Bolitho gestured to the two officers. 'Wait outside.'
The marine captain made as if to protest and then saw Bolitho's eyes.
When the door was closed behind them Bolitho said quietly, 'I think you should come, sir.' He could feel the bitter anger welling inside him like fire. 'It is the least you can do now.'
Pelham-Martin stepped back from the table as if he had been struck. 'How dare you speak to me in that tone?'
'I dare, sir, because of what you have done!' Bolitho heard his words and could not control them. Nor did he want to any more. 'Yours is the honour of commanding these ships and these men. It is also your responsibility. Yet you threw both away, with no more thought than a blind fool!'
'I am warning you, Bolitho!' Pelham-Martin's hands were opening and closing like two crabs. 'I will have you court martialled! I will not rest until your name shares the ingnominy of your brother!' He paled as Bolitho took a step towards him and added thickly, 'It was a trap, I did not expect…'
Bolitho gripped his hands behind him, feeling the commodore's words in his mind, knowing they were the man's last desperate defence.
He said, 'There may be a court martial, sir. We both know whose it will be.' He saw it strike home and added 'slowly, 'I do not care one way or the other. But I will not stand by and see our people shamed and our cause dishonoured. Not by you, or anyone else who thinks more of his own personal advancement than his duty!'
Without another word he threw open the door and hurried along the sundrenched quarterdeck. At any moment he expected Pelham-Martin to call for the captain of marines and place him under arrest, and if it had happened he did not know how his own fury and contempt would use him.
He did not remember finding his way down to the orlop, and his mind only recorded vague scenes of men working at repairs, faces and bodies still blackened with powder smoke, eyes staring and wild from fatigue and worse.
The orlop was in darkness but for the swinging deckhead lanterns, all of which were clustered above the central spectacle of agony and horror. Around the curved sides of the hull the waiting wounded twisted and sobbed, their faces or broken limbs catching a brief pattern of lamplight before the ship swung again and plunged them into merciful darkness once more.
Captain Winstanley lay propped against one of the stout timbers, one eye covered with a thick dressing, the centre of which gleamed bright red like an additional unwinking stare. He was naked to the waist and his lower body was covered with a square of canvas. Beside it lay his curved hanger which he had been carrying during the action.
Bolitho dropped on one knee, seeing the sweat pouring from Winstanley's broad chest, the slow, heavy breathing which told its own story.
Gently he took the other captain's hand. The fingers were like ice. 'I am here, Winstanley.' He saw the remaining eye turn towards him, and then the recognition, as slow as the man's breathing.
The fingers moved slightly., 'It was you I wanted.' He closed his eye and screwed up his face in sudden agony. Then he added faintly, 'I-I was going to tell PelhamMartin… was going to tell him'…' The eye swivelled away and towards a thin man in a long bloodied apron. The Indomitable's surgeon nodded briefly and walked back towards the lanterns, where his assistants were dragging a limp body from his butcher's table.
Winstanley's mouth tried to smile. 'Mr. Tree is impatient, Bolitho. He is wasting time on me.' He lolled his head to stare around the orlop. 'Let him see to these poor fellows. I am done for.' Then his fingers tightened over Bolitho's hand like a steel trap. 'Don't let him leave my ship to carry his disgrace! In the name of Christ, don't let it happen!' The eye was fixed on Bolitho's face, willing him to answer.
Nearby a young midshipman shrunk back against the ship's side, his eyes wide with terror as the assistant surgeon said curtly, 'This one next. His arm will have to come off.' The boy rolled on to his side, weeping and struggling as the surgeon's mates loomed from the shadows.
Winstanley gasped, 'Be brave lad! Be brave!' But his words went unheard.
Bolitho turned away, sickened. He was thinking of Pascoe, of what might have happened if he had obeyed Pelham-Martin's signal to close around this ship and await complete destruction.
He said, 'I have a plan, Winstanley.' He shut his ears to the sudden shrill scream at his back. It was like a tortured woman. 'I will do what I can for your ship.' He tried to smile. 'For all of us.'
Bolitho felt someone brush his shoulder and looked up to see the surgeon and his assistants standing beside him.
Winstanley said quietly, 'It seems I cannot be moved, Bolitho.'
The surgeon muttered impatiently, 'I am sorry, Captain
Bolitho, you will have to leave now.'
Bolitho recoiled as the canvas was dragged aside. Even the attempt at bandaging could not hide the horror of Winstanley's leg and thigh.
He said tightly, 'I'll not wait, Winstanley. I will visit you later to explain my plan, eh?'
The other man nodded and let his hand drop beside him. He knew as well as Bolitho there would be no other meeting on earth. And something in the single eye seemed to pass a message of thanks as Bolitho stepped back into the shadows. Thanks for a promise of a plan that even he did not truly understand. Thanks for not staying to watch his final misery and degradation under the knife, which even now gleamed beneath the lowhung lanterns.
On the quarterdeck the sun was hotter and brighter than ever, but the sickness in Bolitho's stomach remained, leaving him cold, like Winstanley's hand.
Some of the seamen watched him pass, their expressions guarded but in some ways defenceless. They had been fond of their captain,, and he had served them well, whereas Bolitho was a stranger.
In the stern cabin he found Fitzmaurice and Mulder waiting with the commodore, their faces towards the door, as if they had all been watching it for some time.
Bolitho said quietly, 'I am ready, sir.'
Pelham-Martin looked around their faces. 'Then I think we shall discuss…'
He glanced up as Fitzmaurice said harshly, 'Lequiller's other ships are on the high seas somewhere while we stand here talking! We cannot leave Las Mercedes without destroying those we have just fought.' He watched the commodore without emotion. 'Yet if we attack again we face the same treatment now that the balance has shifted against us.'
The commodore dabbed his forehead automatically. 'We tried, gentlemen. No one can say we did not do our best.'
Bolitho tugged at his neckcloth. The words, the heat of the cabin were making his head swim.
He said, 'There is still a way in which we might surprise the enemy.' He watched narrowly as PelhamMartin's features endeavoured to cover his inner confusion. 'Time is not on our side and this plan, any plan may prove better than total failure.'
The others were watching him, but he did not drop his eyes from the commodore's face. It was like a line stretched between them, and one sign of faltering or uncertainty could finish everything.
As if from far away he heard Pelham-Martin -say, 'Very well. Then be so good as to explain it.' As he lowered himself into a chair his hands were shaking badly, but there was no hiding the hatred in his eyes.
Bolitho saw the expression and rejected it. He was thinking of Winstanley down there on the orlop. Amongst his men, and suffering the agonising torment of the surgeon's saw.
10. CODE OF CONDUCT
The Hyperion's lieutenants and senior warrant officers stood shoulder to shoulder around Bolitho's desk, their faces set in various attitudes of concentration as they watched their captain's chart and listened to the quiet insistence of his voice.
Beyond the stem windows the sea was in total darkness, and while the ship still tugged at her anchor the deck and gangways were alive with busy feet and the creak of tackles as a boat was hoisted outboard to the accompaniment of orders and muffled curses.
