He watched the stars growing smaller and fainter. It would soon be time to begin again. Issue rations, make sure his men were clean, and try to keep up their spirits. At least the Itak was not the pox which he had known to kill two-thirds of a ship’s company in a matter of weeks. On land they could build fires, boil water and pursue some sort of routine.
He said, “Walk with me to the pier. It will be light very soon.”
How quiet it was in the village. It was hard to believe the beach and shallows had been full of laughing girls and youths. Like Keen’s beautiful Malua.
“Sir!” Quare’s voice jerked him from his thoughts. “I think I saw a sail!”
Bolitho jumped on to a slab of rock, straining his eyes into the gloom. But all he saw between sky and sea were breakers, a necklace of surf cut short where it met the headland.
But it was brightening fast, and he could already see Eurotas’s portly outline, an anchor light still flickering.
Bolitho looked towards the settlement, but there was no sign of life.
Quare said stubbornly, “There, sir.”
This time he did see it, like a pale fin rising above the distant surf, shivering through the spray, but moving inshore even while he watched.
A schooner. Small and well handled.
He said, “Go and rouse Mr Keen. Tell him I want a message sent to Hardacre to say his schooner is returning.”
The vessel’s master would take more notice of him than of Raymond, that was certain. He heard Quare’s boots crunching back up the slope, and somewhere a child crying, the sound strangely sad.
Then from behind him she said, “I woke up. You’d gone.”
She came to his side and he put his arm around her shoulders, feeling her warmth.
“It’s the schooner.” He tried to sound calm. “I wonder what news she’ll bring.”
The sails were end-on now, tilting steeply to the wind. It must be much stronger outside the bay’s protection, he thought. Being ashore was like being crippled. You had to wait for others. He could even imagine how Raymond felt about it.
He squeezed her shoulders. “Please God let it be good news!”
Hazy light played across the horizon, like smoky liquid spilling over the edge of the earth. It touched the twin masts, Hardacre’s rag of a pendant, as the vessel drove close to the reef and tacked expertly in a welter of spray and spindrift.
Keen came along the path, tucking his shirt into his breeches. He saw Viola Raymond and said, “Oh, good morning, ma’am.”
“Hello, Val.” She smiled, seeing the dark shadows under his eyes, sharing his pain.
Bolitho said, “Hardacre will be here soon, I expect.”
He glanced at the palisades. He would wait until the schooner was warped alongside the pier and then walk down to her deck. Nobody from the settlement would be able to prevent him, and they were too frightened to leave the compound’s protection
The bay was opening up on either hand, and they stood in silence watching the colours emerge from the darkness, the still and threatening shadows come alive with movement and simple beauty.
Keen would be thinking of her, running down the beach into the sea with him. Laughing.
“She’s back then.” Hardacre stood on the hard sand, hands on hips, watching his schooner take on personality. “And about time, too.”
Bolitho shaded his eyes and watched for some sort of signal from the Eurotas or from the palisades. If Raymond ordered her to anchor and await his pleasure he would have to think of something else.
Hardacre remarked suddenly, “That’s very unusual.”
Bolitho looked at him. “What?”
“The master knows this bay like his own soul. He usually begins to wear ship at that point, when the wind stands as it does today.”
Bolitho turned back to the little schooner, a sudden chill of warning pricking his brain.
“Mr Keen, go to the gates and rouse the sentry! Tell the fools to challenge the schooner!”
He watched the small vessel, and then heard Keen shouting up at the blockhouse by the gates. He stiffened, she was altering course yet again, towards the Eurotas.
Hardacre said, “In God’s name, what is the madman doing?”
Bolitho snapped, “Get me a musket!” He saw Quare on the slope. “Quick! Fire yours!”
Damp, or over-eagerness, made the musket misfire, and Bolitho heard Quare growling like an angry dog as he prepared another shot.
From the palisade came a thick, unsteady voice, full of sleep and protest, and Keen returned, saying angrily, “That man should be…” He saw Bolitho’s expression and turned to watch the ships.
Even the crack of the musket did not break their fixed attention, although the chorus of awakened birds was enough to alarm the whole island.
Slowly, faintly at first, and next with terrible resolve, a column of smoke erupted from the schooner’s deck. Then a flame, licking out from a hatch like an orange tongue, consuming the jib sail in ashes.
Keen said with a gasp, “Fireship!”
“Rouse the men!”
Bolitho saw the schooner stagger as part of her maindeck collapsed in a great gust of flame and sparks. Like things released from hell the fires exploded across sails and tarred rigging, hanging the little ship into one massive torch. Bolitho could even see the blaze reflected in Eurotas’s furled canvas and shrouds as the wind carried it unwaveringly towards the anchored ship’s side.
“A boat’s cast off, sir!” Quare was reloading frantically. “The buggers will get away!”
He stopped loading as the schooner shuddered against the Eurotas’s hull and hurled a fresh column of smoke and swirling sparks high over her mastheads.
Bolitho could hear the fires taking hold, could picture the tinder-dry wood, the tarred cordage all joining together in one terrible pyre. He thought he saw some men jump into the sea, and imagined the terror below decks as the off-duty watch awoke to their own awful execution.
He felt her quivering, sobbing quietly against his shoulder.
He said, “There is nothing we can do, Viola. Some will reach the beach, but I fear that most will die.”
So Eurotas had been cut out right under Raymond’s guns. His ship, his life-line if all else failed, was blazing and crackling, the smoke rolling downwind in a great choking bank. Masts and spars were consumed and fell into the sparks, internal explosions hurled fragments high into the air to pock-mark the surrounding water with feathers of spray. One great bang rocked the gutted hulk and rolled an echo around the bay like thunder. As it finally died away, Eurotas started to settle down, the steam spouting and hissing to cover her last agony before she went to the bottom, leaving her charred poop still visible above the surface.
Keen asked quietly, “Why, sir?”
“It was our message, Mr Keen.” Bolitho turned away from the water, his eyes smarting from smoke, or was it the added bitterness of his discovery? “Tuke has chosen his reward.” He looked at Hardacre and added, “It is this place. Without Eurotas’s protection we cannot hold it now. Once installed, it would take a regiment of marines to flush him out again.”
Keen said in a small voice, “And we have no way of getting help, sir.”
As if to emphasize his words the schooner’s bows broke surface and floated away from the great frothing whirlpool of flotsam and charred remains.
Bolitho said abruptly, “Follow me.”
He found Pyper and the rest of the men grouped near the hospital hut, the wounded beside them.
Bolitho looked at them as individuals and then said, “It is my belief that Mathias Tuke has seized the means to attack this island and those others which depend on it. Otherwise he would not waste a schooner by using her as a fireship, she is too valuable for his flotilla.” He saw his words hitting home. “He will kill any natives who oppose him, and you have already seen his methods, both aboard Eurotas and ashore.”
He knew she was watching him, remembering her own torment when the transport had been captured. She even touched her shoulder at the place where her gown hid the livid brand he had set on her.
