Bolitho looked at Allday. 'Bear a hand with the tackles, John.' He spoke easily, seeing the instant anxiety in his eyes. 'It will give you something to do.'
John. He had called him by name. Allday felt it touch him like a cold hand. In minutes, they could be dead. Or perhaps nothing would happen until rum and the thought of two women in their midst finally broke down the last barricade of Lincoln's control.
Tasker walked to the scuppers and bent over the corpse. After removing a money-pouch from the dead man's belt he gestured with his thumb. 'Over with him!' He did not even turn as the corpse hit the water alongside and drifted rapidly towards the stern. He was still imagining that proud, arrogant woman, just as he had seen the screaming black slave girls when he had turned his men on to them.
Below his feet, Jenour put his weapons on to the deck and peered out through the open gunport. It was all moving too fast; the sea so bright, and so early.
He gave Ozzard a quick nod. The little man was obviously terrified. It seemed suddenly important that he should not leave him without a word, some crumb of support.
'I'll do a sketch of you when this is over, eh?' He touched his shoulder as he had seen Bolitho do so often; the contact he always seemed to need, when people who did not know or understand him thought he wanted for nothing.
Ozzard did not seem to hear. 'Take care, Mr Jenour, sir. We're all very fond of you.'
Jenour stared at him and then began to worm his shoulders through the port. It was not going to be easy. He had never imagined it would be. He looked down and saw the hull's copper sheathing gleam in the frothing water below him, then up to the mizzen chains, and a glimpse of the blocks and tarred cordage beneath the quivering ratlines. The gun was very near there, but as yet out of sight.
He cringed against the warm timbers as a corpse heaved over the bulwark just by the shrouds struck the water beneath him. One flapping hand casually brushed his arm as it dropped past him, and he waited with sick horror for the sound of a shot, or the agonising thrust from one of the boarding pikes he had seen stacked around the mizzen trunk.
He stared down as something glided into the cresting water cut back by the barquentine's raked stem. For only a few seconds he saw the black, empty eyes watching him before the shark turned deftly and plunged after the drifting corpse.
Jenour gritted his teeth and pulled himself to the chains and then swung himself round and up on to the mizzen channel. He waited for an eternity before he dared to raise his head. The bulwark was only feet away-at any moment a curious face might look down and see him. Perhaps, although he had heard no sound, all of his companions had been butchered. He thought of the letter which was still unfinished, the sketches his family in Southampton would never see. He felt his eyes smarting; his body was shaking, so that he had to force himself to look directly down again into clear water. There were two sharks now. He gave a quick sob. They would not have long to wait. He whispered, 'God bless you!' He did not know to whom.
On deck, the first of the heavily-barred boxes was swayed up into the full view of the expectant mutineers. They gave a wild cheer, and more rum was already being broached from the other hold.
Catherine saw some of the men watching her and looked away, her eyes meeting with Bolitho's as if to some unspoken word.
His eyes moved, just once, and she turned her head very slightly. She felt her heart pounding, and put her hand to her breast. She had seen what Bolitho had intended: Jenour's grimy, bloodied fingers feeling up for the lower ratlines, while directly beneath the mounted swivel-gun two of the armed seamen were resting in the shade. At any second Jenour might make some sound and bring them down on him.
Lincoln swallowed a mug of rum and gasped noisily, his reddened eyes on the hand against her breast.
'That should be my place, my lady!'
She turned aside and reached up to adjust her piled hair.
She felt his breath, stinking of rum, smelt the dirt and sweat of his body as he gripped her waist and stared wildly at the shadow between her breasts.
It was all she could do to look at him as she felt his hands moving on her body.
Then she said, 'I must loosen my hair!'
If she thought of Bolitho now, all would be lost.
Deftly she pulled the long comb from her hair and even as it tumbled over her shoulders, she raised the comb and drove it into Lincoln's eye.
He fell backwards, screaming, the decorated comb protruding from his eye like an obscene growth.
Someone dropped a musket and it exploded, so that men who had been yelling and running for weapons froze in their tracks and watched with sick disbelief while Lincoln rolled on his back, his heavy seaboots drumming on the deck while his blood encircled his agony.
Tasker, the new mate who had once been a slaver, dragged out his pistol and shouted, 'Leave him! Take the others below and shackle them, 'til we can deal with 'em properly!'
He looked at the tall, dark-haired woman who, despite the levelled weapons, had walked to Bolitho's side.
Tasker laughed. 'That pig-sticker of a sword won't help you now, Admiral!'
Bolitho gripped his sword, but felt only her arm against his side. He was even surprised at the unemotional tone of his voice, when just an instant ago he had been about to throw himself to her defence.
He said, 'Help is here now.' He saw Tasker's astonishment as he slipped the old sword back into its scabbard, then watched it change to stunned understanding as the swivel-gun swung inboard and was depressed on to the bulk of the mutineers.
Allday had torn a cutlass from one of the sailors guarding the loyal hands and now ran aft, bending almost double in case Jenour should jerk the lanyard and rake the deck into a bloody shambles with a full charge of canister.
Bolitho shouted, 'Throw down your arms! In the King's name-or I swear to God I will order my lieutenant to fire!'
Keen stood up from the companion-way and cocked his hidden pistol. Tojohns had also produced a pair from another hiding place.
Keen found time to notice Bolitho's voice, the intensity of his stare, recalling the moment when he had ordered them to continue pouring broadsides into the enemy that had destroyed Hyperion in another sea.
If they do not strike they will die! He was still not sure whether Bolitho would have continued to fire if the French flags had not come down.
He had that same expression now.
The men on deck stared at one another, some probably already planning how they would defend their actions by pleading that they had intended to overthrow the mutineers. A few of the loyal men wondering, perhaps, how their circumstances might have indeed changed had they thrown in their lot with the others. Gold to keep them free of danger and want, the rigours of the common seaman.
There was one man in the ship who had not been consulted or threatened either way, nor even considered when the others had been fanned into an uprising.
He was a seaman from Bristol by the name of William Owen, who had been aloft in the crosstrees, the first masthead lookout at the start of this new and terrible day.
Throughout the fighting on deck, he had witnessed the astounding sight of his messmates turning upon one another after the master had been shot down and the military prisoners released; then, it seemed, in the twinkling of an eye, the roles had been reversed. He had seen the admiral's lady, her bearing defiant even from this high perch, and had sensed the seething cauldron of mutiny as more and more rum had flung reason to one side. Now, his hands shaking badly, he twisted round and peered across the quarter for the other ship's topsails. He rubbed his eyes as relief flooded through him. He was safe, and the other vessel was stern-on as she went about on an opposite tack.
Safe. He had taken part in nothing. He had been doing the job he knew best, for Owen was the most experienced lookout in the Golden Plover's company.
He shaded his eyes again and stared until they watered. He knew all the signs but had never before witnessed it, and he had been at sea for fifteen years.
Stretching away beyond the bows, it made the sea change colour without breaking the surface. Like fast- moving smoke, or steam from a kettle, as if the sea were boiling in its depths…
