Alexander Kent - Cross of St George

A lone voice shouted, “Strike, you bloody bastard! Strike, for Jesus’ sake!” Above the wind in the rigging, it sounded like a scream.

Tyacke said, “So be it.” He dropped his sword and the guns exploded, the vivid tongues of flame appearing to reach and touch the target.

The smoke funnelled downwind, and men stood away from their guns, their eyes red-rimmed in smoke-grimed faces, sweat cutting stripes across their bodies.

Bolitho watched coldly. A ship which could not win, and which would not surrender. Where the working party had been gathered there was only splintered timber and a few corpses, tossed aside with brutal indifference. Men and pieces of men, and from her scuppers there were tiny threads of scarlet, as if the ship herself was bleeding to death. Daubeny had removed his hat, probably without knowing what he had done. But he stared aft again, his face like stone as he called, “All loaded, sir!”

Tyacke turned toward the three figures by the weather rail: Bolitho, Avery close beside him, and Allday a few paces away, his naked cutlass resting on the deck.

One more broadside would finish her completely, with so much damage below deck that she might even burst into flames, deadly to any vessel that came near her. Fire was the greatest fear of every sailor, in both war and peace.

Bolitho felt the numbness. The ache. They were waiting. Justice; revenge; the completeness of defeat.

His was the final responsibility. When he looked for the other American ship, he could barely find her beyond the smoke. But waiting, watching to see what he would do. Testing me again.

“Very well, Captain Tyacke!” He knew that some of the seamen and marines were staring at him, with disbelief, perhaps even disgust. But the gun captains were responding, answering the only discipline they understood. The trigger-lines were pulled taut, each man staring across his muzzle, the helpless target filling every open port.

Tyacke raised his sword. Remembering that moment at the Nile when hell had burst into his life and had left its mark as a permanent reminder? Or seeing just another enemy, a fragment of a war which had outlived so many, friends and foes alike?

There was a sudden burst of shouting and Bolitho shaded his eyes to watch the solitary figure on the enemy’s torn and bloodied quarterdeck. No sword this time, and one arm hanging broken, or even missing in the dangling sleeve.

Very deliberately and without even turning towards Indomitable, he tugged at the halliards, and almost fell as the big Stars and Stripes spiralled down into the smoke.

Avery said in a tight voice, “He had no choice.”

Bolitho glanced at him. Like Tyacke, another memory? Of his own little schooner surrendering to the enemy, while he lay wounded and helpless?

He said, “He had every choice. Men died for no good purpose. Remember what I told you. They have no choice at all.”

He looked in Allday’s direction. “Bravely, old friend?”

Allday lifted the cutlass and balanced the blade on one hand.

“It gets harder, Sir Richard.” Then he grinned, and Bolitho thought that even the sunshine was dim by comparison. “Aye, set bravely!”

Tyacke was watching the other vessel, the brief savagery of action already being crowded aside by the immediate needs of command.

“Boarding parties, Mr Daubeny! The marines will go across when the ship is secured! Pass the word for the surgeon and let me know the bill-we’ll see the cost of this morning’s show of courage!”

Indomitable was responding, the carpenter and his crew already below, hammers and squeaking tackles marking their progress through the lower hull.

Then Tyacke sheathed his sword, and saw the youngest midshipman observing him closely, although his eyes were still blurred with shock. Tyacke looked steadily back at him, giving himself time to consider what had so nearly happened.

He barely knew the midshipman, who had been sent out from England as a replacement for young Deane. His eyes moved unwillingly to one of the quarterdeck guns. Right there, as others had just fallen.

“Well, Mr Campbell, what did you learn from all this?”

The boy, who was only twelve years old, hesitated under Tyacke’s gaze, unused as yet to the scars, and the man who bore them.

In a small voice he answered, “We won, sir.”

Tyacke walked past him and touched his shoulder, something he did not often do. He was more surprised than the midshipman at the contact.

“They lost, Mr Campbell. It is not always the same thing!”

Bolitho was waiting for him. “She’s not much of a prize, James. But her loss will be felt elsewhere!”

Tyacke smiled. Bolitho did not wish to speak of it, either.

He said, “No chance of a chase now, Sir Richard. We have others to care for.”

Bolitho stared at the dark blue water, and the other American frigate, which was already several miles clear.

“I can wait.” He tensed. Someone was crying out in agony as others attempted to move him. “They did well.”

He saw Ozzard’s small figure picking his way through the discarded tackles and rammers by the guns. So much a part of it, and yet able to distance himself from all the sights and sounds around him. He was carrying a bottle, wrapped in a surprisingly clean cloth.

Tyacke was still beside him, although aware of those on every hand who were demanding his attention.

“They’re lucky, Sir Richard.”

Bolitho watched Ozzard preparing a clean goblet, oblivious to everything but the job in hand.

“Some may not agree, James.”

Tyacke said abruptly, “Trust, sir.” One word, but it seemed to hang there even as he walked away for the final act with a vanquished enemy.

Bolitho raised the goblet to his lips as the shadow of the enemy’s topmast laid its patterns on the deck beside him. He saw some of the bloodied seamen pause to watch him; a few grinned when they caught his eye, others merely stared, needing to recognize something. To remember, perhaps, or to tell somebody later, who might want to know about it. He found himself touching the locket beneath his shirt. She would understand what it meant to him. Just that one word, so simply put.

While the sun climbed higher in the clear sky to raise a misty haze on either horizon, Indomitable ’s company worked with scarcely a pause to cleanse their ship of the scars and stains of battle. The air was heady with rum, and it was hoped that a meal would be ready by noon. To the ordinary sailor, strong drink and a full belly were considered a cure for almost everything.

Below the sounds of repair and the disciplined activity, on Indomitable’s orlop deck the contrast was stark. Beneath the ship’s waterline, it was a hushed place that never saw daylight, nor would it until she was broken up. Through the ship’s length it was a place for stores and spare timber, rigging and fresh water, and in the carefully guarded magazines, powder and shot. Here was the purser’s store, with slop clothing and tobacco, food, and wine for the wardroom, and in the same darkness, broken here and there by clusters of lanterns, some of Indomitable’s company, midshipmen and other junior warrant officers, lived, slept, and by the light of flickering glims studied and dreamed of promotion.

It was also a place where men were brought to survive or to die, as their wounds and injuries dictated.

Bolitho ducked low between each massive deck beam and waited for his eyes to accept the harsh change from sunlight to this gloom, from the relief and high spirits of the victors, to the men down here who might not live to see the sun again.

Because of their opening broadsides and Tyacke’s superior ship-handling at close quarters, Indomitable’s casualties, her bill, had been mercifully light. He knew from long experience that that was no consolation to the unlucky ones down on the orlop. Some were lying, or propped against the great curved timbers of the hull, bandaged, or staring at the little group around the makeshift table where the surgeon and his assistants, the lob-lolly boys, worked on their patients: their victims, the old Jacks called them.