crowded even in harbour. Two of the messmen were crouching down, listening at the door as closely as they dared. There was laughter too, as there must have been before greater events in history: Quiberon Bay, the Saintes, or the Nile.
Allday was with Ozzard in the pantry, as he had known he would be. He followed Bolitho past the sentry and into the dimly lit cabin, with the sea like black glass beyond the windows. Apart from the ship’s own noises, it was already quiet. Tyacke would be speaking to his officers, just as he would eventually go around the messdecks and show himself to the men who depended on him. Not to tell them why it was so, but how it must be done. But the ship already knew. Like Sparrow and Phalarope, and Hyperion most of all.
Allday asked, “Will Mr Avery be coming aft, Sir Richard?”
Bolitho waved him to a chair. “Rest easy, old friend. He’ll find a minute to pen a letter for you.”
Allday grinned, the concern and the pain falling away. “I’d take it kindly, Sir Richard. I’ve never been much for book-learnin’ an’ the like.”
Bolitho heard Ozzard’s quiet step. “Just as well for the rest of us, I daresay. So let us drink to those we care about, while we can. But we’ll wait for the flag lieutenant.” He looked away. Avery had probably already written a letter of his own, to the unknown woman in London. Perhaps it was only a dream, a lost hope. But it was an anchor, one which was needed by them all.
He walked to the gun barometer and tapped it automatically, recalling Tyacke’s acceptance of what must be done, his confidence in his ship. And of his words. “If I should fall…” The same words, the same voice which had spoken for all of them.
Avery entered the cabin even as the sentry shouted his arrival.
Bolitho said, “Did it go well, George?”
Avery looked at Ozzard and his tray of glasses.
“Something I heard my father say, a long time ago. That the gods never concern themselves with the protection of the innocent, only with the punishment of the guilty.” He took a glass from the unsmiling Ozzard. “I never thought I would hear it again under these circumstances.”
Bolitho waited while Allday lurched to his feet to join them. Tomorrow, then.
Thinking of Herrick, perhaps. Of all of them.
He raised his glass. “We Happy Few!”
They would like that.
16. Lee Shore
LIEUTENANT George Avery gripped the weather shrouds and then paused to stare up at the foremast. Like most of the ship’s company, he had been on deck for over an hour, and yet his eyes were still not accustomed to the enfolding darkness. He could see the pale outline of the hard-braced topsail, but beyond it nothing save an occasional star as it flitted through long banners of cloud. He shivered; it was cold, and his clothing felt damp and clinging, and there was something else also, a kind of light-headedness, a sense of elation, which he thought had gone forever. Those days when he had been in the small schooner Jolie, cutting out equally small prizes from the French coast, sometimes under the noses of a shore battery… Wild, reckless times. He almost laughed into the damp air. It was madness, as it had been madness then.
He swung himself out and wedged his foot onto the first ratline, then, slowly and carefully, he began to climb, the big signals telescope hanging across his shoulder like a poacher’s gun. Up and up, the shrouds vibrating beneath his grip, the tarred cordage as sharp and cold as ice. He was not afraid of heights, but he respected them: it was one of the first things he could remember when he had been appointed midshipman under his uncle’s sponsorship. The seamen, who had been rough and independent although they had shown him kindness, would rush up the ratlines barefooted, the skin so calloused and hardened that they scorned the wearing of shoes, which they would keep for special occasions.
He stopped to regain his breath, and felt his body being pressed against the quivering rigging while the invisible ship beneath him leaned over to a sudden gust of wind. Like cold hands, holding him.
Even though he could see nothing below him but the unchanging outline of the upper deck, sharpened occasionally when a burst of spray cascaded over the gangways or through the beakhead, he could imagine the others standing as he had left them. So different from the usual nerve-wrenching thrill when the drums rattled and beat the hands to quarters, the orderly chaos when a ship was cleared for action from bow to stern: screens torn down, tiny hutches of cabins where the officers found their only privacy transformed into just another part of a gun deck, furniture, personal items and sea-chests dragged or winched into the lower hull, below the waterline, where the surgeon and his assistants would be preparing, remaining separate from the noise before battle: their work would come to them. On this occasion clearing for action had been an almost leisurely affair, men moving amongst familiar tackle and rigging as if it were broad daylight.
As ordered, the hands had been given a hot meal in separate watches, and only then was the galley fire doused, the last measure of rum drained.
Tyacke had remained by the quarterdeck rail, while officers and messengers had flowed around him, like extensions of the man himself. York with his master’s mates, Daubeny, the first lieutenant, with a junior midshipman always trotting at his heels like a pet dog. And right aft by the companion-way where he had walked with Sir Richard, Avery could see that in his mind also. Where the command of any ship or squadron began or ended. He smiled as he recalled what Allday had said of it. “Aft, the most honour. Forward, the better man!” Bolitho had been holding his watch closely against the compass light, and had said, “Go aloft, George. Take a good glass with you. I need to know instantly. You will be my eyes today.”
It still saddened him. Did those words, too, have a hidden meaning?
And Allday again, taking his hat and sword from him. “They’ll be here when you needs ’em, Mr Avery. Don’t want our flag lieutenant gettin’ all tangled up in the futtock shrouds, now, do we?”
He had written the letter Allday had requested. Like the man, it had been warmly affectionate, and yet, after all he had seen and suffered, so simple and unworldly. Avery had almost been able to see Unis opening and reading it, calling her ex-soldier brother to tell him about it. Holding it up to the child.
He shook his head, thrusting the thoughts aside, and started to climb again. Long before any of their letters reached England, they might all be dead.
The foremast’s fighting-top loomed above him, reminding him of Allday’s joke about the futtock shrouds. Nimble-footed topmen could scramble out and around the top without interruption, those on the leeward side hanging out, suspended, with nothing but the sea beneath them. The fighting-top was a square platform protected by a low barricade, behind which marksmen could take aim at targets on an enemy’s deck. It matched the tops on the other masts, above which the shrouds and stays reached up to the next of the upper yards, and beyond.
The foremast was perhaps the most important and complicated in the ship. It carried not only the bigger course and topsails, but was connected and rigged to the bowsprit, and the smaller, vital jib and staysails. Each time a ship attempted to come about and turn across the eye of the wind, the small jibsails would act like a spur or brake to prevent her floundering to a standstill, taken all aback with her sails flattened uselessly against the masts, unable to pay off in either direction. At the height of close action, the inability to manoeuvre could mean the death of the ship.
He thought of York and men like him, the true professionals. How many people ashore would ever understand the strength and prowess of such fine sailors, when they saw a King’s ship beating down-Channel under a full press of sail?
He dragged himself between the shrouds and took the easier way into the foretop by way of a small opening, the “lubber’s hole,” as the old Jacks derisively termed it.
There were four Royal Marines here, their white crossbelts and the corporal’s chevrons on one man’s sleeve visible against the outer darkness.
“Mornin’, sir! Fine day for a stroll!”
Avery unslung the telescope and smiled. That was another thing about being a flag lieutenant, neither fish nor fowl, like an outsider who had come amongst them: he was not an officer in charge of a mast or a division of guns, nor a symbol of discipline or punishment. So he was accepted. Tolerated.
