Honour This Day

The open sea was there, milky-blue in the early light. Men were cheering, dazed, with joy or disbelief.

Bolitho saw Parns grinning broadly, gripping the master's mate's hand and wringing it so hard the man winced.

'She's ours, Mr Skilton! God damn it, we took her from under their noses!'

Skilton grimaced. 'We're not in port yet, sir!'

Bolitho raised the glass yet again; it felt like lead. And yet it had been less than an hour since they had driven into the anchored treasure-ship.

He saw a host of small boats moving out from the land, a brig making sail to join them as they all headed for the shattered treasure-ship. That last broadside must have opened her like a sieve, he thought grimly. Every boat and spare hand would be used to salvage what they could before she keeled over and sank. A worthwhile sacrifice. To try and take two such ships would have meant losing both. The master's mate was right about one thing. They still had a long way to go.

He dropped the hanger to the deck and looked at it. Unused. Like the midshipman's dirk; you never really knew what you could do until called to fight.

He examined his feelings and only glanced up as the main topsail boomed out to the wind.

Death-wish? He had felt no fear. Not for himself. He looked at the sweating seamen as they slid down the backstays and rushed to the next task, where a hundred men should have been ready at halliards and braces.

They trusted him. That was perhaps the greatest victory.

Bolitho picked up a coffee cup and then pushed it away. Empty. Something Ozzard would never allow to happen in these circumstances. Wearily he rubbed his eyes and looked around the ornate cabin, palatial when compared with a man-of-war. He smiled wryly. Even for a vice-admiral.

It was mid-afternoon, and yet he knew that if he had the will to go on deck again and climb to the maintop he would still be able to see the coast of the Main. But in this case speed was as important as distance, and with the wind holding steady from the north-west he intended to use every stitch of canvas the ship would carry. He had had a brief and hostile interview with the ship's captain, an arrogant, bearded man with the face of some ancient conquistador. It was hard to determine which had angered the Spaniard more. To have his ship seized under the guns of the fortress, or to be interrogated by a man who proclaimed himself to be an English flag-officer, yet looked more like a vagrant in his tattered shirt and smoke-blackened breeches. He seemed to regard Bolitho's intention to sail the ship to more friendly waters as absurd. When the reckoning came, he had said in his strangely toneless English, the end would be without mercy. Bolitho had finished the interview right there by saying quietly, 'I would expect none, since you treat your own people like animals.'

Bolitho heard Parris shouting out to someone in the mizzen top. He seemed tireless, and was never too proud to throw his own weight on brace or halliard amongst his men. He had been a good choice.

Thor had placed herself between the ponderous treasure-ship and the shore, probably as astonished as the rest of them by their success. But great though that success had been it was not without cost, or the sadness which followed any fight.

Lieutenant Dalmaine had died even as his men had been hoisted into Thor from the waterlogged lighter. The two mortars had had to be abandoned, and their massive recoil had all but knocked out the lighter's keel. Dalmaine had seen his men to safety and had apparently run back to retrieve something. The lighter had suddenly flooded and taken Dalmaine and his beloved mortars to the bottom.

Four men had died in the attack, three more had been seriously wounded. One of the latter was the seaman named Laker, who had lost an arm and an eye when a musketoon had been discharged at point-blank range. Bolitho had seen Parris kneeling over him and had heard the man croak, 'Better'n bein' flogged, eh, sir?' He had tried to reach out for the lieutenant's hand. 'Never fancied a checkered shirt at th' gangway, 'specially for 'is sake!'

He must have meant Haven. If they met with Hyperion soon, the surgeon might be able to save him.

Bolitho thought of the holds far below his feet. Cases and chests of gold and silver plate. Jewel-encrusted crucifixes and ornaments – it had looked obscene in the light of a lantern held by Allday, who had never left his side.

So much luck, he thought wearily. The Spanish captain had let slip one piece of information. A company of soldiers were to have boarded the ship that morning to guard the treasure until they unloaded it in Spanish waters. A company of disciplined soldiers would have made a mockery of their attack.

He thought of the little schooner, Spica, and her master, who had tried to raise the alarm. Hate, anger at being boarded, fear of reprisal, it was probably a bit of each. But his ship was intact, although it was unlikely that the Spaniards would divert other vessels to convoy him to safer waters as intended. They might even blame him. One thing was certain; he would not want to trade with the enemy again, neutral or not.

Bolitho yawned hugely and massaged the scar beneath his hair. Hyperion's imposing boatswain, Samuel Lintott, would have a few oaths to offer when he discovered the loss of the jolly boat and two cutters. Maybe the chance of prize-money would soften his anger. Bolitho tried to stop his head from lolling. He could not remember when he had last slept undisturbed.

This ship and her rich cargo would make a difference only in the City of London, and of course with His Britannic Majesty. Bolitho smiled to himself. The King who had not even remembered his name when he had lowered the sword to knight him. Perhaps it meant so little to those who had so much.

He knew it was sheer exhaustion which was making his mind wander.

There was more than one way of fighting a war than spilling blood in the cannon's mouth. But it did not feel right, and left him uneasy. Only pride sustained him. In his men, and those like Dalmaine who had put their sailors first. And the one called Laker, who had fought shoulder-to-shoulder with his friends, simply because it meant far more to him and to them than any flag or the cause.

He allowed his mind to touch on England, and wondered what Belinda was doing with her time in London.

But like a salt-blurred telescope her picture would not settle or form clearly, and he felt a pang of guilt.

He turned his thoughts to Viscount Somervell, although he knew it was a coward's way of opening the door to Catherine. Would they leave the Indies now that the treasure, or a large part of it, was taken?

His head touched his forearm and he jerked up, aware of two things at once. That he had fallen asleep across the table, and that a masthead lookout had pealed down to the deck.

He heard Parris call something and found himself on his feet, his eyes on the cabin skylight as the lookout shouted again.

'Deck there! Two sail to the nor'-west!'

Bolitho walked through the unfamiliar doors and stared at the deserted ranks of cabins. With the remaining crew members battened below where they could neither try to retake the ship nor damage her hull without risking their own lives, it was like a phantom vessel. All Hyperion's hands were employed constantly on deck; or high above it amongst the maze of rigging, like insects trapped in a giant web. He noticed a portrait of a Spanish nobleman beside a case of books, and guessed it was the captain's father. Perhaps like the old grey house in Falmouth, he too had many pictures to retell the history of his family.

He found Parns with Jenour and Skilton, the master's mate, grouped by the larboard side, each with a levelled telescope.

Parns saw him and touched his forehead. 'Nothing yet, Sir Richard.'

Bolitho looked at the sky, then at the hard horizon line. Like the top of a dam, beyond which there was nothing.

It would not be dark for hours yet. Too long.

'Hyperion, maybe, Sir Richard?'

Their eyes met. Parris did not believe it either. Bolitho replied, 'I think not. With the wind in our favour we should have made contact by noon.' He ceased thinking out loud. 'Signal Thor. Imne may not have sighted the ships as yet.' It gave him time to think. To move a few paces this way and that, his chin digging into his stained neckcloth.

The enemy then. He made himself accept it. The Ciudad de Sevilla was no man-of-war, nor did she have the artillery and skills of an Indiaman. The cannons with their ornate mountings and leering bronze faces were impressive, but useless against anything but pirates or some reckless privateer.

He glanced at some of the seamen nearby. The fight had been demanding enough. Friends killed or wounded,