Alexander Kent - Stand into Danger

Colpoys pointed to the water. “That’ll be the closest point!” He fell on his knees, his hands to his chest. “Oh God, they’ve done for me!”

Bolitho called two marines to carry him between them, his mind cringing to the din of musket-fire, the sound of flames devouring a vessel beyond the dense smoke.

There was shouting, too, and he knew that many of the schooner’s people had been ashore when the attack had begun and were now running towards the hill-side in the hope of reaching the protection of the battery.

Bolitho came to a halt, his feet almost in the water. He could barely suck breath and his eyes streamed so badly he could see little beyond the beach.

They had done the impossible, and while Palliser and his men took advantage of their work, they were now able to go no further.

He knelt down to reload his pistol, his fingers shaking as he cocked it for one last shot.

Jury was with him, and Stockdale, too. But there seemed less than half of the party which had so courageously stormed the ridge and taken the cannon.

Bolitho saw Stockdale’s eyes light up as the magazine exploded and hurled the gun bodily down the slope amidst a landslide of corpses and broken rocks.

Midshipman Cowdroy stabbed at the smoke with his hanger. “Boat! Look, there!”

Pearse lowered the marine to the ground and waded into the water, his terrible cutlass held above his head.

“We’ll take it off ’em, lads!”

Bolitho could feel their desperation like a living force. Sailors were all the same in one thing. Get them a boat, no matter how small, and they felt they could manage.

Little dragged out his cutlass and bared his teeth. “Cut ’em down afore they slips us!”

Jury fell against Bolitho, and for an instant he thought he had been taken by a musket-ball. But he was pointing incredulously at the smoke and the shadowy boat which was poking through it.

Bolitho nodded, his heart too full to understand.

It was Rhodes standing in the bows of the long-boat, and he saw the checkered shirts of Destiny’s seamen at the oars behind him.

“Lively there!” Rhodes reached down and seized Bolitho’s wrist. “All in one piece?” He saw Colpoys and shouted, “Lend a hand there!”

The boat was so full of men, some of them wounded, that there was barely five inches of freeboard, as like a drunken sea-creature it backed-water and headed once more into the smoke.

Between coughs and curses Rhodes explained, “Knew you’d try to reach us. Only chance. My God, you raised a riot back there, you rascal!”

A burning schooner drifted abeam, and Bolitho could feel the heat on his face like an inferno. Explosions rolled through the smoke, and he guessed it was either another magazine or the hill-top battery shooting blindly across the lagoon.

“What now?”

Rhodes stood up and gestured wildly to the coxswain. “Hard a-starboard!”

Bolitho saw the twin masts of a schooner right above him, and with his men reached out to catch the heaving-lines which came through the smoke like serpents.

Groaning and crying out in pain, the wounded were pushed and hauled up the vessel’s side, and even as the long-boat was cast adrift with a man who had died in sight of safety as her only passenger, Bolitho heard Palliser shouting orders.

Bolitho felt his way through the smoke and met Palliser and Slade by the tiller.

Palliser exclaimed, “You look like an escaped convict, man!” He gave a brief smile, but Bolitho saw only the strain and the relief.

Rhodes was kneeling beside the marine lieutenant. “He’ll live if we can get him to old Bulkley.”

Palliser raised one hand and the helm went over very slightly. Another schooner was just abeam, her sails drawing well as she stood away from the blazing hulks and headed for the entrance.

Then he said, “By the time they’ve discovered we’ve taken one of their own, we’ll be clear.”

He turned sharply as the San Augustin’s towering masts broke above the smoke. She was still at anchor, and probably had every able man from the island on board waiting to fend off the drifting fire-ships and douse the results of any contact with them.

Palliser added, “After that, it will be someone else’s problem, thank God!”

A ball splashed down near the larboard bow, and Bolitho guessed that Garrick’s gunners had at last realized what was happening.

As the smoke thinned, and parts of the island merged clean and pale in the sunlight, Bolitho saw they were already past the point.

He heard Pearse whisper, “Look, Bob, there she be!” He lifted the head of a wounded seaman so that he could see Destiny’s braced topsails as Dumaresq drove her as close as he dared to the reefs.

Pearse, a boatswain’s mate who had fought like a devil, who by command of his captain had laid raw the back of many a defaulter with his cat-o’-nine-tails, said very quietly, “Poor Bob’s dead, sir.” He closed the young seaman’s eyes with his tarry fingers, adding, “’Nother minute and ’e’d ’ave bin fine.”

Bolitho watched the frigate shortening sail, the rush of men along her gangway as the two vessels tacked closer together. Destiny’s figurehead was as before, pure and pale, her victor’s laurels held up as if in defiance to the smoke-shrouded island.

And all Bolitho could think of was the dead seaman named Bob, of a solitary corpse left drifting in the long-boat, of Stockdale’s anxiety at being ordered away from his side when he was needed. Of Colpoys, and the corporal nicknamed Dipper, Jury and Cowdroy, and others who had been left behind.

“Take in the fores’l!” Palliser watched the Destiny’s wary approach with grim satisfaction. “There were times when I never thought to see that lady again.”

Josh Little crossed to Pearse’s side and said roughly, “We’ll ’ave a wet when we gets aboard, eh?”

Pearse was still looking at the dead seaman. “Aye, Josh. An’ one for ’im, too.”

Rhodes said, “The lord and master will have his way now. A fight to the finish.” He ducked as a heaving-line soared aboard. “But for myself, I wish the odds were fairer.” He looked across at the great pall of smoke which surrounded the flat-topped hill as if to carry it away. “You’re a marvel, Dick. You really are.”

They examined each other like strangers. Then Bolitho said, “I was afraid you’d hold back. That you’d think we were all taken.”

Rhodes waved his arm to some of the seamen along Destiny’s gangway. “Oh, didn’t I tell you? We knew what you were doing, where you were, everything.”

Bolitho stared at him in disbelief. “How?”

“Remember that main-topman of yours, Murray? He was their sentry. Saw you and young Jury as you left cover.” He gripped his friend’s arm. “It’s true! He’s below now with a splinter in his leg. Had quite a story to tell. Lucky for you and young Jury, eh?”

Bolitho shook his head and leaned against the schooner’s bulwark to watch the two hulls come together in the swell.

Death had been that close, and he had known nothing about it. Murray must have taken the first available vessel out of Rio and had ended up with Garrick’s pirates. He could have raised the alarm, or could have shot them both down and become a hero. Instead, something which they had once shared, another precious moment, had held them together.

Dumaresq’s voice boomed through a speaking-trumpet. “Roundly there! I shall be aground if you cannot shift yourselves!”

Rhodes grinned. “Home.”

Captain Dumaresq stood by the stern windows of his cabin, his hands behind him, as he listened to Palliser’s account of the pitched-battle and their escape from the lagoon.

As he signalled for Macmillan to pass round more wine to his stained and weary officers, he said gravely, “I put a landing-party ashore to prick Garrick’s balloon. I did not expect you to make an invasion all on your own!” Then he smiled broadly, and it made him look sad and suddenly tired. “I shall think of you and your lads at dawn tomorrow. But for you, Destiny would have been met with such a resistance that I doubt I could have worked her clear. Things are still bad, gentlemen, but at least we know.”