In the King`s Name

16 NO QUARTER

VINCENT FACED AFT and touched his hat. “Onward cleared for action, sir!”

Adam returned his salute and stood looking along the length of the upper deck. Vincent’s formal use of the ship’s name seemed to make it more personal. Immediate.

He had already seen Maddock, the gunner, on his way to the semi-darkness of the magazine, his felt slippers gripped in one hand, appearing to glance briefly at the guns with a word or a nod to each crew. His head was, as usual, cocked to one side in case the deafness caused him to miss something, which in Maddock’s case was unlikely.

These were his men. Every day of their lives they carried out countless tasks to keep the ship alive and running. But in the end, this was their purpose. To work and fight these guns; if necessary to die doing it. They often discussed it, even joked about it, on messdecks and in wardroom alike. But now the ship was quiet. Waiting.

Vincent said, “They knocked two minutes off the time, sir.” It was meant to break the tension but his face remained drawn, and Adam thought he was in need of a good sleep.

Adam looked up as the topsails flapped untidily before filling once more. The land still seemed a long way away, but it was having its effect, like a giant barrier. He touched the telescope he had borrowed, but changed his mind.

“Load when you’re ready. As planned. Not a race.” Vincent was already gesturing to a bosun’s mate. “But don’t run out!”

He moved nearer to the wheel where Tobias Julyan was comparing notes with Tozer, his mate. Julyan peered up at the masthead pendant and pursed his lips.

“We’ll be losing a knot or two when we change tack next time, sir.”

Tozer ventured, “The last time afore we enter harbour, sir.”

Adam turned and saw the leadsman in the chains hauling in his line, his mouth soundlessly forming the soundings. Then he shouted, “By the mark, ten!”

Julyan grinned. “No wonder it’s a long haul!” Ten fathoms. Sixty feet. Onward drew three fathoms.

The second leadsman was already leaning against his apron, and lowering his own lead in readiness.

They were feeling their way, like a blind man tapping along an unfamiliar street.

Adam said, “Part of your ‘valley’?”

Julyan nodded, feeling the pocket where he kept his bulky notebook. “Don’t want to scrape off her barnacles just yet, sir.”

“Deep nine!”

Julyan licked his lips. “I think I’ll keep my mouth shut!”

Surprisingly, one of the helmsmen laughed.

The rest was drowned by the rumble of gun trucks as breechings were cast off, and the eighteen-pounders were manhandled inboard and loaded under the watchful eye of every senior hand. Adam saw the fists raised as each crew finished. But the guns were not run out.

He looked up at the tops where Royal Marines, stripped of their bright coats, were already lying or crouching with muskets or manning the swivel guns. They would be feeling the full heat of the sun up there.

Adam walked to the side of the quarterdeck and touched one of the blunt carronades as he passed. Hot, as if it had just been fired, and already loaded, each round packed with cast-iron balls in tiers, and deadly metal disks. At short range, they could transform a crowded deck into a slaughterhouse.

He unslung the telescope and trained it abeam, and felt the metal sear his fingers. Towards and across the harbour entrance. Like the impression on the chart, “hacked out of the African coastline,” as Julyan had described it.

He imagined the governor’s building. The line of cannon, and the flag. Not a lot of room to manoeuvre, but compared with Portsmouth Harbour, where ships of the line were expected to enter and depart at the drop of a signal, New Haven seemed spacious.

And quiet.

Vincent said, “Shall I shorten sail, sir?” He had moved to join him, perhaps so the others would not be concerned by any apparent lastminute hesitation. And so they might.

Adam looked briefly at the feathered wind-vane. “We’re going in.”

“And the boats? Cast them adrift?”

Adam glanced down at the boat tier. If boats were kept aboard during a fight, their flying splinters caused more casualties. He had seen it often enough, even as a midshipman. Like David … He shut his mind to it.

“Hold your course, Mark. Be ready to run out.” Their eyes met. “Then fire when I give the word!”

“By th’ mark, seven!”

Captain James Tyacke paused at the top of a steep slope and leaned against a pile of freshly cut timber. He sensed that the cutter’s crew had also stopped, and were watching him or peering up and around at the bare headland. There was not only timber, but piles of bricks, either to extend the pier or the gun emplacements, most of which faced the harbour entrance or the open sea. The musket fire and the single explosion had demonstrated more clearly than anything that the threat was coming from the opposite direction.

He tugged at his coat and drew a long, slow breath; he was sweating strongly. The uniform had been a gesture. He was paying for it now.

He could see the flagstaff clearly against the sky, and some of the buildings also; he could even see that the flag halliard was lifting and trailing slightly in the hot wind, which Fitzgerald had already noted with his keen and younger eyes. Not lowered. It had been cut.

Perhaps the governor, Ballantyne, had already sighted Onward and was attempting to warn her?

Fitzgerald said, “Heads down, lads, but keep your eyes open!” Calmly enough, but there was an edge to his words. He was looking down toward the jetty and pier, and the sea beyond. A sailor’s instinct.

Napier was squatting on a slab of rock, the satchel between his feet. He looked up and found Tyacke’s eyes on him and smiled.

It was time to move. Their arrival must have been seen. Tyacke fought the desire to turn and stare back at the sea. Suppose something had made Adam change his mind? Who would dispute it, or blame him?

Fitzgerald stood up and eased his shoulders. “I was thinkin’, sor …” There was a faint click and he froze, and another voice murmured, “Still! Someone’s comin’!”

Tyacke groped for his sword hilt, but let his hand fall. If he had led them into a trap, it was already too late. He called, “Stand fast!” and gestured to Napier. “You, with me!”

He stared past the others at the litter of building gear and beyond, like a skeleton against the hillside, a partly demolished barn with a rusting horseshoe nailed on a post.

“An unavoidable delay, Captain Tyacke, but you are welcome, beyond words!” It was a deep, authoritative voice, and for a moment seemed to come from nowhere, or the ground itself.

Tyacke had on two occasions seen, but never met, Sir Duncan Ballantyne, but he was as he remembered, and as Adam Bolitho had described. A face from the Armada. Even to the neatly trimmed beard, showing grey now against darkly tanned skin.

He strode toward them, frowning with a faint disapproval as one of the seamen released the hammer of his musket. He said calmly, “My own men were watching you as well.”

Two or three heads appeared as he spoke, and Tyacke saw the gleam of weapons. He took the proferred hand. Strong, but the palm was smooth. A gentleman.

Tyacke said, controlling the urge to touch his scars, “How did you know my name?”

Ballantyne smiled diplomatically.

“I know of only one flag captain.” His dark eyes rested on Napier. “A younger blood, too. I am honoured!” He gestured toward the building with its empty flag mast. “Come.”

He was coatless, but Tyacke noted the finely made shirt and white breeches, obviously expensive, as were the black riding boots, their polish gleaming beneath the inevitable coating of dust. About sixty years of age, according to Flags’ notebook. Without the beard, he would seem younger.

Guilty, he thought. You’re as guilty as hell. And one day I’ll prove it.

Ballantyne had stopped and was pointing back at the water. “I see that you were taking no chances, either!” He laughed.

The corporal was standing bareheaded behind his swivel gun, his hair in the sunlight blazing almost as brightly as his uniform.

Tyacke found that he had fallen into step beside Ballantyne. Corporal Price would have known that, at this range and bearing, the swivel gun would have been an indiscriminate killer.

“Your men can rest a while.” Ballantyne waved toward the nearest building. “I can offer you something to quench your thirst.” Again the quick, quizzical glance. “But we are under siege at present! Here-I will show you something.” He halted again. “Your ship is under sail? Then who commands her?”

“Captain Adam Bolitho. I understood that you had already met him.”

The tanned hand was on Tyacke’s sleeve. “Bolitho? Must be God’s will!” He repeated the name, as if his mind was elsewhere. “A fine young man. But a certain sadness in him too, I felt.”

They had reached the gateway to a circular courtyard, cobbled, and probably built by slaves. Common enough in New Haven, or whatever it had originally been called. But Tyacke noticed none of it. Across the courtyard before him was the mast, the severed halliard still catching the breeze from the sea.

A man lay dead at the foot of the mast, but one hand was still moving, firmly grasping the halliard. The same green uniform, but with a piece of scarlet bunting which Tyacke had at first taken for blood wrapped around his neck like a scarf.

Ballantyne kicked a loose stone across the yard until it rolled against the corpse.

He said, “So that they can tell the difference!” He turned back toward Tyacke, his eyes filling his face. “Mutineers, rebels, call them what you will. They are still traitors!”

He walked on, and although Tyacke was a tall man he had to quicken his pace to keep up with him. He thought he had seen some human shadows through a colonnade, as if there were others watching, perhaps waiting to remove the dead intruder.

Now they were on another side of the building, on a terrace overlooking the next stretch of anchorage. There were a few small vessels, obviously derelict or abandoned, and beyond, the full panorama of hills.

Tyacke kept walking toward the low wall but stopped when Ballantyne touched his sleeve.

“No further, Captain. We are possibly out of range here, but why take the risk?”

As if in response there was a dull bang, probably a musket, but no hint of any fall of shot.

Ballantyne said calmly, “We are the ones under siege. We can withstand any frontal attack by those scum, but we are cut off from our supply routes.” His hand indicated the terrace. “This place was built to defend others!”

He had taken Tyacke’s arm again. “Look yonder, Captain. Perhaps the fight is already lost!”

Tyacke shaded his eyes with his hat to gaze across the glittering breadth of New Haven. There was wreckage clinging to a long sandbar, and smaller fragments still breaking away beneath a layer of fine smoke, like mist. Tyacke recognised the shape of the vessel’s hull, and the gleam of blue paint, which he knew had only recently been applied. Now a total wreck, mastless and abandoned, if any one had lived long enough to escape.

He said quietly, “Endeavour. One of my patrols.”

There were more shots, no closer, even haphazard. As if they were being held in check. Then he said, “We picked up one of your men. That was how we knew about the mutiny.” He dragged out a crumpled piece of paper and flattened it on a bench, away from the wall. It was badly stained with smoke and dried blood.

Ballantyne stared at it and nodded slowly, several times. “John Staples. Acting bosun. A good man. I should have seen it coming.” He swung round and exclaimed, “I’ll not go under without a fight, damn their bloody eyes!” It was strange to see him suddenly defeated.

Tyacke felt someone beside him. It was David Napier, holding a telescope which must have been concealed in the satchel.

“I didn’t know you had that with you.”

“The captain told me to bring it. In case we might need it.” Napier’s chin lifted, and he sounded very young. “Do we, sir?”

Like a hand on the shoulder. Tyacke swung toward the harbour entrance, his mind suddenly ice-clear. A single shot. One of the deaf gunner’s “specials.” The signal. Onward was on the way. No matter what.

He took the old telescope with its finely engraved inscription, and opened it carefully, almost reverently. Bolitho’s telescope. Like those other times.

Napier watched him, conscious of the sudden silence around them. “What can I do, sir?”

Tyacke answered without hesitation, “Fetch our flag from the cutter. Tell Fitzgerald to run it up to the masthead.”

He broke off, his mind too full to continue. He did not even hear Napier say, “I’ll do it myself!”

Tyacke was watching the picture in the powerful lens acquire shape and significance. Like seashells caught in the reflected glare. Onward‘s topsails.

He hardly recognised his own voice. “Sir Duncan, you’re not alone any more.”

• • •

Adam Bolitho stood at the quarterdeck rail, one hand resting lightly on the smooth wood, which seemed to burn beneath the sun. It helped him to remain in the same place, where he could see and be seen, when every urge and instinct dictated that he should be on the move.

It was quiet, the shipboard noises muffled, perhaps by their slow progress. The most persistent sound came from an almost constant alteration of helm, the creak of the big double wheel, or a sharp correction from quartermaster or helmsman.

A glance aloft, and the loosely flapping topsails and listless pendant told their own story: the nearness of land. Without moving, Adam had watched the rugged coastline creeping out on either bow, as if Onward were intent on running ashore.

He could sense the readiness among the men around him. Extra hands now at braces and halliards, a few wearing bandages. Even those from the sick quarters were not spared. And the men at the guns, some peering at the land, visible now on both sides, or looking aft. Waiting was the worst part.

“By the mark, seven!”

Adam watched the leadsman hauling in his line, his bare shoulders wet with spray. He tried to recall the chart and Julyan’s crude but accurate copy. Holding steady. He glanced at the tiny white shape on the nearest elbow of land. Soon after this, more soundings would be necessary.

A splash and a brief flurry of smoke: the last of the galley fire.

He saw a seaman climbing aloft, carrying a container of water and watched by the nearest gun crews. All their mouths were as dry as dust, but the plight of the marines, the marksmen sprawled in the tops, must be far worse.

He saw Lieutenant Devereux talking to two of his men by the fore hatch, in full uniform, sword gleaming at his side. The duelling sword, Adam wondered? Devereux was smiling, and so were his men.

He heard Vincent speak to the quartermaster before joining him at the rail.

“Good thing we didn’t lower the boats after all, sir. We don’t need another anchor!” He seemed calm enough, but his voice was edged with the usual impatience. A first lieutenant’s lot. Adam had not forgotten what it was like.

Vincent looked sharply along the deck as somebody gave a wild cheer. “What the hell!”

But others had joined in, gun crews peering or climbing on to their gangways, even individuals calling from yards or shrouds.

Luke Jago shouted up from the boat tier, “They’ve run up the flag, Cap’n!”

Adam reached instinctively for his telescope, then remembered. Our flag. He saw a seaman turn toward him, grinning. Perhaps he had spoken aloud. He walked to the side and lifted his hat to the shore.

Someone called out, “Wreckage, larboard bow, sir!”

Vincent said, “I’ll be up forrard, sir.”

“And I shall be here, Mark.”

The cheering had stopped. There were more shots, but it was impossible to judge the bearing or distance. Like the wind, it was playing tricks. Adam stared at the headland again: the ensign was very clear now, a twin of the one above the poop.

Midshipman Hotham offered him the big signals telescope. “They’re on the wall, sir.”

Adam trained it carefully and waited for the criss-cross of rigging to dissolve away. There were faces on the first stretch of the battery wall, and somebody was waving, perhaps cheering as Onward came past. Well-sited guns were a ship’s worst enemy, apart from fire. He moved the glass again and saw Vincent’s face pass, blurred and barely recognisable. Squire would be on his way aft to relieve him. Both good officers, but any newcomer might think they scarcely knew each other.

The telescope steadied, finding the range. A few boats huddled together, a shed and part of a slipway, then a cluster of ragged trees. Adam tensed. Someone running.

He heard Squire’s heavy breathing beside him, but did not lower the telescope.

“What do you make of it, James?”

Squire wiped the sweat from his cheek with the back of his hand. “I think the attackers must be on this side, sir. A few marksmen maybe, but until they can-” A jagged ridge of spray rose and fell, interrupting him. “Maybe only one gun. But properly laid and trained, all it would take to slow or disable them while stronger forces were summoned.”

Adam said, “Run out!”

He did not even hear the pipe, only the chorus of gunports being hoisted open. Showing her teeth.

“Ready, sir!”

Onward was heeling slightly, her topsails clutching and holding the offshore wind. But still no target. He could hear a few curses, and thumps from the gun deck as quoins were forced beneath the breeches to depress some of the guns still further.

Someone yelled from forward as a boat under oars pulled strongly from a tiny cove, which had been concealed by rushes or tall grass.

Adam steadied the glass again, and felt himself flinch as several flashes spurted from the boat’s gunwale. “As you bear!” He saw the nearest gun captain crouching over his breech, one hand raised, ready to jump clear.

“Fire!”

Only four guns could be brought to bear at this range. One would have been enough. The boat had taken a direct hit amidships, shattered as if by a giant’s axe. Eventually it settled and was already drifting abeam, planking, broken oars and a bare mast. And bodies.

Musket shots, but only a few, until Sergeant Fairfax’s powerful voice brought another fusillade.

“Gone soft, have you? What d’ you think they’d do to you?”

The firing began again.

Green uniforms, with scarlet scarves. Life or death.

The guns had hardly finished reloading when lookouts sighted more wreckage. The remains of a small vessel, probably one of Tyacke’s brigantines, aground on a sandbar. She had been hit at point-blank range.

Adam stared at the other shore, but the battery wall was now out of sight. Only part of the nearby settlement was still in view, and it looked deserted. Abandoned. Waiting to accept the victors, perhaps? It must have seen many over the centuries.

Squire said heavily, “The brigantine was ahead of us, sir. It took more than a few shots to do that to her.”

Adam strode to the compass and wheel, but ignored both, looking at the masthead pendant and then at the master’s dog-vane. It was holding up well in spite of its frail cluster of cork and feathers.

He saw Julyan watching him through the receding gunsmoke. He might even have smiled.

He said, almost to himself, “While we are here, they’re trapped. There’s only one way to escape.”

Another gun, but further away. No fall of shot.

Sea against land. He thought suddenly of the Battle of Algiers, some three years ago, when Pellew, now Lord Exmouth, had won a resounding victory over combined land and sea forces. He could remember his own surprise and pride when he had read the admiral’s comment in the aftermath of his victory. He had described Adam Bolitho as a born frigate captain. From England’s greatest, it was praise indeed.

A cry from the forecastle: “More wreckage-ahead, sir!”

Julyan murmured, “Soon now, I think …” He did not finish.

This was as far as a vessel of any size could reach and retain room to tack or come about. Any one else could come overland, or up-stream, as had happened during the attack on the mssion.

Adam looked along the deck, at the gun crews baking in the sun, lookouts cupping hands around their eyes, midshipmen sweating and watching the land. Everything.

And the leadsman’s chant. “Deep six!”

He thought of Vincent, up there in the eyes of the ship where their figurehead, the boy with his trident and riding a dolphin, was pointing the way.

The ship comes first.

If Onward dropped anchor to avoid running aground, she would become a sitting target, to be destroyed by guns from the shore or by waterborne explosives. He saw more pieces of wreckage drifting past, part of a topmast lifting above the rest like a charred crucifix.

“Stand by to come about! Warn all hands!”

Men running, answering the shrill of calls, some already perched on the yards high above the guns and their motionless crews. Adam saw that even the cooks and messmen were adding their weight to the braces. He thought with a sudden, strange apprehension of Tyacke and Napier. Where were they now? He looked again for the flag, even though he knew it was out of sight.

Julyan lowered his eyes, watering from staring at the sun’s path. Like tears. “Give the word, sir!”

“Belay that!” It was Squire, his head thrown back to stare up at the braced topsails even as Adam came striding toward the compass. “Foretop, sir!”

Midshipman Hotham had also heard the lookout’s cry, and although he felt a little lost without the signals telescope he could see this in his mind. Like a signal.

Enemy in sight!

Adam lowered the telescope and felt someone take it from him. The image was imprinted on his brain. The ship, almost bows-on, sails fully braced. A big schooner, three-masted, he thought, even larger than the slaver they had taken as a prize. He watched closely. They would meet and pass in half an hour at this rate. Less. The stranger would be armed, but no match for a frigate.

“The other one will try to slip past us!”

Adam looked away from the pyramid of pale canvas. It was another midshipman, Simon Huxley, waiting to act as a “walking speaking-trumpet.” His eyes were fixed on the approaching schooner.

“Ready, sir!” Julyan, anxious, fretting over the delay.

Adam shook his head. “Maintain course!” And to the quarterdeck at large, “Hold your fire!”

He had the telescope again but did not recall having taken it from Hotham. Suppose I am mistaken? On the larboard bow. About half a mile, and looking as if she were sailing on dry land. An easy error of judgment at this range, and across the hard glare of the anchorage. A trick to lead Onward into the shallows. Julyan had warned him, but he did not need it.

The smaller vessel, another schooner, was not trying to slip past while the others faced and fought.

His shirt was clinging to his body, but it felt cold. Like the dead.

“Steady!” From the corner of his eye he saw faces peering up at him from the nearest eighteen-pounder. He stared through the shrouds and ratlines, keeping his eyes on the schooner. As if she were snared in a net.

There should be uncertainty, doubt, even a consciousness of failure. There was none.

More shots, closer now, and he heard, even felt the deck shake as some found their mark. Marksmen in the tops were firing too, although at this range it would have little effect. He thought he heard Jago’s voice calling to some of the afterguard: “You’ll soon know, so watch yer front!”

Somebody was questioning why Onward was turning away from a challenge, and allowing an enemy to escape.

Julyan called, “Ready when you give the word, sir!” He was calm enough. He had no choice.

Adam gripped the rail with both hands and watched the smaller schooner’s masts begin to turn, in line, her canvas in confusion for the first time. From habit he reached for the telescope; he had lost count of the times, but this time he did not need it. Those same sails were all aback now, the hull heeling slightly, without purpose.

He knew Squire was beside him. Sharing it in his own fashion. He spoke for him. “They’ve got boats in the water! Abandoning ship!”

Adam laid his sword flat along the rail. He did not remember having drawn it. He said, “The schooner. Open fire!”

Someone shouted, “What about the boats, sir?”

Adam did not look up at the masthead pendant. There was no time left. He thought he heard Vincent directing the forward guns. He lifted his sword and knew each gun captain was watching, staring aft, eyes fixed on the blade. The sword flashed down; every gun on the larboard quarter must have fired simultaneously. Even as their recoil was halted, the half-naked crews were already sponging out and ramming home the next charge, selecting another ball from the nearest shot-garland.

As the thunder of the broadside rolled away the gun captains were yelling to each other, some coughing as the gunsmoke streamed through the open ports.

Adam heard Monteith, almost shrill above the noise, calling someone’s name. Then a seaman running, perhaps in answer. Another rattle of musket fire, closer now, shots hitting the hull or slapping through the canvas overhead.

The running man swung round as if taken by surprise. Then he fell, a few paces from the nearest gun crew.

Adam forced himself to look away, to turn his eyes toward the approaching ship. Nothing else must distract or concern him. The masthead lookouts and Vincent, up forward, would have an unbroken view. Two ships, Onward‘s bowsprit pointing directly at her enemy’s jib. The shooting was almost continuous now, and the Royal Marines were firing with regular precision, as if on a range.

At any moment Onward‘s bow-chasers would come to bear, then her carronades.

He tore his eyes away to look for the abandoned schooner. That, too, had been a ruse, without regard for their own lives. The schooner was heeling over toward him, her deck splintered. Another splash through the clinging smoke, and she was mastless.

Somebody cried out, near or far: he was beyond understanding. As if all the air had been forced, punched out of his lungs, or his ears were covered by unseen hands. How long? Maybe only a split second, and then came the explosion. He felt spray across his face as fragments hit the sea almost alongside. Something striking the deck with a shower of sparks. As his hearing returned he became aware of the shouts, and the clank of pumps, spilling water over the sun-dried planking.

The smaller schooner had vanished. Some of her remains were coming to the surface. They had misjudged Onward‘s change of direction. Even the schooner’s crew had not escaped.

Vincent was waving, perhaps shouting to confirm his readiness. A drop of the hand, and a nine-pounder responded from the forecastle. The smoke was fanning away as one of the carronades shook the hull.

Julyan was shouting now, and Adam saw him gesture toward the big schooner. “They’re cutting it fine, sir!” He stared down at his own arm, which was smeared with blood, then seemed to shrug casually. Adam had seen the gesture so often, in the chartroom when dealing with a problem which he usually managed to solve.

The big schooner had altered course again. If she drew closer to the other shore, she still might reach the open sea. They were still firing, and her upper deck seemed to be full of uniforms. The schooner was the transport. They were the main force, so far. And mutiny was a contagious disease. It could soon spread.

He winced as the second carronade fired its deadly charge across the other vessel’s forecastle. He did not need a telescope to see the splinters flying, men scattering like rags under a full charge of grape.

“Helm, hard over!” Adam saw Squire turn from the compass box and nod. He was biting his lip.

But Onward was answering slowly. There was an extra helmsman at the wheel. One already lay dead near Squire’s feet.

Squire saw Midshipman Huxley duck by the bulwark as more shots hammered into the deck. He caught his attention and called, “Keep on the move!” then swore under his breath as a splinter sprang from the deck within inches of his own foot.

Adam watched the great arrowhead of water between the two ships. In a few minutes they would be carried further apart. He picked up his sword, and heard some of the seamen calling out to one another. He felt a shot hit and ricochet from one of the eighteen-pounders. One of the crew, leaning on his rammer, did not move. He was still gazing aft at his captain.

More shouts, this time from the foremast. The upper yard, the royal, had been damaged or dislodged by the explosion, and some men were up there in the thick of it. The top-chains were holding, but even as he watched one of the tiny figures threw up his hands and fell.

Adam raised his sword and looked again toward the big schooner.

There was a lull in the gunfire, and many voices suddenly merging. There must be hundreds on board, outnumbering Onward‘s company at least two to one. Fists were raised, and he thought he saw the lens of a telescope flash in the smoky sunlight, either watching the sword or taking aim.

He shouted, “Full broadside! Together!” The sword was at his side, but he was gripping it with all his strength.

A moment later, Onward‘s entire broadside fired as one. Fourteen eighteen-pounders, and anything else that can strike a match, as the old gunners used to say. Like thunder, but no longer at any distance.

“First lieutenant wants you! Now!”

It was a call for the “speaking-trumpet,” and Adam saw young Huxley come to life and call out to a bosun’s mate before running toward the larboard gangway.

A smoke-grimed face peered up from the deck. “Don’t ye spoil that fine uniform, sir!”

Huxley glanced down and might have smiled, then he collapsed. Before any one could reach him, he was dead.

Midshipman Hotham saw him fall, but he was needed elsewhere. But still he hesitated, one hand in his pocket, feeling for the little crucifix he always kept there, which nobody else knew about. “Dear God, please receive the soul of Simon Huxley.” Now he was reunited with his father.

“Ready, sir!”

The next broadside was slowly, more patiently aimed.

For another moment, Adam thought that they were overhauling their enemy. Her foremast was down and, with its broken shrouds and rigging, was pointing toward them like a bridge. Hardly any part of her side seemed to have escaped cannon or small arms fire, and even without a glass the carnage on deck was terrible to see. Adam unclenched his fists. Even the scuppers were trailing patterns of blood. As if the schooner herself was bleeding to death.

And the angle of the remaining masts had changed.

Julyan exclaimed, “She’s hard aground!” and then, looking over at Adam, “As soon as we can, sir.” He fell silent as the bosun crossed the quarterdeck, picking his way past the dead and the injured.

Drummond cleared his throat. He had been shouting and running from one emergency to another for what seemed hours, and there was a gash in his sleeve, a wound he could not remember receiving; another inch and he would have been dead.

He had Adam’s attention now.

“They’ve run up a white flag, sir.”

“I’ll need a boarding party. Then we will anchor.” And he saw Julyan nod, satisfied.

Jago was nearby, and Adam felt his lips crack when he tried to smile at him. This was no victory to be proud of. But few were.

Jago said only, “You’ll be needin’ the gig, Cap’n.”

“The governor must be informed.”

Jago peered around for some of his crew, if they were still alive.

Adam stood a moment, his hand resting on a jagged splinter. The anger returned and swept through him, and he welcomed the strength it gave him. “But first, I will go around our ship.”

Vincent had come aft, eyes red-rimmed from smoke and strain, as two seamen were dragging the dead helmsman away from the wheel. “What if they renege on the truce, sir?”

Adam walked past him, touching his arm briefly as he did so. He could see Huxley’s body, which had been moved to clear the gangway for the passage of messages. He knew Vincent was blaming himself, and that was why his question was doubly important.

He said quietly, “Then, every gun. No quarter.”

Midshipman David Napier sat in the cutter’s sternsheets and tried not to listen to the regular creak of oars as they pulled away from the land. He could not recall when he had last been able to sleep, but he knew if he was offered the finest bed in the world right now, it would still be denied him.

The journey from shore to ship was much less in distance than when they had set off to meet the governor, but already it seemed very long. Tyacke was sitting beside him, and the same stroke oarsman faced him, eyes barely moving as he lay back on his loom for every stroke.

Napier could see Onward‘s masts and loosely furled sails directly ahead, and the flag, so vivid in the pale light. It was dawn. He glanced down at his hands, clenched so tightly that the knuckles were white beneath the tanned skin. This would pass. It had to.

It was seeing the flag that brought it all back to him. As if it had just happened. Stark and brutal.

He had hoisted the ensign on the flagmast where he had seen the dead mutineer when Onward had made her appearance and engaged a small vessel which had proved to be the decoy. He had climbed on to the roof of a low outbuilding to watch the frigate pass the main anchorage.

Something had made him turn, some sound or sense of warning. Even as he had turned there had been two shots, so close they could have been a single blast. He had lost his balance and fallen, but not before he had seen the sprawled body of the governor’s servant, a black youth around his own age. He had tried to warn him but had been unable to shout, because he had no tongue. He had been killed by the ball intended for Napier. The second shot had cut down the attacker, whose scarlet scarf spoke for itself.

The governor had been there almost immediately. On his knees, holding the boy’s hands in his, calling him “Trusty.”

Napier shifted on the hard thwart and kept his eyes on the frigate. He could see some of the damage now, the scars and the gaps in the rigging. Men were already working aloft, fresh canvas overlapping, flapping in the offshore breeze. He had heard the hammering and other sounds during the night, his mind flooding with images of the faces he knew.

He had twisted his leg when he fell. It had saved his life. But he was already struggling to overcome it, as he had before. Like the moment when he had been about to climb into the cutter and the ginger-haired Corporal Price, still hatless, had tried to assist him.

He had done enough, but when Adam had tried to make Price climb aboard ahead of Napier he had declined.

“You know what they say about us Royals, sir? The first to land …”

Napier had finished it for him. “And the last to leave!” Somehow, they had both managed to laugh.

Tyacke was shading his eyes and looking toward the ship, although there was no fierce sunlight at this hour. He said, “When we get back to Freetown, I’ll soon have her looking as smart as paint again.”

Napier watched the masts rising above them, faces on the gangway, and peering down from the yards as the cutter came alongside. He recognised most of them, even at a distance. But he did not see the one he expected, and somehow, he must have known.

Tyacke was patting his pockets. “I’ll be sending Onward home after this. Not before time!”

David Napier straightened his hat and watched the oars being tossed, side-boys already waiting to receive the cutter alongside. The captain was at the entry port, his hand raised.

Napier stood up carefully, and waited for the flag captain to leave the boat ahead of him.

Going home. Now it had a new and precious meaning.