Band of Brothers

Men were already at their stations, handling lines and tackles as if they had been serving Hotspur for months, not days.

Bolitho climbed steadily but slowly, making sure each ratline was underfoot before he took his weight with his arms, Verling’s heavy telescope thumping across his spine. He heard Tinker call after him, ‘Don’t drop that, me son, or the sky’ll fall on you!’

How he could find time to joke about it was a marvel. Tinker was everywhere, and at once. Ready to help or threaten without hesitation. He should have been promoted to warrant rank; there was not a strand of rope or strip of sail he could not control. But in twenty-five years at sea, he had never learned to read or write.

Bolitho reached the upper yard, and could feel his heart banging against his ribs. Too long in harbour. Getting soft…

The lookout already curled in position, his arm around a stay, turned and peered at him.

‘Mornin’, sir!’ He jerked his thumb. ‘Land, larboard bow!’

Bolitho swallowed and forced himself to look. Sea and haze, an endless expanse of choppy white crests. But no land.

The lookout was one of Gorgon’s foretopmen; more to the point, he had been chosen by Tinker for the passage crew.

He gasped, ‘Tell them, Keveth! No breath!’

He swung the telescope carefully around and beneath his arm, even as the lookout yelled to the small figures below. With a name like that, he must be a fellow Cornishman. Two wreckers up here together…

He opened the telescope with great care, waiting for each roll and shudder running through his perch, causing Hotspur to vibrate from truck to keel.

Land, sure enough. Another careful breath, gauging the moment. The sea breaking; he could feel the power and height of the waves, but when he lowered the glass to clear his vision there was nothing there. But it was there. The blunt outline of land, sloping to a point which defied the waves. Like the little sketch in Verling’s log.

Jerbourg Point. Who or what was ‘Jerbourg’, he wondered.

He made his way down to the deck and hurried aft, slipped and almost fell, lightheaded, as if drunk or in fever.

Verling listened as he blurted out everything he had seen. He was conscious of his eyes, his patience, as he described the landfall.

All he said was, ‘Well done.’

Egmont said loudly, ‘I’ll note it in the log, sir.’

Bolitho said, ‘The lookout, Keveth. He sighted it first, sir. Without a glass!’

Verling glanced at both of them, as usual missing nothing.

‘A good hand, that one. A fair shot, too, when given the chance.’ The hint of a smile. ‘And should be. He was a poacher before he signed up with a recruiting party. One jump ahead of the hangman, I shouldn’t wonder.’

‘Deck there!’ It was the masthead again. The poacher. ‘Wreckage ahead, larboard bow!’

Verling did not hesitate. As if he had been expecting it; as if he knew.

‘Stand by to lower a boat. Two leadsmen in the chains.’ His hand shot out. ‘Good ones, Tinker. This is no coastline for chances.’

Egmont asked, ‘You know Guernsey, sir?’

‘I’ve sailed close by before.’ He was looking toward the land, which was still invisible. ‘It was enough.’

He walked to the hatch. ‘Wreckage. Wind and tide make their own landfalls, for us, eh?’

Dancer commented softly, ‘My God, he keeps a cool head!’ He clasped Bolitho’s arm. ‘Like another ancient mariner not a cable’s length away!’

It seemed to take an age for the drifting fragments of wreckage to become clearly visible, more scattered, and reaching out on either bow. There was absolute silence now, the seamen very aware of their kinship with these pathetic remnants which had once been a living vessel.

Verling was on deck again, and stood with his arms folded, watching the sea, and the strengthening blur of land which had almost been forgotten.

Hotspur had shortened sail once more, so that her shipboard sounds in the silence added to the atmosphere of uneasiness, with the creak and clatter of loose rigging, and the groan of the rudder and yoke-lines as the helmsmen fought to maintain steerage way.

Verling said, ‘I think both boats will be necessary. It will save time. Not that there is much to see.’ He was thinking aloud, as if questioning each thought as it came to him.

Even Tinker’s voice seemed subdued as he watched the first boat being hoisted and swung above and over the gunwale.

Verling said, ‘You leave now, Mr. Egmont. See what you can discover. Small craft, I’d say.’

Egmont leaned over the side as some larger fragments of timber bumped against Hotspur’s side.

Bolitho felt a chill run through him. It was, or had been, a cutter as far as he could tell. Like Avenger… There was part of a mast now, and torn sail dragging half-submerged, like a shroud.

The first boat was pulling away, with Egmont in the bows, leaning over to signal his intentions to his coxswain.

Verling called, ‘Now you, Bolitho.’ He had his glass up to his eye again, but trained on the spur of land, not the splintered remains drifting below him. ‘Take Sewell with you. Stay up to wind’rd if you can.’

He felt as if he were being cut off, abandoned, once the boat was in the water and the headrope cast off.

‘Easy, lads, keep it steady!’ He had taken the tiller himself and waited for the oars to pick up the stroke, each man feeling the mood of the sea, trying not to watch the schooner as she fell further and further astern.

At least the wind had eased. Bolitho felt the salt spray on his mouth and soaking into his shoulders. Sewell was crouched down beside him, his back half turned; impossible to see or know what he was thinking. Hard to believe that the confrontation in the cabin had ever happened. Only this was real.

He winced as the boat dipped steeply and more spray burst from the oars. This was no cutter or gig built for the open sea.

‘There!’ Sewell’s arm shot out. ‘Oh, God, it’s one of them!’

Bolitho stood up, holding fast to the tiller-bar to keep his balance.

‘Bowman! Use your hook!’

The seaman had boated his oar and was poised in the blunt bows like a harpoonist as more wreckage surged above a trough.

‘Oars! Fend off, lads!’

It was as if a complete section of the wreck had risen suddenly and violently from the depths, like some act of retribution or spite.

An oar blade splintered and the seaman pitched across his thwart, the broken loom still grasped in his fists. Surprisingly, nobody shouted or showed any sign of fear. It was too swift, too stark. Not just one corpse, but five or six, tangled together in a mesh of torn canvas and broken planking.

It lasted only a few seconds, before the corpses and their tangled prison rolled over and dipped beneath the sea.

Only seconds, but as they fought to bring the boat under command again, the grim picture remained. Staring eyes, bared teeth, gaping wounds, black in the hard light. And the stench of gunpowder. Like the splinters and the burns: they had been fired upon at point-blank range.

Bolitho tugged at the tiller-bar. ‘Back water, starboard!’ He felt the sea sluicing around his legs, as if the boat had been swamped and was going down.

He heard Sewell yell, ‘More wreckage!’ He was clambering over the struggling oarsmen, thrusting his legs over the side to fend off another piece of broken timber. Then he must have lost his footing, and slithered bodily over the gunwale, his face contorted with pain.

The seaman who had been in the bows flung himself over the thwart and seized his arm, just as Bolitho