For My Country’s Freedom

join a larger convoy for the Atlantic crossing.

Even the thought of England made Hudson lick his lips. Summer, yes, but it might be raining. Cool breezes, wet grass under foot. But it was not to be. He realised that the second lieutenant who had been in charge of the forenoon watch was still beside him. He wanted to talk, up here where he could not be heard. It made Hudson feel both guilty and disloyal. He was the first lieutenant, responsible only to the captain for the running and organisation of the ship and her company.

How could things have changed so much in less than a year? When his uncle, a retired vice-admiral, had obtained him the appointment in Anemone through a friend in the Admiralty he had been overjoyed. Like most ambitious young officers he had yearned for a frigate, and to be second-in-command to such a famous captain had been like a dream coming true.

Captain Adam Bolitho was all that a frigate commander was supposed to be: dashing and reckless, but not one to risk lives for his own ends or glory. The fact that Bolitho’s uncle, who commanded their important little squadron, was as celebrated and loved in the fleet as he was notorious in society ashore, gave the appointment an added relish. Or it had, until the day Adam Bolitho had returned to Anemone after his summons to the flag-

ship at English Harbour. He had always been a hard worker, and had expected others to follow his example: often he carried out tasks normally done by common seamen, if only to prove to the landmen and others pressed against their will that he was not asking the impossible of them.

Now he was driving himself to and beyond the limit. Month by month they had patrolled as near to the American mainland as possible, unless other ships were in close company. They had stopped and searched ships of every flag and taken many deserters, and on several occasions had fired on neutral vessels which had showed no inclination to heave-to for inspection. A quarter of Anemones total company were even now in captured prizes and making either for Antigua or Bermuda.

Even that seemed to give the captain no satisfaction, Hudson thought. He shunned the company of his officers, and only came on deck when required for sailing the ship, or in times of foul weather, which had been plentiful over the past months. Then, soaked to the skin, his black hair plastered to his face, looking more like a pirate than a King’s officer, he had never budged until his ship was out of danger.

But he was curt, impatient now, an entirely different man from the one Hudson had first met in Plymouth.

Vicary the second lieutenant, said, 'I’ll be glad when this convoy is out of our hands. Slow to sail, slow even to co-operate- sometimes I think these damned grocery captains take a delight in ignoring signals!' Hudson watched a fish leap and fall into the heaving water. He had found himself assessing even the most commonplace remarks for some secret significance.

Captain Bolitho was never brutal with punishment; otherwise, sailing with only the elderly brig Woodpecker in company he might well have expected serious trouble. Hudson had questioned some of the retaken deserters himself, and many had pleaded that they had run only because of unfair and in some cases horrific

floggings for even minor offences. Now, returned to British ships but in the same war, their treatment would be gauged by their behaviour.

Hudson glanced at the men working on deck, some trying to remain in the shadows of the reefed topsails, or watching the marine sentry with his fixed bayonet on sweating guard over the fresh-water cask.

If only they could be free of the merchantmen and their painfully slow progress. Day in, day out, only the wind seemed to change: and there was precious little of that, too.

Hudson said, 'You think that all this is a waste of time, do you, Philip?'

'Yes, as a matter of fact, I do. This is a drudge’s work. Let them fend for themselves, I say! They are quick enough to squeal and appeal to higher authority if we take a few of their prime seamen to fill the gaps, but they bleat even louder when they are in danger themselves!'

Hudson thought of a verse he had once heard somewhere. God and the Navy we adore, when danger threatens but not before! Obviously nothing had changed.

Anemone had been driven hard. A proper refit was inevitable. He tried not to hope too much. One of the ships awaiting their arrival at Bermuda had been out here for less time than Anemone, and she was going to sail home as an additional escort. Home. He almost gritted his teeth. Then he lifted the telescope again and moved it deliberately towards the distant sails. Further downwind the brig Woodpecker stood above the thick heat haze like a pair of feathers, so white against the pitiless sky.

He said, 'Why don’t you cut on down to the wardroom? It’ll be a mite cooler if nothing else.' He lowered the glass and waited. Here it comes.

Vicary said, 'We’ve always got on well. I can’t talk to anyone else. You know how things get twisted.'

'Distorted, you mean?' Vicary was 24, a native of Sussex, fair-haired and blue-eyed with, Hudson thought, what his mother could have called such an English face. He contained a fond smile and retorted, 'You know I cannot discuss the matter.' Even that felt like disloyalty.

'I appreciate that.' Vicary plucked at his stained shirt. 'I just want to know why. What happened to change him? We deserve that much, surely?'

Hudson toyed with the idea of sending him below with a direct order. Instead he said, 'Something very personal, perhaps. Not a death, or we’d have heard of it. His future is assured, provided he can stay alive, and I don’t just mean in the line of battle.'

Vicary nodded, perhaps from satisfaction that their friendship was not in danger. 'I did hear a few tales about a duel somewhere. Everyone knows it goes on, despite the law.'

Hudson thought of the captain’s uncle as he had been when he had come aboard to meet the officers. Adam was so like him, exactly as Bolitho must have been at the same age. The hero, the man who was followed into battle with a kind of passion, as they had once followed Nelson. And yet unlike so many high-ranking and successful officers-heroes-Hudson had felt that Sir Richard Bolitho was a man without conceit, and one who truly cared for the men he inspired. It was more than charisma, as he had heard it described. When the admiral looked at you, you as an individual person, you could feel it run through your blood. And you knew in the same breath that you would follow him anywhere.

He felt suddenly troubled. Adam Bolitho had once been very like that.

He saw the master-at-arms and the boatswain standing by the weather side and its rank of long eighteen- pounders, and the sight brought him out of his thoughts with a jolt. Punishment was to be carried out at two bells, when the watch below had finished

their meal. He could smell the rum on the hot breeze, which was barely enough to fill the sails.

Punishment was usually carried out in the forenoon; it gave all hands time to get over it and wash away the memory with rum. But for some reason the captain had ordered an extra gun drill today, had even been on deck to time it himself, as if he did not trust his officers to stress the importance of teamwork.

Had they been running free with all canvas filled and driving the Anemone until every strand of rigging was bar taut, it would have been just another punishment. Two dozen lashes: it could have been many more for the man in question. This would not be the first time he had received a striped shirt at the gangway. He was a hard man, a lower-deck lawyer, a born troublemaker. Captain Bolitho could have awarded double that amount.

But this was different. Moving so slowly, with nothing in sight but the far-off convoy and brig, it could be like a spark in a powder keg. The nearest land was Santo Domingo, some hundred miles to the north: the perverse wind made it impossible to tack any closer. But in another two days they would reach the Mona Passage where many changes of tack would be required, keeping all hands busy for days until they broke out into the Atlantic.

Hudson turned as a shadow moved across the rail. It was the captain.

Adam Bolitho gazed at them impassively. 'Nothing to do but gossip, Mr Vicary?' He looked at the first lieutenant. 'I would have thought you could discover something not too tiring for an officer to do, if he has no stomach for his lunch?'

Hudson said, 'We have not had too much time to talk of late, sir.'

He studied his captain as he walked to the compass and then glanced at the limply flapping masthead pendant.

The helmsman called huskily, 'Sou’-east by south, sir, steady she goes!'