Honour This Day

few feet beneath her keel. If it was broad daylight they would be able to see Spica's shadow keeping company with them on the bottom.

'All guns loaded, sir!'

'Very well.' He wondered how the abandoned Lieutenant Dalmaine was getting on with his two thirteen-inch mortars. If the attack failed, and Thor was unable to recover the men from the lighter, Dalmaine had orders to make his way ashore and surrender. Bolitho grimaced. He knew what he would do in those circumstances; what any sailor would attempt. Sailors mistrusted land. When others saw the sea as an enemy or a final barrier against escape, men like Dalmaine would take a chance, even in something as hopeless as a lighter.

Jenour joined them by the tiller and said, 'I was speaking with the Swedish mate, Sir Richard.'

Bolitho smiled. The lieutenant could barely suppress his eagerness.

'We are all ears.'

Jenour pointed into the darkness. 'He says we are past the battery. The biggest treasure-ship is anchored in line with the first fortress.' He added proudly. 'She is the Ciudad de Sevilla.'

Bolitho touched his arm. 'That was well done.' He pictured the marks on the chart. It was exactly as Price had described it, and the newly constructed fortress, which rose from the sea on a bed of rocks.

The leadsman called sharply, 'By th' mark two!'

Parris murmured, 'Christ Almighty.'

Bolitho said, 'Let her fall off a point.' He peered into the black cluster of shapes by the compass box. 'Who is that?'

'Laker, sir!'

Bolitho turned away. It would be. The seaman who was to have been flogged.

Laker called, 'Steady as she goes, sir! East-by-south!'

'By th' mark seven!'

Bolitho clenched his fists. In the time it had taken for the leadsman to recover and then cast his line from the chains, the Spica had ploughed out of the shallows and into deeper water. But if the chart with its sparse information was wrong…

'By th' mark fifteen!' Even the leadsman's voice sounded jubilant. It was not wrong. They were through.

He walked aft to the taffrail and peered at the boats astern, the gurgle of spray around each stem where lively phosphorescence painted the sea.

Allday said, 'Sun-up any minute, Sir Richard.' He sounded on edge. Til be fair glad to see it go down again, an' that's no error.'

Bolitho loosened the hanger in its scabbard. It felt strange without the old sword. He pictured Adam wearing it as his own, Belinda's perfect face when she received the news that he had fallen.

He said harshly, 'Enough melancholy, old friend! We've faced worse odds!'

Allday watched him, his craggy face hidden in darkness.

'I knows it, Sir Richard. It's just that sometimes I get -'

His eyes shone suddenly and Bolitho grasped his thick forearm.

'The sun. Friend or foe, I wonder?'

'Stand by to come about!' Parris sounded untroubled. 'Two more hands on the forebrace, Keats.'

'Aye, aye, sir.'

Bolitho tried to recall the petty officer's face, but instead he saw other, older ones. Hyperion's ghosts come back to watch him. They had waited over the years after their last battle. To claim him as their own, perhaps?

The thought made a chill run down his spine. He undipped the scabbard and tossed it aside while he tested the hanger's balance in his hand.

More light, seeping and spreading across the water. There was the land to starboard, sprawling and shapeless. The flash of sunlight on a window somewhere, a ship's masthead pendant lifting to the first glow like the tip of a knight's lance.

The fortress was almost in line with the jib-boom, a stern, square contrast with the land beyond.

Bolitho let the hanger drop to his side and found that he had thrust his other hand inside his shirt. He could feel his heart pounding beneath the hot, damp skin, and yet his whole being felt cold; raw like steel.

'And there she lies!' He had seen the mastheads of the great ship below the fortress. She could be nothing else but Somervell's galleon. But instead of Somervell he saw Catherine's eyes watching him. Proud and captivating. Distant.

To tear himself from the mood he slowly raised his left arm, until the early sunlight spilled down the hanger as if he had dipped it into molten gold.

The sea noises intruded from every side. Wind and spray, the lively clatter of rigging and shrouds while the deck tilted to the change of tack.

Bolitho called, 'Look yonder, my lads! A reckoning indeed!'

But nobody spoke, for only Hyperion's ghosts understood.

7. Perhaps The Greatest Victory

Bolitho held up the folded chart and strained his eyes in the faint sunlight. He would have wished to take more time to study it in the security of the schooner's tiny cabin, but every second was precious. It was all happening so swiftly, and when he glanced up again from the tilting compass-box he saw the grand roadstead opening up like some vast amphitheatre. More anchored shipping, the distance making them appear to be huddled together near the central fortress, then the coast itself, with white houses and the beginning of the twisting road which eventually led inland. Each mountain was brushed with sunshine, their blue-grey masses overlapping and reaching away, until they faded into mist and merged with the sky.

He stared for several seconds at the big Spanish ship. In size she matched Hyperion. It must have taken a month or more to load her with the gold and silver which had been brought overland on pack-mules and in wagons, guarded every mile of the way by soldiers.

At any minute now Lieutenant Dalmaine would open fire on the battery, before the sunlight reached out and betrayed Thor at her anchorage.

He tore his eyes away to look along the schooner's deck. Most of the Spica's crew were sitting with their backs against the weather bulwark, their eyes fixed on the British seamen. No wonder they had offered no resistance. By contrast with the neat shirts of the Swedes, Hyperion's men looked like pirates. He saw Dacie the boatswain's mate, his head twisted at an angle so that he could watch his men and the Spica's master at the same time. Dacie wore an eye patch to cover an empty socket; it gave him a villainous appearance. Parris had every right to have such confidence in him. Near the helm, Skilton, one of Hyperion's master's mates, in his familiar coat with the white piping, was the only one who showed any sort of uniformity.

Even Jenour had followed his admiral's example and had discarded his hat and coat. He was carrying a sword which his parents had given him, with a fine blue blade of German steel.

Bolitho tried to relax as he studied the big Spanish ship. It was a far cry from that quiet room at the Admiralty when this plan had been discussed with all the delicacy of a conference at Lloyds.

He looked at Parris, his shirt open to the waist, his dark hair streaming above his eyes in the lively offshore breeze. Was Haven right to suspect him, he wondered? It certainly made sense that any woman might prefer him to his colourless captain.

A gull dived above the topsail yard, its mewing cry merging with the far-off blare of a trumpet. Ashore or at anchor, men were stirring, cooks groping for their pots and pans.

Parris stared at him across the deck and grinned. 'Rude awakening, Sir Richard!'

The crash when it came was still a surprise. It was like a double thunderclap which echoed across the water and then rolled back from the land like a returned salute.

Bolitho caught a sudden picture of Francis Inch when he had been given his first command of a bomb like