he was at a guess about Galbraith’s age. He had fair hair, tied in an old-style queue, and there was blood on his waistcoat, which the officer was attempting to staunch.
Galbraith said, “M’sieur, I must tell you…”
The eyes opened and stared up at him, a clear hazel. The breathing was sharp and painful.
“No formalities, Lieutenant. I speak English.” He coughed, and blood ran over the other man’s fingers. “I suppose I am English. So strange, that it should come to this.”
Galbraith stared around. “Surgeon?”
“None. So many shortages.”
“I will take you to my ship. Can you manage that?”
What did it matter? A renegade Englishman; there was a slight accent, possibly American. Perhaps one of the original privateers. And yet he did not seem old enough. He stood up; he was wasting time.
“Rig a bosun’s chair. You, Corporal Sykes, attend this officer’s wound.” He saw the doubt in the marine’s eyes. “It is important!”
Creagh shouted, “’Nother boat shovin’ off, sir!”
Galbraith nodded. Captain Bolitho had seen or guessed what was happening. A prize crew, then. And there was still the dismasted brig to deal with. He needed to act quickly, to organise his boarding party, to have the prisoners searched for concealed weapons.
But something made him ask, “What is your name, Captain?”
He lay back against the others, his eyes quite calm despite the pain.
“Lovatt.” He attempted to smile. “Roddie-Lovatt.”
“Bosun’s chair rigged, sir!”
Galbraith said, “We have a good surgeon. What is the nature of your wound?”
He could hear the other boat hooking on, voices shouting to one another, thankful that reinforcements had arrived. All danger forgotten, perhaps until the night watches, when there would be thoughts for all men.
Lovatt did not conceal his contempt as he said bitterly, “A pistol ball. From one of my gallant sailors yonder. When I refused to haul down the flag.”
Galbraith put his hand on the shoulder of the boy, who had not left the wounded man.
“Go with the others!”
His mind was full. An English captain who was probably an American; a ship which had been handed to the enemy after a mutiny; and a French flag.
The boy tried to free himself and Lovatt said quietly, “Please, Lieutenant. Paul is my son.”
Two seamen carried him to the hastily rigged boatswain’s chair. Once, Lovatt cried out, the sound torn from him, and reached for his son’s hand. His eyes moved to the newly hoisted flag at the peak, the White Ensign, so fresh, so clean above the pain and the smell of death.
He whispered, “Your flag now, Lieutenant.”
Galbraith signalled to the waiting boat’s crew and saw Midshipman Bellairs peering up at him. He would learn another lesson today.
Lovatt was muttering, “Flags, Lieutenant… We are all mercenaries in war.”
Galbraith saw blood on the deck and realised it was his own, from the leg he had cut when climbing aboard.
The chair was being hoisted and then swayed out over the gangway.
He said, “Go with him, boy. Lively now!”
Creagh joined him by the side as the chair was lowered into the boat, where Bellairs was waiting to receive it.
“Found this, sir.” He held out a sword. “Th’ cap’n’s, they says.”
Galbraith took it and felt the drying blood adhering to his fingers. A sword. All that was left of a man. Something to be handed on. He thought of the old Bolitho blade, which today his captain had worn. Or forgotten.
He studied the hilt. One of the early patterns, with a five-ball design, which had been so resented by sea officers when it had been introduced as the first regulation sword. Most officers had preferred their own choice of blade.
Deliberately, he half-drew it from its leather scabbard and read the engraving. He could even picture the establishment, in the Strand in London, the same sword-cutlers from whom he had obtained the hanger at his hip.
He stared across at his own ship, and at the boat rising and dipping in the swell on its errand of mercy.
Better he had been killed, he thought. A King’s officer who had become a traitor: if he lived through this, he might soon wish otherwise.
He sighed. Wounded to be dealt with, dead to be put over. And a meal of sorts. After that… He felt his dried lips crack into a smile.
He was alive, and they had won the day. It was enough. It had to be.
8. No Escape
DENIS O’BEIRNE, Unrivalled’s surgeon, climbed wearily up the quarterdeck ladder and paused to recover his breath. The sea was calmer, the sun very low on the horizon.
The ship’s company was still hard at work. There were men high in the yards, splicing a few remaining breakages, and on the main deck the sailmaker and his crew were sitting cross-legged like so many tailors, their palms and needles moving in unison, ensuring that not a scrap of canvas would be wasted. Apart from the unusual disorder, it was hard to believe that the ship had exchanged fire on this same day, that men had died. Not many, but enough in a small, self-contained company.
O’Beirne had served in the navy for twelve years, mostly in larger vessels, ships of the line, always teeming with humanity, overcrowded and, to a man of his temperament, oppressive. Blockade duty in all weathers, men forced aloft in a screaming gale, only to be recalled to set more sail if the weather changed in their favour. Bad food, crude conditions; he had often wondered how the sailors endured it.
A frigate was something else. Lively, independent if her captain was ambitious and able to free himself from the fleet’s apron strings, and imbued with a sense of companionship which was entirely different. He had observed it with his usual interest, seen it deepen in the few months since Unrivalled had commissioned on that bitterly cold day at Plymouth, and the ship’s first captain had read himself in.
As surgeon he was privileged to share the wardroom with the officers, and during that period he had learned more about his companions than they probably knew. He had always been a good listener, a man who enjoyed sharing the lives of others without becoming a part of them.
A surgeon was classed as a warrant officer, his status somewhere between sailing-master and purser. A craftsman rather than a gentleman. Or as one old sawbones had commented, neither profitable, comfortable, nor respectable.
In recent years the Sick and Hurt Office had worked diligently to improve the naval surgeon’s lot, and to bring them into line with army medical officers. Either way, O’Beirne could not imagine himself doing anything else.
He was entitled to one of the hutch-like cabins allotted to the lieutenants, but preferred his own company in the sickbay below the waterline. His world. Those who visited him voluntarily came in awe; others who were carried to him, like those he had left on the orlop deck, or had seen being put over the side in a hasty burial, had no choice.
He glanced around the quarterdeck. Here, in this place of authority and purpose, the roles were reversed.
Unrivalled was rolling steeply despite the sea’s calmer face, lying to as she had for the entire day, with the battered Tetrarch under her lee, the air alive with hammers and squealing blocks as the boarding party had used every trick and skill known to seamen to erect a jury-rig, enough for Tetrarch to get under way again, and be escorted to Malta.
The little brig had capsized and vanished even before many of her wounded could be ferried to safety. He had heard few regrets from anyone, and even the loss of potential prize-money had seemed insignificant.
