Band of Brothers

in chains on the outskirts of some seaport or along a coastal road as a grisly warning to others. But the trade would never stop while men had gold to offer. Personal greed or to sustain a rebellion, the cause mattered little to those who were prepared to take the risk for profit.

He heard a cry from forward: Stiles, the prizefighter, poised high in the bows, one arm flung out.

Bolitho wiped his face. It was not a trick of light or imagination. He could see the young seaman outlined against the heaving water and occasional feather of spray, and then, reaching out on either side, an endless, pale backdrop of sea and sky.

Then he heard Stiles’ voice. Clear and sharp. ‘Breakers ahead!’

‘Helm a-lee!’ He saw the tiller going over, one of the captured smugglers running to throw his weight with Drury’s to bring it round.

Bolitho saw Keveth staring at him, as if telling him something, but all he could think was that he could see each feature, and that he still had his musket, ‘old Tom’, across one shoulder. As if all time had stopped, and only here and this moment counted for anything.

Stiles was stepping down from his perch in the bows, still watching the sea and the lazy turmoil of breakers. Not a reef, and at high water it would be little more than shallows. A sandbar. But enough.

And here too was the brig, her courses and foretopsail already set and filling to the wind, even a small, curling wave at her stem. Moving through the grey water, her hull still in darkness. Like an onlooker. Uninvolved.

‘Pass the word! Stand by to ram!’

It could have been someone else’s voice.

More of a sensation than a shock, the most noise coming from the flapping canvas as the handful of seamen ran to slacken off all lines and free the winch.

They had ground ashore, with hardly a shudder. When the tide turned again she would be high and dry.

Bolitho walked aft and watched the brig, heeling slightly as she altered course, her sails hardening, a masthead pendant whipping out like a spear.

The seaman named Perry shook his fist.

‘We did our best, damn their eyes!’

‘Not enough…’ Bolitho flinched as someone gripped his arm. ‘What?’ And saw Keveth’s expression. Not shock or surprise, but the face of a man who could no longer be caught aback by anything.

He said quietly, ‘An’ there’s a sight, sir. One you’ll long remember.’

It was Hotspur, lying over to the wind, casting her own shadow like a reflection across the whitecaps. She had skirted the headland, so closely that she appeared to be balanced across it.

Keveth swung round. ‘Wait, sir! What’re you about?’ He was staring up at him as Bolitho ran to the side and climbed into the shrouds.

‘So that he’ll know!’ He was unfolding the collar of his coat, until the white midshipman’s patches were clearly visible. ‘Give me my hat!’

He reached down and took it without losing sight of the brig. Verling would see him, and know what they had done. That this fight had not been so one-sided after all. That his trust had not been misplaced.

But who did he really mean? So that he’ll know…

‘Boat! Larboard quarter!’

Price turned away. ‘Easy, Ted! It’s our lads!’

He looked up at the midshipman in the shrouds, one hand holding his hat steady against the wind. To others, it might look like a salute. They would not see his torn and stained uniform across the water. But they would see him. And they would not forget.

Bolitho heard none of it, watching the two sets of sails. On a converging tack, the land rolling back like a screen. There was light on the water now, a faint margin between sea and sky, but hardly visible. Or real.

Hotspur made a fine sight, the bird unfolding her wings. Ready to attack.

Too far away to see any movement, but he could hold the image clearly in his mind. Swivel guns manned, puny but deadly at close quarters. Hotspur’s two bow-chasers would be empty, useless. Someone would answer for that. Later, perhaps, when they read Verling’s log. Written in Martyn’s familiar hand.

And bright patches of scarlet as if painted on a canvas: Verling had hoisted two ensigns, so that there could be no mistake or excuse. Hotspur had become a man-of-war.

He heard the boat come alongside, voices, excited greetings. Then silence as they all turned to watch the two vessels, almost overlapping, Hotspur graceful, even fragile, against her adversary.

There was anger now, alarm too, at the far-off sounds of shots, like someone tapping casually on a tabletop with his fingers.

Hotspur must have misjudged her change of tack, as if, out of control, she would drive her jib boom through the brig’s foremast shrouds. But she had luffed, and must surely be almost abeam. Then there was a brief, vivid flash, and seconds later the sharp, resonant bang of a swivel gun.

The seamen around him were suddenly quiet, each man in his mind across the grey water with his friend or companion, and at his proper station. This was like being rendered helpless, cut off from the only world they knew.

Keveth said, ‘What the hell! If only…’

The two vessels were still drifting together, sails in disarray, as if no human hands were at the helm of either.

There was a great gasp, mounting to a combined growl, like something torn from each man’s heart. Just a small sliver of scarlet, but it was moving slowly up the brig’s overlapping mainyard, and then it broke out to the wind. To match the two flags flying from Hotspur’s masts.

Bolitho could not tear his eyes away, despite the wild burst of cheering, and the hard slaps across his shoulders.

‘That showed ’em!’ and ‘That made the murderin’ buggers jump!’

One seaman, the boat’s coxswain, was trying to make himself heard.

‘I’m to take you aboard, sir! Mr. Verling’s orders!’

Bolitho seized Keveth’s arm and said, ‘You’re in charge, until they send someone to relieve you.’ He shook him gently. ‘I’ll not forget what you did. Believe me.’ He walked after the boat’s coxswain, but paused and looked back at his own small party of sailors. Price, the big Welshman; even he was at a loss for a joke now. Perry, Stiles, and Drury, who was still standing by the stiff and motionless tiller-bar, his face split by one huge grin.

Then he was in the boat, faster and lighter now without the weight of extra hands sent by Verling. Rising and plunging across each rank of incoming waves, and all the time the tall pyramids of sails seemed to draw no closer. Only once did he turn to gaze back at the beached lugger, and the small cluster of figures by the stern.

‘Stand by, bowman!’

He hardly remembered going alongside, only hands reaching out and down to assist him aboard: familiar faces, but all like strangers. He wanted to shake himself, be carried by this moment and its triumph and thrust the strain or uncertainty, or was it fear, into the retreating shadows.

He could still feel their hands pounding his shoulders, see their grins, and Keveth’s pride and satisfaction. The victors.

He stared around, and across to the other vessel’s poop. The wheel was in fragments, the bulwark pitted and broken by the single blast of canister from Hotspur’s swivel. There was blood, too, and he could hear someone groaning in agony, and another quietly sobbing.

He saw Egmont, back turned, his drawn sword across his shoulder, quite still, as if on parade.

‘This way, sir!’ A seaman touched his arm.

He saw some of them pause to glance at him, and young Sewell, his rough bandage still dangling from one leg. Staring, raising his hand to acknowledge him, his face changed in some way. Older…

Verling was by the compass box, hatless, and without a sword.

‘You did damned well,’ he said.

But Bolitho could not speak, or move. As if everything had stopped. Like the moment when the scarlet ensign had appeared above the brig’s deck.