Alexander Kent - THE INSHORE SQUADRON

He almost fell as Penels darted from beneath his elbow. He had a vague impression of the boy's terrified face, matched only by some last spark of determination, before he was up and diving straight for the water. He broke to the surface and was swimming strongly before Herrick understood what had happened.

Bolitho saw the quarter boat appear around the stem, the coxswain staring blankly at his officers.

Herrick cupped his hands. `Follow that boy, Winslade! Fast as you can!'

Bolitho climbed back to the quarterdeck as Browne said apologetically, `I am sorry, sir, but Indomitable has signalled to say that the Ajax will be destroyed once we are standing clear of the danger.'

Loveys, the surgeon, hurried across the quarterdeck, his white face alien amongst the guns and the seamen.

He said calmly, `The boat is returning, sir. I took the liberty of borrowing a telescope. There are two survivors.' He relented slightly. 'One is Mr Pascoe.'

Bolitho clasped his arm then hurried past him to the rail as the boat nudged carefully alongside.

Winslade, the boat's coxswain, waited for more seamen to limb down the tumblehome to assist and then called, `Just the two, sir!' He swallowed hard before adding, 'I'm afraid we lost young Mr Penels, sir! He just seemed to give up as he reached the boat!'

Bolitho reached the entry port as the two limp figures were handed through. The first he did not recognize, a pigtailed seaman with one arm so badly burned it looked inhuman.

Loveys was on his knees running his hands over Pascoe's body while his aproned assistants hovered behind him like butchers.

Bolitho watched the painful rise and fall of his nephew's chest, the sea water running from beneath his dosed lashes like tears. His clothes had been all but blasted from his body and he gave a quiet groan as the surgeon's boney fingers felt for internal damage.

Loveys said at length, `He's young and fit, of course. Nothing broken. He's lucky.'

He turned to the seaman and said, 'Now, let me have a look at you.'

The seaman muttered vaguely, 'I didn't hear nothin'. One minute the cap'n was yellin' and cussin' about fire.' He shook his head and winced as Loveys touched his burned arm. 'Next thing I was deep underwater. Goin down. I can't swim, y'see?' He realized that Bolitho and Herrick were there and stammered, Beggin' yer pardon, sir!'

Bolitho smiled. `Easy now. What happened next?'

`Our new third lieutenant, sir. Mr Pascoe 'ere, 'e pulls me to some floatin' wreckage, then goes back for my mate, Arthur. But he died afore the boat come for us. It was just me an' Mr Pascoe, sir. The rest is all gone.' He'had to repeat it as if he still could not accept the enormity of it. `All gone!'

As the seaman was carried away to the sick-bay, Pascoe opened his eyes. Surprisingly, he smiled and said weakly, `I've come back after all, Uncle!' Then he fainted.

Bolitho sat at a small table in the stern cabin, a pen poised above his report. Someone would read it, he thought grimly, log books and written reports always seemed to survive no matter what.

It was a strange feeling, like sitting in an abandoned house. The furniture had all been taken below, and without looking up from the table he knew that the gun crews of the nearest nine-pounders were sharing the space with him. Screens had been taken down, and the ship, as she moved very slowly towards the Danish coastline once again, was cleared for battle from bow to stern.

Unlike Nelson's fleet, Bolitho's squadron had been under way throughout the night, his four ships of the line divided into two short columns so that they could watch as much of the area as possible.

The seamen and marines had worked watch and watch, snatching a few hours rest beside their guns and nourished by neat rum and stale food. The galley fire had long since been doused for safety's sake, for each ship in the squadron had to be prepared to fight at minutes' notice.

Bolitho looked at the lines he had written about Mr Midshipman George Penels, aged twelve years and nine months, who had died the previous day in one desperate act of courage.

What had the boy been thinking of? Of Pascoe, whom he had got involved in Babbage's desertion, of his admiral, who had cared enough to put him in Browne's charge when everyone else had shunned him?

This carefully worded report might help the boy's mother when the news eventually reached her in Cornwall. Bolitho had no doubt that Herrick would make certain no mention of Babbage would mar his memory for her.

Allday walked to an open port and leaned down to watch the sea, cold and grey in the morning light. Two cables abeam, Nicator, followed by Inch's Odin, brought life to the dreary scene.

He said, 'Not long now, sir.'

Bolitho waited for Yovell to seal the envelope and replied, _ 'The attack will begin in two hours, if everything is timed correctly.'

He glanced along the deck, past where the screen door would normally be, to the gloom beneath the poop and beyond to the crowded activity of the quarterdeck.

'Our part will happen at any moment.' He stood up and tested his leg warily. `Get my sword, will you?'

How quiet the ship was, he thought. The excitement of the Ajax 's capture and her terrible end when the fuses had been fired in her magazine had been dulled by the loss of Peel's ship. Altogether, Lookout had found ten survivivors. With Pascoe and the burned seaman also rescued, that meant a total bill of some two hundred sailors and marines killed. It was too much of a price to pay.

Bolitho had visited his nephew several times during the night. Each occasion had found Pascoe wide awake, defying Loveys' efforts to make him rest and save his strength.

Perhaps those last moments in the water were too stark in his mind, as if by going to sleep he would never reawake and find his survival only part of a nightmare.

But Pascoe's descriptions, brief though they were, completed a full and horrific picture.

The cruellest part of it had been that Peel had been winning. But some last fury had brought the Ajax too close, so that both frigates had collided bowsprit to bowsprit, bringing down the Frenchman's mizzen and hurling many of the men from their feet. -

Pascoe vaguely remembered Peel shouting about smoke even as Relentless's cheering boarders had rushed to grapple the enemy hand to hand.

He had been on the quarterdeck, the second lieutenant having been killed in the opening.broadsides. The next minute he had felt himself flying through the air and then being smashed, choking, into the sea.

Pascoe had started to swim for a drifting boat when one of the Relentless's topmasts had dropped from the sky like a giant's lance and had cut the boat in half and some struggling men with it.

The thing which Pascoe had not been able to accept was the actual explosion. It had blasted the thirty-six-gun frigate to pieces, yet he had heard nothing.

The collision between the two ships had probably caught a man off balance below decks. A lantern overturned, some powder spilled as a boy ran to serve his gun, or even a flaming wad from the enemy's broadside, it could have been caused by any one of many things.

Bolitho walked slowly beneath the poop, his head ducking automatically between the deckhead beams.

Faces turned to watch him pass, faces which after nearly seven months were no longer strangers.

The figures on the quarterdeck came alive as he stepped out into the morning light, and he saw Herrick with a telescope trained across the nettings towards the Lookout which stood well away on the larboard bow.

The sea was rising and falling in a slow swell, with no crests to break the surface or the motion. There was quite a lot of haze about, and far ahead of the two columns of ships it looked pale green. A trick of the eye and distance. The haze was real enough but the green layer was land. Denmark.