Alexander Kent - Second to None

He said, “Now you know, my lady, this is no game for tricksters. Bones mend, but not hearts. You would do well to remember that!”

She dragged her hand away and raised it as if to strike him, but shook her head when he seized her wrist. “It was not a game or a trick, not to me. I cannot explain…” She stared at him, her eyes shining with tears, and he felt her come against him again, without protest or amusement. He wanted to push her away, no matter what it might do to each or both of them.

Think what you are doing, of the consequences. Are you beyond reason because of a loss you could never have prevented, a happiness which was never yours to explore?

But there was no solution. Only the realisation that he wanted this woman, this girl, another man’s wife.

He heard himself say, “I must leave you. Now. I have to see the admiral.”

She nodded very slowly, as if the action was painful.

“I understand.” He felt her face against his chest, her mouth damp through his shirt. “You may despise me now, Captain Bolitho.”

He kissed her shoulder, felt her body tighten, shock, disbelief, it no longer mattered.

There were voices now, and laughter, someone announcing an arrival. She was fading into the shadows, moving away, but with one arm held out.

He followed her through the same low archway, and she said, “No, no-it was wrong of me!” She shook herself as if to free her body of something. “Go now, please go!”

He held her, kissing her shoulder again, lingeringly, and with a deep sensuality. There were more voices, closer. Someone looking for him, or for her.

He pressed the small silver sword into her hand and closed her fingers around it, then he walked through the archway and into the courtyard once more, his mind and body fighting every step, almost daring to hope she might run after him and prevent him from leaving. But all he heard was the sound of metal on stone. She had flung the little clasp away from her.

He saw Lieutenant Onslow peering out from the opposite doorway and felt something like relief.

“Captain Bolitho, sir! Sir Graham sends his compliments, but he is unable to receive you this evening. He is with Sir Lewis Bazeley, and before the guests arrived he thought-”

Adam touched his sleeve. “No matter. I will sign for my orders and leave.”

Onslow said lamely, “He wishes you every success, sir.”

Adam did not glance up at the balcony. She was there, and she would know that he knew it. Anything more would be insanity.

He followed the flag lieutenant into another room. While Onslow was taking out the written orders, Adam held out his hand and examined it. It should be shaking, but it was quite steady. He picked up the pen, and thought of Jago down there with the gig’s crew.

There were far more dangerous forces abroad this evening than cut-throats and thieves. Perhaps Jago had realised that also.

I wanted her. And she will know it.

He could hear her voice still. Then I shall yield.

Perhaps they would never meet again. She would know the perils of any liaison. Even as a game.

The gig’s crew sat to attention when he appeared, and the bowman steadied the gunwale for him to step aboard. Jago took the tiller.

“Cast off!”

Captain Bolitho had said nothing. But he could smell perfume, the same she had been using when they had carried her, almost insensible, below.

“Bear off forrard! Out oars!”

Jago smiled to himself. Get back to sea. Good thing all round.

“Give way all!”

Adam saw the riding light of his ship drawing nearer and sighed.

Destiny.

LIEUTENANT Leigh Galbraith got down on his knees in the cutter’s stern sheets and ducked his head under the canvas canopy to peer at the compass. When he opened the lantern’s small shutter it seemed as bright as a rocket, just as the normal sounds around him were deafening.

He closed the shutter and regained his seat beside the helmsman. By contrast it was even darker than ever now, and he could imagine the man enjoying his lieutenant’s uncertainty. He was Rist, one of Unrivalled’s senior master’s mates, and the most experienced. The stars, which paved the sky from horizon to horizon, were already paler, but Rist navigated with the assurance of one who lived by them.

Galbraith watched the regular rise and fall of oars, not too fast, not enough to sap a man’s strength when he might need it most. Even they sounded particularly loud. He tried to dismiss it from his thoughts and concentrate. The cutter’s rowlocks were clogged with grease, the oar looms muffled with sackcloth; nothing had been left to chance.

He imagined their progress as a sea bird might have seen them, had there been any at this hour. Three cutters, each astern of the other, followed by a smaller boat which had been hoisted aboard Unrivalled under cover of darkness. Was it only two nights ago? It felt like a week since they had made that early morning departure from Malta.

It had been a quiet night when they had hoisted the other boat aboard, in spite of a steady breeze through the rigging and furled sails, quiet enough to hear the music carried across the harbour from the big white building used by Vice-Admiral Bethune and his staff.

Galbraith had seen the captain by the quarterdeck rail, his hands resting on it as he watched the boat being manhandled into a position away from the others. His head had been turned towards the music, as if his thoughts were elsewhere.

Rist said quietly, “Not long now, sir.”

Galbraith failed to find comfort in his confidence. A point offcourse and the boats might pass the poorly described and charted islet; and he was in command. When daylight came in a mere two hours’ time it would lay them bare, all secrecy would be gone, and the chebecs, if they were there, would make their escape.

There were thirty-five all told in the landing party, not an army, but any larger force would increase the risk and the danger of discovery. Captain Bolitho had decided to include some marines after all, only ten, and each man, as well as their own Sergeant Everett, was an expert shot. When Galbraith had carried out a final inspection of the party before they had disembarked he had noticed that even without their uniforms they managed to look smart and disciplined. The others could have been pirates, but all were trained and experienced hands. Even the foul-mouthed hard man, Campbell, was here in the boat. In a fight he would ask no quarter, nor offer any.

Halcyon’s second lieutenant, Tom Colpoys, was in the boat furthest astern. It would be his decision either to fight or to run if his leader encountered trouble.

Colpoys was a tough, surprisingly quiet-spoken man, old for his rank, and indeed the oldest man in the landing party. Galbraith had been immediately aware of the respect he was shown by his own sailors, and of a calm assurance which could not have come easily to him. From the lower deck, he had probably served all kinds of officers before rising to that same rank.

It was good to know that he was second-in-command of what his young captain had called this “venture.”

Galbraith had taken part in several such raids throughout his varied service, but never in this sea. Here there was no running tide to cover your approach, no boom of surf to warn or guide your final decision to land.

He thought of the Algerine chebecs he had seen and had heard described by the old Jacks. They were laughed at by those who had never encountered them, as relics from a dead past, from the pharaohs to the rise of the slave trade. But those who had experience of them treated them with respect. Even their rig had improved over the years, so that they could outsail most of the smaller traders on which they preyed. Their long sweeps gave them a manoeuvrability which compensated for their lack of armament. A man-of-war, with a fully trained and disciplined company, but becalmed, could become a victim in minutes. A chebec could pull around the ship’s stern and fire point-blank with her one heavy cannon through the unprotected poop. And then the Algerines would board their victim, without either fear or mercy. It was said that the dead were the lucky ones, compared with the horrors which inevitably followed.