When Sparke spoke again he was very composed, even calm. 'I will overlook your anxiety on Mr Frowd's behalf, for I have observed your tendency to become involved in petty matters.' He nodded to Frowd. 'Carry on. Hold this tack as long as the wind favours it. In half an hour send a good leadsman to the chains.' He smiled wryly. 'Will that satisfy you?'
Frowd knuckled his forehead. 'Aye, aye, sir.'
When the half-hour glass was turned beside the compass the other vessel's topgallant sails were in sight from the deck.
D'Esterre, very pale from the hold's discomfort, came up to Bolitho and said hoarsely, 'God, I am so sick, I would wish to die.' He peered at the sloop's straining sails and added, 'Will she catch us?'
'I think not. She's bound to go about soon.' He pointed to the creaming wash alongside. 'There's barely eight fathom under our keel, and it'll soon be half as much.'
The marine stared at the water with amazement. 'You have done nothing to reassure me, Dick!'
Bolitho could imagine the activity aboard the pursuing sloop. She would be almost as big as the Destiny, he thought wistfully. Fast, agile, free of the fleet's ponderous authority. Every glass would now be trained on the scurrying Faithful and her strange red device. The bow-chasers were probably run out with the hope of a crippling shot. Her captain would be waiting to see what the schooner might do and act accordingly. After months of dreary patrol work, with precious little help from the coastal villages, he would see the schooner as some small reward. When the truth was discovered, and Sparke had to explain what he had been doing, there would be a double-hell to pay.
He could understand Sparke's eagerness to get to grips with the enemy and do what Pears expected of him. But Frowd's advice had been sound, and he should have taken it. Now, they would have the sloop to contend with while they hunted for the Colonists and the craft they would be using to ferry powder and shot to a safe hiding place.
There was a muffled bang, the sound blown away by the wind almost as quickly.
A ball slashed along the nearest wave crest, and Stockdale said admiringly, 'Not bad shooting.'
A second ball ripped right above the schooner's poop, and then Sparke, who had been standing rigidly like a statue, shouted harshly, 'There! What did I tell you? She's wearing! Going About, just as I said she would! '
Bolitho watched the angle of the sloop's yards changing, the momentary confusion of her sails before she leaned over on the opposite tack.
Midshipman Weston exclaimed, `That was most clever of you, sir. I would never have believed…'
Bolitho felt his lips crease into a smile, in spite of his anxiety. Sparke, no matter what mood he was in, had little time for crawlers.
'Hold your tongue! When I want praise from you I will ask for it! Now be about your duties, or I'll have Balleine lay his rattan across your fat rump!'
Weston scurried away, his face screwed up with humiliation as he pushed through some grinning seamen.
Sparke said, 'We will shorten sail, Mr Bolitho. Tell Balleine to close up his anchor party in case we have to let go in haste. See that our people are all armed, and that the gunner's mate knows what to do when required.' His eyes fell on Stockdale. 'Get below and put on one of the coats in the cabin. Captain Tracy was about your build, I believe. You'll not be near enough for them to spy the difference.'
Bolitho gave his orders, and felt some relief at Sparke's sudden return to his old self. Right or wrong, successful or not, it was better to be with the devil one knew.
He came out of his thoughts as Sparke snapped, 'Really, must I do everything?'
As the evening gloom followed them towards the land, Faith, ul's approach became more stealthy and cautious. The hands waited to take in the sails, or to put the schooner into the wind should they run across some uncharted sandbar or reef, and every few minutes the leadsman's mournful chant from the forecastle reminded anyone who might still be in doubt of their precarious position.
Later, a little before midnight, Faithful's anchor splashed down, and she came to rest once again.
5. The quality of Courage
`It's getting lighter, sir.' Bolitho stood beside the motionless wheel and watched the water around the anchored schooner until his eyes throbbed with strain.
Sparke grunted but said nothing, his jaw working up and down on a nugget of cheese.
Bolitho could feel the tension, made more extreme by the noises of sea and creaking timbers. They were anchored in a strange, powerful current, so that the Faithful repeatedly rode forward until her anchor was almost apeak. If the tide fell sharply, and you could not always trust the navigational instructions, she might become impaled on one of the flukes.
Another difference was the lack of order and discipline about the decks. Uniforms and the familiar blue jackets of the boatswain's and master's mates had been put below, and the men lounged around the bulwarks in varying attitudes of relaxed indifference to their officers.
Only the marines, crammed like fish in a barrel, were still sealed in the hold, awaiting the signal which might never come.
Sparke remarked quietly, 'Even this schooner would make a fine command, a good start for any ambitious officer.'
Bolitho watched him cut another piece of cheese, his hands quite steady as he added, 'She'll go to the prize court, but after that…'
Bolitho looked away, but it was another jumping fish which had caught his eye. He must not think about afterwards. For Sparke it would mean almost certain promotion, maybe a command of his own, this schooner even. It was obviously uppermost in his mind just now.
And why not? Bolitho pushed his envy aside as best he could.
He himself, if he avoided death or serious injury, would soon be back in Trojan's crowded belly. He thought of Quinn as he had last seen him and shivered. Perhaps it was because of the wound he had taken on his skull. He reached up and touched it cautiously, as if expecting the agony to come again. But injury was more on his mind than it had been before he had been slashed down. Seeing Quinn's gaping wound had made it nearer, as if the odds were going against him with each new risk and action.
When you were very young, like Couzens or Midshipman Forbes, the sights were just as terrible. But pain and death only seemed to happen to others, never to you. Now, Bolitho knew differently.
Stockdale trod heavily across the deck, his head lowered as if in deep thought, his hands locked behind him. In a long blue coat, he looked every inch a captain, especially one of a privateer.
Metal rasped in the gloom, and Sparke snapped, 'Take that man's name! I want absolute silence on deck!'
Bolitho peered up at the mainmast, searching for the masthead pendant. The wind had shifted further in the night and had backed almost due south. If that sloop had sailed past their position in the hope of beating back again at first light, she would find it doubly hard, and it would take far longer to achieve.
Another figure was beside the wheel, a seaman named Moffitt. Originally from Devon, he had come to America with his father as a young boy to settle in New Hampshire. But when the revolution had been recognized as something more than some ill-organized uprisings, Moffitt's father had found himself on the wrong side. Labelled a Loyalist, he had fled with his family to Halifax, and his hard-worked farm had been taken by his new enemy. Moffitt had been away from home at the time. and had been seized, then forced into a ship of the Revolutionary Navy, one of the first American privateers which had sailed from Newburyport.
Their activities had not lasted for long, and the privateer had been chased and taken by a British frigate. For her company it had meant prison, but for Moffitt it had been a chance to change sides once more, to gain his revenge in his own way against those who had ruined his father.
Now he was beside the wheel, waiting to play his part.
Bolitho heard the approaching hiss of rain as it advanced from the darkness and then fell across the deck and furled sails in a relentless downpour. He tried to keep his hands from getting numb, his body from shivering. It was more than just the discomfort, the anxious misery of waiting. It would make the daylight slow to drive away the night, to give them the vision to know what was happening. Without help they had no chance of finding those they
