squeaking down the tilting deck until they showed their muzzles to the sea and sky. On the deck below the main armament of twenty-four-pounders would be just a few feet above the water as it curled along the rounded hull. Achates was carrying such a pyramid of sails it was a wonder the sea was not already lapping through the lower ports.
'Bow-chasers'.'
Keen had his hands clasped behind his back, and Bolitho could see the force of his grip betrayed by the pale knuckles. What did he see? An unexpected prize, or his own ruin?
Bolitho could hear Allday's heavy breathing behind his shoulder and sensed Adam on his other side. Extensions of himself. Each needing the other in a different way.
The other ship fired again, and Bolitho tried not to flinch as a ball ripped through the main-course and the wind tore it into a great flapping slash.
Achates' gunner had been caught napping. The bow-chasers would probably not even bear on the enemy, Bolitho thought.
Every gun-captain along the upper deck had his hand in the air.
Keen said tersely, 'Be ready to come about, Mr Knocker! We'll cross his stern and rake him. That'll give him something to ponder on.'
He sounded angry. Hurt that this should happen.
'Lee braces there! Stand by on the quarterdeck!' Quantock's magnified voice seemed to be everywhere.
At that moment the other ship fired again. Bolitho thought he saw the blur of falling shot before one heavy ball crashed through the forward gangway and the other hissed above the forecastle at extreme elevation.
A last desperate attempt to break off the chase, and it worked.
There was a single, terrible crack, and seconds later the whole of the fore-topgallant mast, the spars and wildly thrashing canvas plunged down to the deck. With torn canvas and rigging trailing after it like serpents, the broken mast thundered across the lee gangway and into the water with a tremendous splash.
Bolitho heard one of the midshipmen stifle a cry of terror as some seamen were plucked bodily over the side with the broken rigging, their voices lost in the din.
Like a great sea-anchor the trailing spars and cordage were already having effect as they pulled the ship's head round, further and further, until all the sails, so carefully set for the chase, were in wild confusion.
Rooke, the boatswain, was already among the chaos with his men, axes flashing as they hacked the debris clear.
The gun crews were working feverishly with tackles and handspikes, but as the ship was dragged still further down wind their muzzles pointed blindly at the sea, their target already standing well away.
Bolitho tried to relax his limbs but his whole body felt like a taut lashing which was about to snap.
In the blink of an eye, Achates had been rendered helpless.
Had this been a fight in earnest, their attacker would already be tacking about to rake them from stem to stern.
High above the deck the topmen yelled to one another as they tried to shorten sail before the ship was completely dismasted.
Keen exclaimed despairingly, 'I'll never forget this. Never!' He looked at Bolitho as if for an answer. 'They fired on us without cause.'
Bolitho saw order being restored, the motion becoming easier as Achates responded to the helm, her shorn topgallant mast poking above the confusion like a broken tusk.
He said, 'They had a cause right enough, and I intend to discover what it was. When that happens we shall be ready.'
Keen saw some of his lieutenants hurrying aft for orders. The older hands would be comparing him with the previous captain. Whatever they thought, it was not a good beginning.
Bolitho said, 'Stand down the people and get the ship under way.'
It was all he could do to keep his voice level. They had been hit, and men had been lost, unless the quarter- boat had found any survivors among the flotsam astern.
But for some instinct, a sense of warning, he might never have ordered Keen to close with the stranger.
It was pointless to pursue the chase, the other ship was already drawing away under every sail she could carry.
He felt sorry for Keen. After all his work to obey his admiral's wishes, his success at surprising the other captain, when the trap had been sprung the enemy had been ready, Keen had not.
Tuson, the ship's surgeon, his white hair ruffling in the wind, was gesturing towards the piles of tangled rigging. Some other men must have been caught there too.
Keen listened to his lieutenants, his face pale and grim.
It was a lesson he would not forget, Bolitho thought.
He saw Adam watching him anxiously. Thinking perhaps of his father. When he had flown false colours and fired on Bolitho's ship.
Bolitho walked to the poop and ducked his head as he strode into the shadows between decks.
I too had forgotten the lesson. It could have been the last dawn after all.
4. A Place to Meet
'Nor'-west by north, sir. Steady as she goes!' Even the helmsman sounded hushed as under topsails and jib Achates glided very slowly towards her anchorage.
It was noon, with the sun high overhead and burning the bare-shouldered seamen who waited at the braces or were spread out on the topsail yards for the last cable or so of their journey.
Bolitho stood apart from Keen and his officers as he watched the shoreline spread and strengthen through a shimmering haze.
They had passed abeam of Cape Cod at dawn, but with the wind dropping to a mere breath of a breeze it had taken them this long to close with the land.
Bolitho raised a glass to his eye and studied the foreshore, the mass of masts and furled sails, the living evidence of a port's prosperity. Ships and flags of every nation, with lighters alongside and harbour craft plying back and forth to the jetties like water-beetles.
There were several men-of-war, he noticed. Two American frigates, and three Frenchmen, one a big third-rate with a rear-admiral's flag flapping listlessly at the mizzen.
Bolitho shifted his glass to the spit of land which was reaching out slowly towards the larboard bow. There was a tell-tale line of grey fortifications with a flag high overhead.
He examined his feelings, aware of the sudden dryness in his throat. It was about nineteen years since he had sailed along and landed on these shores. Another war, and different ships. He wondered how it might have changed, how he would react.
He heard Keen say sharply, 'Begin the salute, Mr Braxton!'
The crash of the first gun echoed and re-echoed across Massachusetts Bay like a thunder-clap while the smoke billowed over the quiet water as if unable to rise. Gulls and other sea-birds rose screaming from their perches and from the sea itself, as gun by gun the ship and the shore battery exchanged salutes.
Bolitho thought of the days which had followed their mauling by the unknown ship. The anger and humiliation had given way to a feverish determination to 'put the score right', as Allday had described it. There had been more damage to rigging than to the hull, and everyone from Keen to the ship's boys had seemed unflagging in their efforts to complete the repairs before the ship anchored at Boston.
A new topgallant mast had been set up, fresh rigging and sails hauled aloft even in the teeth of a strong north-easterly wind. Paint, tar and sweat had achieved wonders.
The mood had been infectious, and Bolitho had even ordered the four wooden Quakers to be removed from his quarters and replaced by the eighteen-pounders. It might mean less room, but it marked a new determination that he would never lower his guard again.
He saw an American guard-boat riding above her own reflection, the oars motionless as she waited to guide
