Alexander Kent - The Flag Captain

The wheel continued to turn, while Bolitho shouted to the invisible men below him at the braces until his throat felt like raw flesh.

But she was coming round. Slowly and painfully, her sails thundering and booming like live things, the solitary jib a pale crescent through the black lines of shrouds and stays.

He dashed the spray from his eyes and ran to the weather side. Already the angle of the waves had altered, and the angry, broken crests were now coming straight for the larboard quarter. All about him he could hear the protesting groan of wood and hemp, the clatter of broken gear, and waited for something to come tearing down from aloft to signal his failure.

But nothing fell, nor did the helmsmen lose control of their wheel. Whoever had designed the Navarra had known a thing or two, he thought dazedly.

“ We will steer due east, Mr Grindle.” He had to repeat it to make himself heard. Or perhaps like him the others were too

stunned, too battered by noise and weather, to make sense of anything any more.

“Braces there!” Without light it was like yelling at an empty deck. A ghost ship in which he was alone and without hope. “Let go and haul!” The strain and gloom were playing tricks with his vision, and he had to count the seconds, gauging the swing of the yards rather than trusting his streaming eyes.

Meheux came reeling aft, his figure rising and falling like a seaport drunk as he slipped, cursing obscenely, against the Spanish captain’s corpse at the foot of the ladder.

“She’ll need take a second reef, sir.” He paused, seemingly amazed he was still alive. “Better get the Dons to do it now. You’ll not get ’em aloft again in this, no matter what you threaten ’em with!”

Bolitho cracked his lips into a grin. The uncertainty and the fears were giving way to a kind of wild excitement. Like going into a battle. A madness all of its own, and no less gripping than real insanity. Later, it would pass, and leave a man empty. Spent, like a fox before the hounds.

He shouted, “See to it! Then make fast and belay.” The grin was still there, fixed on his mouth. “And pray that it holds in one piece!”

Meheux sounded equally wild, his northern accent unusually broad. “I bin praying since th’ minute I came aboard this wreck, sir!” He laughed into the dashing droplets of spray. “It’s bin a mite helpful to my way o’ thinking!”

Bolitho swayed aft to the wheel.

“We will reef, Mr Grindle, but the moment you feel she may broach-to then let me know. I dare not tack, so we will have to spread more sail rather than less of it.”

The petty officer appeared at his side. “No doctor, sir. An’ there are some fierce-lookin’ rents, starboard side aft.”

“Tell Mr Meheux to get his Dons down there as soon as he

has cleared the yards. I want every bucket, anything which will hold water, put into a chain of men. It will save the pumps from being swamped, and will keep the Spaniards busy for a while.”

The man hesitated. “Some o’ the women are willin’ to go for-rard an’ tend the wounded, sir.”

“Good. See they are escorted, McEwen.” He raised his voice. “And make sure they come to no other hurt, understood?”

He grinned. “Aye, sir.”

Grindle muttered, “It’d take a powerful fine Jack to manage a woman in this lot, by the Lord Jesus it would!”

Ashton had appeared again. “Can you come, sir? I think we need some shoring up to be done in the carpenter’s walk by the aft hold. I-I’ve tried but I cannot…”

His voice trailed away.

And that was how the night was to continue. Until Bolitho’s mind found it hard to distinguish the passing hours as he applied it to one crisis after another. Faces and voices became blurred, and even Allday seemed unable to stem the constant stream of demands for help and guidance as the Navarra ploughed wildly into the leaping wave crests.

But somehow the pumps were kept going, the relays of men having to pull their exhausted companions clear before they could take over the fight against the hull’s greedy intake. The bucket chain worked without respite, until totally exhausted the men fell like corpses, oblivious to the spurting water across their bruised bodies or the kicks and curses from the British sailors. The rudder lines grew slack and the business of steering more difficult and wearing, but they did not part, nor did the sails tear from the yards, as well they might under the wind’s onslaught.

At the first hint of dawn, almost guiltily, like an unsuccessful attacker, the wind eased, the wave crests smoothing and settling, while the battered ship became more steady beneath her new masters.

Bolitho never left the quarterdeck, and as the first warmth of a new day gingerly explored the horizon he saw that they had the sea to themselves.

He rubbed his sore eyes, noting the lolling shapes of his men beneath the bulwarks, Meheux asleep on his feet, his back against the foremast trunk as if tied there.

In one more second he would give way. Would fall asleep himself, totally spent. He could not even find the sense of satisfaction, the feeling of pride, in what he had achieved. There was nothing but an all-consuming desire to sleep.

He shook himself and called, “Send for McEwen!” He faltered. His voice sounded like the croak of some disgruntled sea bird.

“Turn the hands to, Mr Grindle, and we will see what we have at our disposal.”

Two women appeared at the break of the forecastle and stood staring around them. One had blood on her apron, but saw him watching her and lifted her hand in greeting. Bolitho tried to smile, but nothing. Instead he waved back to her, his arm feeling like lead.

There was so much to do. In a few more moments the questions and the demands would start all over again.

He breathed in deeply and rested his hands on the rail. A ball had cut out a piece from it like a knife paring soft cheese. He was still staring at it when Allday said firmly, “I have placed a cot for you below the poop, Captain.” He paused, anticipating a protest, but knowing Bolitho had little strength left to make it. He added, “I will call Mr Meheux to take over the watch.”

The next thing Bolitho knew was that he was stretched out on a small hanging cot and someone was removing his sodden shoes and torn coat. And the same realisation brought sleep. Like a black curtain, instant and complete.

Bolitho sat at a makeshift table in the Navarra ’s small stern cabin and stared moodily at a chart. He had slept for three hours, oblivious of everything, until some latent instinct had brought him out of the cot, his eyes and ears groping for an explanation.

In the space of those three hours the wind had completely died, leaving not a hint of its past fury, and as he had hurried on deck he had seen the sails hanging lifeless, the sea breathing gently in a flat calm.

While Meheux had got on with the business of burying the dead, and Grindle had tried to produce some sort of routine for counting and then feeding the passengers and Spanish crew, he had made a slow and methodical search of the dead captain’s quarters.

He raised his eyes and looked around the cabin where a man like himself had once planned, rested and hoped. Through a great rent in the side he could see the dazzling blue water lapping against the hull as if to mock him. From the stern windows he could feel the mounting heat, for the Euryalus ’s broadside had smashed every piece of glass, just as it had turned the cabin into a shattered, blackened ruin. A fire had probably started, and when he had searched for the ship’s papers and log he had found only black, sodden ashes. Nothing to give him information, nor even a sextant to help fix their approximate position. The night’s storm could have driven them many miles to the east. Land might be thirty or fifty miles distant, Spain or North Africa. He could not be sure.