For My Country’s Freedom

Bolitho said, 'That was well done, Captain Tyacke.' Together they watched the spray bursting over the beak-head. Tyacke said quietly, 'Mr York was right about this ship.'

'Deck there!'

Tyacke smiled. 'Already? He must have flown up there.'

Blythe’s voice reached them again. 'Barque, sir! She’s all aback!'

Tyacke said contemptuously, 'Trying to make a run for it, is he?' He swung round. 'Mr Scarlett, get the t’gallants on her and set the forecourse, driver too!' When the first lieutenant hesitated, he snapped, 'Lively it is, Mr Scarlett! I’ll not lose the bugger now!'

Bolitho saw the flash of resentment in Scarlett’s eyes, but this was no time to consider a man’s hurt pride.

Tyacke was beckoning to another midshipman, Craigie, the one who had sighted the stranger in the first place.

'Find the gunner, Mr Craigie, and have him lay aft.' He fumbled in his coat and Bolitho saw the gleam of gold. 'You did well. Quite well.'

The midshipman stared at the coin in his grubby palm. 'Th-thank you, sir!'

Tyacke’s voice pursued him forward to the main hatchway. 'But next time you skylark on duty the prize had better be worthwhile!'

Several of the seamen who were hauling and coiling a confusion of halliards and tackles grinned.

Bolitho smiled. If the barque proved to be useless it would no longer matter.

They had just accomplished something, and they had done it as one company.

Richard Bolitho opened his eyes and stared at the deckhead, his ears and mind taking in the sounds, the angle of a small shuttered lantern telling him instantly how Indomitable was behaving.

But for the lantern the cabin was in complete darkness, the occasional grumbling clatter of the rudder-head the predominant sound. Not much wind then. Two or three times in the night his sailor’s instinct had awakened him, and as usual he had felt a sense of loss at not being up there with the watch on deck when the ship had changed tack yet again. He had never lost that feeling, and he had often wondered if other flag officers still yearned for the more personal command of a captain.

He lay with his hands behind his head looking into the darkness. It was hard to believe that Indomitable would reach Antigua tomorrow or, if the wind failed them again, the next day at the latest. Even now he knew that the small island of Barbuda was less than fifty miles to the north-west, part of the natural chain that formed the Leeward Islands.

Tyacke could be well pleased with his fast passage. Three weeks from Falmouth, England, to Falmouth and English Harbour in Antigua; and they had been uneventful after the early excitement of sighting and boarding 'Blythe’s barque,' as it had become known, only to discover that although she wore American colours she had been under charter to the British government,

and had carried nothing more interesting than a mixed cargo of china clay and building materials for Port Royal in Jamaica.

Scarlett had returned fuming with his boarding party. Because of the charter he had been unable to examine the company for British deserters, let alone search the vessel. Later they had sighted and stopped several vessels of various sizes and flags, but apart from a few deserters they had found very little to their advantage. It had seemed as though the whole ocean had become a desert, and every ship going about her business had somehow avoided them.

There had been little to do but carry out regular sail and gun drills, and, as usual, inactivity had had its side- effects: outbursts of anger and violence on the lower deck, usually between the trained and experienced hands and the amateurs and landmen, whom they seemed to delight in provoking.

The punishment book had made its first appearance and several floggings had been awarded. Bolitho had known and served in ships where floggings had been too commonplace to mention, because a wrong word had been taken for insolence, or a captain had cared little for his subordinates’ methods provided the end results were acceptable. But Bolitho knew Tyacke had felt it badly. After his little schooner Miranda and the brig Larne, with their tightly-knit companies, the ritual of punishment in a ship of Indomitable’s size had sickened him.

Not that he had lost his determination or pride, and neither his wardroom nor the midshipmen were spared the edge of his tongue. At the boarding of one schooner Avery had accompanied the first lieutenant, and afterwards there had been open hostility from Scarlett, while Avery had withdrawn into apparent indifference and been loath to discuss the subject. Tyacke, in his own forceful fashion, had uncovered the bones of the matter.

On board the schooner, Scarlett had admitted that it was almost impossible to discover the presence of deserters, or others

taking an illegal passage to escape from the navy, as long as individual masters spoke up for them or provided false papers.

Avery, who had been told to act only as an observer and not interfere with the first lieutenant’s procedures, had apparently answered that men should be stripped of their shirts for inspection without requesting permission from anybody. A sailor’s back, even if he had been flogged but once, would carry the scars of the cat to the grave. Distinctive naval tattoos were another definite way to identify a deep-water sailorman as a King’s seaman who had run.

Scarlett had retorted sharply, 'I’ll trouble you to keep your ideas to yourself, sir!'

Avery had responded equally coldly, and when Tyacke had told him later, Bolitho had been well able to imagine him saying it.

'You can go to hell for all I care!'

Hard work, perverse winds and sometimes blistering heat, each had played a part. Men used to the English Channel and to North Sea blockade duties were resentful at being chased through every minute of a drill, while the newly-pressed hands made mistakes that brought scorn and humiliation in their wake.

He closed his eyes, but sleep defied him. It would be dawn soon, and land was in sight, from the masthead at least, exciting many of their company who had never left England before in their lives.

He thought of the dream which had pursued him, almost from the boarding of 'Blythe’s barque.' He was not certain how many times it had returned since then, but he knew it had never varied, and when he had woken only minutes ago, he had known somehow that the dream had awakened him. Even his heart had been pounding, something very rare for him unless the dream had become nightmares, like the ones in which he had seen Catherine being carried away from him, her naked body and streaming

hair, and her terror, making him call her name aloud before he had burst out of it.

The dream was completely different. Always the same picture, the narrow waters of Carrick Roads in Falmouth, the murky hump of Pendennis Castle lying across the starboard bow of the ship flying an admiral’s flag: his flag-the knowledge of that had been quite definite, as it so often was in dreams. The squadron had been all around him, ready to weigh, or still shortening their cables. About to leave Falmouth, as he had done so many times.

Without realising it he was out of his cot, his bare feet on the deck’s cool slope; and the sudden icy chill of recognition seemed to freeze his whole body, even though his brain told him that the cabin was as hot and humid as before.

The ships of the squadron had all been his own. Undine, Sparrow and Phalarope, Black Prince and Hyperion. There had even been the topsail cutter Avenger, in which he had served under his brother Hugh.

The realisation was unnerving, and he knew that the dream would return yet again. What did it mean? What had brought all those familiar ships to Falmouth, only to depart? And which one had he been on board at the time?

He felt Indomitable shiver, the awakening rattle of rigging and blocks. A freshening breeze. There was the responding slap of bare feet overhead, brief orders to send the watch to braces and halliards and re-trim the great yards and contain the wind once more.

He saw them in his mind: figures in the darkness, the helmsmen as they felt the spokes in their hands, their eyes peering aloft to seek out the shaking sail, or the small gauge nearby so that they could discover the wind’s true direction.

Perhaps it would be better after Antigua, once he knew what awaited him. The total responsibility.