He looked up. Napier was watching him from the pantry door.
'Yes?' Then he waved the letter, softening it. 'You did not warrant that sharp welcome.'
Napier rubbed one foot over the other.
'Are you not eating, sir?'
Adam stood up, and watched a boat pulling beneath Unrivalled's counter. The guardboat. Their own. Galbraith had not questioned the need for secrecy, nor would he.
He folded the letter. So Keen had known about Catherine's visit too. fie confronted it. With Sillitoe; it had to be. She needed someone.
He stared at the closed skylight. The cabin was like an oven, but the lanterns would draw insects like bees to honey. And they stung. He sighed. A far cry from Nancy 's Falmouth.
lie realized that Napier was still staring at him.
'Some sliced pork, David, you know the way I…'
The boy nodded gravely. 'Fine-sliced, fried pale brown with biscuit crumbs.' He gave a rare grin. 'With black treacle!'
He hurried away.
Adam opened the skylight a few inches and heard the hum of voices, men passing the off-watch hours on deck, seeing the sights, enjoying the breeze, no matter how feeble. A violin, too. Not the shantyman this time, but well played, one of those sad melodies beloved by sailors.
Something stung his wrist and he closed the skylight abruptly. He heard Napier leaving for the galley, no doubt mystified that his captain should eat such spartan food when he could enjoy better fare ashore.
He had begun a letter to his aunt and would finish it tonight before he turned in. And tomorrow they would stand out to sea again. Like those converging lines on Cristie's charts. Meeting where, and for what?
He crossed to the inner screen to study the old sword hanging in its place, catching the lantern light. Napier took care of that also.
He had often thought about the sword, long before it had come to him. In so many of those portraits…
He smiled sadly. And it would have been given to my father.
He recalled Herrick's words, his bitterness. Hatred, like love, never dies.
He saw the goblet on his desk, the cognac, where Napier always placed it.
It was a warning.
Frank Rist, master's mate, closed the chartroom door and made his way to the companion ladder. He had examined the charts that Cristie would require a day or so out of Freetown. It was never necessary, but Cristie always expected it. Nothing left to chance. Rist had taken the opportunity to test the new magnifying glass the boy Ede had made for him. It was amazing, he thought. From a few oddments, he had explained. Oddments. It looked as if it had been made in a top-quality instrument shop, and somehow he knew that Ede had wanted to do it for him. Need would be a better word for it. As if it was his way of holding on to something, and not to beg favours as some might expect. A quiet, almost gentle youth, who certainly did not belong in these rough, brutal surroundings which only a seasoned Jack would recognise as offering comradeship.
It was hard to think of Ede as dangerous, although Rist had heard that he had been seized and charged for wounding his employer with a pair of scissors. Attempted murder, they said. Somebody had spoken up for him, and a lesser charge suggested, and it had not been opposed by the victim, which was strange. But young or not, he would have hanged otherwise.
lie was good with his hands; Rist had even seen Joseph Sullivan allow him to fix some tiny fitting on his model of Spartiate. And Rist knew that Sullivan, an otherwise calm and easy-going man, would have beaten anyone senseless who dared to touch his work.
Ile rested on a gun and stared across the harbour, all in deep shadow now. A few boats still on the move, but most of them had given up trying to get alongside Unrivalled. It was not unknown for women to be smuggled on hoard, through gun ports, even up the anchor cable itself, to remain undiscovered but well used until the morning watch. But not Unrivalled. Marines at entry port and beakhead, on the gangways and out in a guardboat. Just to be sure.
They were going to sea for a purpose. Anything was better than rotting in harbour.
lie had thought a lot about the boarding party which had been slaughtered. Men like those here on deck, yarning and passing the time. After a meal of salt beef from the cask, hard biscuit, all washed down with some of the purser's coarse red wine, Black Strap, the sailors called it. They were in the mood for gossip, and outrage over the cold-blooded murders. And now, they did not even have the prize Albatroz to pass bets on.
Rist watched the lights ashore and found himself wondering again if there were people there who knew about the proposed mission, which would begin tomorrow. He tried to laugh it off. If so, it's more than we do.! But it would not come.
He had never forgotten the risks in the trade. When they had boarded Albatroz with the high-and-mighty Lieutenant Varlo, he had been tensed up hard, and ready. And once aboard he had made sure that two of the swivel guns were loaded and primed, and trained inboard. At the first hint of danger, a daisy-cutter could have swept the decks as clean as a parson's plate.
Somebody must have got slack, over-confident. The appearance of the second vessel had tipped the balance. He had heard some of the hands exclaim, 'There was no need to kill our lads! They could've let 'em run for it!'
Rist knew differently. There would be every need to kill them.
It was when they had arrived in Freetown and the boarding party had been relieved by a military guard from the barracks that it had happened. The big, hard-faced master, Cousens, had called out, 'You'll never hold on to us!' Then, as Varlo was climbing into the jollyboat, he had added sharply, 'I knows you from somewhere, don't I?' And he had smiled, sneered. 'Don't worry, matey, it'll come to me, then we'll see!'
It was unlikely. But it was not impossible. All those years, some he could scarcely remember, others he still tried to forget. It was just possible.
'You have the watch, I believe?'
Rist knew it was Varlo. You couldn't help knowing.
'Sir?'
'Time for Rounds. Send for a bosun's mate and ship's corporal.'
Never a please, or offer of thanks. He could smell the drink on his breath too. Maybe he would fall down a ladder and break his poxy neck.
Alhatroz had sailed. They would probably never lay eyes on her again.
He turned as two more figures appeared by the companionway. One was the first lieutenant; the other was Hawkins, the ship's newest and youngest midshipman.
Varlo said, 'I'm about to carry out Rounds, Mr Galbraith.'
Rist relaxed, muscle by muscle, glad of the interruption. The evening ritual of Rounds, when the lieutenant on duty would inspect all aspects of cleanliness, security and safety. Messdeck to magazines, defaulters, if any, to be inspected also or given extra work.
Galbraith said, 'Hands will be called two hours early. Both watches will be fed before the boats are hoisted. Weigh anchor at eight bells.'
Rist could almost feel their exchange of glances. No love lost there.
Galbraith continued in a more informal fashion, 'And, Mr Hawkins-first time doing Rounds, I hear?' The boy stammered something, and Galbraith said, 'Just remember, when you are on the messdeck it is a part of ship, but it is also their home. So show respect, as I'm sure you would elsewhere!'
Rist kept his face straight. For Varlo's benefit, he thought. The boy was too young to know anything.
Galbraith watched the little group move away, and soon he could hear the shrill twitter of the call, and imagined men in their messes, at their scrubbed tables, loose gear stowed away, illegal bottles of hoarded rum well hidden from the officer's prying eye.
Men who would fight and if necessary kill when ordered. Die too, if the cards played a false hand. Tough and hardened men like Isaac Dias, the gun captain who could measure the fall of each shot with accuracy, although he could neither read nor write. And Sullivan, who had been at Trafalgar, and Campbell who seemed to cherish the scars on his hack like battle honours. And youngsters like Napier, the captain's servant, somehow untainted by the violence and crude language around him. He wondered if Adam Bolitho realized what he had done for the boy. It went far beyond hero worship. Or the youth he had seen talking to Rist, who now had work he understood and
