With All Despatch

downriver to his fishermen friends.' He stared at the aide again. 'Tell him he will be well paid.' He jingled some coins in his pocket to give the words emphasis. 'I'll brook no argument!'

Allday tapped the floor with the point of his cutlass. 'I reckon he understands, Cap'n.' Again he sounded very calm, almost casual. 'Don't you, matey?'

It would be a full day before Wakeful would dare to approach the rendezvous. Even then it might be too dangerous for Queely to draw near enough. Bolitho felt sick, and rubbed his eyes to rouse himself from despair.

Why should Tanner take the admiral, if his main intention concerned the treasure?

He walked out into the stinging air and looked up at some fast-moving cloud. It hit him like a clenched fist, as if the answer had been written in those same stars.

He heard himself say tightly, 'The wind has veered yet again, Allday.' He glanced at the familiar, bulky shadow framed against the fading stars.

'It blows fair, old friend.' He added bitterly, 'For France!'

Snapdragon's jolly-boat snugged alongside her anchored consort, and with the briefest of ceremony her commander, Lieutenant Hector Vatass, climbed aboard.

For an instant he paused and peered towards the shore. The wind was fresh to strong, but here in the Sheerness anchorage its force was lessened by the land, so that the snow flumes swirled around in an aimless dance. For a moment Vatass could see the headland beyond the dockyard; in the next it was all blotted out, with only his own vessel still visible.

Telemachus's first lieutenant guided him to the companionway and said, 'Good to see you, sir.'

His formality was unexpected and unusual. But Vatass's mind and body were too strained from the rigours of his entrance to the anchorage in the early morning to make much of it. He had received a message from the coastguard that he was required back at Sheerness. The order had come from Captain Bolitho. It was not one to question, even though Vatass had been fretting already over losing a speedy schooner which had evaded him in a heavier snowsquall off the Foreland.

He found Paice sitting in the cabin, his features grave as he finished writing laboriously in his log.

Vatass lowered himself on to a bench seat and said, 'I wish the damned weather would make up its mind, Jonas. I am heartily sick of it.' He realised that Paice was still silent and asked, 'What is wrong?'

Paice did not reply directly. 'Did you not meet with the courier-brig?' He saw Vatass shake his head. 'I thought as much.'

Paice reached down and produced a bottle of brandy, half-filling two glasses. He had been preparing for this moment as soon as Snapdragon had been reported tacking around the headland.

He held up his glass and regarded the other man thoughtfully. 'It's war, Hector.'

Vatass swallowed the brandy and almost choked. 'Jesus! Contraband, I'll wager!'

Paice gave a wintry smile. Vatass was very young, lucky to command a topsail cutter, to command anything at all. That would soon change now. Commands would go to officers who were barely used to their present junior ranks. Good old Jack again. He knew that the enormity of his announcement had taken Vatass completely aback. The weak joke was all he had to give himself time to accept it.

Paice said, 'I don't care if it's stolen from Westminster Abbey.' He clinked glasses solemnly. 'War. I received a signal late last night.' He waved his large hand across a pile of loose papers on the table. 'These are from the admiral at Chatham. It has them all jumping. They should have been damned well expecting it!' He stared around the cabin. 'They'll be asking us for men soon, you know that? We shall be using green replacements while our seasoned people are scattered through the fleet!'

Vatass was only half-listening. He did not share Paice's anxiety over the prospect of his Telemachus being pared away by the needs of war. All he could think was that he was young and once again full of hope. A new command-a brig perhaps, or even a rakish sloop-of-war. That would surely mean promotion.

Paice watched his emotions. Vatass had still not learned how to conceal them.

He said, 'Captain Bolitho is across the water in Holland, or he could be anywhere by now.' He looked at his log, and the chart which was beneath it. 'Wakeful is with him.' He downed the brandy in one swallow and refilled his glass immediately. 'At least I trust to God she is.'

Vatass allowed his mind to settle. Which had touched him more? Paice's news of Bolitho, or the fact he had never seen the tall lieutenant drink in this fashion before. He had heard that, after his wife had been killed, Paice had rarely been without the bottle. But that was past. Another memory.

Vatass began, 'I do not understand, Jonas. What can we hope to do?' Paice glared at him, his eyes red with anxiety and anger. 'Don't you see it yet, man? What the hell have you been doing?'

Vatass replied stiffly, 'Chasing a suspected smuggler.'

Paice said in a more level voice, 'The King of France has been executed. Yesterday we were told that their National Convention has declared war on England and Holland.' He nodded very slowly. 'Captain Bolitho is in the midst of it. And I doubt if he knows a whisper of what has happened!'

Vatass said unhelpfully, 'He left you in command of the flotilla, Jonas.'

Paice gave what could have been a bleak smile. 'I intend to use it.' He stood upright with his head inside the skylight and unclipped one of the covers.

Vatass saw tiny flakes of snow settle on his face and hair before he lowered the cover and sat down again.

'We're putting to sea as soon as makes no difference.' He held up one hand. 'Save the protests. I know you've only just come to rest. But at any moment I may receive a direct order from the admiral, one I cannot ignore, which will prevent our going.' He lowered his voice as if to conceal an inner anguish 'I'll not leave him unsupported and without help.' He kept his eyes on the young lieutenant's face as he poured him another glass, some of the brandy slopping unheeded across the neatly written orders. 'Well, Hector, are you with me?'

'Suppose we cannot find Wakeful?'

'Damn me, we'll have tried! And I shall be able to hear that man's name without the shame of knowing I failed him, after the pride he returned to me by his own example.' He waved vaguely over the chart. 'The frontiers will be closed, and any alien ship will be treated as hostile. Wakeful is a sound vessel, and her commander a match for anything. But she's no fifth-rate.' He glanced around the cabin. His command and his home; as if he could already see Telemachus facing up to a full broadside, with only her carronades and six-pounders to protect herself.

Vatass knew all this, and guessed that, whatever happened, his chances of an immediate promotion were in serious jeopardy. But he had always looked up to Paice's old style of leadership, even more, his qualities as a true sailor. Rough and outspoken, it was easy to picture him in his original role as master of a collier-brig.

'I'm with you.' He considered his words, his young face suddenly serious. 'What about the admiral?'

Paice swept the papers from his chart and picked up some dividers.

'I have the feeling that there is someone more powerful than that fine gentleman behind our captain!' He looked across at Vatass and studied him for several seconds.

Vatass tried to laugh it off. It was war anyway. Nothing else would count now. But Paice's stare made him feel uneasy. As if he did not expect they would ever meet again.

'More vessels lying ahead, Cap'n!' Allday ducked beneath the boat's taut canvas and peered aft through the snow. It was more like sleet now, wet and clinging, so that the interior of the small boat was slippery and treacherous.

Bolitho crouched beside the Dutch skipper at the tiller and narrowed his eyes to judge the boat's progress under her two lug-sails. One side of the river was lost in sleet and mist, but here and there he could see the lower portions of hulls and taut cables, probably the same ships he had passed in the night after leaving Wakeful. Even in the poor light the small fishing boat was a pitiful sight. Scarred and patched, with unmatched equipment which had been salvaged or stolen from other boats. He guessed that it had been used more as a link between the larger vessels for carrying contraband than for genuine fishing. The four Dutchmen who made up the crew seemed anxious to please him despite the stilted translations which passed through Brennier's aide. Perhaps they imagined that, with Tanner gone, their chance of any reward was remote, and Bolitho's promise of