Alexander Kent - Command a King`s Ship

Perhaps what they had seen at the reef had taught them more than drill, and would act as a warning to all of them. He began to pace again. And to me.

Bolitho strode into the cabin and paused below the skylight. It was almost sunset, and the open stern windows shone in the dying glare like burnished copper. Within the cabin the shadows bobbed this way and that to the frigate's steady motion and the swinging deckhead lanterns, and he watched the little group by the windows with something like disbelief.

Don Luis Puigserver sat awkwardly on the bench seat, one arm in a sling, his chest and ribs encased in bandages. When he had been dragged aboard with the other survivors a few hours earlier he had passed unrecognised until a gasping Spanish lieutenant, the only one of 1\Tervion's officers to be rescued, had managed to explain the truth. Then, Bolitho had thought it was too late. The thickset Spaniard had been unconscious and covered with angry scars and bruises. The fact he had survived that long had been hard to accept when Bolitho had recalled the Nervion's final destruction. Of the forty or so to reach Undine's protection, ten had already died, and several of the remainder were in a bad state. Crushed under falling spars, half drowned by the inrush of water, the Nervion's original complement of two hundred and seventy men had been totally unprepared for the horror which had awaited them on the reef. While their vessel had foundered and smashed herself to pieces, the surging waters had suddenly erupted in a maelstrom of dashing shapes as the sharks had hurried to the attack. Terrified men had seen their companions torn to bloody remnants, when moments before they had been setting more sail and manning their guns to run down the impudent brigantine.

When Undine's boats had arrived it had been nearly over. A few men had swum desperately back to the capsized frigate, only to be dragged down as she had slid from the reef for her last plunge. Others had clung to floating spars and upturned boats and had watched in terror as one by one their grey attackers had plucked them screaming into the churned, scarlet water.

And now, Puigserver was sitting here in the cabin, his face almost composed as he sipped steadily from a goblet of wine. He was naked to the waist, and Bolitho could see some extent of the bruising on his body, evidence of his will to survive.

He said quietly, 'I am grateful that you are in better spirits, Ser7or.'

The Spaniard made to grin, but winced at the effort. He waved the surgeon and one of his assistants aside and asked, 'My men? How many?'

Bolitho looked past him towards the horizon. A thread of copper, fading even as he watched.

'Thirty.' He shrugged. 'Many were badly mauled.'

Puigserver took another swallow. 'It was terrible to behold.' His dark eyes hardened. 'Capitan Triarte was so enraged by that other ship's attack that he went after her like a man possessed. He was too hot-blooded. Not like you.'

Bolitho smiled gravely. Not likeyon. But suppose he had not had a sailing master like Mudge? One so experienced, so travelled as to feel the reef's danger like another of his stored memories. It was likely Undine might have shared the Spaniard's fate. It made him chill, despite the lifeless air in the cabin.

Somewhere beyond the bulkhead a man screamed. A thin, long-drawn sound which stopped abruptly as if a door had been slammed on it.

Whitmarsh wiped his hands on his apron and straightened his back, his head bowed beneath the beams.

He said, 'Don Puigserver will be comfortable for a while, sir. I would like to return to my other charges.' He was sweating very badly, and a muscle at one corner of his face twitched uncontrollably.

Bolitho nodded. 'Thank you. Please inform me of any help you might require.'

The surgeon touched the Spaniard's bandages vaguely. 'God's help perhaps.' He gave a wry smile. 'Out here, we have little else.'

As he left with his assistant Puigserver murmured, 'A man with an inner torment, Capitan.' He grimaced. 'But a gentle one for his trade.'

Allday was folding up a towel and some unused dressings and said, 'Mr. Raymond was asking to see you, Captain.' He frowned. 'I told him you had given orders that the cabin was to be kept for the surgeon until his work was done with Don Puig-' he coughed, '… the Spanish gentleman.'

'What did he want?'

Bolitho was so weary he hardly cared. He had seen little of Raymond since the survivors had been brought aboard, and had heard he had been in the wardroom.

Allday replied, 'He was wishing to make a complaint, Captain. His wife took a displeasure at you asking her to help tend the injured.' He frowned again. 'I told him you had more important work to do.' He picked up his things and walked to the door.

Puigserver leaned back and closed his eyes. Without the others present he seemed willing to reveal the pain he was really enduring.

He said, 'Your All-day is a remarkable fellow, eh? With a few hundred of his kind I might think again about a campaign in the South Americas.'

Bolitho sighed. 'He worries too much.'

Puigserver opened his eyes and smiled. 'He seems to think you are worth worrying about, Capitan.'

He leaned forward, his face suddenly intense. 'But before Raymond and the others come amongst us, I must speak. I want your opinion about the wreck. I need it.'

Bolitho walked to the bulkhead and touched the sword with his fingers.

He said, 'I have thought of little else, Senor. At first I believed the brigantine to be a pirate, her captain so confused or so in dread of his crew as to need a battle to keep them together. But I cannot believe it in my heart. Someone knew of our intentions.'

The Spaniard watched him intently. 'The French perhaps?'

'Maybe. If their government is so concerned at our movements it must mean that when they sank the Fortunate they did indeed capture her despatches intact. It would have to be something really vital to play such a dangerous game.'

Puigserver reached for the wine bottle. 'A game which did work.'

'Then you, too, are of the same mind, Senor?' He watched the man's outline, paler now against the darkened windows.

He did not reply directly. 'if, and I am only saying if, this someone intended such a course of action, he will have known we were two ships in company.' He paused and then said sharply, 'A reaction, Capitan! Quickly!'

Bolitho said, 'It would make no difference. He would realise that this is a combined mission. One ship without the other makes further progress impossible, and…

Puigserver was banging his hip with the goblet, wine slopping over his leg like blood.

He shouted excitedly, 'And? Go on, Capitan! And what?'

Bolitho looked away and replied firmly, 'I must return either to England or to Teneriffe and await further orders.'

When he looked again at the Spaniard he saw he was slumped back on the seat, his square features strained, his chest heaving as if from a fight.

Puigserver said thickly, 'When you came to Santa Cruz, I knew you were a man of thoughts and not merely of words.' He shook his head. 'Let me finish. This man, these creatures, whoever they are, who would let my people die so horribly, want you to turn back!'

Bolitho watched him, fascinated, awed by his strength. 'Without you being here, Senor.' He looked away. 'I would have had no option.'

'Exactly, Capitan.'

He peered at Bolitho over the rim of the goblet, his eyes shining in the lantern light like tawny stones.

Bolitho added, 'By the time I returned to England, and new plans were made and agreed upon, something might have happened in the East Indies or elsewhere which we could not control.'

'Give me your hand, Capitan.' He groped forward, his breathing sharper. 'In a moment I will sleep. It has been a wretched day, but far worse for many others.'