As Browne hurried away to prepare his signal, Bolitho said to Neale, “When Phalarope has acknowledged, we shall stand closer inshore.”
Neale hesitated. “We shall be seen at once, sir.”
Bolitho shrugged. “By then it will be too late.”
He wished suddenly that Herrick was here with him. Like a rock. Part of himself. And ready to argue in his stubborn way. Neale would follow him to and through the gates of hell without a murmur, but not Herrick. If there was a flaw in the plan he would see it.
Bolitho looked up at the masthead pendant and then at his own flag. Stiff, like banners. The wind was still rising.
Unconsciously his fingers played with the worn pommel of his sword. He was being unfair. To Neale and to Allday, to Herrick, who was not even present.
It was his flag at the mizzen masthead, and the responsibility was his alone.
Surprisingly, he felt more at ease after that, and when he took his regular walk along the side of the quarterdeck there was nothing to betray the fear that he had almost lost his confidence.
Bolitho saw Styx ’s first lieutenant cross to the compass and glance at it before studying each sail in turn.
Nothing was said, nor was there need. The professionals in the frigate’s company knew their ship like they knew each other. Any comment from Pickthorn that the wind had backed another point would have been resented by the master, and judged by Neale to be a display of nerves.
Bolitho had seen it all before, and had endured it too. He walked aft again, watching the colour spreading across the sea and its endless parade of white-horses. Salt stung his mouth and cheeks but he barely noticed it. He stared towards Phalarope as she plunged obediently to windward, squarely on Styx ’s starboard quarter. She looked splendid, with her closed gunports making a chequered line along her side. The gilded figurehead was bright in the early sunlight, and he could just make out a knot of blue figures on her quarterdeck. One of them would be Adam, he thought. Like Pickthorn, watching over his sails, ready to order men here or there to keep each piece of canvas filled and hard to the wind. Phalarope was heeling heavily towards him, pushed over by the press of sails and the occasional steep crest under her keel.
How this ship must look.
Bolitho turned and walked down to the quarterdeck rail again. The gun crews were still at their stations, the tension gone as daylight laid bare an empty sea. The second and third lieutenants were chatting together, swords sheathed, their attitudes of men at ease in a park.
Neale was moving his telescope across the larboard nettings, studying the undulating, slate-coloured slopes of the mainland.
They were standing some five miles out, but many eyes would have seen them.
Neale tossed his glass to a midshipman and commented glumly, “Not a damn thing.”
Browne joined Bolitho by the rail. “She’s really flying, sir.”
Bolitho looked at him and smiled. Browne was more stirred by the lively ship beneath him as she lifted and plunged through the white-horses than he was troubled by the inaction.
“Yes. My nephew will have his hands full but will enjoy every second, no doubt.”
“I don’t envy him that, sir!” Browne was careful never to mention Phalarope’s captain. “A raw company, lieutenants no more than boys, I’ll be content with my duties here!”
Bundy called, “Mist ahead, sir!”
Neale grunted. He had seen it already, seeping low down like pale smoke. The fact the master had mentioned it implied he was troubled. In a moment or so the lookouts would see the southern headland of the Loire Estuary. After that, the next report would be sighting the Ile d’Yeu. Right back where they had started, except that they were much closer inshore.
He looked over at Bolitho, who stood with his hands behind his back, his legs apart to take the deck’s uneven roll. He will never turn back. Not in a thousand years.
Neale felt strangely sorry for Bolitho at this moment. Disturbed that what had started as a daring piece of strategy had seemingly gone wrong.
“Deck there! Sails on the larboard bow!”
Neale climbed into the shrouds and beckoned urgently for his telescope.
Bolitho folded his arms across his chest, certain that if he did not everyone around him would see them shaking with anxiety.
The mist dipped and swirled as the wind found it and drove it inshore. And there they were, like a phalanx of Roman soldiers on the march, six lines of small vessels under sail. In the bright glare even the pendants and ensigns looked stiff, like lances.
Browne breathed out slowly. “In daylight there look even more of them.”
Bolitho nodded, his lips suddenly like dust. The fleet of small vessels was making hard going of it, tacking back and forth in an effort to retain formation and to gain some progress against the wind.
Neale exclaimed, “What will they do now? Scatter and run?”
Bolitho said, “Make more sail, Captain Neale, every stitch you can carry, and let us not give the enemy a chance to decide!”
He turned and saw Browne smiling broadly while men dashed past him to obey the shrill pipe to loose more canvas. The great studding-sails would be run out on either beam like huge ears to carry them faster and still faster towards the mass of slowmoving hulls.
Across the starboard quarter Bolitho saw Phalarope’s pyramid of pale canvas tilt more steeply as she followed suit, and he thought he could hear the scrape of a fiddle as her seamen were urged to greater efforts to keep station on the rear-admiral’s flag.
Midshipman Kilburne, who had managed to keep his glass trained on the other frigate in spite of the bustle around him, called, “From Phalarope, sir! Sail to the nor’-west!”
Neale barely turned. “That’ll be Rapid, most likely.”
Bolitho gripped the rail as the ship slid deeply beneath him. The decks were running with spray, as if it was pouring rain, and some of the bare-backed gun crews looked drenched as Styx plunged towards the widening array of vessels.
The bearing would be right for Rapid. She must have found Sparrowhawk and was coming to join the fight. He bit his lip. Slaughter, more likely.
“Load and run out, if you please. We will engage on either beam.”
Bolitho tugged out his watch and opened the guard. Exactly eight in the morning. Even as the thought touched him the bells chimed out from the forecastle. Even there, a ship’s boy had managed to remember his part of the pattern which made a ship work.
“The enemy is dividing into two flotillas, sir.” Pickthorn shook his head. “They’ll not outrun us now, and there are only rocks or the beach beyond them!” Even he sounded dismayed at the enemy’s helplessness.
Kilburne jammed the big signals telescope against his eye until the pain made it water. Bolitho was barely two feet from him and he did not want to disturb his thoughts by making a stupid mistake. He blinked hard and tried again, seeing Phalarope’s iron-hard canvas swoop across the lens, the bright hoist of flags at her yard.
He was not mistaken. Shakily he called, “From Phalarope, sir. She’s made Rapid ’s number.”
Bolitho turned. It was common practice for one ship to repeat another’s signal, but something in the midshipman’s tone warned him of sudden danger.
“From Rapid, sir. Enemy in sight to the nor’-west! ”
Browne murmured softly, “Hell’s teeth!”
“Any orders, sir?” Neale looked at Bolitho, his face and eyes calm. As if he already knew, and accepted it.
Bolitho shook his head. “We will attack. Alter course to larboard and head off any of the leaders who try to break past us.”
He turned on his heel as once again the men dashed to the braces and halliards, most of them oblivious to the menace hidden below the horizon.
Allday pushed himself away from the nettings and strode deliberately to Bolitho’s side.
Bolitho eyed him thoughtfully. “Well, perhaps you were right after all, old friend. But there’s no getting round it.”
Allday stared past him towards the converging array of sails and low hulls, hating what he saw, what it might
