Jago smiled to himself. Get back to sea. Good thing all round.
“Give way all!”
Adam saw the riding light of his ship drawing nearer and sighed.
Destiny.
15. Close Action
LIEUTENANT Leigh Galbraith got down on his knees in the cutter’s stern sheets and ducked his head under the canvas canopy to peer at the compass. When he opened the lantern’s small shutter it seemed as bright as a rocket, just as the normal sounds around him were deafening.
He closed the shutter and regained his seat beside the helmsman. By contrast it was even darker than ever now, and he could imagine the man enjoying his lieutenant’s uncertainty. He was Rist, one of Unrivalled’s senior master’s mates, and the most experienced. The stars, which paved the sky from horizon to horizon, were already paler, but Rist navigated with the assurance of one who lived by them.
Galbraith watched the regular rise and fall of oars, not too fast, not enough to sap a man’s strength when he might need it most. Even they sounded particularly loud. He tried to dismiss it from his thoughts and concentrate. The cutter’s rowlocks were clogged with grease, the oar looms muffled with sackcloth; nothing had been left to chance.
He imagined their progress as a sea bird might have seen them, had there been any at this hour. Three cutters, each astern of the other, followed by a smaller boat which had been hoisted aboard Unrivalled under cover of darkness. Was it only two nights ago? It felt like a week since they had made that early morning departure from Malta.
It had been a quiet night when they had hoisted the other boat aboard, in spite of a steady breeze through the rigging and furled sails, quiet enough to hear the music carried across the harbour from the big white building used by Vice-Admiral Bethune and his staff.
Galbraith had seen the captain by the quarterdeck rail, his hands resting on it as he watched the boat being manhandled into a position away from the others. His head had been turned towards the music, as if his thoughts were elsewhere.
Rist said quietly, “Not long now, sir.”
Galbraith failed to find comfort in his confidence. A point offcourse and the boats might pass the poorly described and charted islet; and he was in command. When daylight came in a mere two hours’ time it would lay them bare, all secrecy would be gone, and the chebecs, if they were there, would make their escape.
There were thirty-five all told in the landing party, not an army, but any larger force would increase the risk and the danger of discovery. Captain Bolitho had decided to include some marines after all, only ten, and each man, as well as their own Sergeant Everett, was an expert shot. When Galbraith had carried out a final inspection of the party before they had disembarked he had noticed that even without their uniforms they managed to look smart and disciplined. The others could have been pirates, but all were trained and experienced hands. Even the foul-mouthed hard man, Campbell, was here in the boat. In a fight he would ask no quarter, nor offer any.
Halcyon’s second lieutenant, Tom Colpoys, was in the boat furthest astern. It would be his decision either to fight or to run if his leader encountered trouble.
Colpoys was a tough, surprisingly quiet-spoken man, old for his rank, and indeed the oldest man in the landing party. Galbraith had been immediately aware of the respect he was shown by his own sailors, and of a calm assurance which could not have come easily to him. From the lower deck, he had probably served all kinds of officers before rising to that same rank.
It was good to know that he was second-in-command of what his young captain had called this “venture.”
Galbraith had taken part in several such raids throughout his varied service, but never in this sea. Here there was no running tide to cover your approach, no boom of surf to warn or guide your final decision to land.
He thought of the Algerine chebecs he had seen and had heard described by the old Jacks. They were laughed at by those who had never encountered them, as relics from a dead past, from the pharaohs to the rise of the slave trade. But those who had experience of them treated them with respect. Even their rig had improved over the years, so that they could outsail most of the smaller traders on which they preyed. Their long sweeps gave them a manoeuvrability which compensated for their lack of armament. A man-of-war, with a fully trained and disciplined company, but becalmed, could become a victim in minutes. A chebec could pull around the ship’s stern and fire point-blank with her one heavy cannon through the unprotected poop. And then the Algerines would board their victim, without either fear or mercy. It was said that the dead were the lucky ones, compared with the horrors which inevitably followed.
He saw Williams, one of Unrivalled’s gunner’s mates, bending over the heavy bag he had brought with him. Another professional, he had been entrusted with fuses, powder, and the combining of both into a floating inferno. Galbraith had seen him clambering over the small boat they had hoisted aboard, supervising the placing and lashing of each deadly parcel. If anything could dislodge the chebecs, this miniature fireship would do it. If they were driven from shelter and forced into deeper water, even they would be no match for Unrivalled’s speed and armament.
“Now, sir!” Rist eased the tiller-bar without waiting for an order. Galbraith saw the man in the bows waving his arm above his head, and then pointing firmly across the starboard bow. Nothing was said, nobody turned to watch, and so break the steady stroke of oars.
Galbraith wanted to wipe his face with his hand. “Ease the stroke-allow the others to see what we are about!”
He was surprised at the calmness of his own voice. At any moment a shot might shatter the stillness, another boat forge out from the invisible islet. Only the handful of marines had loaded muskets. Anything else would be madness. He himself had been in the middle of a raid when someone had tripped and fallen, exploding his musket and rousing the enemy.
It was no consolation now. He touched the hanger at his side and wondered if he would have time to load his pistol if the worst happened. And then he saw it. Not a shape, not an outline, but like a presence which must have been visible for a long time, and yet hidden, betrayed only by the missing stars which formed its backcloth.
He gripped Rist’s shoulder. “We’ll go in! Beach her! ” Afterwards he wondered how he had managed to grin. “If there is a poxy beach!”
Then he was scrambling through the boat, steadying himself on a shoulder here, an oarsman’s arm there. Men he knew, or thought he did, who would trust him, because there was no other choice.
“Boat your oars. Roundly, there!”
Galbraith heaved himself over and almost fell as the water surged around his thighs and boots, dragging at him, while the cutter plunged on towards the paler patch of land.
More men were over the side now, and one gasped aloud as he stumbled on hard sand or shingle. The boat grated noisily aground, men rocking and guiding the suddenly clumsy hull until it eventually came to rest.
Galbraith wiped spray from his mouth and eyes. Figures were hurrying away, like the spokes of a wheel, and he had to shake himself to recall the next details. But all he could think was that they had remembered what to do. Exactly as it had been outlined to them on the frigate’s familiar deck. Yesterday… it was impossible.
Someone said hoarsely, “Next boat comin’ in, sir!”
Galbraith pointed. “Tell Mr Rist! Then go and help them to beach!”
And suddenly the small hump of beach was full of figures, men seizing their weapons, others making the boats secure, and the gunner’s mate, Williams, floundering almost chest-deep in water while he controlled the last boat in the procession.
Lieutenant Colpoys sounded satisfied. “They’ll lie easy enough here, sir.” He was peering up at the ridge of high ground. “The buggers would be down on us by now if they’d heard anything!”
“I’m going up to get my bearings, Tom.” Galbraith touched his arm. “Call me Leigh, if you like. Not sir, in this godforsaken place!”
He began to climb, Rist close on his heels, breathing heavily, more used to Unrivalled’s quarterdeck than this kind of exercise.
Galbraith paused and dropped on one knee. He could see the extent of the ridge now, jutting up from nowhere.
