Second to None (34 page)

But there was no solution. Only the realisation that he wanted this woman, this girl, another man's wife.

He heard himself say, ‘I must leave you. Now. I have to see the admiral.'

She nodded very slowly, as if the action was painful.

‘I understand.' He felt her face against his chest, her mouth damp through his shirt. ‘You may despise me now, Captain Bolitho.'

He kissed her shoulder, felt her body tighten, shock, disbelief, it no longer mattered.

There were voices now, and laughter, someone announcing an arrival. She was fading into the shadows, moving away, but with one arm held out.

He followed her through the same low archway, and she said, ‘No, no – it was wrong of me!' She shook herself as if to free her body of something. ‘Go now, please go!'

He held her, kissing her shoulder again, lingeringly, and with a deep sensuality. There were more voices, closer. Someone looking for him, or for her.

He pressed the small silver sword into her hand and closed her fingers around it, then he walked through the archway and into the courtyard once more, his mind and body fighting every step, almost daring to hope she might run after him and prevent him from leaving. But all he heard was the sound of metal on stone. She had flung the little clasp away from her.

He saw Lieutenant Onslow peering out from the opposite doorway and felt something like relief.

‘Captain Bolitho, sir! Sir Graham sends his compliments, but he is unable to receive you this evening. He is with Sir Lewis Bazeley, and before the guests arrived he thought –'

Adam touched his sleeve. ‘No matter. I will sign for my orders and leave.'

Onslow said lamely, ‘He wishes you every success, sir.'

Adam did not glance up at the balcony. She was there, and
she would know that he knew it. Anything more would be insanity.

He followed the flag lieutenant into another room. While Onslow was taking out the written orders, Adam held out his hand and examined it. It should be shaking, but it was quite steady. He picked up the pen, and thought of Jago down there with the gig's crew.

There were far more dangerous forces abroad this evening than cutthroats and thieves. Perhaps Jago had realised that also.

I wanted her. And she will know it.

He could hear her voice still.
Then I shall yield.

Perhaps they would never meet again. She would know the perils of any liaison. Even as a game.

The gig's crew sat to attention when he appeared, and the bowman steadied the gunwale for him to step aboard. Jago took the tiller.

‘Cast off!'

Captain Bolitho had said nothing. But he could smell perfume, the same she had been using when they had carried her, almost insensible, below.

‘Bear off forrard! Out oars!'

Jago smiled to himself.
Get back to sea. Good thing all round.

‘Give way all!'

Adam saw the riding light of his ship drawing nearer and sighed.

Destiny.

LIEUTENANT LEIGH GALBRAITH
got down on his knees in the cutter's sternsheets and ducked his head under the canvas canopy to peer at the compass. When he opened the lantern's small shutter it seemed as bright as a rocket, just as the normal sounds around him were deafening.

He closed the shutter and regained his seat beside the helmsman. By contrast it was even darker than ever now, and he could imagine the man enjoying his lieutenant's uncertainty. He was Rist, one of
Unrivalled
's senior master's mates, and the most experienced. The stars, which paved the sky from horizon to horizon, were already paler, but Rist navigated with the assurance of one who lived by them.

Galbraith watched the regular rise and fall of oars, not too fast, not enough to sap a man's strength when he might need it most. Even they sounded particularly loud. He tried to dismiss it from his thoughts and concentrate. The cutter's rowlocks were clogged with grease, the oar looms muffled with sackcloth; nothing had been left to chance.

He imagined their progress as a sea bird might have seen them, had there been any at this hour. Three cutters, each astern of the other, followed by a smaller boat which had been hoisted aboard
Unrivalled
under cover of darkness. Was it only two nights ago? It felt like a week since they had made that early morning departure from Malta.

It had been a quiet night when they had hoisted the other boat aboard, in spite of a steady breeze through the rigging and furled sails, quiet enough to hear the music carried across
the harbour from the big white building used by Vice-Admiral Bethune and his staff.

Galbraith had seen the captain by the quarterdeck rail, his hands resting on it as he watched the boat being manhandled into a position away from the others. His head had been turned towards the music, as if his thoughts were elsewhere.

Rist said quietly, ‘Not long now, sir.'

Galbraith failed to find comfort in his confidence. A point off-course and the boats might pass the poorly described and charted islet; and he was in command. When daylight came in a mere two hours' time it would lay them bare, all secrecy would be gone, and the chebecks, if they were there, would make their escape.

There were thirty-five all told in the landing party, not an army, but any larger force would increase the risk and the danger of discovery. Captain Bolitho had decided to include some marines after all, only ten, and each man, as well as their own Sergeant Everett, was an expert shot. When Galbraith had carried out a final inspection of the party before they had disembarked he had noticed that even without their uniforms they managed to look smart and disciplined. The others could have been pirates, but all were trained and experienced hands. Even the foul-mouthed hard man, Campbell, was here in the boat. In a fight he would ask no quarter, nor offer any.

Halcyon
's second lieutenant, Tom Colpoys, was in the boat furthest astern. It would be his decision either to fight or to run if his leader encountered trouble.

Colpoys was a tough, surprisingly quiet-spoken man, old for his rank, and indeed the oldest man in the landing party. Galbraith had been immediately aware of the respect he was shown by his own sailors, and of a calm assurance which could not have come easily to him. From the lower deck, he had probably served all kinds of officer before rising to that same rank.

It was good to know that he was second-in-command of what his young captain had called this ‘venture'.

Galbraith had taken part in several such raids throughout his varied service, but never in this sea. Here there was no running tide to cover your approach, no boom of surf to warn or guide your final decision to land.

He thought of the Algerine chebecks he had seen and had heard described by the old Jacks. They were laughed at by those who had never encountered them, as relics from a dead past, from the pharaohs to the rise of the slave trade. But those who had experience of them treated them with respect. Even their rig had improved over the years, so that they could outsail most of the smaller traders on which they preyed. Their long sweeps gave them a manoeuvrability which compensated for their lack of armament. A man-of-war, with a fully trained and disciplined company, but becalmed, could become a victim in minutes. A chebeck could pull around the ship's stem and fire point-blank with her one heavy cannon through the unprotected poop. And then the Algerines would board their victim, without either fear or mercy. It was said that the dead were the lucky ones, compared with the horrors which inevitably followed.

He saw Williams, one of
Unrivalled
's gunner's mates, bending over the heavy bag he had brought with him. Another professional, he had been entrusted with fuses, powder, and the combining of both into a floating inferno. Galbraith had seen him clambering over the small boat they had hoisted aboard, supervising the placing and lashing of each deadly parcel. If anything could dislodge the chebecks, this miniature fireship would do it. If they were driven from shelter and forced into deeper water, even they would be no match for
Unrivalled
's speed and armament.

‘
Now,
sir!' Rist eased the tiller-bar without waiting for an order. Galbraith saw the man in the bows waving his arm above his head, and then pointing firmly across the starboard bow. Nothing was said, nobody turned to watch, and so break the steady stroke of oars.

Galbraith wanted to wipe his face with his hand. ‘Ease the stroke – allow the others to see what we are about!'

He was surprised at the calmness of his own voice. At any moment a shot might shatter the stillness, another boat forge out from the invisible islet. Only the handful of marines had loaded muskets. Anything else would be madness. He himself had been in the middle of a raid when someone had tripped and fallen, exploding his musket and rousing the enemy.

It was no consolation now. He touched the hanger at his side and wondered if he would have time to load his pistol
if the worst happened. And then he saw it. Not a shape, not an outline, but like a presence which must have been visible for a long time, and yet hidden, betrayed only by the missing stars which formed its backcloth.

He gripped Rist's shoulder. ‘We'll go in!
Beach her!
' Afterwards he wondered how he had managed to grin. ‘If there
is
a poxy beach!'

Then he was scrambling through the boat, steadying himself on a shoulder here, an oarsman's arm there. Men he knew, or thought he did, who would trust him, because there was no other choice.

‘Boat your oars. Roundly, there!'

Galbraith heaved himself over and almost fell as the water surged around his thighs and boots, dragging at him, while the cutter plunged on towards the paler patch of land.

More men were over the side now, and one gasped aloud as he stumbled on hard sand or shingle. The boat grated noisily aground, men rocking and guiding the suddenly clumsy hull until it eventually came to rest.

Galbraith wiped spray from his mouth and eyes. Figures were hurrying away, like the spokes of a wheel, and he had to shake himself to recall the next details. But all he could think was that
they
had remembered what to do. Exactly as it had been outlined to them on the frigate's familiar deck. Yesterday . . . it was impossible.

Someone said hoarsely, ‘Next boat comin' in, sir!'

Galbraith pointed. ‘Tell Mr Rist! Then go and help them to beach!'

And suddenly the small hump of beach was full of figures, men seizing their weapons, others making the boats secure, and the gunner's mate, Williams, floundering almost chest-deep in water while he controlled the last boat in the procession.

Lieutenant Colpoys sounded satisfied. ‘They'll lie easy enough here, sir.' He was peering up at the ridge of high ground. ‘The buggers would be down on us by now if they'd heard anything!'

‘I'm going up to get my bearings, Tom.' Galbraith touched his arm. ‘Call me Leigh, if you like. Not
sir,
in this godforsaken place!'

He began to climb, Rist close on his heels, breathing
heavily, more used to
Unrivalled
's quarterdeck than this kind of exercise.

Galbraith paused and dropped on one knee. He could see the extent of the ridge now, jutting up from nowhere.
Like a cocked hat,
one survey had described it. Darker now, because the stars had almost gone, and sharper in depth and outline as his eyes became accustomed to their barren surroundings.

Then he stood, as if someone had called to him. And there it was, the crude anchorage, with another, larger island beginning to be visible in the far distance. He swore under his breath.
The one they should have landed on.
Despite everything, he had misjudged it.

He felt Rist beside him, watching, listening, wary.

Then he said, ‘Fires down yonder, sir!'

Galbraith stared until his eyes watered. Fires on the shore. For warmth, or for cooking? It did not matter. At a guess, they were exactly where his boats would have grated ashore. The rest did not bear thinking about.

Rist summed it up. ‘We was lucky, sir.'

Galbraith asked curtly, ‘First light?'

‘Half an hour, sir. No cloud about.' He nodded to confirm it. ‘No longer.'

Galbraith turned his back on the flickering points of fire. It might be long enough. If it failed . . .

He quickened his pace, hearing Adam Bolitho's voice.
Mostly, it will be up to you
.

And that was now.

He was not even breathless when he reached the beach. He had heard it said often enough that the British seaman could adapt to anything, given a little time, and it was true, he thought. Men stood in small groups, some quietly loading muskets, others checking the deadly array of weapons, cutlasses, dirks or boarding axes, the latter always a favourite in a hand-to-hand fight. Colpoys strode to meet him, and listened intently as Galbraith told him what he had seen, and the only possible location for an anchorage. Chebecks drew little water; they could lie close inshore without risk to their graceful hulls.

Colpoys held up his hand and said flatly, ‘Wind's backed, si . . .' And grinned awkwardly. ‘It will help our ships.' He
glanced at the one boat still afloat. ‘But it rules out sailing
that
directly amongst the Algerines. One mast and a scrap of sail – they'll see it coming, cut their cables if necessary. No chance!'

Galbraith saw Rist nod, angry with himself for not noticing the slight change of wind.

He said, ‘But they're
there,
Tom, I know it. Fires, too.' He pictured the other island, high ground like this. A lookout would be posted as a matter of course at first light, to warn of the approach of danger or a possible victim. It was so simple that he wanted to damn the eyes of everyone who had considered this plan at the beginning. Bethune perhaps, spurred on by some sharp reminder from the Admiralty? Whatever it was, it was too late now.