By the Mast Divided (51 page)

‘Mr Burns, I feel after what has happened and with the glory you will gather from it, you may feel you owe us a favour. Captain Barclay asked me how you had fared, and for the sake of your being our comrade I declined to tell him the whole truth. Likewise with Captain Nelson. I now ask that you return both those favours. Please tell Lieutenant Colbourne that this is some kind of cruel joke.’

Burns looked at Pearce for what seemed like an age, his podgy face showing nothing. Then he turned his back on them all, and began to pace back and forth, quite the little admiral. A look from Pearce to Twyman produced no response – there was no mercy in those eyes, just the avarice of a man calculating an increase in his salvage money. Pearce was wondering whether to produce Lutyens’ letter. Would that persuade this lieutenant to desist, or would it – in telling him both who Pearce was and whom he represented – decide him to put ashore into the hands of a Justice of the Pearce as a man wanted by the law? He could not risk it.

Colbourne filled the awkward silence. ‘Fetch your dunnage, all of you, and get it aboard my ship.’ No one moved, until he added, quietly. ‘I have the law on my side and I will not hesitate to bring muskets aboard if I have to.’

The temptation to tell the lieutenant to go to hell was strong, as potent as the notion of chucking him bodily off the ship. Pearce was aware that his companions were looking at him, in expectation of some idea of what to do, and once more he felt a slight irritation at being called upon to decide – why could they not think and act for themselves? The thoughts going through his mind were a jumble of possibilities, risks, and consequences, overlaid by the feeling that the Fates were again playing a cruel trick on him – the same trick as they had been playing for the past two weeks. He thought about the near arrest that led him to the Pelican and impressment; the thwarted possibility of escape; Barclay’s surprise offer of freedom and now this.

They could not stand against authority here any more than they had been able to aboard HMS
Brilliant
. The law was on the side of the Navy and they were five against that, four because Pearce quickly discounted Gherson. No one on this deck would make a move to help them, one or two from greed, the majority for fear that they too might end up as pressed men. He could not even be sure that anyone but Michael O’Hagan would back him in taking action. But the thought Pearce was left with utterly depressed him; that having fallen foul of a cruel fate and overcome it, he was now being thrust into a situation where he would have to do the whole thing again.

‘John-boy?’ said O’Hagan.

Pearce turned around and spoke softly so that his reply was for the Irishman’s ears only. ‘We comply, Michael, because we must. But I swear on your God, Barclay will regret this act to his dying day. I shall make sure of that.’

Then he added, in a louder voice, one that stopped the midshipman in his tracks. ‘Mr Burns, we will meet again one day, when I hope you are old enough to allow me to extract the price you must pay for what is an act of pure treachery.’

‘Amen,’ hissed Michael.

Pearce looked past the boy’s pale white face and fear-filled eyes to the low northern shore, to the sandy beach rising in the distance and the wooded hills of the Weald of Kent – beyond that the road to London and the solution he sought. So near, yet so far!

D
AVID
D
ONACHIE
was born in Edinburgh in 1944. He has always had an abiding interest in the naval history of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as well as the Roman Republic, and, under the pen-name of Jack Ludlow, has published a number of historical adventure novels. David lives in Deal with his partner, the novelist Sarah Grazebrook.

T
HE
J
OHN
P
EARCE SERIES

By the Mast Divided

A Shot Rolling Ship

An Awkward Commission

A Flag of Truce

The Admirals’ Game

An Ill Wind

Blown Off Course

Enemies at Every Turn

A Sea of Troubles

Written as Jack Ludlow

T
HE
R
EPUBLIC SERIES

The Pillars of Rome

The Sword of Revenge

The Gods of War

T
HE
C
ONQUEST SERIES

Mercenaries

Warriors

Conquest

T
HE
R
OADS TO
W
AR SERIES

The Burning Sky

A Broken Land

A Bitter Field

T
HE
C
RUSADES SERIES

Son of Blood

Soldier of Crusade