands. We are going to need them.”
Grimes turned his back on the man called Cousens.
“The steering is undamaged, sir. But what do you intend?”
Adam glanced at the carving on the poop, the barque’s name in gilt lettering. Villa de Bilbao. It, too, was splashed with blood.
“We shall return to English Harbour. I think we have evidence enough. Sir Graham’s message to the captain-general will have to wait a while longer.”
Grimes paused to listen to one of his men, and said, “She’s a slaver right enough, sir. All the usual fittings, no covers on the hatches, just bars to keep the poor devils penned up for the journey, the last for some of them, no doubt!”
“And the gold?”
Grimes studied him guardedly, not yet sure of the bridge that might exist between them. Then he said bluntly, “Payment for the last few cargoes, I’d wager,” and seemed surprised when Adam grasped his arm and said, “I am certain of it!”
Cousens tried to thrust past Jago, shouting, “What about me, damn your eyes!”
Adam looked along the littered and scarred deck, at Lotus’s men leaning on their weapons, another bandaging the arm of one of the barque’s sailors, and turned toward Cousens again, remembering the terrified faces he had seen in a slaver’s hold, women too, some no older than Elizabeth. They all ended up as pieces of gold.
“You, Cousens, will be put ashore and hanged. You fired on a King’s ship, one authorized by law to stop and search any suspected vessel, as well you know. Those who pay you will not save you.”
He felt sick, furious with himself for caring so much. They had captured a prize which, given time, would reveal names and places.
If Cousens lived or died the trade would still go on. But just this once they had made their mark.
He walked over to watch Lotus’s jolly-boat pulling across the water toward the Villa de Bilbao.
He realized that he was still gripping the old sword in his
hand, but could hardly remember drawing it. Another minute and Cousens would not have had to wait for the rope. He tried again to shake it off, the narrow margin of life and death.
He watched the jolly-boat pulling closer.
Help was on its way. Very carefully, he sheathed the sword which had served other Bolithos.
Not a moment too soon.
12 CATHERINE
VICE-ADMIRAL Sir Graham Bethune paused under a low archway and gazed up at the house.
“This is the one?” He saw Tolan nod, but felt compelled to insist, “You’re certain?”
It was a warm evening, humid, and Bethune was feeling it. He was wearing a boatcloak to cover his gold-laced uniform and held his hat concealed beneath it. He was breathing heavily. Perhaps they were in for a storm; but he knew he was already missing the regular rides and walks across the park in London.
“It’s damned quiet.” Again, Tolan said nothing, and Bethune knew he had been snapping at him and every one else since news of the arrival of the sloop Lotus and her impressive prize had been carried to him. Even the boat’s crew which had brought him ashore had felt the rough edge of his tongue.
And now he was here, and all his original confidence had deserted him. It could have been the first time. It might never have happened at all, except in his mind.
The narrow street was deserted. Everybody, it seemed, was still down at the harbour, watching the activity, sightseers in their small craft being held back or chased away by the guard-boats.
He thought of Adam Bolitho, remembering his face when he had lost his temper, forgetting that the flag-lieutenant and the secretary were still within earshot. And Tolan.
It had blown over, but Bethune still wondered if the air between them would clear.
And Bolitho had acted correctly. As Nelson had often proclaimed, the written order should never be a substitute for a captain’s initiative. And he was right.
He calmed himself with effort and unfastened his cloak.
He looked up at the steps and beyond, at the clouds drifting past Monk’s Hill and the lookout station which had first sighted the ill-matched vessels making their approach. That must have been ten hours ago. Things had moved very quickly after that. He relaxed a little and said, “I’m not to be disturbed. By anybody.” He relented slightly. “Good work, Tolan.”
Man of War Page 21
