Alexander Kent - In the King`s Name

Jago’s shadow merged with his own across the deck, and he heard the steady breathing. Then he lifted his arms and felt the coxswain clip the old sword into place.

It was like a signal.

“Beat to quarters and clear for action!”

VINCENT FACED AFT and touched his hat. “Onward cleared for action, sir!”

Adam returned his salute and stood looking along the length of the upper deck. Vincent’s formal use of the ship’s name seemed to make it more personal. Immediate.

He had already seen Maddock, the gunner, on his way to the semi-darkness of the magazine, his felt slippers gripped in one hand, appearing to glance briefly at the guns with a word or a nod to each crew. His head was, as usual, cocked to one side in case the deafness caused him to miss something, which in Maddock’s case was unlikely.

These were his men. Every day of their lives they carried out countless tasks to keep the ship alive and running. But in the end, this was their purpose. To work and fight these guns; if necessary to die doing it. They often discussed it, even joked about it, on messdecks and in wardroom alike. But now the ship was quiet. Waiting.

Vincent said, “They knocked two minutes off the time, sir.” It was meant to break the tension but his face remained drawn, and Adam thought he was in need of a good sleep.

Adam looked up as the topsails flapped untidily before filling once more. The land still seemed a long way away, but it was having its effect, like a giant barrier. He touched the telescope he had borrowed, but changed his mind.

“Load when you’re ready. As planned. Not a race.” Vincent was already gesturing to a bosun’s mate. “But don’t run out!”

He moved nearer to the wheel where Tobias Julyan was comparing notes with Tozer, his mate. Julyan peered up at the masthead pendant and pursed his lips.

“We’ll be losing a knot or two when we change tack next time, sir.”

Tozer ventured, “The last time afore we enter harbour, sir.”

Adam turned and saw the leadsman in the chains hauling in his line, his mouth soundlessly forming the soundings. Then he shouted, “By the mark, ten!”

Julyan grinned. “No wonder it’s a long haul!” Ten fathoms. Sixty feet. Onward drew three fathoms.

The second leadsman was already leaning against his apron, and lowering his own lead in readiness.

They were feeling their way, like a blind man tapping along an unfamiliar street.

Adam said, “Part of your ‘valley’?”

Julyan nodded, feeling the pocket where he kept his bulky notebook. “Don’t want to scrape off her barnacles just yet, sir.”

“Deep nine!”

Julyan licked his lips. “I think I’ll keep my mouth shut!”

Surprisingly, one of the helmsmen laughed.

The rest was drowned by the rumble of gun trucks as breechings were cast off, and the eighteen-pounders were manhandled inboard and loaded under the watchful eye of every senior hand. Adam saw the fists raised as each crew finished. But the guns were not run out.

He looked up at the tops where Royal Marines, stripped of their bright coats, were already lying or crouching with muskets or manning the swivel guns. They would be feeling the full heat of the sun up there.

Adam walked to the side of the quarterdeck and touched one of the blunt carronades as he passed. Hot, as if it had just been fired, and already loaded, each round packed with cast-iron balls in tiers, and deadly metal disks. At short range, they could transform a crowded deck into a slaughterhouse.

He unslung the telescope and trained it abeam, and felt the metal sear his fingers. Towards and across the harbour entrance. Like the impression on the chart, “hacked out of the African coastline,” as Julyan had described it.

He imagined the governor’s building. The line of cannon, and the flag. Not a lot of room to manoeuvre, but compared with Portsmouth Harbour, where ships of the line were expected to enter and depart at the drop of a signal, New Haven seemed spacious.

And quiet.

Vincent said, “Shall I shorten sail, sir?” He had moved to join him, perhaps so the others would not be concerned by any apparent lastminute hesitation. And so they might .

Adam looked briefly at the feathered wind-vane. “We’re going in.”

“And the boats? Cast them adrift?”

Adam glanced down at the boat tier. If boats were kept aboard during a fight, their flying splinters caused more casualties. He had seen it often enough, even as a midshipman. Like David … He shut his mind to it.

“Hold your course, Mark. Be ready to run out.” Their eyes met. “Then fire when I give the word!”

“By th’ mark, seven!”

Captain James Tyacke paused at the top of a steep slope and leaned against a pile of freshly cut timber. He sensed that the cutter’s crew had also stopped, and were watching him or peering up and around at the bare headland. There was not only timber, but piles of bricks, either to extend the pier or the gun emplacements, most of which faced the harbour entrance or the open sea. The musket fire and the single explosion had demonstrated more clearly than anything that the threat was coming from the opposite direction.

He tugged at his coat and drew a long, slow breath; he was sweating strongly. The uniform had been a gesture. He was paying for it now.

He could see the flagstaff clearly against the sky, and some of the buildings also; he could even see that the flag halliard was lifting and trailing slightly in the hot wind, which Fitzgerald had already noted with his keen and younger eyes. Not lowered. It had been cut.

Perhaps the governor, Ballantyne, had already sighted Onward and was attempting to warn her?

Fitzgerald said, “Heads down, lads, but keep your eyes open!” Calmly enough, but there was an edge to his words. He was looking down toward the jetty and pier, and the sea beyond. A sailor’s instinct.

Napier was squatting on a slab of rock, the satchel between his feet. He looked up and found Tyacke’s eyes on him and smiled.

It was time to move. Their arrival must have been seen. Tyacke fought the desire to turn and stare back at the sea. Suppose something had made Adam change his mind? Who would dispute it, or blame him?

Fitzgerald stood up and eased his shoulders. “I was thinkin’, sor …” There was a faint click and he froze, and another voice murmured, “Still! Someone’s comin’!”

Tyacke groped for his sword hilt, but let his hand fall. If he had led them into a trap, it was already too late. He called, “Stand fast!” and gestured to Napier. “You, with me!”

He stared past the others at the litter of building gear and beyond, like a skeleton against the hillside, a partly demolished barn with a rusting horseshoe nailed on a post.

“An unavoidable delay, Captain Tyacke, but you are welcome , beyond words!” It was a deep, authoritative voice, and for a moment seemed to come from nowhere, or the ground itself.

Tyacke had on two occasions seen, but never met, Sir Duncan Ballantyne, but he was as he remembered, and as Adam Bolitho had described. A face from the Armada . Even to the neatly trimmed beard, showing grey now against darkly tanned skin.

He strode toward them, frowning with a faint disapproval as one of the seamen released the hammer of his musket. He said calmly, “My own men were watching you as well.”

Two or three heads appeared as he spoke, and Tyacke saw the gleam of weapons. He took the proferred hand. Strong, but the palm was smooth. A gentleman.

Tyacke said, controlling the urge to touch his scars, “How did you know my name?”