Second to None (45 page)

Adam said, ‘You may load and run out now.' The gun captains would know. Single shots this time; an overloaded eighteen-pounder would be useless. He watched the sea boiling away from the lee side, the one thing he had dreaded about holding the wind-gage. Maximum elevation for the first broadside. And after that . . .

He found that he was holding the locket through his spray-soaked shirt. At least she was free of the worry and the strain at every separation.

And I have nobody to grieve for me.

‘Sir!' It was Galbraith, reaching out as if to drag him from his sudden despair.

‘What is it?'

Galbraith could not seem to find the words immediately. ‘
Halcyon,
sir! They're cheering!' He fell silent, as if shocked at his own emotion. ‘
Cheering us!
'

Adam stared across the wind-torn water at the battered, defiant ship, and faintly, above the shipboard sounds and the squeal of gun trucks, he heard it. The hand reaching out again. The lifeline.

He shouted, ‘As you bear, Mr Massie! On the uproll!'

It was too far, but the other frigate was changing tack. Preparing to fight, and, if possible, to board on their own terms.

‘Fire!'

Adam gripped young Deighton's arm and felt him jump as if he had been shot.

‘Go forrard to the carronades. Remind them
not to fire
until ordered!' He shook him gently. ‘Can you do that?'

Surprisingly, the youth smiled, for the first time.

‘Aye, ready, sir!'

He hurried down the ladder and walked purposefully forward, not even faltering when, gun by gun, the larboard battery recoiled from their open ports. Adam heard muffled shouts and felt the impact of a heavy ball smashing into the side, and thought of O'Beirne below in his domain, his glittering instruments laid out with the same care as these gun captains took with theirs.

‘
Sponge out! Reload!
Move yerself, that man!'

‘Take in the courses, Mr Galbraith.' Adam leaned over the rail and saw the spare hands running to obey the call. With
the big courses brailed up and loosely furled it was like being stripped naked, with the ship open from forecastle to taffrail.

And there was the enemy. In mid-tack, sails all in disarray, some ports empty, others with their guns already run out for the next encounter.

‘
Ready,
sir!'

Every gun captain was staring aft with raised fist, the gun crews barely flinching as another mass of iron slammed into the lower hull. They were on a converging tack, like a great arrowhead painted on the sea. Two ships, all else unimportant, and even
Halcyon
's brave defiance forgotten. The other ship was beginning to lean to the wind on the opposite tack, but just for a minute she would be bows-on, unable to lay a single gun on
Unrivalled.
A minute, maybe less.

Adam found that his sword was in his hand, and that he was standing away from the rail, and yet he remembered neither.

‘As you bear, lads!' How could a minute last so long?

He thought he heard the far-off rumble of heavy guns. Rhodes was still bombarding the fortifications, as timeless as those ancient ramparts in Malta where the invisible orchestra had played for them and they had taken, one from the other. Without question.

The sword sliced down, like glass in the sunlight.

‘Fire!'

Gun by gun, each hurling itself inboard to be manhandled and reloaded without a second to fumble or consider.

He saw holes appear in the other ship's foresail and jib, and long fragments of gilded woodwork blasted from the ornate beakhead. But she was swinging through the wind; they would be alongside and mad for revenge. The boarding nets would merely delay the inevitable.

He heard Napier shout; it was more like a scream. ‘
Foremast,
sir!'

Adam had seen some of
Unrivalled
's shots cutting through the water beyond the target. It was too difficult for them to lay their guns with any hope of accuracy.

It was impossible, but the enemy's whole foremast was going over the side, as if severed by some great, invisible axe.

Shots hammered into the deck and he saw two marines fall
from the hammock nettings. He heard the bang of swivels from the tops and knew that Bosanquet's men were following their orders, their marksmen already firing down into the mass of figures scrambling through and over the fallen mast to reach the point of collision. But Bosanquet would never know. He lay with one immaculate leg bent under him, his face destroyed by a splintered ball which had come through one of the gunports.

Luxmore, his second-in-command, was already down there with his own party, bayonets gleaming in the smoky light, all mercy gone as the first boarders leaped wildly across the narrow gap of water only to be hacked down or impaled. Closer and closer, until
Unrivalled
's long jib boom, its canvas in rags, was pointing directly at the enemy's forecastle.

Adam sliced the air with his sword again. Had the carronade crews understood? Had Deighton managed to reach them or had he, too, been killed? But Deighton was here beside him, and he shook himself, feeling the despair falling away.

It was more a sensation than a sound; the carronades were almost touching the other ship when they belched smoke and lurched inboard on their slides.

Adam yelled, ‘To me,
Unrivalled
!' Then he ran along the gangway, hearing the shots, feeling some of them crack into wood and metal and flesh. The nets hung in shreds, and the massed boarding party was blasted into a pile of bloody gruel. Men were running to follow him, and he saw Campbell wielding a boarding axe, hacking down anyone who tried to prevent
Unrivalled
's people from boarding.

And all the while, through the bang of muskets and the clash of steel in the hand-to-hand fighting, and the screams and pleas which went unheard in any language, he could think only of one fact which stood out above all else. Pirates, corsairs, mercenaries, the names by which the enemy were known meant nothing. Somehow he knew that the man who had offered shelter to the French frigates in the event of Napoleon's escape from Elba was here
in this ship.
It was all that counted. Martinez, indirectly or otherwise, had killed Richard Bolitho, as surely as if he had aimed the weapon.

Someone lunged at him with a sword and he heard Jago
shout, ‘Down
you
go, you bastard!' The man fell over some broken timber to be crushed between the two hulls.

His arm felt like lead and throbbed with pain, and there was blood on his hand, his own or another's he neither knew nor cared.

They were halfway along the unfamiliar deck, some of the enemy still putting up a fierce resistance, but many falling as his marines directed a swivel gun from the ship's gangway.

Massie was down, his hands like claws across his stomach as he fell. Adam saw Lieutenant Wynter stoop to help him, and Massie's angry rejection, shaking his head as if to urge him back into the fight. Then the blood came and it did not stop. Massie had had his way, and had remained quite alone to the end.

He heard Galbraith shouting above the din, and saw more men climbing over the fallen rigging to join the first boarders and their own captain. There was cheering too, and he wondered how they could find the strength. He hacked a sword aside and felt the pain tear his muscles as the point grated against the man's ribs before the blade found its mark, choking the scream before it had begun. It seemed to take all his strength to tug it free. Somehow he had dragged himself up a ladder, where smaller groups of figures were locked in what he knew was the final resistance.

Jago gasped, ‘I can see smoke, sir! Fire below, by my guess!'

Adam gripped a stanchion and gulped at the air. ‘Get our wounded across to the ship! Leave
nobody
!'

Jago peered at him. How did he know it was over? Men were still fighting, or chasing some of the defenders, hacking them down.

Adam wiped his face with his sleeve and almost laughed. It was his best uniform, the one he had been wearing when he had gone to her room. Madness. A wild dream. He gripped his sword even more tightly, knowing that if he allowed himself to laugh he would be unable to stop it.

He heard someone gasp and swung round to see Napier on one knee, a wood splinter protruding from his thigh like a bloody quill.

‘Here, my lad, you're coming with me!' Then, as he bent
to give the boy his arm, he saw Martinez, crouching behind a raised hatch, a pistol in one hand. It had to be him; but how could he be so sure? It was only a glimpse, too quick for him to see the dark eyes widen with shocked disbelief as he had stared first at the slim figure in a post-captain's soiled coat, and then, instantly, at the old sword. Something like recognition, something he had never forgotten.

And it was too late. Adam could not reach him with his sword, and if Martinez fired now he would surely kill the boy he had lifted from this stained and fought-over planking.

Martinez said thickly,
‘Bo-lye-tho.'
And took careful aim.

But the shot seemed louder, or came from a different bearing. It was the marine corporal Bloxham, Bosanquet's crack shot. He stepped carefully over a corpse and kicked the unfired pistol across the deck.

He said, ‘'Ere, sir, I'll take the lad from you,' and grinned, the strain slipping from his features. ‘But I'll just reload old Bess 'ere first, to be on the safe side!'

Adam touched his arm, and walked across to look at the dead man. He heard the sudden wave of frantic cheering. The fight was over.

My men.
And they had won the day, because of a trust which few could explain. Until the next time. Now he must go and face these same men, and share it with them before the pain of loss intruded.

He gazed along the disputed deck, with its bloody scars of battle. Soon only the dead and the poor wretches who had fled below would remain.

He saw his own ship angled away from the bows, suddenly clear in the fresh sunlight, her wounds hidden by drifting smoke, and only then did he know what had held him here. He looked down into the dead face, frozen at the instant of impact. As he had sworn to do.

Perhaps he had expected elation, or a sense of revenge. There was nothing.

He heard voices calling out and knew they would come to find him, interrupting this moment which he could share with only one.

He let his sword arm fall to his side and turned once more
to look at his ship, and smiled a little, as if he had heard someone speak.

‘Thank you, Uncle.'

The Most Coveted Gift.

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Epub ISBN: 9781407010076

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Reissued in the United Kingdom by Arrow Books in 2007

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Copyright © Bolitho Maritime Productions 1999

Alexander Kent has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988 to be identified as the author of this work

This book is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author's imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental

First published in the United Kingdom in 2000 by William Heinemann

First published in paperback in 2000 by Arrow Books

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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 9780099497752