you’ll pardon my saying so, sir, I would that your nephew was aboard Odin instead of that ship.”
“You never alter, Inch.” Bolitho lay back on the bench and listened to the sea surging around the rudder. “But in this case I think you are wrong.”
He did not see the perplexed look on Inch’s long face. When action was joined it was somehow right that his brother’s son should be in that same old frigate. Like a joining of hands, after all the bitterness which had driven them apart.
Allday left the cabin, wondering what sort of companion Inch’s coxswain would make. He saw Stirling hovering in the lobby and asked, “All too much, is it?”
The boy turned on him as if to hit back but then smiled. “It’s a big step, Mr Allday.”
Allday grinned and squatted on the breech of a nine-pounder. “Not Mister, just Allday, it suits well enough.”
The boy relaxed and studied him curiously. “But you speak with the admiral like one of his equals.”
Allday looked down at his fists. “Friend, more like. It’s what he needs.”
He stood up suddenly and leaned over the midshipman’s slight figure.
“If you go aft to him and act normal, he’ll treat you the same.” He spoke with such force that Stirling was impressed into silence. “Cause he’s just a man, see? Not God Almighty! Right now he needs all his friends, not his bloody lieutenants, so just you remember that, sir! ” He punched the midshipman gently on his uninjured arm. “But you tell him what I said, or give him any of your lip, an’ I’ll take you apart, sir! ”
Stirling grinned. “Got you, Allday! And thanks.”
Allday watched him re-enter the cabin and sighed. Seems a nice lad, he thought. Of course, when he was made lieutenant he might well change. He looked round the shadowy between-decks at the tethered gun at every sealed port, brooding and waiting, like all the others in the squadron. Stirling was fourteen. What the hell was he doing here when they were about to sail into battle? What the hell were any of them doing here?
Allday shivered. It got worse, not better. Stirling was full of high spirits, in spite of his injury, or perhaps because of it. But he did not know what it would be like when those guns were surrounded with yelling, smoke- blackened madmen, and the order was to fire, reload and keep firing, no matter what.
He thought of the battle-crazed marine who had almost driven his bayonet through him on the Ceres’ orlop deck.
Maybe peace was really coming, and this might be the last sea-fight for any of them.
Allday thought too of the Phalarope standing to windward of them. It made him feel uneasy, just to know she was there.
A sergeant of marines clumped out of the shadows and peered at him.
“Feel like a wet, matey?”
Allday grinned. “From a bullock?”
The sergeant took his arm and led him towards the companion ladder.
“Why not?”
They climbed down through the familiar shipboard smells and the headier aroma of Jamaican rum.
Maybe Odin wasn’t such a bad ship after all.
The marine sergeants and corporals shared a small, screened off portion of the lower gun-deck. They greeted Allday with cheerful grins, and soon had him comfortably seated with a pot of rum by his elbow.
The colour-sergeant said, “Now, matey, as the rear-admiral’s personal cox’n, so to speak, you’ll know wot we’re goin’ to do, right?”
Allday leant against the side and expanded. “Well, usually me an’ the admiral…”
By the evening of that day, Odin, with Phalarope keeping well to windward, were out of sight of the remainder of the squadron.
In the great cabin, resplendent with the table fully extended and the best glasses and silver laid before the chattering officers, Captain Francis Inch was bursting with pleasure and pride. Nothing could ever be quite so perfect again.
Bolitho sat at the head of the table and allowed the conversation and wit to flow around him, while glasses were refilled and toasts drunk with barely a break in between.
Bolitho glanced at the ship’s lieutenants. Mostly they were so young, and like Allday, although he had no way of knowing it, he was thinking of this same carefree place as it would soon become when the ship was called to quarters.
He studied the officers in turn and tried to remember each by name. Sons, and lovers, but not many husbands amongst them. Yet. A normal enough wardroom in any ship of the line.
They would fight, and they must win.
One young lieutenant was saying, “Yes, I’m really going to get married when we get home again.” He held up his hand to silence the derisive laughter. “No, this time I mean it!”
Then he turned and looked at Bolitho, emboldened by claret or touched perhaps by the thought of the battle yet to come, he asked, “May I ask, sir, are you married?”
Bolitho smiled. “Like you, Mr Travers, I am getting married when we anchor again in Plymouth Sound.”
“Thank you for that, sir.” The lieutenant studied him anxiously. “I thought, just for a moment-”
“I know what you were thinking.” He was suddenly glad he had remembered the lieutenant’s name. “The idea of marriage has given you something to stay alive for, am I right?”
Travers lowered his eyes. “I am not afraid, sir.”
“I know that too.” He looked away. How can I not become involved?
Bolitho said, “But it also gives you something to fight for, remember that and you’ll not fail.”
As the most junior guest present, Midshipman George Stirling, whose home was in Winchester, sat enthralled and watched everything.
In his mind he was composing another long letter to his mother.
My dearest Mother… This evening we are standing towards the French coast. I am dining with Rear-Admiral Bolitho.
He gave a secret smile. She might not believe it. He was not sure that he did either.
He tried again.
He is such a fine man, and I nearly cried when the people lined the ship to give their huzzas when he left for Odin.
He realized that Bolitho was watching him down the length of the table.
Bolitho asked, “Are you ready, Mr Stirling?”
The midshipman swallowed hard and lifted his goblet which suddenly seemed too heavy to hold.
Bolitho glanced at the others, their faces flushed and cheerful. Wars were not made by young men, he thought, but they had to fight them. It seemed right that Stirling should give the final toast. And it would be just that for some of these same young men.
Stirling tried not to lick his lips as every eye turned in his direction. Then he recalled what Allday had told him about Bolitho. He’s just a man.
“Gentlemen, the toast is Victory! Death to the French!”
The rest was lost in a roar of approval, as if the ship herself was eager to fight.
15. An Impudent Gesture
“CAP’N’S comin’ up, sir.”
Pascoe lowered his telescope and nodded to the master’s mate.
“Thank you.”
He had been watching the Odin going through her sail and gun drills, the ports opening and closing as if controlled by a giant’s touch, sails filling and then reefing with equal precision.
He heard Emes’s step on the damp planking and turned towards him. He never knew what sort of mood might lie behind Emes’s impassive features, what he might really be thinking and planning in the privacy of his cabin.
Pascoe touched his hat. “Sou’-east by south, sir. Wind’s veered a trifle, north by east.”
