his chart. It was pale, probably some sort of rock, and strangely at odds with the lush green background. Beyond it, glittering now above the starboard carronade, was the first hint of an opening. He bit his lip. If Herrick stayed silent he would have to drive past the inlet, and lose precious time in so doing. If there were ships still there, they might even slip past before he could come about and spread more canvas. He looked up, slitting his eyes against the glare. The sunlight angled down between the shrouds as if through windows in a cathedral, he thought vaguely.
Topsails and jib, with the forecourse so tightly reefed it was barely filling. But it was dangerous to make more speed.
He saw Allday watching him from the companionway, his heavy cutlass across one shoulder. Allday was waiting his moment. He knew his captain’s moods so well that to speak now would only bring a swift rebuke.
The realization, even amidst all his uncertainty, moved Bolitho. He said quietly, “I can almostfeel the island.”
Allday walked to his side. “The smoke is thinning a bit, Captain.”
“No. I think it’s being fanned further inland.”
“Mebbee. It’s my thought that the first lieutenant has found nothing. The pirates have gone, and knowing Mr Herrick, I’ll wager he’s looking after the dead an’ wounded left behind.”
“Deck there!” The urgency of the cry made everyone look up. “Ships at anchor around the point! Two of ’em!” A pause. “Tops’l schooners!”
Bolitho turned to Allday, his eyes gleaming. “Well?”
Allday seemed troubled. “I was wrong then.”
“Yes.” Bolitho strode to the rail. “Shake out the fores’l, Mr Borlase! There’s no sense in losing that pair.” He smiled at the lieutenant’s anxious expression. “We might even catch them as prizes if they’ve the wit to strike to us!”
He turned away, trying to contain his anxiety for Herrick and his men. They must have lost their way, or perhaps the schooner had grounded?
The big forecourse boomed and filled importantly from the foreyard. In response, the land seemed to move abeam more quickly, while spray spattered over the bow and across the crouching seamen there.
Keen was shouting, “Starboard battery will fire by division! On the order, gun captains, and not before, d’you hear?”
Bolitho looked at him at the opposite end of the ship, or almost. How far he had come to gain such confidence and authority. Without becoming a tyrant on the journey, which was even more important.
It did not occur to Bolitho that Keen’s captain might have had something to do with it.
He said, “Stand by to alter course, Mr Borlase. Pipe the hands to the braces. We will steer nor’-east.”
How many times had they altered tack and course during the long night? But it had been usual enough for these men. This was different. They had made their landfall. They would do what they were ordered.
He listened to the bark of commands, the clatter of halliards and blocks as belaying pins were removed and the hands prepared to trim the yards.
The pale wedge of land was almost past now, and he could see fires burning, and hissing clouds of steam from the opposite side of the inlet.
“By th’ mark five!”
Lakey said, “Ready, sir.”
Bolitho looked at him gravely. It was all on the sailing master’s lean face. Responsibility. Anxiety. Determination. The ship, and it was always his ship to a master, had to have room to come about should the water become too shallow or the wind die. At worse they must anchor, but still hope they could fight clear of the shoals and the angry-looking spray below the foreshore.
“Very well.” As the seamen hauled at the braces, and the big double wheel was put steadily over by Lakey’s best helmsmen, Bolitho cupped his hands and yelled, “Masthead! What of the ships?” The seaman must have been so enthralled by his place as spectator that he had not added to his first report.
“Still at anchor, sir!” The man was probably peering down at the deck, but the blinding sunlight hid him.
Bolitho consulted the compass and then the set of the sails, feeling the ship leaning less steeply as she came into the land’s shelter.
Borlase was yelling, “Belay there! Take that man’s name, Mr Jury!”
Bolitho had no idea who that man was, nor did he care. He was staring at the reflected fires on the water, leaping and glowing dull red despite the sun’s power, making the inlet ahead of the bowsprit glitter like one great flaming arrowhead.
“Take in the forecourse, Mr Borlase!”
As the sail was brailed up to its yard again, Bolitho studied the blazing village and charred boats with mounting anger. Where was the point of it? What prestige could a pirate like Tuke hope to gain by destroying and murdering these simple people?
“Deep six!” The leadsman sounded completely absorbed.
Ninety feet above the deck Marine Blissett, ex-gamekeeper and now one of Tempest’s best musket shots, stood with his companions beside the little swivel gun and watched the stick-like masts above the barrier of land.
Once round it and the starboard battery would begin to fire. Slow and deadly. The first shots were always under control. He peered over the barricade at the intent figures between the black guns, the lieutenants and warrant officers pacing and worrying, or snatching a look aft at the captain.
He saw Bolitho almost below him. He was carrying his hat, and his black hair was moving in the hot breeze.
Blissett remembered the other island. The girl he had found stripped and murdered.
Blissett was always amazed at his fellow men. They were often forced to live and work in unbearable hardship, and no matter how the captain kept an eye on such matters, there was always some bully ready to make things worse when he got the chance.
Yet these same men who could face a broadside with outward calm, or watch one of their mates flogged with barely any emotion, could rise to madness if an outsider kicked a dog, or as in that case, killed an unknown girl who was probably a slut anyway.
Blissett was not like that. He thought things out. What you needed to stay out of trouble. But also what you had to do to get noticed. He wanted to be a sergeant like Quare. He might as well, now that he was one of them.
He wondered why he had not been one of the party sent ashore with that pig Prideaux.
The captain of the maintop, legs braced, his back against the massive blocks of the topmast shrouds, asked, “Wot you dreamin’ about, Blissett?”
The captain of the top, a giant petty officer called Wayth, was very aware of his responsibility, the maze of cordage and spars, the great areas of canvas which he might be ordered to repair or reset at any moment of the day. And he disliked marines intensely without knowing why.
Blissett shrugged. “We’ll have no chance of taking these buggers. They’ll fight to the finish and take their bloody ships to the bottom with ’em. No prize money. No nothin’!”
The mast trembled, and Wayth forgot the marines as he peered up at his topmen.
Blissett said to his friend, “We’ll be up to ’em. shortly, Dick.”
“Aye.” The marine at the swivel swung it towards the land.
“We’d never even reach the ships with this poor cow!” He grinned. “Now, if we was shootin’ on the larboard beam we might ’it a couple of fat ’ogs for our supper, eh?”
Rising to his friend’s joke, Blissett turned away from the rocky shoreline and the two sets of masts and playfully pointed his musket towards the opposite side.
“One for the pot, Dick!” He froze. “Jesus! There’s a bloody cannon over there!”
Wayth snarled, “I’ve ’ad about all…”
The rest of his anger was blasted away by the crash of a heavy gun and the immediate shriek of iron as it smashed between Tempest’s masts.
Blissett fell to his knees, ears ringing, the breath pounded from his lungs by the closeness of a massive ball. Dazedly he stared at the length of severed rigging, and then, as he retched helplessly over the barricade, at the
