Stand Into Danger (4 page)

Bolitho tried to remember what the captain had said.
Loyalty.
Shelve all else until there was time for it, when it could do no damage. Dumaresq had almost echoed his mother's last words to him. The sea is no place for the unwary.

Feet clattered overhead, and Bolitho heard more heavy nets of stores being swayed inboard to the twitter of a call.

Away from the land again, from the hurt, the sense of loss. Yes, it would be good to go.

True to Lieutenant Rhodes' information, His Britannic Majesty's Ship
Destiny
of twenty-eight guns made ready to weigh anchor on the following Monday morning. The past few days had gone so swiftly for Bolitho he thought life might be quieter at sea than it had been in harbour. Palliser had kept him working watch-on, watch-off with hardly a break. The first lieutenant took nothing at face value and made a point of questioning Bolitho on his daily work, his opinions and suggestions for changing some of the men around on the watch and quarter bills. If he was swift with his sarcasm, Palliser was equally quick to put his subordinate's ideas to good use.

Bolitho often thought of Rhodes' words about the first lieutenant.
After a command of his own.
He would certainly do his best for the ship and her captain, and be doubly quick to stamp on any incompetence which might eventually be laid at his door.

And Bolitho had worked hard to know the men he would deal with directly. Unlike the great ships of the line, a frigate's survival depended on her agility and not the thickness of her timbers. Likewise, her company was divided into divisions where they could work with the best results for the ship's benefit.

The foremast, with all its spread of canvas, course and topsails, topgallants and royals, with the additional foresails, jib and flying jib provided the means to turn with haste, through the wind's eye if need be, or to luff and cut across an enemy's vulnerable stern. At the opposite end of the ship the helmsmen and sailing master would use each mast, each scrap of canvas, to lay the vessel on the course required with the least need for manoeuvre.

Bolitho was in charge of the mainmast. The tallest in the ship, it too was graded like the men who would soon be swarming aloft when ordered, no matter how they felt or what the weather threw against them.

The nimble topmen were the cream of the company, while on the deck itself, working at braces and halliards and manning the capstan bars, were the landmen, the newly recruited, or old sailors who could no longer be expected to fight salt-hardened canvas a hundred feet and more above the hull.

Rhodes had the fore, while a master's mate took charge of the mizzen-mast, supposedly the easiest one in any ship with its limited sail plan and where bodily strength was the first requirement. The afterguard, marines and a handful of seamen were sufficient to attend the mizzen.

Bolitho made a point of meeting the boatswain, a formidable-looking man named Timbrell. Tall, weatherbeaten and scarred like an ancient warrior, he was the king of the vessel's seamen. Once clear of the land, Timbrell would work under the first lieutenant to rectify storm damage, repair spars and rigging, maintain the paintwork, ensure all the seams were free of leaks, and generally keep an eye on the professionals who would carry out those needs. The carpenter and his crew, the cooper and the sailmaker, the ropemaker and all the rest.

A seaman to his fingertips, he was a good friend to a new officer, but could be a bad enemy if provoked.

This particular Monday morning had begun early, before daybreak. With the cook providing a hasty meal, as if he too was conscious of the need to get under way.

Lists were checked yet again, names to match voices, faces to put into jobs where they belonged. To a landsman it would have looked like chaos, with lines snaking across the decks, men working aloft astride the great yards as they loosened the sails, hardened overnight by an unexpected frost.

Bolitho had seen the captain come on deck several times. Speaking with Palliser or discussing something with Gulliver, the master. If he was anxious he did not show it, but strode around the quarterdeck with his sure-footed tread like a man thinking of something else beyond the ship.

The officers and warrant officers had changed into their faded sea-going uniforms, so that only Bolitho and most of the young midshipmen looked alien in their new coats and shining buttons.

Bolitho had received two letters from his mother, both together from the Falmouth Mail. He could picture her as he had last seen her. So frail, and so lovely. The lady who had never grown up, some local people said. The Scottish girl who had captivated Captain James Bolitho from their first meeting. She was really too frail to carry the weight of the house and the estate. With his elder brother Hugh at sea somewhere, back aboard his frigate after a short period in command of the revenue cutter
Avenger
at Falmouth, and their father not yet home, the burden would seem doubly hard. His grown-up sister Felicity had already left home to marry an army officer, while the youngest in the family, Nancy, should have been thinking of a coming marriage of her own.

Bolitho crossed to the gangway where the hands were stowing the hammocks brought up from below. Poor Nancy, she would be missing Bolitho's dead friend more than anyone, and with nothing to keep her mind free of her loss.

Someone stood beside him and he turned to see the surgeon peering at the shore. The time he had found to speak with the rotund surgeon had been well spent. Another strange member in their company. Ship's surgeons, in Bolitho's experience, had been of the poorest quality, butchers for the most part, and their bloody work with knife and saw was as feared by sailors as any enemy broadside.

But Henry Bulkley was a world apart. He had been in a comfortable living in London, at a prestigious address where his clients had been wealthy but demanding.

Bulkley had explained to Bolitho during the quiet of a dog-watch, “I got to hate the tyranny of the sick, the selfishness of people who are only content if they are ill. I came to sea to escape. Now I
repair
and do not have to waste my time on those too rich to know their own bodies. I am as much a specialist as Mr Vallance, our gunner, or the carpenter, and I share their work in my own way. Or poor Codd, the purser, who frets over each mile logged and sets it against his stores of cheese and salt beef, candles and slop clothing.”

He had smiled contentedly. “And I enjoy the pleasure of seeing other lands. I have sailed with Captain Dumaresq for three years. He, of course, is never sick. He would not
permit
it to happen!”

Bolitho said, “It is a strange feeling to leave like this. To an unknown destination, a landfall which only the captain and two or three others may know. No war, yet we sail ready to fight.”

He saw the big man called Stockdale mustering in line with the other seamen around the trunk of the mainmast.

The surgeon followed his glance and observed, “I heard something of what happened ashore. You have made a firm convert in that one. My God, he looks like an oak. I say that Little must have tripped him to win his money.” He shot a glance at Bolitho's profile. “Unless he wanted to come with you? To escape from something, like most of us, eh?”

Bolitho smiled. Bulkley did not know the half of it. Stockdale had been allotted to the mizzen-mast for sail drill, and the quarter-deck six-pounders when the ship cleared for action. It was all in writing and signed with Palliser's slashing signature.

But somehow Stockdale had managed to alter things. Here he was in Bolitho's division, and would be stationed on the starboard battery of twelve-pounders which were in Bolitho's charge.

A quarter-boat pulled strongly from the shoreline, all the others having been hoisted inboard on their tier before the first cock had even considered crowing.

The last link with the land. Dumaresq's final letters and despatches for the courier. Eventually they would end up on somebody's desk at the Admiralty. A note would be passed to the First Sea Lord, a mark might be made on one of the great charts there. A small ship leaving under sealed orders. It was nothing new, only the times had changed.

Palliser strode to the quarterdeck rail, his speaking-trumpet beneath his arm, his head darting around like a bird of prey seeking the next victim.

Bolitho looked up at the mainmast truck and was just able to discern the long red masthead pendant as it snapped out towards the quarter. A north-westerly wind. Dumaresq would need at least that to work clear of the anchorage. Never easy at the best of times, and after three months without sea-going activity, it would only require some forgetful seaman or petty officer to relay the wrong order and a proud exit might become a shambles in minutes.

Palliser called, “All officers lay aft, if you please.” He sounded irritable, and was obviously conscious of the importance of the moment.

Bolitho joined Rhodes and Colpoys on the quarterdeck, while the master and the surgeon hovered slightly in the background like intruders.

Palliser said, “We shall weigh in half an hour. Take up your stations, and watch every man. Tell the boatswain's mates to start anyone shirking his work, and take the name of each malingerer for punishment.” He glanced at Bolitho curiously. “I have put that Stockdale man with you. I am uncertain as to why, but he seemed to feel it was his place. You must have some special gift, Mr Bolitho, though for the life of me I cannot see it!”

They touched their hats and walked away to their various stations.

Palliser's voice followed them, hollow and insistent through the speaking-trumpet.

“Mr Timbrell! Ten more hands on the capstan! Where is that damn shantyman?”

The trumpet swivelled round like a coachman's blunderbuss. “Hell's teeth, Mr Rhodes, I want the anchor hove short this morning,
not next week!
”

Clink, clink, clink, the pawls on the capstan moved reluctantly as the men threw themselves on the bars. Whippings and lashings had been cast off from the various coils of halliards and other running rigging, and while the officers and midshipmen were placed at intervals along the decks, like blue and white islets amongst a moving tide of seamen, the ship seemed to come alive, as if she too was aware of the time.

Bolitho darted a glance at the land. No more sun, and a light drizzle had begun to patter across the water, touching the ship and making the waiting men shiver and stamp their bare feet.

Little was whispering fiercely to two of the new seamen, his big hands stabbing out like spades as he made some point or other. He saw Bolitho and sighed.

“Gawd, sir, they're like blocks o' wood!”

Bolitho watched his two midshipmen and wondered how he should break the barrier which had sprung up as he had appeared on deck. He had spoken only briefly to them the previous day.
Destiny
was the first ship to both of them, as she was to all but two of the ‘young gentlemen'. Peter Merrett was so small he seemed unable to find a place amidst the straining ropes and panting, thrusting seamen. He was twelve years old, the son of a prominent Exeter lawyer, who in turn was the brother of an admiral. A formidable combination. Much later on, if he lived, little Merrett might use such influence to his own advantage, and at the cost of others. But now, shivering and not a little frightened, he looked the picture of misery. The other one was Ian Jury, a fourteen-year-old youth from Weymouth. Jury's father had been a distinguished sea officer but had died in a shipwreck when Ian had still been a child. To the dead captain's relatives the Navy must have seemed the obvious place for Jury. It would also save them a great deal of trouble.

Bolitho nodded to them.

Jury was tall for his age, a pleasant-faced youth with fair hair and a barely controlled excitement.

Jury was the first to speak. “Do we know where we are bound, sir?”

Bolitho studied him gravely. Under four years between them. Jury was not really like his dead friend, but the hair was similar.

He cursed himself for his brooding and replied, “We shall know soon enough.” His voice came out more sharply than he had intended and he said, “It is a well-kept secret as far as I am concerned.”

Jury watched him, his eyes curious. Bolitho knew what he was thinking, all the things he wanted to ask, to know, to discover in his new, demanding world. As he had once been himself.

Bolitho said, “I shall want you to go aloft to the maintop, Mr Jury, and watch over the hands as they work. You, Mr Merrett, will remain with me to pass messages forrard or aft as need be.”

He smiled as their eyes explored the towering criss-cross of shrouds and rigging, the great main-yard and those above it reaching out on either beam like huge long-bows.

The two senior midshipmen, Henderson and Cowdroy, were aft by the mizzen, while the remaining pair were assisting Rhodes by the foremast.

Stockdale happened to be nearby and wheezed, “Good mornin' for it, sir.”

Bolitho smiled at his haltered features. “No regrets, Stockdale?”

The big man shook his head. “Nah. I needs a change. This will do me.”

Little grinned from across a long twelve-pounder. “Reckon you could take the main-brace all on yer own!”