Second to None (13 page)

Adam persisted, ‘No, sir, we use her. To spring the trap. They know we are trailing our cloaks, and they will be
expecting the brigantine. I am sure she is a regular visitor there.'

He was aware of the tawny eyes on him, Avery watching but not seeing him. As if he were somewhere else . . . He was suddenly deeply moved.
With my uncle
.

‘
Rosario
appears to be an agile vessel, sir. It would seem only fair if we were to “chase” her into Algiers?'

Bouverie swallowed. ‘A cutting-out expedition? I'm not at all certain –' Then he nodded again, vigorously. ‘It might work, it's daring enough. Foolhardy, some will say.'

Adam returned to the stem windows. One of the
Rosario
's crew had told him that they had often carried female slaves, some very young girls. The master had delighted in abusing them.

He thought of Zenoria, her back laid open by a whip. Keen had rescued her, and she had married him. Not out of love. Out of gratitude.

The mark of Satan, she had called it.

He heard himself say, ‘Time is short, sir. We cannot delay.'

‘The authority for such an act, which might provoke another outbreak of war . . .'

‘Is yours, sir.'

Why should it matter? Bouverie would not be the first or the last officer to await a decision from a higher authority. But it did matter. It had to.

He said, ‘I can take
Rosario.
I am short-handed, but we could share the burden between us. Then so would the laurels be equally divided.'

He saw the shot go home. Like one of old Stranace's.

‘We'll do it. I'll send you some good hands within the hour.' Bouverie was thinking fast, like a flood-gate bursting open. ‘Will you take the
Rosario
's master with you, in case . . .?'

Adam picked up his hat and saw blood on his sleeve. Jago's cutlass.

‘I shall take him. Later, I shall see him hang.' He looked at Avery. ‘By the authority vested in
me
!'

Adam Bolitho lowered his telescope and moved into the shadow of the brigantine's foresail. There would be hundreds
of eyes watching from the shore. One mistake would be enough to betray them.

Bang
.

He saw a waterspout burst from the sea. Close. But was it near enough to deceive their audience?

He had seen
Matchless
leaning over as she had changed tack for her final approach, and he had seen the citadel, all and more than Avery had described. It looked as if it had been there for centuries, since time began. Avery had told him about a secret, cave-like entrance to which they had been taken in a large galley. You could lose an army trying to storm such a place. Or a fleet.

He glanced at the
Rosario
's master. Once aboard and in command of his own vessel again, he seemed to have grown in stature, as if all the pathetic pleading and whimpering for his life had been forgotten. Slumped by the bulwark, Jago sat with both legs outthrust, his eyes never leaving the man's face.

Nothing was certain. The master had intended to hoist some sort of recognition signal as they had tacked closer to the protective headland. Adam had said, ‘No. They will know
Rosario.
They will not expect a signal when she is being chased by an enemy!'

Somebody had even laughed.

He turned to look at the swivel guns, all loaded and primed. And the hatch covers. He could imagine the extra seamen and marines crammed in the holds, listening to the occasional bang of
Matchless
's bow-chaser, sweating it out. Captain Bosanquet was down there with them, apparently more concerned with the state of his uniform in the filthy hold than the prospect of being dead within the next hour.

He stepped into the shadow again and held his breath, and carefully raised his glass and trained it on the citadel, and the main wall which Avery had remembered so clearly. A movement. He watched, hardly daring to blink. Guns, an entire line of them, thrusting their muzzles through the embrasures, the menace undiminished by distance. He could almost hear their iron trucks squeaking over the worn stone.

He felt the hull shiver. Whatever else he was,
Rosario
's master knew these waters well. They were in the shallows now, heading for the anchorage. Avery was right. He felt
almost light-headed.
Right.
The great guns would not depress enough to endanger the brigantine. Like the batteries he had seen at Halifax, carefully sited on the mainland and on a small island in the harbour, so that no enemy ship could slip past them undetected.

But here there was no island.

He saw the first gun fire and recoil, smoke writhing above the old walls like a ragged spectre. Then, one by one, the others followed. The sound seemed to be all around them, like an unending echo. Probably bronzed guns. They were just as deadly to a wooden hull.

He thought of
Unrivalled
outside, somewhere around the headland and still out of sight. Galbraith and Cristie, and all the others who despite his own attempts to remain detached were no longer strangers to him.

Could he never accept it? Like the moment when Galbraith had picked men for the
Rosario
's raiding party. It had been difficult for him; almost everybody, even the green hands, had volunteered. Madness, then. What would Galbraith be thinking now? Feeling pride at having been left in command? Or seeing a chance of permanent promotion if things went badly wrong?

A seaman called, ‘One o' them galleys headin' this way, sir! Starboard bow!'

Matchless
was firing again, a broadside this time; it was impossible to tell where the shots were falling. There were more local vessels in evidence. Lateen sails and elderly schooners, with dhows etched against the water like bats.

He felt his mouth go dry as splashes burst around
Matchless
's bows. Close. Too damned close. He bit his lip and scrambled to the opposite side.

When he lifted his head again, it was all he could do to stop himself from shouting aloud.

Directly across the larboard bow, and framed against the citadel's high walls, was the frigate. He tried to take it in, to hold it in his mind, like all those other times. The range and the bearing, the point of embrace. To see the frigate lying at her anchor, brailed-up sails filling and emptying in the offshore wind the only suggestion of movement, was unnerving. Unreal.

He cleared his throat. ‘Ready about! Warn all hands, Mr Wynter!'

He groped for the short, curved fighting sword and loosened it. He could hear Jago's voice in his thoughts. ‘Take the old one, sir.
The
sword!'

And his own reply. Like somebody else. ‘When I've earned it!'

The
Rosario
's ragged seamen were hauling on halliards and braces, their bare feet gripping the deck like claws, without feeling.

It only needed one of them to shout, to signal. He found his fingers clenched on the hilt of the hanger. They must not be taken. There would be no quarter. No pity.

He moved around the mast and watched the helmsman putting down the wheel, one of
Unrivalled
's topmen at his side, a dirk in his fist.

‘
Matchless
‘as gone about, sir!' The man breathed out noisily. ‘They're best off out o' this little lot!'

Adam stared at the frigate. Old but well maintained, her name,
La Fortune,
in faded gilt lettering across her counter. Thirty guns at a guess. A giant to the local craft on which she preyed in the name of France. There were faces along her gangway and poop, but no muzzles were run out. Adam felt his body trembling. Why should they be? Those great guns had seen off the impudent intruder. He could hear some of them cheering, laughing. Not too many of them, however; the rest were probably ashore, evidence of their security here.

Rosario
's master jumped away from the helmsman and cupped his hands, staring wild-eyed as the frigate's masts towered over them. The dirk drove into his side and he fell without even a murmur.

Even at the end he must have realised that nothing Adam could do would match the horror his new masters would have unleashed on those who betrayed them.

It was already too late. With the helm hard over and the distance falling away,
Rosario
's bowsprit mounted the frigate's quarter like a tusk and splintered into fragments, cordage and flapping canvas shielding Wynter's boarding party as they swarmed up and over the side.

Adam drew his hanger and waved it.

‘At 'em, lads!'
Hatches were bursting open and men ran, half blinded by the sunlight, carried forward by their companions, reason already forgotten.

Adam grasped a dangling line and dragged himself over the frigate's rail, slipping and almost falling between the two hulls.

An unknown voice rasped, ‘Don't leave us
now,
sir!' And laughed, a terrible sound. Matched only by the scarlet-coated marines, somehow holding formation, bayonets like ice in the sun's glare, Captain Bosanquet shouting, ‘Together, Marines!
Together!
'

Adam noticed that his face was the colour of his fine tunic.

A horn or trumpet had added its mournful call to the din of shouting, the clash of steel, the screams of men being hacked down.

The boarding party needed no urging. Beyond the smoke and the scattering sailing craft was open water.
The sea.
All they had. All that mattered.

Adam stopped in his tracks as a young lieutenant blocked his way. He was probably the only officer left aboard.

‘Surrender!'
It had never left him. Not at moments like this. ‘Surrender, damn your eyes!'

The lieutenant lowered his sword but drew a pistol from inside his coat. He was actually grinning, grinning while he took aim, already beyond reach.

Jago lunged forward but halted beside Adam as the French officer coughed and staggered against the gangway. There was a boarding axe embedded in his back.

Adam stared up at the masthead pendant. The wind was still with them.

‘Hands aloft! Loose tops' Is!'

How could they hope to do it? To cut out a ship from a protected harbour?

‘Cut the cable!' He wiped his mouth and tasted blood on his hand, but could recall no contest. Men were surrendering, others were being thrown over the side, dead or alive it did not matter.

La Fortune
was free of the ground, her hull already moving as the first topsails and a jib steadied her against the thrust of wind, the demands of her rudder.

Guns were firing, but
La Fortune
moved on, untouched by the battery which could not be brought to bear.

He saw the
Rosario
drifting away, an oared galley already attempting to grapple her.

Wynter was shouting, ‘She's answering, sir!' Not so blank and self-contained now, but wild-eyed, dangerous. His father the member of Parliament would scarcely have recognised him.

Jago said, ‘Lost three men, sir. Another'll go afore long.'

He winced as iron hammered against the hull, grape or canister from
Rosario
's swivels, and licked his parched lips. A Froggie ship. There would be wine on board. He turned to mention it to the captain.

Adam was watching a Royal Marine hoist a White Ensign to the frigate's gaff. Without surprise that they had done it. That they had survived.

But he said, ‘For you, Uncle! For you!'

ADAM BOLITHO CLOSED
his small log book and leaned his elbows on the cabin table. For a moment he watched the dying light, the shadows moving evenly across the checkered deck as
Unrivalled
tilted to a steady wind across the quarter. A fine sunset, the thick glass and the cabin skylight the colour of bronze.

He massaged his eyes and tried to thrust aside the lingering disappointment, and accept what he had perceived as unfairness. Not to himself, but to the ship.

They had done what many would have considered foolhardy, and, having cut out a valuable prize from under the noses of the Dey's defenders, they had joined the other ships outside the port in an atmosphere of triumph and excitement.

Now
Unrivalled
sailed alone. At any other time Adam would have welcomed this, the independence beloved of frigate captains.

But he had sensed the resentment when Captain Bouverie had decided to return to Malta with the captured
La Fortune
, and, as senior officer, to reap the praise and the lion's share of any reward which might be forthcoming. From what Adam had managed to glean from the French frigate's log, it seemed that her captain had been employed along the North African coast, snatching up or destroying local shipping with little or no opposition. The circumstances of war must have changed his role to that of a mercenary, under French colours now that Napoleon was back in Europe, but living off whichever ally found his services most useful when there was no other choice.

Adam had known nothing but war all his life, and even while he had been at sea he had been well aware of the constant threat of invasion. He thought of
La Fortune
's captain and others like him.
How would I feel, if England was overrun by a ruthless enemy? Would I continue to fight? And for what?

He felt the rudder shudder beneath the counter. The glass was steady, but Cristie insisted that the wind which had given them
Rosario
and their one chance to cut out the frigate was the forerunner of stronger gusts. It was not unknown in the Mediterranean, even in June.

Two of the cutting-out party who had died of their wounds had been from
Unrivalled,
and they had been buried immediately. But it was another source of grievance, and then open protest, now that the prize had disappeared with
Matchless
. There had been an outbreak of violence in one of the messes, and a petty officer had been threatened when he had intervened. So there would be two men for punishment tomorrow.