Alexander Kent - Second to None

He threw his coat into the boat and climbed down beside the carefully packed charges. A few voices pursued him but he could not hear them. Colpoys was wading with the others, pushing the boat away from the beach.

Four oars, and a hard, hard pull. He doubted if any of them could swim; few sailors could. For them, the sea was always the real enemy.

He lay back on the loom, his muscles cracking in protest. Williams took the tiller, a slow match by his foot shining like a solitary, evil eye.

Campbell said, “Nice an’ steady, lads! We don’t want to tire the officer, do we?”

Galbraith pulled steadily; he could not recall when he had last handled an oar. As a midshipman? Was he ever that?

Tell my captain about it. What had he meant? Because there was no one else who would care?

He thought of the girl he had hoped to marry, but he had been about to take up his first command, so the wedding had been postponed.

He closed his eyes and pressed his feet hard into the stretchers, sweat running down his back like ice water.

But she had not waited, and had married another. Why had he thought of her now?

And all for this. A moment’s madness, then oblivion. Like George Avery, matter-of-fact about some things, sensitive, even shy, about others. And the traitor Lovatt who had died in the captain’s cabin; perhaps he had had some purpose, even to the end…

Williams called softly, “Half a cable!”

Galbraith gasped, “Oars!”

The blades still, dripping into the dark water alongside. When he twisted round on the thwart, he saw what he thought at first was a single large vessel, but when he dashed the sweat from his eyes he realised there were two, chebecs, overlapping one another, masts and furled sails stark against the clear sky, rakish hulls still hidden in shadow.

He said, “We shall grapple the first one, and light the fuses.” He saw Williams nod, apparently untroubled now that he was here to do it. “Then we’ll swim for the land. Together.”

He paused, and Williams said gently, “Can’t swim, sir. Never thought to learn.”

One of the others murmured, “Me neither.”

Galbraith repeated, “Together. Take the bottom boards, we shall manage.” He looked at Campbell, and saw the evil, answering grin.

“I’d walk on water just to ’elp an officer, sir! ”

The long bowsprit and ram-like beak-head swept over them, as if the chebec and not the boat was moving.

It was a miracle nobody had seen or challenged them.

Galbraith lurched to his feet and balanced the grapnel on his hand. Up and over. Now.

Even as the grapnel jagged into the vessel’s beak-head the stillness was broken by a wild shout. More like a fiend than something human. Galbraith staggered and ducked as a musket exploded directly above him, the sickening crack of the shot slamming into flesh and bone so close that it must have passed within inches.

Someone was gasping, “Oh, dear God, help me! Oh, dear God, help me!” Over and over, until Campbell silenced him with a blow to the chin.

The fuse was alight, sparking along the boat, alive, deadly.

“Over, lads!” The water knocked the breath out of him but he could still think. No more shots. There was still time before the chebec’s crew discovered what was happening.

And then he was swimming strongly, Williams and the other man floundering and kicking between them. The wounded seaman had vanished.

Two shots echoed across the water, and then Galbraith heard a chorus of yells and screams. They must have realised that the bobbing boat under their bows was not merely a visitor.

It was madness, and he wanted to laugh even as he spat out water, trying to guess how far they had come, and if the Algerines had managed to stop the fuses. Then he gasped as his foot grated painfully between two sharp stones, and he realised that he had lost or kicked off his boots. He staggered into the shallows, one hand groping for his hanger, the other still clinging to the choking gunner’s mate.

Campbell was already on his feet, pulling the other seaman on to firm ground.

Galbraith wanted to tell them something, but saw Campbell ’s eyes light up like the fires he had seen on the beach.

“Get down!” But it came out as a croak. Then the whole world exploded.

Adam Bolitho rested his hands on the quarterdeck rail and listened to the regular creak of rigging, the clatter of a block.

Otherwise it seemed unnaturally quiet, the ship forging into the deeper darkness, as if she was not under control.

He shivered; the rail was like ice. But it was not that and he knew it. He could see Unrivalled in his mind’s eye, ghosting along under topsails and forecourse; to set more canvas would deny them even a faint chance of surprise. He stared up at the maintopmast and thought he could see the masthead pendant licking out towards the lee bow. It would be plain for everyone to see when daylight finally parted sea from sky. To set the topgallants, the “skyscrapers,” would be a gift to any lookout.

He felt the twinge of doubt again. There might be nothing.

They had cleared for action as soon as they had cast off the boats. There had been no excitement, no cheering. It had been like watching men going to their deaths, pulling away into the darkness. Not just a captain’s decision. But mine.

He walked to the compass box again, the faces of the helmsmen turning towards him like masks in the binnacle light.

One said, “Sou’-west-by-south, sir. Full an’ bye.”

“Very well.” He saw Cristie with a master’s mate. Their charts had been taken below; their part was done. The master was probably thinking of his senior mate, Rist, who had gone with Galbraith and the others. Too valuable a man to lose. To throw away.

Suppose Galbraith had misjudged his approach. It was easy enough. It would give the enemy time to cut and run for it, if they were there… The slight shift of wind had been noted. Galbraith might have ignored it.

He saw Lieutenant Massie’s dark shadow on the opposite side of the deck, standing in Galbraith’s place, but with his heart most likely with his gun crews. The eighteen-pounders were already loaded, double-shotted and with grape. It was inaccurate but devastating, and there would be little time to reload. If they were there.

He wondered briefly if Massie was still brooding over the reprimand he had been given. Resenting it, or taking it personally. What did one man matter in any case?

It was an argument Adam had heard many times. He could recall his uncle’s insistence that there had to be an alternative, beginning with the conditions under which men were forced to serve in times of war. Strange that Sir Lewis Bazeley had made the same point during that meal in the cabin. To impress the officers, or had he really cared? He had drawn comparisons with the Honourable East India Company’s ships, where men were not ruled by the Articles of War, or subject to the moods and temper of a captain.

Adam had heard himself responding, very aware of the girl’s eyes, and her hand lying still on the table. The same hand which had later gripped his wrist like steel, refusing to release him.

“So what is the alternative for the captain of a King’s ship, Sir Lewis? Restrict their freedom to come and go, when they have none? Deny them their privileges, when they are afforded none? Cut their pay, when it is so meagre after the purser’s deductions that were it gone they would scarcely miss it?”

Bazeley had smiled without warmth. “So you favour the lash?”

Adam had seen her hand clench suddenly, as if she had been sharing it in some way.

He had answered, “The lash only brutalises the victim, and the man who administers it. But mostly, I think, the man who orders it to be carried out.”