Alexander Kent - The Flag Captain

Bolitho rubbed the small fragments on his palm and said absently, “The Six Hogs.”

Behind him he heard Partridge murmur admiringly, “If I’d not seen it I ’d never ’ave believed it.”

Bolitho said, “Alter course a point to larboard, if you please, and pipe the hands to the braces.”

Keverne coughed and then asked quietly, “What are the Six Hogs, sir?”

“Sandbars, Mr Keverne. We are now about two miles due south of St Anthony Head.” He smiled, suddenly ashamed for allowing the apparent miracle to continue. “They call the sandbars by that name, although I do not know why. But they are covered with these small stones, and have been so since I can remember.”

He swung round and watched as a sliver of sunlight pierced the swirling mist and touched the quarterdeck with pale gold. Partridge and the others would have been less in awe of his navigation had he been wrong in his calculations. Or perhaps it was more instinct than calculations. Even before he had been bundled off to sea as a gawky twelve-year-old midshipman he had learned every cove and inlet around Falmouth and several miles in either direction as well.

Even so, memory could play tricks, and it would have been small comfort to the admiral or his own prospects if the coming

day had found Euryalus aground and dismasted in sight of his home town.

The big topsails flapped loudly and the deck tilted to a sudden pressure of wind, and like an army of departing ghosts the mist seeped through the shrouds and moved clear of the ship.

Bolitho paused in his pacing and stared fixedly at the widening panorama of green coastline which reached away on either bow, growing and coming alive in the sunlight.

There, almost balanced on the jib-boom, or so it appeared, was St Anthony’s beacon, usually the first sight of home to a returning sailor. Slightly to larboard, hunched on the headland, its grey bulk defying the sun and its warmth, was Pendennis Castle, guarding the harbour entrance and Carrick Road as it had down the centuries.

Bolitho licked his lips; they were dry, not merely from salt air.

“Lay a course to the anchorage, Mr Partridge. I am going to pay my respects to the admiral.”

Partridge stared at him and then touched his battered hat. “Aye, aye, sir.”

Below the poop it was cool and dark after the quarterdeck, and as he strode aft towards the companion which led to the admiral’s day cabin Bolitho was still pondering over what might lie in store for him and his command.

As he ran lightly down the companion to the middle deck and past two small ship’s boys who were busily polishing brass hinges on some of the cabin doors, he recalled with sudden clarity how mixed his feelings had once been about assuming command of the Euryalus. It was common enough to take prize ships and put them to work against their old masters, it was more common still to let them keep their original names. Sailors often said it was bad luck to change a ship’s title, but then seafaring people said a lot of things more from habit than known fact.

She had once been named Tornade, flagship of the French

admiral Lequiller who had broken the British blockade to cross the Atlantic as far west as the Caribbean, there to cause havoc and destruction until finally run to earth by an inferior British squadron in the Bay of Biscay. She had struck her colours to Bolitho’s own ship, the old Hyperion, but not before she had pounded the worn two-decker almost into a floating wreck.

The Lords of the Admiralty had decided to rename Bolitho’s great prize, mostly it seemed because Lequiller had outwitted them on more than one occasion. It was strange, Bolitho had thought, that those who controlled His Majesty’s Navy from the heights of Admiralty seemed to know so little of ships and men that such changes were thought necessary.

Only the Euryalus ’s new figurehead was English. It had been carved with great care by Jethro Miller at St Austell in Cornwall, as a gift from the people of Falmouth to one of their most popular sons. Miller had been Hyperion ’s carpenter and had lost a leg in that last terrible battle. But he still retained his skill, and the figurehead which stared with cold blue eyes from the bows with shield and upraised sword had somehow given the Euryalus a small change of personality. It bore little resemblance perhaps to the hero of the Siege of Troy, but it was enough to strike fear into the heart of any enemy who might see it and know what was about to follow.

For the great three-decker was a force to be reckoned with. Built at Brest by one of the best French yards, she had all the modern refinements and improvements to hull design and sail plan that any captain could wish.

From figurehead to taffrail she measured two hundred and twenty-five feet, and within her two thousand ton bulk she carried not only a hundred guns, including a lower battery of massive thirty-two-pounders, but a company of some eight hundred officers, seamen and marines. She could, when handled properly, act and speak with authority and devastating effect.

When she had commissioned, Bolitho had been made to take every man he could get to crew her constant demands and requirements. Pale-skinned debtors and petty thieves from the jails, a few trained men from other ships laid up for repairs, as well as the usual mixture of characters brought in by the dreaded press-gangs. For they had been hard times, and an ever-demanding fleet had already sifted and poached through every port and village in search of men, and with growing fears of a French invasion no captain could allow himself the luxury of choice when it came to gathering hands to fight his ship.

There had been volunteers too, mostly Cornishmen, who knew Bolitho’s name and reputation even, although many of them had never laid eyes on him in their lives.

It should have been a great step forward for Bolitho, as he had told himself often enough. The Euryalus was a fine ship, and a new one. Not only that, she represented an open acknowledgement of his past record as well as the obvious stepping stone to advancement. It was something dreamed about by every ambitious sea officer, and in a Service where promotion often depended on the death of an officer’s superior, the Euryalus must have been watched with both admiration and envy by those less fortunate.

But to Bolitho she meant something more, something very personal. While he had been searching the Caribbean and then driving back again to the last embrace in the Bay of Biscay he had been tortured by the memory of his wife, Cheney, who had died in Cornwall, without him, when she most needed him. In his heart he knew he could have done nothing. The coach had overturned and she had been killed, and their unborn child also. His being there would have made no difference. And yet it still haunted him, had made him withdraw from his officers and seamen to a point when he had been tormented by loneliness and loss.

And now he was back again in Falmouth. The big grey stone house would be there waiting for him as always. As it had for all

the others before him, and yet it would now seem even more empty than ever.

A marine sentry stamped to attention outside the cabin door, his eyes fixed on some point above Bolitho’s shoulder. Like a toy soldier with his blank expression and scarlet coat.

Sunlight lanced through the great stern windows, throwing countless reflections across the deckhead and dark furniture, and he saw the admiral’s grey-haired secretary checking papers and documents before stowing them in a long metal box. He made to rise from his seat but Bolitho shook his head and walked slowly to the opposite side of the cabin. He could hear the admiral moving about his sleeping cabin, and imagined him contemplating these last hours of his presence aboard his own flagship.