The Price of Glory (38 page)

A grumbling in his stomach reminded him that it was some hours since he had last eaten. He crossed over to Tully, who had the watch. “I am going below, Mr. Tully,” he addressed him formally, and then in a lower voice: “If you have the leisure when the watch is ended, come and join me for supper. I will get some chilled wine sent up from the hold.”

It was now quite gloomy in his cabin and the Angel Gabriel followed him in with a taper to light the lanterns.

“What have we got to eat?” Nathan asked him, slumping in a chair and throwing his hat on the table. “Catch any fish?” For there had been a time in the afternoon when they had been becalmed and Gabriel had seized the opportunity to cast a line. He fancied himself a fisherman, having excelled as a poacher in his youth, before he turned to highway robbery and then to cutting throats in the King's name.

“I could grill you up a half-dozen sardines,” he offered, “with some fresh lemon and herbs.” He was a handy cook, too, when he could be bothered but you could not debate the menu with him or he became recalcitrant. “And there is some potted blubber that is very nice with toast or crusted bread.”

“The sardines would be excellent,” Nathan assured him, “though you may keep your potted blubber.” This was a speciality of the Angel's. A dish of jellyfish that he left to stink to take the toughness out and then boiled up with vinegar and sesame seeds, sealing the resulting mess in a jar with butter. Then, after a short pause: “Are they large sardines, because I have invited Mr. Tully ?”

“They'll go round,” replied Gabriel shortly. “There's bread and cheese if you're still hungry.”

“And perhaps a bottle or two of the
branco
you picked up in Gibraltar?”

Mr. Kerr, the late captain of the
Unicorn
had possessed a fine collection of wines which Nathan had inherited—though this might have been disputed by his family had they known of it—but its bounty had been exhausted during the voyage homeward and Nathan had been forced to purchase some of his own. He was particularly partial to the
branco
which had been delivered packed in straw and ice from the mountains above Gibraltar and was now stored deep in the hold to keep it cool.

When Gabriel had gone Nathan heaved himself up from the chair—the humidity was exhausting—and helped himself to the Madeira on the cabinet by way of an appetiser. He carried it over to the table and studied the chart that was spread there. He was still lost in contemplation when eight bells announced the end of the watch and shortly after he heard Tully's knock upon the door. Nathan invited him to pour himself a glass and join him at the chart.

“I want you to imagine a situation,” he proposed when Tully had joined him at the table. “You are standing out from the port of Genoa bound for Leghorn when you are beset by a storm, a most severe storm from the north-east.” He remembered what Nelson had said of it. “The worst storm you have ever known in these waters. What do you do?”

“Well, being unable to return to port, I would have no choice but to run before the wind.”

“Under bare poles.”

“If it were so severe, yes.”

“But would you not then run upon the shore—somewhere between Capo Mele and where we are now?”

Tully considered the chart. “I might,” he agreed. “Unless I took some action to prevent it.”

“Such as?”

“I might contrive to get some canvas aloft. A reefed topsail and perhaps a storm jib to bring my head around if the wind were not too violent.”

“They tried that on the
Agamemnon,
” Nathan informed him, “and lost their topmast. Came damn near to losing the ship.”

Tully nodded thoughtfully. “I take it we are not talking of the
Agamemnon
in this instance,” he surmised.

“No.” Nathan was sworn to secrecy about the gold of the Casa di San Giorgio, but figured he had some latitude in matters that were peripheral to it. “We are talking of a brig, of about two hundred tons. An English brig called the
Childe of Hale,
taken prize by the French but still with some English in her crew.”

Tully looked down again upon the chart. “Well, a brig of that size and a storm of that severity, she might have foundered in deep water, long before she reached the coast.”

“I know. But if she did not. What would you do, if you were her master? Say you had tried to bend a sail to the mast and it had been lost, and the mast, too.”

“Well …” Tully put down his glass and lowered his nose to the chart. He followed the line of the coast like a dog questing for a scent. “Well, I might try to beach her.” He stabbed with his finger. “Here at Ventimiglia.”

“Just what I was thinking,” said Nathan. They caught each other's eye and laughed.

“What are you looking for?” asked Tully, regarding him curiously.

“A needle in a haystack,” said Nathan. There was probably a more appropriate metaphor, something with the sea in it, but he was damned if he could think of one. A shell on a beach did not quite do the trick. “Ah, here are our loaves and fishes,” he said, as the Angel Gabriel appeared before them, closely followed by two of the ship's boys bearing their supper.

They had eaten most of the sardines and demolished one of the bottles of wine when they heard the cry of “Sail Ho!” from the deck. A moment later, young Lamb came below with the first lieutenant's compliments and the information that the schooner
Pearl
was bearing down upon them, bound for Gibraltar with mail from the fleet, and if he had any letters for home he might like to prepare them for despatch.

Nathan had letters in progress for both his parents and a note for Alex with some drawings he had made. He scribbled a final word, sealed them in their separate envelopes and hurried up on deck. The
Pearl
was alongside and Signor Grimaldi, having been forewarned, standing by with his servant and his bags.

“Well, sir, I will miss your company,” said Nathan insincerely, shaking him by the hand, “but I do not suppose you will be sorry to see England again. I can only regret that your mission was not more successful.”

Grimaldi made some grudging reply and Nathan watched him go with relief, for he had not been the easiest of passengers. In exchange, there was a despatch from the commodore and a letter from his mother which the
Pearl
had brought on her voyage out from Gibraltar.

Nathan returned to his cabin and opened the despatch first. It was brief and to the point. Buonaparte had defeated the Austrians at Montenotte, in the mountains north of Genoa, and was pushing northward, with the Allied armies in full flight before him. Nathan was commanded to rendezvous with the rest of the squadron off Voltri in three days' time.

He sat down to read the bulkier message from his mother. No news of any import. The usual tirade against the Ministry and the steps that were being taken to suppress dissent—another one of her friends had been arrested. It was worse than the Inquisition, she said. But then there was something on Mary Wollstonecraft and Imlay which caught his attention.

“Mary appears well on the road to recovery and sends her regards. She has been seeing some of her old friends, I am glad to say—those that are not imprisoned as a danger to the state—and seems to have put Imlay behind her. As to him, the rogue has not been seen in London for some time and it is believed he has gone to Paris, where he no doubt keeps another woman or two
.
”

Nathan was still pondering this news when Mr. Fleetwood appeared with the first lieutenant's respects and he would be obliged if the captain would come up onto the deck as there was a suspicion of a sail moving close to the shore.

“Where away, Mr. Duncan?” Nathan enquired, frowning into the darkness at the foot of the Rock.

“Two points off the larboard bow, sir. It was Mr. Lamb who saw it—or thought he did.”

“By God, Mr. Lamb, you would see a black cat in a coal cellar,” murmured Nathan, for the clouds had gathered since he had gone below and he was damned if he could see a thing.

“The moon came out for a moment, sir, and I am sure I saw something moving against the cliff. “

“Big, small … ?”

“About the size of a small brig, moving towards the north-east.”

Which was more or less the same course as the
Unicorn.
She had been ploughing her lonely furrow all evening, down to Cap Ferrat and then back up again to Cap Martin; her sentry's beat. And not so much as the hint of a sail. Nor was there now, so far as Nathan was concerned. His eyes had adjusted to the darkness but he still could not see anything moving between the frigate and the shore. One day, he thought, they would be able to fire some kind of a light into the air, like a firework, that floated in the firmament like a star. He had a mind to design one but had not yet resolved the key problem of gravity. The clouds parted briefly and the moon shone through.

“There!” cried Mr. Lamb, throwing out an arm and his voice slipping back into its juvenile state. Nathan followed the line of the pointing finger and saw her—just for an instant, exactly where the midshipman had said she was: a brig under full sail at a distance of about a mile and a half and just about to round the point.

“Mr. Perry!”

“Here, sir,” replied the sailing master in his soft voice. He was standing almost at Nathan's shoulder.

“I am sorry, I did not see you there in the dark.” Nathan always felt a little awkward with Mr. Perry, like a bumptious young officer instructing an old hand, though there was not more than ten years between them. “How much closer can we go into the shore?” he asked him, though he knew the answer already.

“With the wind as it is, sir, I think we are as close as we may bear.”

“What if we were to take her in tow?” They had the boats out already at the stern.

But Mr. Perry was making a mouth and shaking his head. “I would not care to go much closer than we are now, sir, in these waters.”

“But the charts show deep water at the foot of the Rock.”

“I would not rely too much upon the charts, sir,” the master replied diffidently, “not off these shores.” This was true. The charts in their possession were mostly of French or Genoese origin and Nathan had been shocked at how bad they were, though this might be deliberate, of course, in the hope of confusing the enemy. Nelson had ordered his captains to take soundings in all the bays, wherever it was possible. “We know the bottom shelves steeply beyond the point,” Mr. Perry reminded him, “and there are a great many rocks just under the surface of the water.”

“Could we not board her from the boats, sir?” suggested the first lieutenant. “For she cannot be moving more than a couple of knots.”

Nathan thought about it. But that one glance had revealed a number of gunports along her side. No more than a half-dozen, he thought, and there was no means of knowing if there were guns behind them or not. But it was a risk. The sky was lighter out to sea and they would almost certainly see the approaching boats, if only by the white splashes made by the oars. He hated to think what half a dozen guns, even small ones, loaded with grape, could do to his boat crews across a mile or so of open water.

“I think if we cannot take them by surprise …” he began, but his brain was leaping ahead of him. About two miles along the coast was Cap Martin and beyond that a shallow bay. If he could get there first and send the boats in before the brig rounded the point they could make their attack from inshore, where it would be least expected.

He explained the plan to his officers. “But we must clap on sail to get ahead of her, Mr. Perry,” he said. “As much as she will bear.”

“Stuns'ls, sir?”

“Stuns'ls, kites and all.”

The sailing master cast his eyes aloft. “I do not know about that, sir,” he confessed worriedly, “for I think there is a storm coming on.”

It was no more than Nathan had been thinking for the past hour or so but he sighed with impatience. “Well, if it does, we will just have to get them in again, Mr. Perry, as fast as you like, but I think it might hold off long enough to achieve our purpose.”

And so studding sails and kites it was and they fair flew along, by comparison with their former progress, at a speed of three knots and two fathoms, as Mr. Lamb reported scornfully upon casting the log.

“Not fast enough for you, Mr. Lamb?” Nathan quizzed him dryly. “Well, if Mr. Perry is not much mistaken we will be running a great deal faster before the night is out.” And pray God we do not run upon the rocks, he added silently, avoiding Mr. Perry's eye.

“I am going to give Mr. Tully command of the boats,” he informed the first lieutenant quietly. He expected a protest and he got one. As first lieutenant it was Mr. Duncan's privilege, no his duty … “But you do not speak French,” Nathan pointed out, “and Mr. Tully does. If he is challenged and he is able to engage in converse with them it will gain a few vital seconds.”

“Then let him serve under me,” the first lieutenant replied reasonably.

“That would be to risk losing my two best officers,” Nathan argued. “I would be left with Mr. Holroyd as my only lieutenant. I cannot countenance it.”

The truth was, he had more confidence in Tully. He knew this could be construed as unfair, as showing favour to a friend, but there it was. He knew in his heart that Duncan was not the man to lead a raiding party off a hostile coast in the dark, whereas to Tully, the ex-smuggler, it was all in a night's work.

“Very well, Mr. Perry, you can take in the stuns'ls,” Nathan instructed the master when they had weathered the point, and the words were scarce out of his mouth when the master was off and roaring down the deck.

“Stand by the booms! Stand by to take in t'gallant stuns'ls.”

Nathan was confident they must have gained a least a mile on the brig, which had been hugging the shore all around the bay, but the wind had pushed them further out to sea and he fretted away at the weather rail while the seconds ticked by.