seaman. The other one you kept for yourself.
He turned away as Galbraith yelled his orders to the boatswain's party waiting by the foremast. Leaving port. Would he never get used to it? The excitement, the small pictures you never left behind. Fishermen standing in their frail craft to wave, their cheers soundless in the din of canvas and feet running to halliards and braces. A small packet ship under French colours, dipping her flag as they had passed her. The old enemy; the sea, perhaps, was the only true thing they held in common.
He had levelled his glass on the land, the Sound already swallowed up astern, and imagined her as she must have been, writing the note, some sudden whim or determination making her give it to some waterman for delivery. Maybe she was already regretting it, fearing it might he misinterpreted or worse. He had put his own letter to her in the guardboat. It would be delivered to Bryan Ferguson; if she had not already gone away, he would find her.
He heard one of the helmsmen curse quietly, saw him gesture at something on the big double wheel, the replacement for one shot to pieces.
He touched his side again. There might have been no letter. He thought, too, of the marine who had died, dropping his musket. A man well liked, and remembered because he had once served under the young Captain Nelson in the Agamemnon, 'Old Aggie, ' as she was affectionately known.
Was there someone left, perhaps in Plymouth, who would grieve for him? Or would it he yet another lost name, like the Paradox's boatswain, who had come from St Keverne overlooking the Manacles, which they had discussed while he lay dying. So many. Too many.
He had contained a sudden and, he knew, unreasonable anger when he had read the letter from a retired rearadmiral who had served with Sandell's father, and had sponsored the boy for his appointment as midshipman. No sadness, no pity. If anything, only a resentful disapproval that a would-be officer had been lost at sea, without proper investigation, a fault, surely, of his captain. Would he have cared so much for procedure if a lowly landman had been missing overboard?
He saw Midshipman Deighton standing by the flag locker with his chosen hands, frowning slightly as he studied his signals card, then he smiled at something said by a master's mate. And he saw Lieutenant Bellairs turn from his station with the afterguard, to watch with, he thought, a certain sadness, as if seeing someone else. Then he was with his men again. He would get over it. There was no other way.
He seized the hammock nettings as the ship crashed into a long, unbroken roller. And what would be the outcome of this venture? It was the admiral's total responsibility; his was the decision whether to call the Dey's bluff, or commit all his ships and men to the onslaught of battle. No ship could match gun for gun with a carefully sited shore battery. And there might be heated shot, and fire, every sailor's only real fear. According to the written orders, the Dey had mounted a thousand cannon or more, perhaps in those same old crumbling batteries he had seen for himself when he had cut out an enemy ship from the anchorage, and afterwards when Admiral Lord Rhodes had made his attack with bomb vessels and his own heavier ships in support. But too far out to find and destroy those hidden guns.
Exmouth was a frigate man. Had been. How would he perceive, and accept, a challenge which might end in disaster?
He saw Galbraith studying him, trying not to show it. He, too, was changed in some way. Troubled by his captain? Unsure of him, after what had happened?
Adam faced into the wind, coming harder now across the quarter, tasting it. Like the tears that day, fallen on his hand.
Whatever happened they must be ready, for treachery and for traps.
A voice seemed to insist, You must be ready. You.
He called, 'Get the courses on her, Mr Galbraith! Another hand on the helm, too!'
He saw him lift his speaking-trumpet, men poised and ready to respond to his orders, their bodies stripped and shining with spray. Like those warriors to whom she had alluded, in the myths and traditions of ancient times of which he knew so little. She had described him as a man of war. Perhaps she had not truly understood how apt that had been. There had never been opportunity or leisure to become anything else, for the boy who had walked from Penzance to Falmouth. The frigate captain.
lie heard the thunder of released canvas as it filled and hardened to the wind. Unrivalled was standing hard over, every eighteenpounder on the weather side throwing its weight on the breechings.
They might walk together again. And she would share it with him.
lie stared into the wind until the spray almost blinded him.
She must know. It came like a fist from nowhere. Why she had written that brief note, which now seemed to hold such urgency.
God he with you. It was like hearing her voice.
'More hands on the weather forebrace, Mr Fielding! Move yourselves.',
Adam stared at the land again, almost lost now in the wind and spray. A green haze, without real form or substance. It would soon he gone once they changed tack.
He waited for the ship to steady, the sails shining like metal breastplates, then he strode to the quarterdeck rail and gripped it with both hands.
Fear was an enemy, but it could he held at hay. When others looked to you, there was never any choice. The faces sometimes came back to remind him. He had seen it in Bellairs just now, Galbraith also. Seeking something, other than trust.
It was a long time ago, another voice. I don't want to die. Please, God, not now.
But the voice was his own.
18. 'Prepare For Battle!'
LUKE JAGO stood with his legs braced against the ship's easy motion, his hat tilted to shield his eyes from the unwavering glare. To some he might appear composed, even indifferent. Those who did not know him.
It was always the same, he thought, from the moment the order was piped through the ship. All hands! All hands, lay aft to witness punishment! It was a part of life in the navy: good or bad, you accepted it.
Often you never really knew how it had begun, or if it could have been prevented. Order, discipline, routine; he should be used to it by now.
Perhaps it was boredom. It was almost a month since Unrivalled had left Plymouth. They had caught up with the fleet at Gibraltar, anchored while many of the lame ducks were still making their final approach.
But after that the ship had spent almost all of her time at sea, keeping contact with other frigates, the admiral's scouts, only half aware of the planning and the scheming which must have been taking place.
He glanced over the heads of the assembled company at the horizon, like molten metal from a furnace, and, beyond it, what looked like a far-off, unmoving cloud. Africa.
He heard Hastie, the master-at-arms, call, 'Prisoner seized up, sir!'
Jago moved forward, a few feet behind the captain's left shoulder, his body angled only slightly against the quarterdeck rail.
He looked briefly at the prisoner. Stripped to the waist and seized up to a rigged grating, head twisted round to stare up at the figures on the quarterdeck. A small group of midshipmen on one side, the officer of the watch, Bellairs, on the other, a mass of off-watch and unemployed sailors filling the usually busy deck, 'the marketplace, ' they termed it.
The watchkeepers were going about their normal affairs, on the gangways, splicing and attending to the running rigging, some working far above the deck, while topsails and jibs flapped or filled to a wind which was little more than a hot breeze.
Jago had heard the master cursing it. Maybe some fast sailing, when every man was required to work the ship, was what they needed.
The prisoner, for instance, an ordinary seaman named Bellamy, not one of the usual troublemakers or hard men. Probably just his bad luck.
He half-listened to the captain's voice reading the relevant section of the Articles of War. Jago knew it by heart. He felt his shoulders stiffen, remembering the moment, the sickening blow of the lash across his naked hack. He
