aboard little better than bumpkins, it needs more care.”
It was like mist clearing from a telescope. Adam suddenly remembered hearing that a midshipman had been put ashore to await a court martial after a sailor had been accidentally killed at sea. The matter had never come to court martial and the midshipman had been sent to another vessel. He had been an admiral’s son. It had been about the time when Galbraith had seen his promised promotion cancelled. Nobody could prove there was a connection; few would even care. Except Galbraith. And he was here, second-in-command of one of the navy’s most powerful frigates. Would he remain content, or would he be too afraid for what was left of his career to show the spirit which had once earned him a command of his own?
“Any orders, sir?”
Adam glanced at the nearest eighteen-pounders. Another difference. Unrivalled’s armament consisted mainly of such guns, and they made up the bulk of her top-weight. The designers had insisted that these eighteen-pounders, usually nine feet in length, be cast a foot shorter in an effort to reduce some of the weight.
A frigate was only as good as her firepower and her agility, and he had taken careful note of the sea creaming almost as high as the ports on the lee side. In a fierce ship-to-ship action, a captain could no longer rely on supremacy merely by taking and holding the wind-gage.
He said, “We shall exercise the larboard battery this afternoon, Mr Galbraith. I want our people to know their guns like their own minds. As you remarked, we are short-handed, and if required to engage on both sides at once we shall be busy indeed.” He saw the slight frown. “I know we may not be called to fight. The war might be over already for all we know.” He touched his arm and felt him flinch at the contact. “But if we fight, I intend this ship to be the victor!”
Galbraith touched his hat and walked away, no doubt to face the questions and displeasures of the wardroom.
Adam walked to the dripping hammock nettings and steadied himself as the deck lurched to another strong gust. The land was almost gone from view. Cape St Vincent, the scene of one of the war’s greatest engagements, where Nelson had scorned the rigidity of Fighting Instructions and attacked the Spanish flagship Santissima Trinidad of one hundred and thirty guns, the largest warship in the world. So like his uncle, he thought. Sir Richard Bolitho had never allowed the conventional rules of battle to preclude initiative and personal daring. It seemed wrong that the admirals so admired and so loved by those they had led had never met face to face.
He ran a sodden handkerchief over skin streaming now with spray. Identical to the handkerchief he had given Catherine in the church, knowing she had used it to dry her eyes behind the veil. Galbraith had seen that too…
He shook himself angrily and walked to the rail. A few of the hands were splicing and repairing; as in any frigate, the miles of cordage needed constant attention. Some of them raised their eyes and immediately looked away. Men who could make or break any ship. He smiled grimly. Any captain. Some of them were from the assize courts, debtors and thieves, tyrants and cowards. The alternatives were transportation or the rope. He watched spray bursting through the beak-head, making the beautiful figurehead shine like a nymph rising from the sea itself.
Unrivalled would draw them together, as a team, as one company.
And when they reached Gibraltar, what orders would he find waiting? To return to England, or be redirected to some other squadron in a different ocean? If nothing had changed he would continue on to Malta, to join the new squadron under the flag of Vice-Admiral Sir Graham Bethune. He was dismayed by the return of the pain. Bethune had been sent to relieve Sir Richard Bolitho, but Fate had decided otherwise. But for that, it might have been Bethune who had died, and Richard Bolitho would have been reunited with his Catherine. Kate.
Like himself, Bethune had been one of Bolitho’s midshipmen, in his first command, the little Sparrow. As Valentine Keen had been a midshipman when Sir Richard had been captain of a frigate.
So many missing faces. We Happy Few. Now there were hardly any.
He saw two of the “young gentlemen” dodging along the slippery main deck, calling to one another above the bang of canvas and the sluice of water, apparently without a care in the world.
Here there were only five of them. He would make an effort to get to know each one. Galbraith’s sharp comment about inspiration and leadership cut both ways; it always had. In larger ships, which carried broods of midshipmen, there was always the risk of bullying and petty tyranny. He had discovered it soon enough for himself, like so many things which had taught him to defend himself and stand up for those less able to do so.
Today, his reputation with both blade and pistol would end any trouble before it could begin. But it had not been easy. How slow he had been to understand, to come to terms with it. The regular lessons with a local teacher, and later, when he had learned to handle a sword, the intricacies of defence and attack. Slow? Or had he merely decided that he did not want to know how it was all paid for? Until he heard his teacher in the next room, in bed with his mother. And the others.
It was different now. They could think what they liked, but they dared not slander her name in his presence.
But the memory remained, like an unhealed wound.
He saw the midshipman of the watch, Fielding, writing something on his slate, his lip pouting with concentration. The same midshipman who had called him one morning when he had been powerless to break that same dream.
He thought of Catherine again, that last desperate kiss before she had left the house. To protect my reputation. There was no defence against dreams. Just as, in those same dreams, she had never resisted him.
He heard a slight cough behind him. That was Usher, the captain’s clerk, who had once been the purser’s assistant, a small, nervous man who seemed totally out of place in a ship of war. O’Beirne, the ruddy-faced surgeon, had confided that the man was dying, “a day at a time,” as he had put it. His lungs were diseased, only too common in the confines of a ship. He thought of Yovell, the clerk who had become his uncle’s secretary. A scholar who was never without his Bible. He would have been there when… He turned away and closed his mind to it.
“Yes, Usher?”
“I’ve done copies of the lists, sir. Three of each.” He always found it necessary to explain every detail of his work.
“Very well. I shall sign them after I have eaten.”
“Deck there! Sail on the larboard quarter!”
Everyone looked up. The voice of the masthead lookout had been heard only rarely on this passage.
The master tugged down his hat and said, “Shall I send another man aloft, sir?”
Adam glanced at him. Cristie was a professional; he would not be here otherwise. It was not an idle comment. And here was Wynter, the third lieutenant and officer-of-the-watch, hurrying from the chartroom, but with biscuit crumbs on his coat to betray his other activities. Young, efficient and keen, when required he could put on such a blank expression that it was impossible to know what he was thinking, which was unusual for a junior lieutenant. But his father was a member of Parliament, so perhaps that might explain it.
Adam said, “Your glass, Mr Fielding. I shall go up directly.” He thought he saw Cristie’s deep-set eyes sharpen. “I shall not shorten sail. Yet.” He wedged his hat inside the companion-way and felt his hair wet against his forehead. “A trader seeking the company of a frigate?” He shook his head as if someone had answered. “I think not. I know a few King’s officers who would not be slow to press a few prime hands, no matter what the Admiralty directs us to do!”
Cristie gave a rare grin. He would know. Even sailors with the genuine Protection, the document which should have defended them against the demands of a hungry fleet, had been pressed. It would take months for someone to find out and do something about it.
Cristie said, “If she holds up to wind’rd we’ll never be able to reach her.”
Adam looked up at the towering masts. Why? Was it a demonstration of something? Bravado, perhaps?
He slung the big telescope over his shoulder and strode forward to the main chains before gazing up again at the swaying crosstrees, where the lookout would be perched like a sea bird, uncaring, or indifferent to the other world far beneath his dangling legs.
The others watched until Lieutenant Wynter exclaimed, “What ails him, Mr Cristie? How can he know anything more than the rest of us?”
“The Cap’n don’t miss much, Mr Wynter.” He gestured to the biscuit crumbs. “Your little pleasures, for instance!”
