Alexander Kent - The Flag Captain

Broughton snapped, “Tell that officer to stay still, damn him!” Keverne relayed his sudden burst of irritation and Bolitho heard Meheux call, “I beg your pardon, Sir Lucius!” But he sounded cheerful for all that. Bolitho had recalled him from the Navarra to resume charge of his beloved upper battery of twelve-pounders, and Meheux had hardly stopped smiling since his return.

Nevertheless, it did reveal something of Broughton’s uneasiness.

Bolitho said, “I had the prisoner taken below to the orlop, sir.” The admiral sniffed. “Damn Witrand! It would do him good to stay up here with us.”

Bolitho smiled. “One thing seems certain. He knows more of this place than I first suspected. When Mr Keverne went to escort him below he was dressed and ready. No surprise, sir, not what you would expect at all from a man innocent of military affairs.” Broughton said, “That was shrewd of Keverne.” But it was only a passing interest, and Bolitho guessed his mind was still firmly fixed on what lay behind the shadows.

More feet clattered on the deck and Broughton swung round as Calvert stepped awkwardly over a gun-tackle.

“Mind your feet! You make more noise than a blind cripple!”

Calvert mumbled something in the gloom, and Bolitho saw

some of the nearby gun crews grinning knowingly at each other.

It must be over the whole ship about Calvert’s conflict with his admiral.

“Good morning, gentlemen.” Draffen came from beneath the poop, dressed in a frilled white shirt and dark breeches. He had a pistol in his belt, and sounded very refreshed, as if he had just emerged from a dreamless sleep.

Midshipman Tothill called, “ Zeus in sight, sir!”

Bolitho walked to the quarterdeck rail and stared along the length of his ship. The Tanais was growing steadily from the shadows, and beyond her, a little to larboard, he could just make out the leading seventy-four, her upper yards already shining in the reflected glow.

The sun’s rim lifted over the horizon, the warm light reaching away on either bow, touching the lively wave crests, spreading still further, until Tothill exclaimed, “There’s the land, sir!”

It was hardly a proper sighting report, but in the sudden excitement no one else seemed to notice. Which was just as well, Bolitho thought, in view of Broughton’s edginess.

“Thank you, Mr Tothill,” he replied coldly. “That was very prompt.”

The strengthening sunlight made the midshipman’s face glow like one enormous blush, but he had the sense to remain silent.

Bolitho turned to watch the land gaining personality as the shadows were pushed aside. Long rolling hills, grey and purple for the moment, but already showing their barren slopes with the deeper patches of darkness where gullies and other steep clefts remained hidden to the watching eyes.

“ Valorous is in sight, sir.” Lucey, the fifth lieutenant, who was also in charge of the quarterdeck nine-pounders, kept his voice low. “She has set her t’gallants.”

Bolitho walked up the tilting deck to the weather side and stared across the hammock nettings. The rearmost seventy-four made a fine picture as she forged after her slower-moving

consorts, topsails and topgallants shining like polished shells, while her hull remained in shadow as if unwilling to show itself. Soon now a lookout would sight the frigate standing well out to seaward, and then the little Restless, creeping closer inshore, and the last to be freed from the night’s darkness. The prize, Navarra, would remain within visual signalling distance but no nearer. It would do no harm for the defenders of Djafou to think Broughton had at least one other ship-of-war at his disposal. Bolitho had even advised the master’s mate sent across to relieve Meheux to make as many signals as he liked to give the impression he was in contact with more ships below the horizon.

So much depended on the first attack. The enemy, especially Spaniards, might feel less willing to fight against a growing force of ships if the early assault went against them.

Bolitho made himself walk slowly up and down the weather side, leaving the admiral standing motionless by the foot of the mainmast.

The poop and nettings seemed strangely bare without the customary reassuring scarlet lines of marines. But for the rest, his ship appeared to be ready. He could see both ranks of guns on the upper deck now, their crews stripped to near nakedness, with coloured neckerchiefs tied around their ears as protection against the cannons’ roar. Above, through the spread nets he saw the swivel guns manned in the tops, while more seamen waited at braces and halliards momentarily unemployed and watching the quarterdeck.

Partridge blew his nose violently into a green handkerchief, and then froze as Broughton shot him a savage glance. But the admiral said nothing, and the white-haired master thrust the offending handkerchief into his coat, grinning sheepishly at Tothill.

Bolitho rested one palm on his sword. The ship was alive, a vital, intricate weapon of war. He recalled his last fight aboard the Navarra, the stark contrast between this ordered world of

discipline and training and the other ship’s crude defences. The frightened Spanish seamen as they allowed their terror to change to bloody ferocity, hacking at the retreating boarders until there was none left alive. The half-naked women resting from their efforts at the pumps, shining in their sweat as he had passed. Meheux cursing as he had slipped in the Spanish captain’s blood, and Ashton’s youthful voice rising above the din as he had urged his gunners to fire and reload in his amateur Spanish.

And little Pareja. Wanting to please him. Feeling really needed, perhaps for the first time in his life. He thought too of his widow, wondering what she was doing at this moment. Hating him for leaving her without a husband? Regretting all the things which had brought her to Spain in the first place? It was hard to tell. A strange woman, he thought. He had never met anyone quite like her before. Wearing the finery of a wealthy lady, yet with the bold and fiery arrogance of one used to a much harder life than Pareja had given her.

Tothill’s voice shook him from his thoughts. “Signal from Zeus, sir. Repeated by Tanais. ” He was scribbling busily on his slate. “ Enemy in sight, sir.”

Broughton swore silently. “Hell’s teeth!”

Tanais ’s topsails and rigging had hidden Rattray’s signal from the flagship, so time had been lost in repeating it down the line. Bolitho frowned. It was another argument for having Euryalus leading, he thought. He could imagine Rattray passing his order to a midshipman like Tothill. He would be very aware of his position in the van and would want to get his signal hoisted as soon as possible. There was nothing in the signal book which would suffice for a word like Djafou. Wanting to make haste and avoid spelling it out letter by letter, he had made a more familiar signal instead. Captain Falcon would have devised something more imaginative, or said nothing at all. How easy it was to know a ship’s ways once you knew her captain.

The land had changed colour as the sun climbed higher above its own image, the purples giving way to scorched green, the grey rocks and gullies becoming sharper defined, as if from an artist’s drawing in the Gazette.

But the overall appearance had not changed. Treeless and without any sign of life, above which the air was already distorted in haze, or perhaps it was dust swirling around on the steady sea breeze.

There was the western headland, and overlapping it, its nearest side still in deep shadow, the one shaped like a great beak. Exactly abeam was a round hill, the side of which had cracked and fallen into the sea. It was a good four miles distant, but Bolitho could see the sea breaking in white feathers across the crumbled rocks, driven along the cheerless shoreline by the wind, as if searching for an inlet.