When the sun rose there would be so much steam it would be like a fire-ship, Bolitho thought.
But Pears knew all this, and required no telling. He had watched too many dawns on so many seas to need some lieutenant to remind him.
It was still quite dark on the upper gundeck, but Bolitho knew that every cannon was manned and cleared for action within minutes of the galley fires being doused. It was an uncanny, sinister feeling. This great ship, moving like a shadow into deeper darkness, the sails shaking occasionally to a tired wind, the wheel creaking as the helmsmen sought to hold her on course.
Somewhere, up ahead, lay Coutts' objective. The tiny, remote island where he hoped, no, intended to find so much. Isla San Bernardo, little more than a dot on Erasmus Bunce's chart. It was said to have been the last resting place of some exclusive order of friars who had landed there over a hundred years ago. Bunce had remarked scathingly that they had probably arrived there by accident, imagining it to be one of the mainlands. That seemed likely, Bolitho thought. The passage between Santo Domingo and Puerto Rico was some ninety miles wide, a veritable ocean for some tiny, inexperienced boat. The friars had long passed into history, massacred it was said by pirates, by marooned captives, by one of a dozen scourges which still ravaged the length and breadth of the rich Caribbean.
Spite was there now, in position and ready to seal the anchorage. Cunningham must be rubbing his hands, seeing the citation in the Gazette as if it were already written.
Bolitho heard Pears moving towards him. It was time. He said, 'Wind holding steady, sir, nor' by west.' He waited, sensing the man's responsibility, his doubt.
Pears muttered, 'Very well, Mr Bolitho. We shall get light to see our way before long.' He raised his eyes to the mastheads, to the great rectangles of pale canvas and the fading stars beyond.
Bolitho followed his glance, wondering how it must feel. To command, to carry the final reward, or blame. Cairns seemed exactly ready for it, whereas he felt unsure, too far removed to understand what Pears must be feeling. Cairns would be leaving soon, he thought. Would that bring him closer to Pears? He doubted it.
Cairns came now out of the darkness without causing a stir, as he always did.
He touched his hat to Pears' bulky shape and to Bolitho said, 'I've just been round the lower gundeck. Not enough hands there, but I doubt we'll be fighting a fleet today!'
Bolitho recalled Coutts' excitement over a single schooner and smiled.
'With Spite's aid, I expect we'll give a good account of ourselves!'
Pears turned with sudden anger. 'Get aloft, Mr Bolitho! Use some of your wit on the masthead look-out and report what you see.' He swung away. 'Unless your sickness at heights still prevails!’
His sarcasm was clearly heard by the helmsmen and the quarterdeck gun crews. Bolitho felt both surprised and embarrassed by the outburst, and saw a marine turning away to hide a broad grin.
Cairns said quietly, 'Which gives you some idea of his own anxiety, Dick.'
That simple comment helped to steady Bolitho as he climbed up the mainmast ratlines, purposefully disdaining the lubber's hole at the maintop to climb out and cling with fingers and toes to the futtock shrouds, his body arched above the deck far below. His resentment at Pears' words enabled him to reach the topgallant mast without even a stab of nausea, and when at last, breathless and sweating, he clambered on to the crosstrees beside the look-out, he realized he had climbed that far with more haste than his usual caution.
The seaman said, 'It be lightenin' now, zur. Be a fine old day, I'm thinkin':
Bolitho looked at him, drawing deep breaths to recover himself. He recognized the man, an elderly topman named Buller. Elderly by naval standards, but he was probably no more than thirty. Worn out by the endless demands of wind and sea, of fighting maddened canvas in the teeth of a gale, fisting and kicking until every nail was almost torn from his hands, and his muscles strained and ruptured beyond treatment, he would soon be relegated to safer work on the forecastle or with the afterguard.
But the important thing to Bolitho was that the man was untroubled. Not merely by height and discomfort, but by the unexpected appearance of his second lieutenant.
Bolitho thought of the marine's grin. That too was suddenly important. There had been no malice, no pleasure at seeing him trodden on by the captain.
He replied, 'It will be hot anyway.' He pointed past the foremast, strangely bare without its topgallant set at the yard. 'D'you know these waters, Buller?'
The man considered it. 'Can't say I do, zur. But then, can't say I don't. One place is like another to a sailorman.' He chuckled. 'Less'e's let ashore, o' course.'
Bolitho thought of the brothel in New York, the woman screaming obscenities in his face, the dead girl's breast still warm under his palm.
One place like another. That was true enough, he thought. Even the merchant seamen were the same. Every ship was the last. One more voyage, just enough pay and bounty saved, and it would be used to buy a little alehouse, a chandlery, a smallholding from some country squire. But it never seemed to happen, unless the man was thrown on the beach in peacetime, or rejected as a useless cripple. The sea always won in the end.
The outboard end of the fore-topsail yard paled slightly, and when he twisted round Bolitho saw the first hint of dawn. He peered down and swallowed hard. The deck, darkly ribbed around by the upper batteries of guns, seemed a mile beneath his dangling legs. He would just have to put up with it. If the hatred of heights had plagued him since his first ship when he had been twelve years old, it was' not likely to relent now.
Bolitho felt the mast and its' spars trembling and swaying beneath him. He had gone to sea as a midshipman in 1768. The year Trojan had been launched. He had thought of it before, but this morning, up here and strangely isolated, it seemed like an omen, a warning. He shivered. He was getting as bad as Quinn.
On the quarterdeck, unaware or indifferent to his second lieutenant's fancies, Pears paced back and forth across the damp planking.
Cairns watched him, and aft on the raised poop D'Esterre stood with his arms crossed, thinking of Fort Exeter, of Bolitho, and of his dead marines.
A door opened and slammed, and voices floated around the quarterdeck to announce the admiral's arrival. He was followed by his aide, Ackerman, and even in the poor light looked alert and wide awake.
He paused near the wheel and spoke to Bunce, then with a nod to Cairns said, 'Morning, Captain. Is everything ready?'
Cairns winced. Where Pears was concerned, things were always ready.
But Pears sounded unruffled. 'Aye, sir. Cleared for action, but guns not loaded,' the slightest hint of dryness, 'or run out.'
Coutts glanced at him. 'I can see that.' He turned away. 'Spite must be in position now. I suggest you set more sail, Captain. The time for guessing is done.'
Cairns relayed the order and seconds later, with the topmen rushing out along the upper yards and the wet canvas falling and then billowing sluggishly to the wind, Trojan tilted more steeply to the extra pressure.
'I've been looking at the chart again.' Coutts was half watching the activity above the deck. `There seems to be no other anchorage. Deep water to the south'rd and a shoal or two against the shore. Cunningham put his landing party to the south'rd. A clever move. He thinks things out, that one.'
Pears dragged his eyes from the lithe topmen as they slithered down to the deck again.
He said, 'It was the only place, I'd have thought, sir.' 'Really?'
Coutts moved away with his flag lieutenant, the cut well and truly driven home.
A few gulls dipped out of the darkness and circled the ship like pieces of spindrift. They seemed to tell of the land's nearness, and their almost disinterested attitude implied they had other sources of food close by.
From his dizzy perch Bolitho watched the birds as they floated past him. They reminded him of all those other times, different landfalls, but mostly of Falmouth. The little fishing villages which nestled in rocky clefts along the Cornish coast, the boats coming home, the gulls screaming and mewing above them.
He came out of his thoughts as Buller said, 'Ell, zur, Spite's well off station!' He showed some excitement for the first time. 'There'll be the devil to pay now!'
Bolitho found time to marvel that the seaman should care and be so accurate in his opinions. Coutts would be furious, and it might take Trojan a whole day to beat back to her original station and allow Cunningham a second chance.
'I'd better get down and tell the captain.' He was thinking aloud.
Why had he mentioned it? Even thought of it? Had it been to stop another wave of frustration throughout the
