Second to None (18 page)

Their eyes held.
Know what to do. Unrivalled
would fire that final broadside. Any boarding party would be butchered.

Galbraith said steadily, ‘I shall be ready, sir!'

‘A close thing.'

‘We would have run them down, sir. The way you handled her . . .'

Adam touched his sleeve. ‘Not that, Leigh. I wanted them dead.'

Galbraith turned away, beckoning urgently to one of his petty officers. Even when the quarter-boat had been warped alongside and men were clambering down the frigate's tumblehome, he was still reliving it.

The Captain had called him by his first name, like an old and trusted friend. But more, he remembered and was disturbed by the look of pain on the dark features. Anguish, as if he had almost betrayed something. Or someone.

‘Bear off forrard! Give way all!'

They were dipping and rising over the choppy water, the boat's stem already clattering through drifting flotsam and lolling corpses. Galbraith shaded his eyes to look up at the other vessel, huge now as they pulled past her bows, seeing the damage which
Unrivalled
's guns had inflicted.

‘Marines, take the poop! Creagh, put your party below!' He saw the boatswain's mate nod, his weatherbeaten face unusually grim. He was the man who had first recognised
Tetrarch,
and perhaps remembered the blackest moment in her life, when she had been surrendered to the enemy.

Sergeant Everett of the marines called, ‘Watch yer back, sir! I'd not trust a one of 'em!'

Galbraith thought of the captain again.
It might have been us.
Then he lurched to his feet, one hand on the shoulder of an oarsman in this overcrowded boat, his mind empty of everything but the grapnel thudding into the scarred timbers and the hull grating alongside.

‘With me, lads!'

Within a second he might be dead, or floating out there with the other corpses.

And then he was up and over the first gunport lid, tearing his leg on something jagged but feeling nothing.

There were more people on deck than he had expected. For the most part ragged and outwardly undisciplined, the sweepings of a dozen countries, renegades and deserters, and yet . . . He stared around, taking in the discarded weapons, the sprawled shapes of men killed by
Unrivalled
's slow and accurate fire. It would need more than greed or some obscure cause to weld this rabble into one company, to stand and fight a King's ship which for all they knew might have been expecting support from other men-of-war.

He thought of the hand on his sleeve, and pointed with his hanger.

‘Where is your captain?' He could not recall having drawn the blade as he had scrambled aboard.

A man stepped or was pushed towards him. An officer of sorts, his uniform coat without facings or rank.

He said huskily, ‘He is dying.' He spread his hands. ‘
We
pulled down the flag. It was necessary!'

One of Creagh's seamen shouted, ‘Fire's out!' He glared at the silent figures below the poop as if he would have cut each one down himself. ‘Lantern, sir! Knocked over!'

The ship was safe. Galbraith said, ‘Run up our flag.' He glanced at
Unrivalled,
moving so slowly, the guns like black teeth along her side. Then he looked up at the squad of Royal Marines with their bayoneted muskets. They had even managed to depress a swivel gun towards the listless men who were now their prisoners. A blast of canister shot would deter any last-minute resistance.

Sergeant Everett called, ‘Captain's up here, sir!'

Galbraith sheathed his hanger. It would be useless in any case if some hothead tried to retake the ship. The groups of men parted to allow him through, and he saw defeat in their strained features. The will to fight was gone, if it had ever been there. Apathy, despair, fear, the face of surrender and all it represented.

Tetrarch
's captain was not what he had expected. Propped between one of his officers and a pale-faced youth, he was at a guess about Galbraith's age. He had fair hair, tied in an old-style queue, and there was blood on his waistcoat, which the officer was attempting to staunch.

Galbraith said, ‘M'sieur, I must tell you . . .'

The eyes opened and stared up at him, a clear hazel. The breathing was sharp and painful.

‘No formalities, Lieutenant. I speak English.' He coughed, and blood ran over the other man's fingers. ‘I suppose I
am
English. So strange, that it should come to this.'

Galbraith stared around. ‘Surgeon?'

‘None. So many shortages.'

‘I will take you to my ship. Can you manage that?'

What did it matter? A renegade Englishman; there was a slight accent, possibly American. Perhaps one of the original privateers. And yet he did not seem old enough. He stood up; he was wasting time.

‘Rig a bosun's chair. You, Corporal Sykes, attend this officer's wound.' He saw the doubt in the marine's eyes. ‘It is important!'

Creagh shouted, ‘'Nother boat shovin' off, sir!'

Galbraith nodded. Captain Bolitho had seen or guessed what was happening. A prize crew, then. And there was still the dismasted brig to deal with. He needed to act quickly, to organise his boarding party, to have the prisoners searched for concealed weapons.

But something made him ask, ‘What is your name, Captain?'

He lay back against the others, his eyes quite calm despite the pain.

‘Lovatt.' He attempted to smile. ‘Roddie – Lovatt.'

‘Bosun's chair rigged, sir!'

Galbraith said, ‘We have a good surgeon. What is the nature of your wound?'

He could hear the other boat hooking on, voices shouting to one another, thankful that reinforcements had arrived. All danger forgotten, perhaps until the night watches, when there would be thoughts for all men.

Lovatt did not conceal his contempt as he said bitterly, ‘A pistol ball. From one of my gallant sailors yonder. When I refused to haul down the flag.'

Galbraith put his hand on the shoulder of the boy, who had not left the wounded man.

‘Go with the others!'

His mind was full. An English captain who was probably an American; a ship which had been handed to the enemy after a mutiny; and a French flag.

The boy tried to free himself and Lovatt said quietly, ‘Please, Lieutenant. Paul is my son.'

Two seamen carried him to the hastily rigged boatswain's chair. Once, Lovatt cried out, the sound torn from him, and reached for his son's hand. His eyes moved to the newly hoisted flag at the peak, the White Ensign, so fresh, so clean above the pain and the smell of death.

He whispered, ‘
Your
flag now, Lieutenant.'

Galbraith signalled to the waiting boat's crew and saw Midshipman Bellairs peering up at him. He would learn another lesson today.

Lovatt was muttering, ‘Flags, Lieutenant . . . We are all mercenaries in war.'

Galbraith saw blood on the deck and realised it was his own, from the leg he had cut when climbing aboard.

The chair was being hoisted and then swayed out over the gangway.

He said, ‘Go with him, boy. Lively now!'

Creagh joined him by the side as the chair was lowered into the boat, where Bellairs was waiting to receive it.

‘Found this, sir.' He held out a sword. ‘Th' cap'n's, they says.'

Galbraith took it and felt the drying blood adhering to his fingers. A sword. All that was left of a man. Something to be handed on. He thought of the old Bolitho blade, which today his captain had worn.
Or forgotten
.

He studied the hilt. One of the early patterns, with a five-ball
design, which had been so resented by sea officers when it had been introduced as the first regulation sword. Most officers had preferred their own choice of blade.

Deliberately, he half-drew it from its leather scabbard and read the engraving. He could even picture the establishment, in the Strand in London, the same sword-cutlers from whom he had obtained the hanger at his hip.

He stared across at his own ship, and at the boat rising and dipping in the swell on its errand of mercy.

Better he had been killed, he thought. A King's officer who had become a traitor: if he lived through this, he might soon wish otherwise.

He sighed. Wounded to be dealt with, dead to be put over. And a meal of sorts. After that . . . He felt his dried lips crack into a smile.

He was alive, and they had won the day. It was enough. It had to be.

DENIS O'BEIRNE,
UNRIVALLED
'S
surgeon, climbed wearily up the quarterdeck ladder and paused to recover his breath. The sea was calmer, the sun very low on the horizon.

The ship's company was still hard at work. There were men high in the yards, splicing a few remaining breakages, and on the maindeck the sailmaker and his crew were sitting cross-legged like so many tailors, their palms and needles moving in unison, ensuring that not a scrap of canvas would be wasted. Apart from the unusual disorder, it was hard to believe that the ship had exchanged fire on this same day, that men had died. Not many, but enough in a small, self-contained company.

O'Beirne had served in the navy for twelve years, mostly in larger vessels, ships of the line, always teeming with humanity, overcrowded and, to a man of his temperament, oppressive. Blockade duty in all weathers, men forced aloft in a screaming gale, only to be recalled to set more sail if the weather changed in their favour. Bad food, crude conditions; he had often wondered how the sailors endured it.

A frigate was something else. Lively, independent if her captain was ambitious and able to free himself from the fleet's apron strings, and imbued with a sense of companionship which was entirely different. He had observed it with his usual interest, seen it deepen in the few months since
Unrivalled
had commissioned on that bitterly cold day at Plymouth, and the ship's first captain had read himself in.

As surgeon he was privileged to share the wardroom with
the officers, and during that period he had learned more about his companions than they probably knew. He had always been a good listener, a man who enjoyed sharing the lives of others without becoming a part of them.

A surgeon was classed as a warrant officer, his status somewhere between sailing master and purser. A craftsman rather than a gentleman. Or as one old sawbones had commented, neither profitable, comfortable, nor respectable.

In recent years the Sick and Hurt Office had worked diligently to improve the naval surgeon's lot, and to bring them into line with army medical officers. Either way, O'Beirne could not imagine himself doing anything else.

He was entitled to one of the hutch-like cabins allotted to the lieutenants, but preferred his own company in the sickbay below the waterline. His world. Those who visited him voluntarily came in awe; others who were carried to him, like those he had left on the orlop deck, or had seen being put over the side in a hasty burial, had no choice.

He glanced around the quarterdeck. Here, in this place of authority and purpose, the roles were reversed.

Unrivalled
was rolling steeply despite the sea's calmer face, lying to as she had for the entire day, with the battered
Tetrarch
under her lee, the air alive with hammers and squealing blocks as the boarding party had used every trick and skill known to seamen to erect a jury-rig, enough for
Tetrarch
to get under way again, and be escorted to Malta.

The little brig had capsized and vanished even before many of her wounded could be ferried to safety. He had heard few regrets from anyone, and even the loss of potential prize money had seemed insignificant.

Two ships, and the sun already low above its reflection. He saw the captain staring up at their new fore topgallant sail, while Cristie, the master, pointed out something where the topmen were still working.

O'Beirne thought of his latest charge,
Tetrarch
's captain. He had borne up well, considering the angle of the pistol shot and a great loss of blood. The ball had been fired point-blank, and his waistcoat had been singed and stained with powder smoke. Only one thing had saved his life: he had been wearing one of the outdated crossbelts which some
officers had still been using when O'Beirne had first gone to sea. It had a heavy buckle, like a small horseshoe. The ball had been deflected by it, and had broken in half.

They had stripped him naked and the loblolly boys had held him spreadeagled on the makeshift table, already ingrained with the blood of those who had gone before him.

O'Beirne could shut his ears and concentrate on the work in hand, but his mind was still able to record the inert shapes which lay in the shadows, or propped against the frigate's curved timbers. There had been no time to separate or distinguish the living from the dead. He had become accustomed to it, but still liked to believe he had not become hardened by it. He remembered the powder monkey who had lost a leg: it had been a challenge not to watch his face, his eyes so filled with terror as the knife had made its first incision. He had died on the table before the saw could complete the necessary surgery.

O'Beirne had seen his surgeon's mate scribble in a dogeared log book. The powder monkey had been ten years old.

O'Beirne came from a large family, seven boys and three girls. Three brothers had entered the Church, two had donned the King's coat in a local regiment of foot, another had gone to sea in a packet ship. His sisters had married honest farmers and were raising families of their own. The brother who had gone to sea was no more; neither were the two who had ‘gone for a soldier'.

He smiled to himself. There was something to be said for the Church after all.

He realised that the captain was looking at him. He seemed clear-eyed and attentive while he listened to what Cristie had to say, and yet O'Beirne knew he had been on deck or close to it since dawn.