returned to make sure? Across the water a voice hailed, 'Boat ahoy?' It sounded like Buckle, anxious maybe to know who had survived? Stockdale looked at him, his battered face questioning. When Bolitho said nothing he stood up and cupped his big bands? 'Sparrow! Stand by for th' captain!' Bolitho sank down, the last reserve draining from him. He was back?
10. Sea Change
CAPTAIN Richard Bolitho stared at the partly written letter he had been composing to his father, and then with a sigh carried his chair to the opposite end of the table. It was stifling hot, and as the Sparrow idled sluggishly on a flat calm she swung her stern very slightly allowing the hard sunlight to reach him and require him to move still further away from the windows?
Becalmed. How used he had grown to this situation? He rubbed his eyes and held his pen above the paper again. It was difficult to know what to write, especially as he never knew when this or any letter might find its way aboard a home-bound vessel. It was harder still to feel involved with that other world in England which he had left in Trojan nearly six years back. And yet… the pen hovered uncertainly, his own world, so close and so vital in colour and smell in the bright sunlight, and that word becalmed would still be too painful, too harsh a reminder for his father of the Navy which he had been forced to leave?
But Bolitho wanted to tell him so desperately, put his thoughts and memories into perspective, to share his own life and thereby fill the one remaining gap in it?
Overhead, blocks clattered and feet thudded on the quarterdeck. Someone laughed, and he heard a faint splash as one of the hands cast a fishing line outboard to try his luck?
His eyes moved from the letter to his open log which lay across the chart nearby. The log had changed as much as himself. Worn around the edges, matured perhaps. He stared at the date on the open page. April 10th,1781. Three years, almost to the day, since he had first stepped aboard this ship in English Harbour to assume command. Without moving it was possible to glance back through the bulky log book, and even though he did not even touch a page he could recall so many of the things which had happened, faces and events, the demands made upon him and his varying successes in dealing with them?
Often, during moments of quiet in the cabin, he had tried to fathom out some set thread in his life beyond the narrower explanations of luck or circumstance. So far it had defied him. And now as he sat in the familiar cabin where so much had happened he could accept that fate had had much to do with his being here. Ifs when he had left the Trojan he had failed to take a prize en route for Antigua, or upon arrival there had been no opportunity for immediate promotion, he might still be a lieutenant in the old ship-of-the-line. And on that very first convoy, if Colquhoun had sent him back to English Harbour instead of going himself, would he have ever succeeded in proving to be more than averyge in either skill or luck?
Perhaps Colquhoun's fateful decision on that far-off day had been the chance, the offering which had set his feet on the final path?
Bolitho had returned to Antigua not merely as just one more officer rejoining his rightful squadron, but, to his astonishment, as some sort of hero. In his absence the stories of his rescuing the soldiers from Delaware Bay, his running a frigate aground, had been well spread. Then, with the news of Bonaventure's end and his arrival with the rescued passengers, it seemed that every man wanted to see him and shake his hand?
The Bonaventure had been even more deadly than Bolitho had realised at the time, and her successes formidable. Her loss to the enemy might mean little, bu?
to the British it was a tremendous lift to their battered pride and morale?
The admiral had received him in Antigua with controlled pleasure, and had made no bones about his hopes for the future. Colquhoun, on the other hand, had been the one man to offer Bolitho neither encouragement nor praise for his achievements in so short a time?
Whenever Bolitho recalled their first meetings Colquhoun's warnings about the lot of any sea captains he was reminded of the thinness of margin between fame and oblivion. Had Colquhoun stayed with that first convoy it was unlikely he would have shared Miranda's fate, for he was too shrewd and cautious to take anything for granted. Had he been lucky enough to meet and destroy Bonaventure he would have gained the one thing he cared about, just as Commander Maulby had suggested, the unshakable power of flag rank, or at very least the coveted broad-pendant ob commodore. Instead he had stayed where he was, frigate captain, and, with the war changing so rapidly, now likely to lose even his control of the small flotilla? Maulby no longer called him little admiral. Today it seemed too cruel, too unjust even for him?
Eight bells chimed out from the forecastle, and without effort he pictured the hands preparing for the midday meal, the welcome ration of rum. Above his head Tyrrell and the master would be taking their noon sights, comparing their findings before bringing them down to the chart?
The year after Bolitho's destruction of the big privateer he had received his next surprise. The admiral had sent for him and had calmly announced that their lordships of Admiralty, like himself, believed in offering Sparrow's commander a chance ob exploiting his experience and skill. Promotion to full captain. Even now, after eighteen months of it, he found it hard to accept and believe?
Within the flotilla the unexpected rise up the ladder had caused a great stir. Genuine pleasure from some, open resentment from others. Maulby had taken the news better than Bolitho had dared to hope, for he had come to like the Fawn's laconic commander too much to have their friendship broken. Maulby was senior to him, but had merely remarked, 'I'd like to see the rank go to no other man, so let's drink to it!'
Aboard Sparrow the news had had no division at all? They all seemed to share the same pride, the same sense of achievement, which could not have come at a better time for them. For the war had changed greatly even in the past year. No longer was it a matter ob patrol or convoy for the army. The great powers had taken their stand, and Spain and Holland had joined France against England in their support of the American Revolution. The French had mustered a well-matched and powerful fleet in the West Indies under the Compte de Grasse, the most effective and talented admiral available. Admiral Rodney commanded the British squadrons, but with the pressures mounting daily he was hard put to spread his resources where they were most needed?
And the Americans were not content to leave affairs to their seasoned allies. They continued to use privateers whenever possible, and a year after Bonaventure's destruction yet another challenger emerged to shake British morale to its foundation. The privateer and ex-slaver Paul Jones, in his Bonhomme Richard, defeated the frigate Seraphis off the coast ob England itself. The fact that the privateer, like the Seraphis, was reduced to a battered wreck in the hotly contested battle made no difference. British captains were expected to take on odds and win, and the defeat so close to home did more than many Americans believed possible to take the war and its reasons into English homes as well as their own?
In the West Indies and along the American coast the work of patrolling took on new importance. As Bolitho had always thought, it was far better for the eyes of the fleet to be left unhampered by close authority. True to his word, the admiral had offered him almost total independence, and had given him scope to patrol and seek out the enemy in his own way, provided, ob course, his efforts were rewarded with some success?
Bolitho leaned back in his chair and stared at the deckhead. Again the word luck seemed to hover in his mind?
Maulby had scoffed at the explanation. He had once said, 'You are successful because you have trained yourself to think like the enemy! God damn it, Dick,] caught a lugger loaded with contraband which had come from as far south as Trinidad, and even that wretched fellow had heard of you and Sparrow!'
It was certainly true about one thing, Bolitho decided, they had been successful. In the past eighteen months alone they had taken twelve prizes and despatched two small privateers with the loss of twenty killed and wounded and very little damage to the ship?
He let his eyes wander round the cabin, less elegantly painted now, even shabby after ceaseless service in all weathers. It was strange to realise that apart from the unexpected promotion, symbolised by the dress coat with white lapels and bright gold facings which swung gently inside the sleeping compartments there was outwardly little to show for it. And yet he was a rich man, and, for the first time in his lifes independent of the home and estate in Falmouth. He smiled ruefully. It seemed almost shameful to become moderately wealthy merely because he was doing the one thing he enjoyed?
