Alexander Kent - Second to None

“Deep six! ”

If he went to the side he knew he would be able to see the ship’s great shadow on the seabed. He did not move. Men were watching him, seeing their own fate in him. Lieutenant Wynter was by the foremast, staring at another, larger island which appeared to be reaching out to snare them.

Adam said, “Let her fall off a point.” He saw Captain Bosanquet with one of his corporals positioned by the boat tier. If she drove aground they would need every boat, perhaps to try and kedge her free again. But men in fear of their lives would see the boats as their only security, their link with the invisible Halcyon.

He looked at the masthead pendant again. How many times? Holding steady. If the wind backed again they would not weather the next island, with its headland jutting out like a giant horn. If, if, if.

He heard the big forecourse flap noisily, and felt the deck heel very slightly.

Jago muttered, “Just stow that, matey!” Adam had not realised that he was at his side.

“An’ a quarter six!”

Adam released his breath very slowly. Slightly deeper here. He had seen the splash of the lead hitting the water, but his mind had rejected it, as if afraid of what it might reveal.

“Deck there! Boats ahead! ” From his lofty perch Sullivan could very likely see over, if not beyond, the out-thrust headland, and on to the next leg of the channel.

Bosanquet snapped, “Put your men in position, Corporal!”

His best shots, although his chosen marksmen were with the landing party.

Adam said, “Over here, boy!” He swung Napier round like a puppet and pointed him towards the bows. Then he laid the telescope on his shoulder. “Breathe easily.” Surely the boy was not afraid of him? With the ship in real danger of being wrecked, perhaps overrun by Algerines, it was impossible. He steadied the shoulder, and said quietly, “This will show them, eh?”

He saw the leading cutter spring into focus, the oars rising and falling to a fast, desperate stroke. Another cutter was close astern, and the third appeared to be stopped, its oars in confusion. A man was hanging over the gunwale, others were trying to drag him from the looms. They had been fired on, the sound muffled by Unrivalled’s shipboard noises. One officer, Halcyon’s second lieutenant, a seaman tying a bandage around his arm.

Even at this distance Adam could see Colpoys’ disbelief, when he turned and saw Unrivalled filling the channel.

And then he saw the chebec. She must have used her sweeps to cut past the wreckage and overhaul the three cutters. The great, triangular sails were filling, pushing the chebec over while her sweeps rose and froze in perfect unison. No wonder unarmed merchantmen were terrified of the Barbary pirates.

Adam gritted his teeth, and felt the boy stiffen as the leadsman’s chant came aft to remind them of their own peril.

“By th’ mark seven!”

He said sharply, “Stand to your guns, Mr Massie! Bow-chasers, then the smashers!”

He saw Massie look aloft. A split second only, but it said everything. If Unrivalled lost a spar, let alone a mast, they would never see open water again.

Adam rubbed his eye and laid his hand on the boy’s shoulder again. It was madness, but it reminded him of the instant she had raised her hand to strike him, and he had gripped her wrist with such force that it must have shocked her.

He said, “Still, now!” and winced as a bow-chaser banged out from the forecastle, the recoil jerking the planks even here at his feet.

He tried again, and then said, “Over yonder, boy. You look. Tell me.”

He thrust the long signals telescope into his hands, and tensed as another shot cracked out from forward. From a corner of his eye he saw one of the cutters passing abeam, suddenly dark in Unrivalled’s shadow, men standing to yell and cheer when moments earlier they had been facing death.

There were more shots now, heavy muskets, and the sharper, answering crack of the marines’ weapons.

He felt something thud into the packed hammocks, heard the screech of metal as a ball ricocheted from one of the quarterdeck nine-pounders. Men were crouching, peering through open ports, waiting for the first sight of the chebec, waiting for the order as they had been taught, had had hammered into them day after day.

But Adam did not move an inch. He could not. He had to know.

Then Napier said in a remarkably steady voice, “It’s them, sir! On the headland! Four of them!” The significance of what he had said seemed to reach him and he twisted round, the telescope forgotten. “Mr Galbraith is safe, sir!”

Then Massie’s whistle shrilled and the first great carronade lurched inboard on its slide, the noise matched only by the crash of its massive ball as it exploded into the chebec’s quarter. Timber, spars, oars and fragments of men flew in all directions, but the chebec came on.

Massie gauged the range, his whistle to his lips. After one shot from the “smasher,” many men were too deaf to hear a shouted order.

The second carronade belched fire, and the ball must have exploded deep within the slender hull.

Adam called, “As you bear!” He gripped the boy’s shoulder. “I want them to know, to feel what it’s like!”

There was more firing in the far distance, like thunder on the hills: Halcyon in pursuit of the third chebec, her captain perhaps believing that his consort had been wrecked.

“By th’ mark…” The rest was lost in the crash of gunfire as Massie strode aft, pausing only to watch each eighteen-pounder fling itself inboard and pour a murderous charge into the stricken chebec. There were still a few figures waving weapons and firing across the littered water. Even when the final charge smashed into the capsizing hull Adam imagined he could still hear their demented fury.

“By the mark fifteen!”

Adam saw the lead splash down again, could picture the seabed suddenly sliding away into depths of darkness.

“We will heave-to directly, Mr Cristie.” He raised his voice; even that was an effort. “Mr Wynter, stand by to retrieve those boats. Inform the surgeon. I want him on deck when they come aboard.”

He stared at the headland, misty now with drifting smoke.

“I’ll take the gig, sir.” It was Jago. “Fetch Mr Galbraith.”

Adam said, “I’d be obliged.” He looked away as men hurried past him. “And, thank you.”

Jago hesitated by the ladder and looked over his shoulder. The captain was standing quite still as orders were shouted and, with her sails in disorder, his ship came slowly round into the wind.

He had kept his word. Jago could hear the boats pulling towards the ship, their crews exhausted but still able to cheer.

He heard the sailing-master say quietly to his mate, “Not a choice I would have cared to make, Mr Woodthorpe.”

Jago shook his head. Not yours to make, was it?

As if to put a seal on it, the leadsman, forgotten in the forechains, yelled, “No bottom, sir!”

They were through.

THE LETTER lay on the cabin table, held down by the knife Adam had used to open it, its flap moving slightly in a faint breeze from the stern windows, the broken seal shining in the sunlight like droplets of blood. He tried to think it through rationally, as he had taught himself to do with most things.

Unrivalled had anchored that morning, with Halcyon entering harbour close astern. A moment of triumph, a lingering excitement after the short, savage encounter with the chebecs and the sheer pleasure of greeting a filthy but grinning Galbraith, his shirt scorched almost from his back, and his equally dirty but jubilant companions.

Adam had taken his report ashore, only to be told that Bethune was neither at his headquarters nor aboard his flagship Montrose. He had boarded one of the squadron’s brigs, and with Sir Lewis Bazeley had gone to examine potential sites for new defences in Malta and the offshore islands.