Alexander Kent - BEYOND THE REEF

The lookout asked, "Be it bad, zur?"

Jenour glanced at him. An old sailor. One of the few still left.

He said, "Take this glass. Tell me what you see."

The man squinted through it, the crowsfeet around his eyes creasing his leathery skin.

"Beyond them ships, zur?" He shook his head, as if shocked that he could still be surprised. "'Tis a fleet, zur!"

Jenour lowered himself swiftly past and around the maintop, where the marine marksmen lounged against the barricades watching his descent with interest.

Bolitho listened to him without comment, then said, "It will be an army of invasion. Adam saw only a part of it, but this is the truth of the matter."

Keen said, "Can they be stopped, sir?"

"Until aid arrives, yes, Val."

He looked towards the horizon, still dim with mist, like the smoke of a silent battle.

"Get rid of the boats. The victors can recover them."

He ignored the calls and the rush of seamen to the hoisting tackles. "Well, there it is, Stephen. I thank you for your eyes today." He saw other men running to prepare chain lifts to rig from the yards, to prevent them from falling on the unprotected gun crews if they were shot away. "What will he do, I wonder?"

"If…" Jenour shivered as he recalled what he had just seen. "If it is indeed the same French officer, and if, as you suspect, he was in that frigate…"

Bolitho tried to smile, but he could not. "Too many ifs, Stephen."

"He will know you are here, Sir Richard. Know, too, that you have never run from the enemy."

Bolitho touched his arm. "Then I have lost one ruse before it is begun. But I believe you are right."

He watched the first of the boats being lowered, then cast adrift and left under the control of a canvas sea anchor. He thought suddenly of the Golden Plover. Was Fate so certain after all? Had death merely been postponed until today?

Yet again he seemed to hear her voice, Don't leave me, and he answered her, but only in his mind. Never.

He saw Keen staring around the orderly decks, where men stood or crouched to await the next command. Perhaps he was already calculating the cost, seeing these same decks strewn with the dead and dying as Herrick's flagship had been.

Bolitho said abruptly, "Let us have some music to pass the while, Captain!" The formality was for those nearest to them. If they lived, they would remember.

Keen gave a faint smile. "Portsmouth Lass, sir?"

Their eyes met. Another memory. "None other."

So while the ships sailed slowly towards an unknown enemy, the small marine fifers marched up and down the deck, piping out a sailor's tune neither Bolitho nor Keen would ever forget.

Bolitho felt for the locket beneath his shirt and pressed it against his skin.

I am here, Kate, and you are with me.

Lieutenant Sedgemore had been watching Bolitho and the flag captain, his mind as yet unable to grasp the enormity of the enemy's strength. But once this was over… He allowed his eyes to stray to that part of the deck where his predecessor had died so horribly. As if he expected to see him lying there, torn apart.

He felt cold, despite the strengthening sun. He had seen something which he had only known as a stranger. It was fear.

BOLITHO plucked the shirt from his skin and watched some ship's boys carrying drinking water beneath either gangway for the gun crews. It had seemed an eternity since Valkyrie's signal, "Enemy in sight!" had been repeated down the line, and Bolitho knew that despite their superiority in strength and numbers it was probably much worse for the oncoming French vessels. Black Prince had her yards braced hard round and was as close to the wind as such a large ship could stand, but at least they were holding formation and staying in line, with only half a mile between each of them. The enemy had the wind striking directly across their larboard bows, so that they appeared to weave this way and that, leaning over one minute with their sails like metal breastplates, and the next caught aback in a confusion of thrashing canvas.

Bolitho shaded his face to look through the mass of rigging. Nets had been rigged to catch falling blocks or broken spars, any of which could kill a man as efficiently as an iron ball. It was like being sealed in a trap. Men, weapons of war, everything they had come to accept as their daily existence.

Bolitho sought out the frigate Tybalt and saw her beating against the wind with no less difficulty than the enemy. But once the liners were close enough to engage, Captain Esse would run down from his hard-won position to windward and attack the enemy's fleet of transports and supply vessels to scatter or destroy any which fell under his broadsides. He might have little hope of survival, but every frigate captain knew the risks of independent action. Tybalt's hull was created and designed for just such operations, but her timbers were no match at all for the massive firepower of a line-of-battle. Bolitho took a telescope from Midshipman De Courcy and trained it with care until he had found the ragged formation of ships which lay far away across the starboard bow. So slow. He had been right the first time. It would be at noon when the first guns tested the range.

And for what? It might rate a comment in the Gazette as had Hyperion's last battle. That had been almost lost in the resounding echoes of Trafalgar, and the death of the nation's hero.

Ferguson would hear it first, either in the town or from the post-boy. Then Catherine. He glanced at Keen's handsome profile. One did not need to be a magician to know what he was thinking as the time dragged by and men leaned on their weapons, some already gasping for breath as the suspense wore them down like exhausted survivors from a battle still to fight.

After all, what did Martinique really matter? They had taken it from the French by force in 1794 but, typically, had handed it back during the brief Peace of Amiens. It was always the same, and Bolitho had often been reminded of the words of an embittered sergeant of marines who had exclaimed, "Surely if it's worth dyin' for, it's worth 'oldin' on to?" Down over the years his lonely protest had remained unanswered.

Now, with the war changing direction in Europe, the prospect of throwing lives and ships away to no lasting purpose went against everything he held important.

Once again, they were faced with action, not because it was logical or unavoidable, but because war had started to outstrip the minds of men who planned its strategy from afar.

Keen had joined him. "If the rest of the squadron finds us, sir, we could still win the day. But if Captain Crowfoot has no inkling…" He turned and stared into the bright sunshine as Tybalt completed another tack.

"I cannot send Tybalt to find him, Val. She is our only hope today."

Keen watched the men at the helm, Julyan speaking quietly with two of his master's mates. "I know."

Bolitho took a cup of water from one of the boys. And what of Thomas Herrick? Had he rallied some of his local patrols, and was he already heading out to offer support? It seemed far more likely that he would take charge of the 74 Matchless under the command of his latest enemy, Captain the Lord Rathcullen. Her repairs would be almost completed, and in any case, the sight of just one additional sail of the line might make a difference to an invasion fleet which would wish to avoid battle at any cost. It was unnerving: this constant comparison with the events which had led to Herrick's court martial. In her letter Catherine had touched briefly on the sudden death of Hector Gossage, Herrick's flag captain at that costly battle for the convoy. He had never recovered fully after losing his arm, and even the unexpected promotion to flag rank could not protect him from the onslaught of gangrene. Had he known he was doomed that day in the great cabin below, his version of the evidence might have been very different. Bolitho had his suspicions, but they were not something he could voice freely without proof. Either way, Gossage had saved Herrick's future and probably his very life.