Alexander Kent - With All Despatch

Then he stared at the enemy's blackened stern. All windows demolished, the counter stove in like wet felt, the ornate taffrail high overhead splintered and unrecognisable.

Queely said hoarsely, "I think we got her steering, sir!" He looked at him with sudden desperation. "It's still not enough, is it?"

Bolitho watched the small figures swarming up the corvette's ratlines. Soon they would have a jury-rig, and be ready to face them once more. He shifted his glance to Wakeful' s foredeck. Six men dead, several more crawling to safety, or being carried to the hatchway. It was a miracle that anyone had survived.

It would take Queely's men an hour or more to rerig the foresail and jib, and it was obvious that most of the forward rigging was rendered quite useless.

He watched the corvette turning very slowly, wind, and not rudder, carrying her off course. At this range she would use her broadside to bombard Wakeful until she followed Snapdragon to the seabed.

Allday exclaimed harshly, "Here comes Telemachus, Cap'n! By God, haven't they taken enough?"

Bolitho saw the other cutter bearing down on the drifting corvette for another attack, her sails in rags, her bulwark and forecastle looking as if they had been torn and gnawed by some nightmare monster.

He said quietly, "Give them a cheer, Mr Queely. I'd not thought to see such valour this day."

The cheers echoed across the lively wave crests to the men on the other cutter, and probably to those working aloft aboard La Foi whose captain had ordered his stern-chaser to fire just seconds too late. Men were running aft and shooting towards the oncoming cutter, but once under the corvette's quarter there was not a single nine-pounder which could be brought to bear.

The two carronades fired within seconds of one another. More debris burst from the stern and up through the deck beyond. The force of the explosion flung men from the gangways, while some even fell from the foresail yard to the deck below.

Bolitho stared until his eyes throbbed. Was it the constant strain, the agony of seeing men cut down, who had never known the savage demands of sea warfare? He seized Queely's arm. "Is it going?"

Queely nodded, unable to answer. The corvette's main mast was beginning to topple, held for a while by stays and shrouds until the weight of spars and wind-filled canvas took control. In those few seconds Bolitho saw some of the French sailors who had been sent aloft to free each frozen block by hand, stare down as they realised too late that there was no escape or survival.

Then, with rigging parting like pistol shots, the mast thundered over the side, to be snared by the remaining lines and dragged alongside to make any chance of steering impossible.

Bolitho watched the confusion, and knew that Telemachus' s last shots must have exploited the damage left by Queely's carronade.

Queely stared along the deck, his eyes wild, hungry for revenge. For Kempthorne and the others who lay dead and dying, for Snapdragon, and for his own command.

He said huskily, "We can still close with them, sir! God damn them, they'll not be able to move before nightfall!"

The sailing master called anxiously, " Telemachus is standing away, sir!" He hesitated, as if he too shared Bolitho's mood. "She's dipped 'er Ensign, sir!"

Bolitho looked across the smoky water to where Telemachus was tacking very slowly away from her crippled adversary.

So Jonas Paice was dead. After all he had suffered, or perhaps because of it, he was now at peace.

Aloud he said firmly, "There's been enough killing. I'll not countenance cold-blooded murder and smear our name." His grey eyes lingered on the other battered cutter. No tall figure at her bulwark. He must have been dying then, even as he had doffed his hat in a last salute. "Or his especially. A worthy and honourable man."

Queely watched him dully, shoulders heaving from the madness of battle.

Bolitho looked at him and added, "We have saved Brennier and his treasure." He did not even glance at the drifting corvette which moments earlier had been ready to destroy them all. "Her captain will pay a more terrible price for his failure-so why fire on his men, who cannot defend themselves?"

He saw Allday watching him, his hands crossed over the hilt of his cutlass.

Bolitho said, "I'll board Telemachus as soon as we can work alongside. I shall take command and pass you a tow."

" You in command, sir?"

Bolitho smiled sadly. "Mine is the honour this time, Mr Queely."

Later, as Wakeful tugged reluctantly at her towing warp, Bolitho stood by Telemachus' s taffrail and looked at the damage, the bloodstains, the hurt of this vessel, where it had all begun for him.

Paice's body had been carried below and laid in the cabin. Hawkins the boatswain had asked about burying him at sea with the others. Bolitho had seen the boatswain's rough features soften as he had replied, "No, Mr Hawkins. We'll lay him with his wife."

Allday heard and saw all of this, his mind dazed by the impossible shift of events.

The sky was even bluer than when he had looked up and offered his prayer. But his senses refused to accept any of it.

Only when Bolitho drew near him and said gently, "Look yonder, old friend. Tell me what you see."

Allday slowly raised his eyes, afraid of what might be there. Then in a small voice he murmured, "White cliffs, Cap'n."

Bolitho nodded, sharing the moment with him, and with Paice.

"I never thought to see them again."

Allday's face split into an unexpected grin.

"An' that's no error, Cap'n!"

At eight bells that evening, they saw the murky silhouette of Dover Castle.

The two little ships had come home.

ALLDAY glanced at the rigid marine sentry posted outside the frigate's stern cabin and after a brief hesitation thrust open the door.

He had been surprised to discover that leaving England again had been so easy. There was no knowing what lay ahead, or what the war might mean to him and to his captain. But on the nine days' passage from Spithead aboard this frigate, the thirty-six-gun Harvester, it had felt more like a homecoming than some of the anxious moments they had shared in the past.

For a few seconds he stood by the screen door and saw Bolitho framed against the tall stern windows, with a sunlit panorama of sea and hazy coastline turning very slowly beyond as the frigate was laid on her final tack for the anchorage.

In the vivid light the Rock itself was a hint of land, rather than a solid reality; but just the sight of it made Allday tense with excitement, something else he found difficult to explain. Gibraltar was not merely the gateway to the Mediterranean this time. It opened for them a new life, another chance.

He nodded with slow approval. In his best uniform with the white lapels, and the newly adopted epaulettes gleaming on either shoulder, Bolitho was a far cry from the man in the shabby coat, facing the smugglers', then the corvette's, cannon fire with equal determination, and with a defiance which had never left him despite the setbacks, the suffering and the procession of disappointments which had taken them both to the Nore.

Bolitho turned and looked at him. "Well? What do you see?"

Allday had served with him for eleven years. Coxswain, friend, a right arm when need be. But Bolitho could still surprise him.

Like now. The post-captain, a man envied not a little by Harvester' s young commanding officer; and yet he was anxious, even afraid, that he would fail, and betray all the hopes he had nursed since his return to duty.

"Like old times, Cap'n."