Bolitho jerked upright in the chair, making Allday exclaim, 'Easy, sir! I all but parted your windpipe just then!'
Then he said, 'I heard it, too. Gunfire!'
Bolitho started to rise and then lay back again. 'Finish the shave, please.' He controlled his sudden excitement. 'It won't do for me to go rushing on deck.'
It was hard, all the same. He had always been used to going at once to the quarterdeck to assess the circumstances for himself. He recalled one of his first captains, when as a midshipman he had been ordered to pass an urgent message aft to that same lordly presence.
The captain had been drinking in his stern cabin. Bolitho could picture him without effort. As he had stammered out the message, the captain had turned merely to nod and say, 'My compliments to the first lieutenant, Mr Bolitho. Tell him I will come up shortly. That is, if you have still the breath for it!'
Perhaps he, too, had been dying to see for himself, as Bolitho was now.
There was a tap at the screen door and Herrick entered the cabin.
'Good morning, Thomas.' He smiled. It was wrong to play games with Herrick and he added, 'I heard firing.'
Herrick nodded. 'From the bearing I would say it is Lookout, sir, to the nor'-east.'
Bolitho wiped his skin with a towel and stood up, feeling the deck quiver as the rudder fell heavily in a trough. Lookout was the little sloop-of-war, and her captain was Commander Veitch, Herrick's previous first lieutenant. A stern-looking man from Tynemouth, utterly dependable, who had earned his promotion the hard way. If he was tackling something on his own, then it was small and agile… Veitch obviously considered there was no time to inform his flagship or call for assistance. He was not that sort of man anyway.
Herrick suggested, 'Probably a blockade runner, sir.'
Ozzard hurried in with Bolitho's coat and held it out like a Spaniard tormenting a bull.
Bolitho said, 'Are either of the frigates in sight yet?'
More explosions echoed against the Benbow's side. Short and
sharp. Lookout's bow-chasers from their sound.
Herrick replied, 'Not when I was on deck, sir. Relentless
should be away to the sou'-west and Styx down to lee'rd as
instructed.'
'Good.' He slipped into his coat. It felt damp. 'Let us see for ourselves.'
The sky was much brighter when they walked from beneath the poop, and Wolfe hurried to meet them. 'Masthead reports Lookout in sight, sir. She's in company with another smaller craft. Either a brig or a ship with one mast shot out of her!' He bared his teeth.
Bolitho could read his mind. An early capture. Prize-money. A command for somebody. Even a temporary one as prizemaster was all it needed in wartime. And some luck. Bolitho had had both, and had so won his own first command.
People bustled about the quarterdeck, securing the pumps and scrubbers, faces still obscured in shadow. But all well aware that their admiral was up and about. What did it mean to them? A sea fight? Death or mutilation? It would certainly be a break in the monotony of daily routine.
Bolitho saw some of the officers on the lee side of the deck. Byrd and Manley, the fourth and fifth lieutenants, and, younger still, Courtenay, the sixth, whom Allday had ousted from his barge.
He must find time to meet and get to know them. He was lucky to know the minds of the officers who captained the squadron, but if the Benbow was driven into a hard battle, a young lieutenant could find himself in command after one devastating broadside.
Wolfe had a telescope to his eye and said, 'Here comes Relentless! I can just see her sky-scrapers. She-scents the smell of battle, sir.'
Bolitho could imagine the activity aboard the thirty-six-gun frigate. He had met her young captain, Rowley Peel, only twice. He was the odd one out in the squadron, but was quick to move when need be. Dashing down from his station to protect his heavier consorts, to harry the enemy, to attempt whatever was so ordered by the flagship.
Old Grubb rumbled, 'Better day today. Fine an' clear.' He lapsed into silence again, his hands thrust deeply into his shabby watch-coat.
Wolfe saw Pascoe on the larboard gangway and called harshly, 'Would you go aloft, Mr Pascoe. Take a glass and see what you can determine.'
Pascoe threw his hat to a seaman and ran to the weather shrouds. He was amongst the black tangle of rigging and beyond the mainyard before Bolitho could watch his progress. Bolitho thought of his own hatred for heights, what it had cost him at Pascoe's age. He felt his mouth lift in a smile. It would sound ridiculous to tell somebody that one of the fruits of his promotion had been that he no longer had to climb up those headspinning shrouds.
Pascoe called down, his voice clear above the drumming beat of canvas and rigging.
'Lookout has grappled, sir! The other one is a brig. She wears
no flag but they are hoisting our colours now!'
Several of the idlers on the gangways and gundeck cheered,
and Herrick exclaimed
'So soon. Well done. Well done.'
Bolitho nodded. `You trained your old first lieutenant well, Thomas.'
Lieutenant Browne appeared through the after companion, buttoning his coat and saying, 'I heard something. What is happening?'
Wolfe said to the sailing master, 'A lot of use he'll be!' Herrick answered, 'We have taken a prize, Mr Browne. I fear you have missed it.'
Several of the nearby seamen were grinning and nudging each other. Bolitho sensed the change. There was a better feeling already.
'Deck there! Land on the lee bow!'
Herrick and the master bustled to the chart room beneath the poop to consult their findings.
That would be The Skaw. As far as the strange brig was concerned, it had been a near thing. An hour earlier and she would havee slipped away unseen.
Bolitho said, `I will take breakfast now. Let me know when Lookout is near enough to exchange signals.'
Herrick stood by the chart room entrance, shading his eyes as if he expected to see the other vessels.
'Mr Grubb thinks we should be off The Skaw before noon if the wind stays with us.'
'I agree. Once there you may signal the squadron to anchor in succession.' Bolitho nodded to the other officers and made his way aft.
Herrick gave a great sigh. He tended to worry when Bolitho was nearby, but he worried all the more when he was gone.
Pascoe slithered down to the deck and retrieved his hat. He was about to approach the quarterdeck when a small figure stepped from between two eighteen-pounders and said, `Excuse me, sir!' It was Midshipman Penels.
`Yes?' Pascoe paused and studied the boy. Was I ever 'like that?
'I – I don't know how to explain, sir.'
He sounded and looked so despairing that Pascoe said, 'Speak out.'
It was virtually impossible to find any privacy in a ship-ofwar. Apart from the captain, and possibly a man deep in the ship's cells, there was always a crowd.
Pascoe knew very little about the newest midshipman. He was from Cornwall, and that was all he had to go on.
He said, 'You are from Bodmin, I believe?'
'Yes, sir.' Penels looked around like a trapped animal. 'There's someone in your division, sir. Someone I grew up with back in England.'
Pascoe stood aside as a file of marines stamped past on their way to one of their complicated drills.
Penels explained, 'His name is John Babbage, sir. He was taken by the press-gang at Plymouth. I didn't know until we were at sea. He worked for my mother after my father died, sir. He was good to me. My best friend.'
Pascoe looked away. It was not his place to interfere. In any case, Penels should have gone to the first
