Alexander Kent - ENEMY IN SIGHT

Bolitho was walking back and forth at the weather side when the masthead lookout suddenly broke into his brooding thoughts.

"Deck there! Sail fine on th' larboard bow!"

Bolitho glanced at the masthead pendant. There was no point in altering course. It would take more precious time, and there would be no light at all within an hour. They would pass the frigate some two miles abeam, and that would suffice to read her signals.

He lifted his glass and peered across the nettings. He could not see the distant ship, for her shape was well merged with the dull grey blur which he knew to be the French coast. He looked aloft again and bit his lip. Up there, swaying comfortably on his dizzy perch, the lookout would be able to see her quite well, and more important, the lay of the land beyond.

He made up his mind. "I'm going aloft, Mr. Inch." He ignored the quick exchange of glances, but concentrated all his will on climbing out on to the weather shrouds and slowly step by step up the quivering ratlines. Ever since he had been a midshipman Bolitho had hated heights, and each time he had found himself forced to make such a climb he always expected he would have outgrown such a stupid fear. But it was not so, and with gritted teeth, his eyes fixed firmly towards the swaying topmast, he continued to climb higher and higher. Up and around the maintop, where two startled marines were cleaning a swivel gun, and gritting his teeth still harder to control the rising nausea as he felt the pull of his weight against his fingers while his body hung outwards on the futtock shrouds. But with more eyes fixed upon him than the approaching frigate, he could not take the easier passage of the lubber's hole.

When at last he reached the crosstrees he found a grizzled, pigtailed seaman already moving aside to give him room to sit down. Bolitho nodded gratefully, as yet unable to regain his breath. For a few moments he sat with his back against the trembling mast while he groped for his slung telescope and tried not to look down at the neck so far below him.

He heard Midshipman Gascoigne yelling, "She's made the recognition signal, sir!" Inch must have said something for seconds later the arranged acknowledgement broke in a bright rectangle from the main topsail yard.

Bolitho trained his glass and saw the sleek frigate swooping across the lens, the spray lifting above her bows in one unbroken curtain. He forgot his discomfort as he remembered his own service in frigates. Always on the move, with the dash and excitement which only such graceful ships could give. He pitied her captain's lonely vigil here. Back and forth, day after day, with nothing to show for it. A ship of the line was bad enough in these conditions, but within her sleek hull it would be a living nightmare.

He dragged the glass away from the other ship and swung it across the darkening spit of headland to the north of the estuary. A few patches, probably coastguard houses, he thought. Above the distant offshore current they appeared to be moving and the sea to be still. He lowered the glass and wiped his eye with his sleeve.

He heard Inch's voice carried by the wind. "Captain, sir! Ithuriel has nothing to report!"

By waiting for the mizzen topsail to flap momentarily in the falling wind it was possible for Bolitho to see the shortened figures standing on the quarterdeck, their faces pale blobs against the worn planking. He could see Gascoigne, his signal book flapping in the breeze, and Stepkyne with his glass on the frigate as she cruised past on the opposite tack. Even the ship looked small and compact, so that it was hard to accept that six hundred human souls lived out their lives within her fat hull.

He thought, too, of the frigate's wretched conditions. One of a chain of ships, weatherbeaten and dependent on their own resources, yet essential if the enemy was to be contained within his harbours.

Bolitho swallowed hard and seized a backstay. He could not face another long climb, even downwards, so 56

watched by the lookout with something like awe he swung from the crosstrees, and holding his breath made his way to the quarterdeck by a faster, if less dignified method. He arrived panting on deck, conscious of the grinning seamen around him and of the pain in his legs where the thick stay had seared through to his skin in the speedy and heartstopping descent.

He said stiffly, "Before the light goes I will make a signal to Ithuriel." He beckoned to Gascoigne. "I've -forgotten her captain's name."

Gascoigne was still gaping as if he could not believe a captain could behave in such an odd manner. Then he opened his book and stammered, "Ithuriel, 32, Captain Curry, sir!"

It would sound trite to wish him a good New Year, Bolitho thought, but it would be better than nothing.

Stepkyne said, "Well, they've kept her smart enough, in spite of the damn weather."

Bolitho took Gascoigne's big signal telescope and lifted it above the nettings. The frigate was on the Hyperion's larboard quarter now and he could see the huddled figures on her quarterdeck below the tattered remnant of her ensign. He blinked his eyes rapidly to clear them from strain. He was mistaken. He had to be.

His voice was still calm as he snapped, "Make this signal, Mr. Gascoigne. Hermes to Ithuriel. Good luck."

He ignored the startled look on the midshipman's pale face and rasped, "That's right. I said Hermes!" Then he added, "Thank you, Mr. Stepkyne."

Nobody spoke. Those standing near Bolitho even averted their eyes as if unable to watch his madness.

Gascoigne said in a small voice, "She's acknowledged, sir."

Bolitho looked away. "Lay her on. the starboard tack, Mr. Gossett. We will steer due west." Then as the pipes twittered and the men ran to the braces he added harshly, "Ithuriel is a thirty-two-gun frigate, gentlemen. That ship is a thirty-six! And only a Frenchman would fail to see we are not the Hermes!"

They were all staring at him now. "Mr. Stepkyne saw it first, even though he did not recognise fully what he had discovered. She is too smart, too clean after weeks of blockade duty!

Inch said, "What does it mean, sir?" He seemed stunned.

Bolitho watched the yards swinging and the sails filling again to the wind.

"It means, gentlemen, that Ithuriel has been taken. That explains how those people knew our recognition signals." It was amazing how calm he sounded. He could not understand it, when every fibre in his body was crying out for them to understand, as he did. He saw Allday leaning against a nine-pounder, staring astern at the frigate as she sidled once more into the haze of spray and growing darkness. He would know how Bolitho felt. He had been aboard his ship, the Phalarope when she had been attacked by an American privateer. That, too, had been a British frigate taken as a prize.

Bolitho asked slowly, "Why should the French bother with such a deception? They have taken a good frigate, so why keep it a secret?"

Gossett said, "Seems to me, sir, that they got summat to 'ide."

Bolitho showed his teeth in a smile. "I believe so, Mr. Gossett." He looked up at the flapping pendant. "There is no time to inform the squadron, even if we could find them." His tone hardened. "As soon as it is dark we will go about and work to a position north of the estuary again. I have no doubt the frigate's captain, whoever he is, will anchor for the night. He will know it to be unlikely for another ship to come from the squadron for days, even weeks maybe." He tried to keep the bitterness from his voice. If Pelham-Martin had concentrated his three frigates, and if possible the sloops as well in a tight are around the patrol area and within visual distance of one another, this could never have happened. He continued in the same flat tone, "We will close the shore as near as we are able. When the first daylight appears I want to have the wind-gage." He glanced coldly at the nearest guns.