quarterdeck, his eyes watering in the sunlight. For just a few moments the years fell away and they were back in Sparrow. Then Tyrrell swung himself out and down into the cutter, his wooden stump jutting out like a tusk.
Keen murmured, 'I wonder.'
The cutter pulled quickly away from the side, the oars rising and dipping to a fast stroke, her coxswain standing upright behind the lieutenant as he headed for the shore.
Bolitho bit his lip. 'I trusted him. Perhaps it was too strong for him in the end.'
Keen shook his head. 'I don't understand, sir.'
Bolitho watched the boat swinging round in a tight arc as Tyrrell's arm pointed to larboard in a new direction. He could see the swirl of an inshore current, the way the trees and thick scrub ran down to the water's edge. It was hard to believe that the inlet was other than the chart had described.
There was a far-off bang and then the lookout called, 'Frigate's fired a shot, sir!'
Knocker remarked dourly, 'Couldn't hit Gibraltar from there!'
Bolitho glanced at Keen. Was it a warning to Achates to quit Spanish waters or a signal to someone else?
He said, 'I suggest you beat to quarters. Clear for action without delay.' He turned to watch the cutter's progress. 'We'll not be caught a second time.'
Around him men stood stiffly like crude statues, unable to believe what they had heard.
Then, as the drums rattled and voices barked hoarsely between decks, the truth became clear to everyone.
Keen folded his arms and looked down the length of his command. Men hurried along either gangway, tamping down the tightly packed hammocks in the nettings, while ship's boys dashed among the guns and spread sand which might prevent a man from slipping if the blood started to flow. Big Harry Rooke, the boatswain, was yelling at some of his own party as they scrambled along the yards to rig chain-slings to prevent the spars from falling on the men below. Others tore down screens between decks to transform the great space from small, individual messes and cabins into one open battery from bow to stern.
Quantock looked up from the gun-deck and touched his hat.
'Cleared for action, sir!' He had learned Keen's ways by now. Just as Keen had once learned them under Bolitho's command. 'Nine minutes, sir!'
Keen nodded. 'That was well done, Mr Quantock.'
But there was nothing between them, and neither smiled because of the small compliment.
Bolitho raised a telescope and watched the distant cutter. What Lieutenant Scott and the others must be thinking he could only guess. The roll of drums as Achates beat to quarters, the bang of a cannon, and all the time they were pulling further and further from their ship, their home.
He heard Allday give a discreet cough and saw him holding out his coat for him while Ozzard fussed around behind with his sword. Adam was here too, clear-eyed and looking incredibly young and anxious.
'Orders, sir?'
Bolitho allowed Allday to clip on the old sword and was saddened by Adam's formality.
He said, 'I am sorry, Adam. I should have known. You have every right to be proud. In your place I would have felt the same.'
The youthful lieutenant took half a pace towards him. 'I would cut off a hand rather than hurt you, sir. It was just that…'
'It was just that you wanted to share it with me and I was too busy to listen.'
Keen said, 'Ready, sir.'
He glanced from one to the other and felt strangely relieved. He looked directly at Allday but the coxswain did not even blink. Keen smiled. Allday was a fox.
'Very well.' Bolitho looked at his Hag at the foremast truck. 'Run up the colours, if you please. And then, Mr Bolitho, make a signal. Enemy in sight.' He saw Adam's expression change from surprise to understanding as he added for the quarterdeck's benefit, 'We might as well give them the idea we are not totally alone, eh, lads?'
He looked at Keen. 'Let's be about it.'
Suppose there was nothing? That he had been wrong about Tyrrell, about everything else? He would be a laughingstock.
He saw the signals midshipman, Ferrier, with his assistants, and little F.vans from the Sparrowhawk busy at the halliards, and then as the bright balls of bunting dashed up the yard and broke to the breeze there was an excited cheer from the men at the upper-deck eighteen-pounders.
Most of them could not distinguish one flag from another. But to them it meant more than words. It was a symbol. A part of them.
Keen watched Bolitho's face and sighed. I should have known.
There was a sharp whiplash crack and several voices yelled, 'They've fired on the cutter, the buggers!' Cheers one instant, fury the next.
Bolitho snatched a glass and watched the cutter coming about, the oars in momentary confusion as the water around it leapt with vicious feathers of spray. He saw a corpse pushed roughly over the gunwale to give more space to the oarsmen, and heard a loud bang as the cutter's swivel raked the trees nearest to the beach.
Keen was shouting, 'We may have to leave the cutter, Mr Quantock! But signal Mr Scott to return with all haste!'
He glanced at Bolitho but saw that he was standing by the nettings, his eyes fixed on the partly hidden inlet as if he was expecting something to happen.
The cutter was moving slowly now, and Bolitho knew that more than one of the seamen had been hit, probably by musket fire. He shifted his gaze from the lively current which betrayed the inlet and saw Tyrrell standing at the boat's tiller, waving a fist to drive the oarsmen to greater efforts.
The main-topsail lifted and cracked with sudden impatience.
Bolitho said, 'Be ready to get the ship under way again, Mr Knocker. We have a few minutes yet.'
Quantock said, 'The frigate's holding on the same course, sir.'
Bolitho felt his mouth run dry as something moved beyond and through a long bank of trees. Like a serpent's tail, yellow and red in the sunlight. The masthead pendant of a large ship, the remainder of her still hidden as she edged slowly through the concealed channel towards open water.
Then her tapering jib-boom and figurehead, blazing gold, and her forecastle and a tightly reefed topsail, her jib barely flapping as she moved sedately into the glare.
Another few moments and they would have lost her. They must have been holding their breaths as Achates had sailed past, laughed at their pathetic efforts to find them. Bolitho clenched his fists behind his coat tails. They would not laugh much longer.
The cutter was less than a cable away, and Keen said, 'Grapnel ready. No time to hoist the boat now!'
He tore his eyes from the other vessel as it moved from cover until she seemed to fill the shoreline.
'Hell's teeth, she's the one right enough!'
Bolitho lifted the old sword two inches from its scabbard and then snapped it down again.
'Finally, Captain Keen, you are convinced.'
He heard shouts as the boat's crew were hauled bodily up the side while the wounded were hoisted on bowlines, their anguished cries ignored in the haste to get them to safety.
Achates heeled more firmly in the wind, her hull brushing away the cutter like a piece of flotsam. Tyrrell remained standing at the tiller, his sole companion a dead seaman who crouched over an oar as if temporarily exhausted.
Bolitho exclaimed, 'Throw him a line! I'll not leave him!'
In his heart he knew Tyrrell intended to remain in the boat, to be carried away by the current. He had purposefully guided Achates from one false scent to another, and had even suggested that the boats should examine a cove directly alongside the other ship's real hiding-place. Nobody would ever have known. But something at the very last moment had persuaded him to act as he had.
Now the truth would come out. He would be lucky to escape with his life for what he had done.
Bolitho saw a heaving-line snake over the drifting boat, watched Tyrrell's uncertainty and anguish before he caught the line and took two turns around the abandoned swivel-gun.
Keen waited only long enough for Tyrrell to be seized by the waiting hands at the entry port before he yelled his orders and sent his men rushing aloft again to set the topgallant sails in what seemed like a rising wind.
