Alexander Kent - The Only Victor

He exclaimed, "She's lying on something, Mr Jay! "

Jay stared from him to her with stunned amazement. "By the livin' Jesus! " He sprang across the cabin and seized the girl's naked shoulder to push her across the bunk.

But her body, slippery with sweat, escaped his grasp, and she moved like lightning, a knife appearing in her left hand even as Segrave ran to Jay's assistance.

Jay went sprawling from the impetus of his charge across the cabin and as he pitched to the deck he saw Segrave fall over the girl, and heard his sharp cry of agony.

Segrave felt the blade like fire across his hip, somehow knew that she had raised the knife for another blow at his unprotected back.

There was a cracking sound and the knife went clattering to the deck. The girl lay back, her eyes closed, her mouth bleeding where Jay had punched her.

Another figure ran into the low cabin. It was the seaman named Dwyer.

Jay rasped, "'Ere, give Mr Segrave a hand! " He rolled the girl's body aside and tugged a worn leather pouch from beneath her.

Segrave groaned and tried to move. Then he saw the slash in his breeches where the knife had gone in. There was blood everywhere, and the pain was making him gasp, bite his lip to prevent himself from screaming.

The sailor wrapped what appeared to be a shirt around the wound, but it was soon soaked through with blood.

Jay ripped open the big pouch, his eyes speedily scanning the contents before he opened the chart with trembling fingers.

Then he stood up. "I must speak with the Cap'n." He looked at Segrave's contorted face. "You saved my rump, an' no mistake! " He watched his agony and added kindly, "Be easy till I come back."

On deck the sky already seemed darker, the clouds underbellied with deep gold.

In quick sentences Jay shouted his information across the choppy division of water. "She was bound for Cape Town! There's a despatch, wrote in French it looks."

Tyacke called, "How badly is Mr Segrave?" He saw Jay's shrug. "Then you had better not move him! Send the vessel's master across with the pouch-the deserter too. I will rejoin the squadron. Are you confident that you can manage?"

Jay grinned and said to himself, "Manage? They'll not make trouble now."

The Albacora's master protested violently as a seaman seized his arm.

Jay snarled, "Put those irons on him! Attempting to murder a King's officer, butchering slaves, to say nothing of trading with the enemy." He nodded, satisfied as the man fell silent. "Yes, my friend, you've understood the signal at last."

As the boat cast off and headed for Miranda, Jay positioned his most trusted men with great care.

"We will get under way presently. Watch every move, even if they blinks! Shoot if in any doubt, see?"

With the boatswain, he returned to the cabin where Dwyer was holding the midshipman and trying to staunch the blood.

Dwyer said helplessly, "Won't let me do it proper, sir! "

Sperry tore his eyes from the sprawled figure on the bunk and licked his lips.

"Now there's a thing, Bob."

Jay was thinking of how close he had been to death. "Later, George."

Segrave was weaker but still tried to struggle as Sperry held him on the deck, while Dwyer and Jay began to cut away his bloodied breeches.

Sperry said huskily, "I'll put a stitch or two in it. Just lay another dressin' on while I-"

Jay exclaimed, "Who the bloody hell did that?"

The midshipman lay quietly now, like a sick or injured animal.

The whole of his buttocks and the backs of his thighs were scarred and bruised as if he had been beaten over and over again with a cord or a whip. Whoever had done this to him it was not in Miranda. That meant he had carried these scars for over six weeks, and without a word being said.

Jay thought of the jibes and grins, and all the while he. The boatswain said, "He's passed out, Bob. I'll fetch me gear."

"Yeh, an' see if you can find some rum or brandy-anythin'."

He turned back to the midshipman, who lay as if he was dead. "You poor little bugger," he said softly. He watched the blood soaking through the makeshift bandages. But for Segrave's unexpected courage it would have been his own blood, and no second chance either.

He saw Dwyer watching him and said harshly, "And it goes no further, see? This is Miranda's business, no one else's! I reckon 'e's suffered enough in this poxy squadron."

Midshipman Segrave opened his eyes and was conscious of two things immediately. The sky overhead was dark and dotted with tiny stars; he was wrapped in blankets, a pillow beneath his head.

A shadow bent over him, and Jay asked, "How is it?"

Then came the pain, throbbing in time with his heartbeats. He could taste brandy on his lips but could only remember the sequence of events like dark pictures. Hands holding him down; sharp stabbing pains; oblivion. Then the girl. He shook violently. That was it. When it had happened.

"Am I all right?" His voice sounded weak.

Jay forced a grin. " 'Course you are. 'Ero of the hour. Saved my skin, an' gave us cause to 'old this ship."

He looked across at two kneeling figures. Like some natives at prayer. But he knew they were trying to peer through the dirty skylight. Sperry was down there with the girl, doing what he probably did better than anything, if half his yarns were to be believed.

Then he asked, "Tell me, lad, who did that to you?"

But Segrave shook his head, his eyes closed with the pain and the emotion.

Jay, the hard-bitten master's mate, had called him a hero.

THEMIS'S STERN CABIN was like a furnace in spite of the open gunports and the windsails rigged to each hatchway, so it was difficult even to think. Bolitho sat at the table, his head resting on one hand while he scanned the contents of the pouch which had been ferried across from the schooner Miranda.

Commodore Warren slumped in a high-backed chair, his ashen features turned towards the nearest port, his only movement when he plucked his uniform coat or shirt away from his damp skin.

Seated beside Bolitho, his plump, round-shouldered secretary, Daniel Yovell, had to repeatedly push his gold-rimmed spectacles back into position when they slipped down his nose, as he wrote the notes which Bolitho might require later on.

Warren asked suddenly, "You are not surprised by the army's reply to your request, Sir Richard?"

Bolitho dragged his thoughts away from the pouch which Miranda's boarding party had discovered. The evidence of the chart was interesting, but the lengthy letter to some French merchant in Cape Town was far more so.

He replied, "Much what I expected, Commodore Warren. But we have to use the proper channels. By now, Sir David Baird's soldiers will have begun their landings. It is too late to prevent it, even if I could."

Jenour stood beside the stern windows and watched the Miranda as she swung above her reflection, a perfect twin on the calm water. Her commander had been fortunate, he thought. A few hours later and he would have lost the wind completely.

He turned as Bolitho said, "Your French is excellent, Stephen. When you translated this letter for me, did you notice anything unusual?"

Jenour tried to shake off the torpor. Of them all, Bolitho looked the coolest. Dressed in shirt and breeches, his coat tossed aside on to a chest, he even managed to appear alert, although Jenour knew that he had been pacing the cabin since Miranda's sails had been sighted closing the land. That had been at dawn. It was now

high noon. In this oven-heat men trod warily; it was a dangerous time when frayed tempers brought sharp discipline, with an aftermath of resentment. Better to be at sea, with every man too busy to brood.

Jenour screwed up his face. "If the letter is a code I cannot read it, Sir Richard. It is the kind of letter that one merchant might send to another, passed perhaps by one ship on passage to that particular destination. After all, it is quite possible for French merchants to be in Cape Town surely?"