Alexander Kent - Second to None

A figure moved from the gun deck and paused, gazing at the sea. It was Jago, the captain’s coxswain, the only man aboard who had actually served with Adam Bolitho before. He had a lean, darkly tanned face and hair tied in a neat, old-fashioned queue, like the gunner’s mate he had been. A man with a past, he had been flogged in another ship, wrongly it was said, by a sadistic captain, and there was still a certain anger about him, a contained defiance. Wynter had seen him stripped and sluicing his body at the wash deck pump; the scars had been familiar enough, but Jago carried them differently, almost with pride. Bloody arrogance, Massie had called it.

Whatever the truth of it, he would know their captain better than any of them. He had been with him when they had stormed a battery during an attack by the combined forces on the dockyards and principal buildings in Washington. Some claimed that raid was revenge for the American invasion of Canada and the attack on York; others said it was a final show of strength in a war no one could win.

Luke Jago knew the officers on the quarterdeck were watching him and could make a fair bet as to their thoughts. He, too, was surprised to find himself here, in his new station, when all he had wanted was to quit the navy, with only bitterness in his soul.

He could recall exactly when Captain Bolitho had asked him to be his coxswain; could remember his refusal. Bolitho was one of only a few officers Jago had ever liked or trusted, but his mind had been made up. Determined. Until that last battle, the deck raked by the enemy’s fire, men crying out and falling from aloft. When the commodore had pitched on to his side, already beyond aid. He knew the rumours like all the rest of them, that the commodore had been shot by somebody aboard their own ship, but he had heard no more about it. He gave a quick grin. He couldn’t even remember the bloody man’s name any more.

Unlike the boy John Whitmarsh, the captain’s servant, who had survived when Anemone had gone down. He remembered him well enough. The smile faded. The Yankees had hanged Bolitho’s old coxswain for ensuring that Anemone would not live to become their prize.

Captain Bolitho had taken a liking to the boy; maybe he had seen something of himself in him. He had wanted to sponsor him with his own money, so he could finish his education and wear the King’s coat some day. Jago could remember the boy showing him the dirk the captain had given him, probably the only gift he had ever received. Without a tremor in his voice, he had told Jago that he wanted to stay with his captain. It was all he wanted, he said.

He had watched Adam Bolitho’s face when he had told him Whitmarsh had been killed. A ball had shattered against one of the guns, and the iron splinter had ended his young life instantly; he had died without a trace of pain or terror.

And the exact moment when he had made up his mind, or had it made up for him. He was still uncertain, unwilling to believe it was not his decision alone. They had shaken hands on it with the smoke still hanging in the air, when the enemy frigate had broken off the action. “A victory, sir,” he had heard himself say. “Or as good as.” He had thought himself mad then. Until they had buried their dead, including the boy John Whitmarsh, with the beautiful dirk still strapped to his side.

One hundred and sixty feet above their heads and oblivious to their thoughts, Adam Bolitho eased himself into position and looked down at the ship, which seemed to pivot from side to side as if his perch in the crosstrees was motionless. He had never tired of the sight since he had made his first dash aloft as a midshipman in his uncle’s old Hyperion. Even when he had been mastheaded for some prank or indiscretion, he had always managed to marvel at what he saw. The ship, far beneath his shoes, the little blue and white shapes of the officers and master’s mates, the clusters of seamen and scarlet-coated marines. His ship, all one hundred and fifty feet of her, over a thousand tons of weapons, masts and spars, and the men to serve and fight her.

His uncle had confided that he had always hated heights, had feared going aloft when his ship had made or reefed sails. Another lesson Adam had learned, that fear could be contained if it seemed more dangerous to reveal it.

He glanced at his companion. A leathery face and a pair of the keenest eyes he had seen, like polished glass.

He hesitated. “Sullivan, isn’t it?”

The seaman showed his uneven teeth. “Thass me, sir.” He smiled slightly as Adam unslung the telescope.

“Where away?” It was strange: despite his attempt to stay at arm’s length, the ship was closing in. A face he could barely recall. A typical Jack, some would say. Hard, rough, and, in their way, simple men.

“Same bearin’, sir.”

He steadied the glass, raising it very carefully as breaking crests leaped into view, magnified into small tidal waves in the powerful lens.

He felt the spar quiver and shake against his body, mast upon mast, down to the ship’s keelson. He could remember the genuine pleasure and pride of the men who had built her when he had insisted they come aboard for her commissioning.

And there she was, rising and dipping, her canvas dark against the scudding clouds.

The lookout said, “Square-rigged at the fore, sir.”

Adam nodded and waited for the glass to steady again. A brigantine, handling well in the offshore wind, almost bows-on. When he lowered the glass she seemed to drop away to a mere sliver of colour and movement. It never failed to surprise him that men like Sullivan, who would scorn a telescope, or trade it for a new knife or fresh clothing, or drink if it was offered, could still see and recognise another vessel when a landsman might not even notice it.

“Local, d’ you think?”

Sullivan watched him with sudden interest. “Spaniard, I’d say, sir. I seen ’em afore, as far to the south’rd as Good Hope. Handy little craft.” He added doubtfully, “Rightly ’andled, ’er course, sir!”

Adam took another look. The master was right. They would never catch her with the wind against them. And why should they care? Lose more time and distance when tomorrow they should lie in the shadow of the Rock?

It was like yesterday. He had been returning to Plymouth and it had been reported that a boat had been heading out to meet them. Not merely a boat: an admiral’s barge, the flag officer himself coming to tell him, to be the first to prepare him for the news of his uncle’s death. Vice-Admiral Valentine Keen. His uncle’s friend. He felt the same stab of guilt; he would never lose it. Zenoria’s husband. After her death he had married again. But like that moment alone in the silence of the house, he had thought only of Zenoria. What he had done.

Keen had told him what he knew, the circumstances of Bolitho’s death and of his burial at sea. Nothing was definite, except that his flagship had engaged two frigates, manned by renegades and traitors who, with others, had aided Napoleon’s escape from Elba; he had marched on Paris almost before the allies had recovered from the shock.

Bethune would know more of the details by now, where the frigates had taken refuge prior to their unexpected meeting with Frobisher, who was involved, how it had been planned. He found he was gripping the telescope so tightly that his knuckles were almost white. Spain was an ally now. And yet a Spaniard had been involved.

He repeated quietly, “Spaniard, you say?”

The man regarded him thoughtfully. Sir Richard Bolitho’s nephew. A fire-eater, they said. A fighter. Sullivan had been at sea on and off for most of his forty years, and had served several captains, but could not recall ever speaking to one. And this one had even known his name.