and sea.
“It’s what you want to be, right?” He liked Bellairs; he would make a good officer, given the chance. He glanced at the captain again. And the example. Cristie had seen the best and the worst of them in his day. His own family had grown up in Tynemouth, in the next street to Collingwood, Nelson’s friend and second-in-command at Trafalgar.
He heard Lieutenant Massie say, “I’ll not answer for the jib if we try to come about!”
Cristie nudged the midshipman and repeated, “Remember it, see!”
He moved away as the captain strode towards him.
“What say you, Mr Cristie? Do you think me mad to drive her so?”
Cristie did not know if Bellairs was listening, nor did he care. It was nothing he could mark on his chart, or record in the log. And nobody else would understand. The captain, the one who drove himself and everybody else, who had not hesitated to lead his own men on a cutting-out raid which had seemed an almost certain disaster, had asked him. Not told him, as was every captain’s right.
He heard himself say, “There’s your answer, sir!” He watched his face as he looked at the widening bank of blue sky as it spread from horizon to horizon. The wind had lessened, so that the rattle of broken rigging and the flapping tails of torn canvas intruded for the first time. Soon the sun would show above the retreating cloud, and steam would rise from these wet, treacherous decks.
Men were pausing to draw breath, to peer around for messmates or for a special friend, as they might after action. Two of the younger midshipmen were actually grinning at one another and shaking hands with a kind of jubilant triumph.
Adam saw all and none of it. He was staring up, at the first lookout to risk the perilous climb aloft.
“Deck there! Sail on th’ weather bow!”
He turned to Cristie and said quietly, “And there, my friend, lies the enemy.”
7. A Bad Ship
LIEUTENANT Galbraith pivoted round on his heels and stared up to the quarterdeck rail, eyes slitted against the first hard sunshine.
“Ship cleared for action, sir!”
Adam did not take out his watch; he had no need to. From the moment the small marine drummer boys had begun the staccato rattle of beating to quarters, he had watched the ship come alive again, the savage wind almost forgotten. Only fragments of canvas and snapped cordage, flapping “Irish pennants,” as the old hands called them, gave any hint of the storm which had passed as quickly as it had found them.
Seven o’clock in the morning: six bells had just chimed from the forecastle. It was all routine, normal, and yet so different.
Adam had stood by the rail, feeling the ship preparing for whatever challenge she might meet within the next few hours. Screens torn down, hutch-like cabins folded away and stowed in the holds with furniture and all unnecessary personal belongings. A bad moment, when some might pause to reflect that their owners might not need them after this day was past.
It had taken ten minutes to clear the ship from bow to stern. Even his cabin, the largest he had ever occupied and a place which still lacked personality, was open, so that gun crews and powder monkeys could move unhindered if the shot began to fly.
The galley fire had been doused at the beginning of the storm, and there had been no time to relight it. Men fought better on a full belly, especially when they had already been contesting wind and sea for most of the night.
He stared along the main deck, at the gun crews standing by their charges, the long eighteen-pounders which made up the bulk of Unrivalled’s artillery. Most of them were stripped to the waist, new hands and landsmen following the example of the seasoned men who had seen and done it all before. Any clothing was precious to a working sailor, and costly to replace out of his meagre pay. Fabric also attracted gangrene, and hampered treatment should a man be wounded.
Adam thought he could smell the rum even from the quarterdeck. The purser had been quietly outraged by the extra issue he had ordered, a double tot for every man, as if the cost would be extracted from his own pocket.
But it had bridged the gap, and would do no harm at all.
Six seamen to each gun, including its captain, but hauling the heavy cannon up a tilting deck if the ship was to leeward of an enemy would require many more. An experienced crew should be able to fire a shot every ninety seconds, at the outset of battle in any case, although Adam had known some gun captains prepared and ready to fire three shots every two minutes. It had been so in Hyperion, an exceptional ship: a legend, like her captain.
He smiled, but did not see Galbraith’s quick answering grin.
The ship was moving steadily and, apparently, unhurriedly, with courses and staysails clewed up or furled. It seemed to open up the sea on either beam, and Adam had seen several of the unemployed seamen clambering up to seek out the enemy. To watch and prepare themselves as best they could. He considered it. The enemy. There were two of them, one large, a cut-down man-of-war by her appearance, the other smaller, a brig.
It was still so peaceful. So full of quiet menace.
Who were they? What had prompted their mission to Algiers?
He saw Lieutenant Massie by the foremast, ready to direct the opening shots, his own little group of midshipmen, messengers and petty officers waiting to pass his orders, and to close their eyes and ears to all else around them.
He turned away from the rail and saw the Royal Marines stationed across the deck, scarlet ranks moving evenly to the ship’s motion. Cristie, and Lieutenant Wynter, Midshipman Bellairs and his signals party, the helmsmen and master’s mates. A centre. The ship’s brain. He glanced at the tightly packed hammock nettings, slight protection for such a prize target.
He raised his eyes and saw more marines in the fighting-tops. He had always thought of it when facing an action at sea. The marksmen, one of whom he knew had been a poacher before enlisting, not out of patriotism but rather to avoid prison or deportation. They were all first-class shots.
He looked at the horizon again, the tiny patches of sails against the hard blue line. He would think even more of it now, since Avery had described those final moments, so quietly, so intimately. He bit his lip, controlling it. All these men, good and bad, would be looking to him. Aft, the most honour. He touched the old sword at his hip, remembering the note she had left with it. For me. He had seen Jago’s searching glance when he had come on deck. The old sword, the bright epaulettes. What had he thought? Arrogance, or vanity?
Jago was climbing the quarterdeck ladder now, his dark eyes barely moving, but missing nothing. A man he might never know, but one he did not want to lose.
Jago joined him by the rail and stood with his arms folded, as if to show his contempt for some of those watching. Like Lieutenant Massie, or the sulky midshipman named Sandell. Sandell, as he insisted on being called.
Jago said, “The first ship, sir. Old Creagh thinks he knows her.”
So casually spoken. Testing me?
The face formed in his mind. Creagh was one of the boatswain’s mates, and would have been carrying out a flogging if Unrivalled had turned back instead of forcing her passage into the teeth of the storm. A lot of people might be thinking that, and cursing their captain for his stubborn refusal to give way.
“One of Mr Partridge’s mates.” He did not see Jago’s quiet smile, although he sensed it.
“He swears she’s the Tetrarch. Served in her some years back.”
Adam nodded. Like a family. Like the men who served them, there were bad ships too.
Tetrarch was a fourth-rate, one of a rare breed now virtually erased from the Navy List. Classed as ships of the line, they had been rendered obsolete by the mounting savagery and improved gunnery of this everlasting war. The fourth-rate was neither one thing nor the other, not fast enough to serve as a frigate, and, mounting less than sixty guns, no match for the battering she must withstand in the line of battle. Ship to ship. Gun to gun.
Tetrarch had been caught off Ushant some three years ago. Attacked and captured by two French frigates, she
