glow.
'Don’t say anything.' He reached out and put his arm round his shoulder. 'The letter will tell you everything you must do. The rest you will decide for yourself.'
'But, Uncle.' Pascoe's voice sounded unsteady. 'You must not speak like that!'
'It must be said.' He turned and smiled at him. 'As it was once said to me. And now,' he forced the pain out of his thoughts, 'we must help Mr. Plowman below.'
But when they turned from the windows, Plowman had already gone.
15. Disaster
'sTEER nor'-nor'-east.' Farquhar remained near the wheel, looking towards Bolitho. 'We will weather the headland as close as we dare.' He glared at the master. 'Do you understand, Mr. Bevan?'-
'Aye, sir.' The master shifted under his stare. 'It's a bad entrance. Shoals below the headland. Some others offshore, but the charts can't fix them exactly.'
Farquhar walked down to the quarterdeck rail. 'No sign of life yet, sir.'
Bolitho raised a telescope and moved it slowly along the uneven summit of the headland. About a mile across the larboard bow. But it was still resting in deep shadow, with only the paling sky to give some indication of height and depth. But he could see the writhing movement at the bottom of the nearest point, to mark the sea breaking and sluicing over a steep, stony beach, and jagged reefs, too. He heard Farquhar's sudden impatience with the sailing master, and guessed it had been as much to relieve the tension as anything. But he had been wrong to vent his feelings on him. Bevan, the master, ex-mate of an Indiaman, needed all his wits about him now, and the complete confidence of his three helmsmen, without his captain throwing his temperament to all and sundry.
'I expect none.'
Bolitho stiffened as something passed above the nearest hump of land. For a moment he thought it was smoke, but it was a solitary feather of cloud, moving diagonally towards the water beyond the headland which was still in semidarkness. He saw that the forepart of the cloud was pale gold, holding the sun which was still hidden to the men in both ships.
He strode to the nettings and climbed on the top of a nine-pounder to peer across the quarter. Buzzard was right on station. Two cables astern, with her mainsail and topgallants clewed up and her big forecourse braced round to contain the light south-westerly wind. She looked very slender and frail in the dim light, and he pictured Javal with his officers watching the same jutting land, and willing time to pass. To get on with it.
But it would be some while yet, he thought. The French would bide their time and not risk their enemy's escape by opening fire too early.
He stepped down from the gun and almost fell. Despite the liberal scattering of sand along every gun deck, the planks were damp, with night dew and treacherous underfoot. A seaman caught his elbow and grinned at him.
'Easy sir! We’ll not 'ave 'em sayin' it was our gun which downed the commodore!'
Bolitho smiled. As in every part of the ship, the guns were fully manned and loaded. All it needed to complete her preparedness was to open the ports and run out. But if there was some watcher on the land, there was no point in showing that Osiris's upper line of gun ports was only black squares painted on canvas.
He said, 'Nor that I was too drunk to stand upright, eh?' They laughed, as he knew they would. The air around the guns, even in the cool wind, was heavy with rum, and he guessed that far more than a double tot had found its way to each man. Or that some had used their issue to pay old debts, or to purchase something better. Most likely, some had held back their rum to cover bets. What had they bet on? Who would live or die? How much prize money they would receive? Which officer would hold his nerve the longest? He had no doubt that the bets would be many and varied.
He walked forward again to the rail and stared along the shadowed gun deck. Figures moved restlessly around each black barrel. Like slaves as they tested each piece of tackle and equipment for their trade. The gun captains had done their part. Had made certain that the first balls to be fired were perfect in shape and weight, that each charge was just right. After the opening shots, it was usually too desperate, too deafening to pause for such niceties.
He looked up and saw the marine marksmen in the tops, while right forward on the forecastle there were more of them, standing loosely beside their long muskets, or chatting with the carronade crews.
Bolitho heard Allday say, 'I’ve brought the sword, sir.' He slipped off the boat cloak he had been wearing since three hours before dawn and allowed Allday to buckle on his sword.
Allday said softly, but with obvious disapproval, 'You look more like a buccaneer than a commodore, sir! I don’tknow what they'd say in Falmouth!'
Bolitho smiled. 'One of my ancestors was a pirate, Allday.' He tightened the belt buckle. He had lost some weight during his fever. 'When it was a respectable calling, of course. '
He turned as Farquhar hurried past. 'Have you extra hands on pumps and buckets?'
'Yes, sir.' Farquhar ran a finger around his neckcloth. 'If they use heated shot on us, I’m as ready as I can be.' He looked at the nets spread above the gun deck, at the looser ones draped along the shrouds to prevent a sudden rush of boarders. To the sentries at each hatch and companion, and the boatswain's party who waited to hack away fallen spars, or clear corpses from an upended gun.
Bolitho watched him, seeing his mind examining each part of his command for a flaw or a weak point, Under their feet, and beneath the crowded gun deck, the lower batteries of thirty-two-pounders would be ready and waiting. And below them, standing like ghouls in a circle of lanterns, the surgeon and his assistants, watching the empty table, the glittering knives and saws. Bolitho recalled Luce' s pale face, his pleading His one frantic scream. He looked across at Pascoe who stood on the lee side by the main shrouds, talking with a petty officer and a midshipman. Was he thinking about Luce, he wondered?
Aft, on the poop, the bulk of the marines waited by the nettings, in three lines, for if Osiris was to engage from her larboard side, they would have to fire rank by rank, like soldiers in a square.
Bolitho tried to pick out faces he knew, but there were hardly any. Anonymous, yet familiar. Typical, but un-
