Sloop of War

by Alexander Kent

  Bolitho raised a telescope and held it trained on Fawn’s quarterdeck. He saw running figures, faces magnified in the lens and made more terrible by distance and silence. Open mouths, gesturing arms as men ran to hack away the wreckage and keep at least some of the guns firing. A spar fell across his small encircled world, so that he flinched as if expecting to feel the shock of its impact on the deck. A seaman was running and stumbling along one gang-way, his face apparently shot away, his terror agonising to watch as he fell and was mercifully lost alongside.

  Someone had kept his head, and high above the deck Bolitho saw the maintopsail billowing free to the wind, the sudden response beneath Fawn’s gilded figurehead as she began to gather way.

  He felt Buckle shaking his arm and turned as he shouted desperately, “We must go about, sir!” He pointed frantically towards the glittering water and at a mass of brown weed which glided so close to its surface. “We’ll be ashore this instant!”

  Bolitho looked past him. “Prepare to anchor, Mr. Tyrrell!” He did not recognise his voice. It was like steel against steel. “Have the cutters swayed out and prepare to lay a kedge anchor directly.” He waited until Tyrrell had run to the rail and the first dazed men had swarmed out along the yards. “We will remain here.”

  Moving more slowly, Sparrow edged into the shallows, and when she passed above one sandbar it was possible to see her own shadow before the water deepened once more.

  Bolitho continued to pass his orders, making each one separate and detached from the next while he forced himself to concentrate, to shut his ears to the gunfire, to shield his eyes from Fawn’s slow and methodical destruction.

  The cutters were lowered, and as ordered, Glass, the boatswain, took one of them to lay out a small kedge. With sails brailed up, and loosely anchored from bow and stern, Sparrow finally came to rest.

  Then and only then did Bolitho raise his glass again and turn it on the Fawn . Listing badly, and all but her mizzen shot away, she was still trying to work clear of the bombardment. It was hopeless, for although her rudder seemed intact, and the spanker and crossjack were giving her some sort of steerage way, she was badly hampered by a mass of dragging spars and canvas, and appeared to have few men left who were able to cut it adrift. She was hit again and again, the splintered sections of timber and planking plummeting in the shallows, floating with and astern of her like blood from a wounded beast.

  She gave a violent lurch, and as her mizzen came down to join the rest of her spars, Bolitho knew she had driven aground. She was broaching to, her deck tilting towards him as the first savage spines ground into her bilges and keel. It was finished.

  He closed the glass and handed it to someone nearby. He saw no individual faces, heard no voices he could recognise. His own was as strange and unnatural as before.

  “The Frenchman lies on our larboard bow.” How quiet it was now. The enemy had ceased fire, for as Fawn lay gripped on a shoal she was at last out of reach from those guns. Smoke drifted above the headland, and Bolitho pictured the French artillerymen sponging out the muzzles, watching perhaps the unexpected arrival of another sloop. One more victim. “The range is less than a mile. He is well moored to present a perfect deception.” He knew Tyrrell and the rest were watching him. Transfixed. “Equally, he cannot hurt us. We on the other hand . . .” He turned despite his guard to see Fawn’s beakhead and bowsprit tear away and drop into the swirling current beneath her stem. He continued tonelessly, “We can hit him, and hard!”

  Graves was on the ladder, his face pale from shock or at seeing the other ship destroyed so cruelly.

  Bolitho looked at him. “Get the larboard bow-chaser to work. You will open fire when ready. Pass your requirements to the bosun. By using the anchor cables you will be able to traverse at will.” He turned to Tyrrell. “Have the capstan manned at once.”

  Graves was halfway along the deck when Bolitho’s voice brought him stockstill in his tracks.

  “Fetch Mr. Yule! Tell him I want him to build a small furnace where he can heat shot for your gun. Take good care that it is done right and well.” He shifted his eyes to the enemy ship. “We have time now. Plenty of it.”

  Then he walked to the nettings and waited for Tyrrell to come aft again.

  Tyrrell said quietly, “You were right after all, sir. It was us they were after. Good God Almighty, it was us we just watched being destroyed!”

  Bolitho studied him gravely. “Aye, Jethro.” He recalled with stark clarity Maulby’s words to him at their last meeting. Of Colquhoun. That man will be the death of me . . .

  He swung round, his voice harsh again. “What the hell is the delay?”

  He was answered by a loud bang from forward, and was in time to see the fall of shot some half a cable from the enemy.

  An order was passed down the deck and the men at the capstan bars took the strain, tautening the cable very slightly so that Sparrow’s bows edged round to give Graves’s crew a better traverse.

  Bang! The ball shrieked away, this time slapping down in line with the enemy’s poop.

  Bolitho had to grip his hands to steady himself. The next ball would strike. He knew it would. From then on . . . He beckoned to Stockdale.

  “Away gig. Pipe for the second cutter to head for Fawn . We may yet pick up some of her people.”

  He saw Dalkeith below the ladder, already dressed in his long, stained apron.

  Another bang came from the bow-chaser, and he saw the brown smoke billowing through the beakhead, hiding the actual fall of shot. But a voice yelled, “Got ’er! Fine on th’ quarter!”

  He said, half to himself, “Not pop-guns this time, Mr. Frenchman! Not this time!”

  “Gig’s ready, sir!” Even Stockdale sounded shocked.

  “Take charge until I return, Mr. Tyrrell.” He waited for him to drag his leg down to the entry port. “We will work out of here on the next tide.”

  He heard dull hammering as Yule and his mates constructed a crude furnace. It was dangerous, even foolhardy under normal circumstances to consider heating shot aboard ship. A tinder-dry hull, cordage and canvas, tar and gunpowder. But this was not normal. Sparrow was anchored in sheltered waters. A floating gun-platform. It was merely a matter of accuracy and patience.

  Tyrrell asked awkwardly, “How long do we keep firing, sir?”

  Bolitho swung himself out above the gently slapping cat’s-paws and green reflections.

  “Until the enemy is destroyed.” He looked away. “Completely.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  Tyrrell watched Bolitho climb into the gig, the quick flurry of oars as Stockdale guided it towards the hulk which had once been Fawn .

  Then he walked slowly to the quarterdeck rail and shaded his eyes to watch the enemy ship. There was little sign of damage, but the balls were hitting her regularly now. Shortly, the heated shot would be cradled from Yule’s furnace, and then . . . he shivered despite the growing sunlight. Like most sailors he feared fire more than anything.

  Hewyard joined him and asked quietly, “Did he mean it?”

  Tyrrell thought of Bolitho’s eyes, the despair and hurt when Fawn had been taken by the trap. “Aye, he did.”

  He flinched as a gun fired from the Frenchman’s deck, and saw the ball throw up a thin column almost a cable short. Seamen not employed on the capstan or boats were watching from the gang-ways and shrouds, some even made wagers as to the next shot. As each French ball fell short they cheered or jeered, spectators only, and as yet unaware that but for a twist of fate they and not Fawn’s people would have died under those cannon.

  Tyrrell continued, “Colquhoun brought us to this. If our cap’n had been given his rightful position to attack we’d have got clear.” He banged his palms together. “Arrogant bastard! An’ he just sits out there like some sort of god while we finish his mess for him!”

  Another bang echoed across the water and he saw a spar fall from the enemy’s mainmast. Very slowly, or so it appeared, like a leaf from a tree in autumn
.

  Midshipman Fowler called, “Our boats are standing off the wreck, sir!”

  He was pale, but as he raised his telescope his hand was as steady as a gun.

  Tyrrell looked at him coldly. And there’s another one. Like Ransome, like Colquhoun. Without humanity or feelings.

  Wreck was how he had described Fawn . Yet moments ago she had been a living, vital creature. A way of life for her people and those who would have come after.

  Savagely he said, “Get aloft, Mr. Fowler, and take your glass with you! Keep an eye open for Bacchante beyond th’ reef and watch for her signals.”

  If any.

  Then as the gun banged out again he made himself walk to the opposite side leaving Heyward to his thoughts.

  Bolitho heard the gun’s regular bombardment even as the gig hooked on to Fawn’s listing side, and with some of his men he climbed aboard.

  “The cutter first!” He gestured to Bethune who was staring at the bloody shambles like a man in a trance. “Full load, and then the gig.”

  Stockdale followed him up the slanting deck, over smashed boats and tangled rigging. Once as they passed a hatchway Bolitho saw a green glow, and when he peered below he saw the sea surging jubilantly through a great gash in the hull, the reflected sunlight playing on two bobbing corpses. Huge patches of blood, upended guns around which the dazed survivors staggered down towards the waiting boats. There seemed very few of them.

  Bolitho wiped his face with his shirt-sleeve. Us, Tyrrell had said. It was not difficult to understand.

  He paused on the quarterdeck ladder and looked down at Maulby. He had been crushed by a fallen spar, his features frozen in the agony of the moment. There was a small smudge of blood on his cheek, and there were flies crawling on his face.

  He said hoarsely, “Take him, Stockdale.”

  Stockdale bent down and then muttered, “Can’t be done, sir. ’E’s ’eld fast.”

  Bolitho knelt over the spar and covered his face with a scrap of canvas. Rest easy, old friend. Stay with your ship. You are in the best of company today.

  The deck gave a quick shiver. She was beginning to break up. The sea, the tide and the unlashed guns would soon finish what the enemy had begun.

  Bethune’s voice came up from alongside where the cutter rose and plunged in a dangerous swell. “All off, sir!”

  “Thank you.”

  Bolitho heard the sea crashing through the deck below, swamping the wardroom and on into the stern cabin. One like his own. There was no time to retrieve anything now. He bent down and unclipped Maulby’s sword.

  He handed it to Stockdale. “Someone in England might like it.”

  He made himself take one long glance around him. Remembering every detail. Holding it.

  Then he followed Stockdale into the gig. He did not look back, nor did he hear the sounds of Fawn’s final misery. He was thinking of Maulby. His drawling voice. Feeling his last handshake.

  Tyrrell met him and then said, “Mr. Yule has th’ furnace ready, sir.”

  Bolitho looked at him emptily. “Douse it, if you please.”

  “Sir?”

  “I’ll not burn men for doing their duty. The Frenchman is too badly holed now to get away. We will send a boat across under a flag of truce, I don’t think he’ll wish to prolong senseless killing.”

  Tyrrell breathed out slowly. “Aye, sir. I’ll attend to it.”

  When he turned back from passing the order to cease fire he found that Bolitho had left the deck.

  He saw Stockdale carrying the sword and wiping it with a scrap of waste, his battered face totally engrossed in the task. He thought of Tilby’s two model ships. Like Maulby’s sword. Was that all that was left of a man?

  He was still pondering about it when Bacchante’s topmasts hove in sight and she hoisted her first signal.

  It was evening before Sparrow was able to close with the frigate. For almost as soon as she had worked clear of the bar the wind veered and gained considerably in strength, so that it was necessary to use every effort to beat clear of those treacherous breakers. In open waters again, with the darkening slab of Grand Bahama some five miles abeam, Sparrow reduced sail and hove-to within a cable of Colquhoun’s ship.

  As he sat in the crazily tossing gig Bolitho watched the frigate and the last signal for him to repair on board being hauled down to the deck. It had been hoisted for some time, but like Colquhoun’s previous ones, he had ignored it. Had not even made an acknowledgement.

  Spray lanced back from the oars and dashed across his face. It helped to calm him, if only slightly. His sorrow was matched by anger, his self-control by an eagerness to confront Colquhoun.

  The gig turned and rose dizzily on a steep swell, the bowman almost pitching overboard as he hooked on to the chains and made fast.

  Bolitho clambered up the frigate’s tumblehome, for once ignoring the sea which swirled along the hull as if to pluck him away.

  Colquhoun was not at the entry port, and the first lieutenant said quickly, “By God, sir, I am sorry for what happened.”

  Bolitho eyed him gravely. “Thank you. The fault was not of your making.”

  Then without another word or a glance at the swaying side party he strode aft to the cabin.

  Colquhoun was standing by the windows, as if he had not moved since their last encounter. In the lanterns’ yellow glare his face looked stiff and unsmiling, and when he spoke his tone was like that of a much older man.

  “It took you long enough! How dare you ignore my signals!”

  Bolitho faced him coldly. The anger in Colquhoun’s voice was as false as his composure, and he saw one hand twitching badly against his white breeches.

  “Your earlier signals were made to Fawn, sir.” He saw him start and continued slowly, “But she was already in pieces and her people mostly killed in battle or drowned when she struck.”

  Colquhoun nodded jerkily, his brows tightening as if he was trying to keep a grip on his emotions.

  “That is beside the point. You disobeyed my orders. You crossed the bar without permission. You . . .”

  Bolitho said, “I did what I considered to be my duty.” It was no use. He could feel his control slipping away like an icy yard beneath a topman. “But for your lust after glory we would have taken the Frenchman together, without loss. We had all the advantage, for the enemy knew nothing of your full strength. She was after one prize only. Sparrow.” He turned away, trying to hide his grief. “Because of you, Maulby and his men were killed, his ship lost. Because of your senseless rigidity, your failure to see beyond prize money, you could not help when the time came.” He swung round again, his voice harsh. “Well, the Frenchman is taken! What d’you want now, a bloody knighthood?”

  Surprisingly, Colquhoun’s voice was very low, and as he spoke he kept his eyes on some point away from Bolitho.

  “I will ignore your outburst.” He paused. “Ah, I remember now, you have young Fowler aboard. It would have done no good to lose him in battle.” He was speaking more quickly, the disjointed sentences falling from his lips in time with his thoughts. “The admiral will expect a full report. I shall . . .”

  Bolitho watched him, sickened. “I have the written orders you originally gave me. The ones which were to send me as far from the point of attack as you could invent.” Despite Colquhoun’s pathetic explanations and excuses he forced himself to go on. “If I had obeyed them, or the wind had remained constant, Fawn would still have perished. What would you have done then? Sent the little Lucifer maybe?”

  Colquhoun walked to his desk and pulled a decanter from its rack. Some of the brandy slopped over his hand but he did not seem to notice it.

  “I received orders some while back. When we had run the French flute to ground, or given up the search, we are ordered to proceed to New York. The flotilla is to be reduced.” He swallowed half a glass of brandy and had to fight to regain his breath. “Bacchante will be returned to fleet duties.”

  Bolitho stared at him. Any co
mpassion or pity he might have harboured behind his anger was gone with that admission.

  In a low tone he asked, “All this while, and you knew we were to go to New York?” He listened to his own voice, wondering how he could sound so calm. “You thought it was a last chance to prove yourself. A great show of victory, with you entering port, a fine fat prize under your colours! Yet because of your greed you could not see the real danger, and Fawn has paid dearly for your ignorance!”

  Colquhoun lifted his eyes and watched him desperately.

  “In New York things might seem different. Remember, I was the one who helped you . . .” He broke off and swallowed another drink. “I needed that prize! I’ve earned it!”

  Bolitho moved towards the door, keeping his eyes on Colquhoun’s quivering shoulders.

  He said, “I sent Fawn’s remaining lieutenant to take charge of the flute . Surrender was arranged by Lieutenant Heyward.” He made himself keep to the details, if only to stop Colquhoun from pleading. “The French ship’ll not be much use again. I suggest you send your marines to take charge and await the military, who’ll wish to escort the prisoners elsewhere.”

  Colquhoun leaned against the stern windows, his voice muffled by the sounds of sea and rudder.

  “It will mean a court martial.” His shoulders stiffened. “You will be ordered to attend.”

  Bolitho nodded. “It would seem so.”

  Colquhoun waved one hand towards the cabin without turning.

  “All this gone. In just a moment of bad circumstances. Fate.”

  “Maulby probably thought that, too.” Bolitho rested his fingers on the door.

  Colquhoun pushed himself from the windows and lurched across the cabin.

  “So you’ve won in the end, eh?” His voice cracked. “You and your bloody Sparrow!”

  Bolitho saw the man’s anguish and answered, “Three years ago when I was given Sparrow I thought command was everything, all a man could desire. Then maybe I would have agreed with your decisions, no matter what they entailed. Now I know better, perhaps after all, thanks to you. Command is one thing. But responsibility, the duty to those who depend on you, is the greater burden. We must share the guilt for Maulby’s death.” He saw Colquhoun staring at him incredulously but continued, “Your folly blinded you to everything but future advancement. My crime was pride. A pride which goaded the enemy into laying a snare for me, and one which cost Fawn’s people dearly.” He opened the door. “I hope I never forget it. Nor you.”