Alexander Kent - Signal-Close Action!

Herrick walked to the rail and repeated his order to Lieutenant Steere who had emerged from the lower gun deck.

Grubb shambled beneath the poop, his ruined face smudged in smoke and grime.

"she’ll answer the 'elm now, sir! Ready to get under way!" Herrick said quietly, "He won’t hear you, Mr. Grubb." He looked sadly towards Bolitho. "He's looking at the signal and thinking of those who can "tsee it, and never will now. I know him so well."

As the sailing master moved away to his helmsmen, Herrick said to Pascoe, "Go to him, Adam. I can manage without you for a while." He watched Pascoe's face and was moved to add, "Try and tell him. They didn"t do it for any signal. It was for him."

CAPTAIN THOMAS HERRICK entered the cabin and waited for Bolitho to look up from his table.

"The masthead has just sighted the Rock to the nor"-west, sir. With luck we should be anchored under Gibraltar 's battery before sunset. "

"Thank you, Thomas. I did hear the hail." He sounded distant. "You had better prepare a gun salute for the admiral. " Herrick watched him sadly. "And then you’ll be leaving Lysander, sir."

Bolitho stood up and walked slowly to the windows. There was Nicator about half a mile astern, her topsails and jib very pale in the sunlight. Beyond her he could see the untidy formation of captured supply ships, and a French frigate which they had taken in tow until some of her damage could be put right.

Leaving Lysander. That was the very crux of it. All the. weeks and months. The disappointments and moments of elation or pride. The heartbreaking work, the horrors of battle. Now it was behind him. Until the next time.

He heard the bang of hammers and the crisp sound of an adze, and pictured the work continuing about the ship. As it had.from the moment that Grubb had reported the helm answering once more and they had cast off the French two-decker. It still seemed like some sort of miracle that the main French fleet had continued south-east towards Egypt. Perhaps de Brueys had still believed that Bolitho's little force had attacked his well-defended supply convoy as a further delaying tactic, and that some other fleet was already gathering across his path to Alexandria.

Battered and holed, her hull filled with water with each painful mile, Lysander had sailed with the wind, doing makeshift repairs, burying her dead, and tending the wounded, of whom there were many.

Then; with Nicator in company, they had sailed westward again, dreading another series of squalls almost as much as an enemy attack. But the French had other things on their minds, and days later when Lysander s lookouts had sighted a small pyramid of sails, Bolitho and the companies of both ships had watched with a mixture of awe and emotion as Harebell had run down towards them. In her wake, black and buff in the bright sunshine, had followed not a squadron but a fleet. It had been a coincidence, and yet it was hard to accept that miracles had played no part.

Lieutenant Gilchrist in the badly damaged frigate Buzzard had not sailed directly to Gibraltar as ordered. Instead, and for no reason which had yet come to light, he had broken his passage at Syracuse. And there, resting and disillusioned after its fruitless sweep to Alexandria, was the fleet, with Nelson's flagship Vanguard in its centre.

Nelson had apparently needed no more than a hazy report to set him going once again. To Alexandria, where he had discovered the remaining French transports sheltering in the harbour. But to the north-east, anchored with rigid and formidable precision, much as Herrick had predicted, lay the French fleet.

With half of her company dead or wounded, Lysander had remained on the fringe of the fight. The Battle of the Nile, as everyone was calling it. It began in the evening and raged all night, and when dawn came up there were so many wrecks, so many corpses, that Bolitho could only marvel at man's ferocity.

Undeterred by the French line, and the fact that many of the ships were held together with cables to prevent a breakthrough, Nelson sailed around the end of the French defences and attacked them from the shore side. For there was no heavy siege guns on the land to prevent him, and he was able to concentrate his skill and his energy against an equally determined enemy.

Although the French fleet was the larger, by dawn all but two of de Brueys's ships had struck or been destroyed. The remaining two had slipped away in the night after witnessing the most horrific sight of the whole battle. L "Orient, de Brueys's great flagship of one hundred and twenty guns, had exploded, damaging several vessels nearby, and having such an effect on both sides that momentarily the firing ceased.

De Brueys went with her, but the memory of his courage and endurance were as proudly remembered in the British ships as anywhere. With both legs shot off, the stumps bound with tourniquets, de Brueys had ordered that he be propped upright in a chair, facing his old enemy, and commanding his defences until the end.

Bonaparte's dream was ended. He had lost his entire fleet and over five thousand men, six times as many as the British. And his army stood at the mouth of the Nile, undefended and marooned.

It had been a great victory, and as he had watched the closing stages of the battle, the angry red flashes across the sea and sky, Bolitho had felt justly proud of Lysander's part in it.

Later, when he had sent his own report to the flagship, Bolitho had waited to discover the rear-admiral's reactions.

With his usual vigour, Nelson was preparing to put his fleet to sea again, but sent an officer by boat to Lysander with a short but warm reply.

You are a man after my own heart, Bolitho. The risk justifies the deed.

He had instructed Bolitho to escort the handful of prizes to Gibraltar and there take passage to England and report once more to the Admiralty. At no time did Nelson mention Captain Probyn's death. Which was just as well, as Herrick had pointed out.

He turned and looked at Herrick "It is a strange thing, Thomas, but Francis Inch is still the only one among us to have met "Our Nel"."

Herrick nodded. "But his influence is here, nonetheless, sir. That letter from him and the fact that a broad pendant still flies above this ship, is far better than any handshake." Bolitho said, "After all we’ve been through, I shall miss Lysander, Thomas."

"Aye." His round face saddened. "Once at anchor, I will get the more serious work done. Although I fear she may never again stand in the line of battle. "

"When you arrive in England, Thomas." He smiled. "But then, I don’thave to remind you, do I? I will always need a loyal friend."

"Never fear." Herrick turned to watch a yawl surging past the quarter windows, its crew waving and cheering the battered seventy-four, their voices lost beyond the thick glass. "If I can come, I’ll come."

Bolitho saw Ozzard locking his two large sea chests in readiness to be taken to a boat.

He said, "I’ve made a lot of bad mistakes, Thomas. Too many."

"But you found the answers, sir. That's all that matters." "Is it?" He smiled. "I wonder. I’ve certainly learned that it's no easier to decide who lives or dies just because you fly your flag above the end result.

He glanced at the polished wine cabinet as two seamen started to wrap it around with sailcloth. Would he see her in London? Would there be anything more between them?

Some hours later, after the drawn-out crash of the salutes, the anchoring, and the necessary business of signing documents, Bolitho went on deck for the last time.

In the sunset, Gibraltar looked like a vast slab of coral, and the ship's yards and furled sails had a similar tint.

He walked slowly along the line of assembled faces, trying to, stay impassive as he shook a hand here, spoke a name there.