Second to None

19. “Trust Me…”

JOSHUA CRISTIE, the master, watched his captain stride from the chart to the compass box, and said, “Wind’s still holdin’ steady from the nor’-east, sir.”

Adam Bolitho stared at the great span of hardening canvas, the masthead pendant reaching out towards the bow like a lance.

He said, “Make to Flag. Sail in sight to the west.” He paused long enough to see Midshipman Cousens and his signals party bending double to fasten the flags into order for hoisting, and caught sight of Bellairs turning from the rail, his eyes anxious, as if he were concerned that someone else was carrying out what had been his duty before his examination for lieutenant.

He forgot them as he raised a telescope and levelled it on the flagship. The other ships were badly scattered, and Frobisher’s yards seemed to be a mass of signals as Rhodes tried to muster his command.

It was not long before Cousens shouted, “Acknowledged, sir!” But it felt like an age. Then Cousens called again, “Disregard, Remain on station.”

Adam turned away. “God damn him!”

Galbraith joined him. “Shall I send Bellairs aloft, sir? Sullivan’s a good hand, but…”

Adam looked at him. “There is a ship, right enough, and we both know which one she is!”

He swung round again as a rocket exploded like a small star against the dusty shoreline. The bomb vessel was moving into position between the flagship and the old fortifications. Rhodes ’ show of strength. Adam knew that anger was blunting his judgment, but he could not help it. If Algiers had any doubts before, they would be gone now.

Even if it was the Dutch frigate, one such ship could do little against Rhodes ’ array of force.

He thought of the response to his signal. Like a slap in the face, which would soon be known to every man here today. It was cheap. And it was dangerous.

He saw Napier standing by the companion hatch and said, “Here, take my coat and hat.” He saw Galbraith open his mouth as if to protest, then close it again. Perhaps he was embarrassed to see his own captain making a fool of himself, or maybe he felt it as a slight on his ability that he had not been consulted.

If I am wrong, my friend, it is better for you to know nothing.

Jago was here too, but took his sword and tucked it under his arm without comment.

Adam strode to the shrouds, where he turned and looked back at Galbraith.

“Trust me.” That was all.

Then he was climbing the ratlines, his boots slipping on the taut cordage, his hands and arms grazed by rigging he did not even feel. As he drew level with the maintop the marines stared at him with surprise, then some of them grinned, and one even gave a cheeky wave. Perhaps the man whose brother was a corporal in the flagship.

On and on, higher and higher, until his heart was pounding at his ribs like a fist.

He took Sullivan’s hard hand for the last heave up on to the crosstrees, and gasped, “Where away?”

Sullivan pointed without hesitation, and might even have smiled as Adam dragged out the small telescope which could easily be slung over one shoulder.

The light was still poor, high though he was above the tilting deck, but the other ship was a frigate right enough. Standing away, with all plain sail set and filling to the fresh north-easterly.

He swung the glass to larboard and studied the scattered ships. The two liners were on course again, Frobisher in the lead, with Matchless and Montrose standing well away on either quarter. And, far away, her masts and topsails shimmering in haze, was Halcyon, the admiral’s “eyes,” leading the squadron.

Then he saw the bomb vessel Atlas and found time to pity her commander as he sweated to work his ship into a position from which he could fire. From here it was all a sand-coloured blur, with only the slow-moving ships making sense. Adam had been aboard a bomb vessel during the campaign against the Americans, and Atlas seemed little improved. Bluff-bowed, and very heavily constructed for her hundred feet in length; bombs were always hard to handle. Apart from two immensely heavy mortars, they also carried a formidable armament of twenty-four pounder carronades as well as small weapons to fight off boarders. But the mortars were their reason for being. Each was thirteen inches in diameter and fired a massive shot, which, because of its high trajectory, would fall directly on top of its target before exploding.

Adam felt his own ship riding over again to the wind. They could keep their bomb vessels…

Sullivan said, almost patiently, “I reckon that when the light clears a bit we’ll see the other ship, sir.”

Adam allowed the glass to fall on to its sling and stared at him.

“I saw the frigate. Surely there’s no other.”

Sullivan gazed beyond his shoulder. “She’s there, sir. A big ’un.” He looked directly into his eyes. Not the captain, but a visitor to his world. “But I reckon you already knew that, sir?”

Adam gazed down at the deck. The upturned faces. Waiting…

“There could only be one. The merchantman that left Malta when Atlas sailed. Aranmore.”

Sullivan nodded slowly. “Might well be, sir.”

Adam reached across and touched his leg. “A prize indeed.”

He knew Sullivan was leaning over to watch him descend. Even the marines in the fighting-top remained quiet and unsmiling as he clambered down past the barricade and its swivel-gun, the daisy-cutter, as the sailors called them. Perhaps they saw it in his face, even as he felt it like a tightening grip around his heart.

Galbraith hurried to meet him, barely able to drag his eyes away from the tar-stained shirt and the blood soaking through one knee of his breeches.

“I think the frigate is chasing Aranmore, Leigh.” He leaned on the chart, his scarred hands taking the weight.

Galbraith said, “Suppose you’re wrong, sir?”

Cristie forced a grin, and said, “There was only one man who was never wrong, Mr Galbraith, an’ they crucified him!”

Adam lingered on the warning, and knew what it must have cost Galbraith to say it.

“But if I’m not? If the Algerines capture Aranmore,” he hesitated, loathing it, “it will make Lord Rhodes a laughing-stock.

The hostages could be used for bargaining, and so much for ‘a show of strength.’”

Galbraith nodded, understanding. Experience, instinct; he did not know how it came about. And he was ashamed that he was glad the choice was not his. Nor probably ever would be.

He watched the captain’s face as he beckoned to Midshipman Cousens. Outwardly calm again, his voice unhurried, thinking aloud while he held out one arm to allow his coxswain to clip the old sword into position.

“Make to Flag, Mr Cousens. Enemy in sight to the west, steering west-by-south.” He saw Cristie acknowledge it. “In pursuit of…” He smiled at the youth’s frowning features. “Spell it out. Aranmore.”

It took physical effort to take and raise the spare telescope. The next few hours would be vital. He heard the flags squeaking aloft and in his mind saw them breaking out at the yard and, across that mile or so of lively water, another signals midshipman like Cousens reading the signal, as someone else wrote it down on a slate.

Cousens’ brow was furrowed in concentration. “From Flag, sir. Acknowledged.” He sounded rather subdued. “Flag’s calling up Halcyon, sir.”

Adam snapped, “No use! Halcyon’s too far downwind-it will take her a whole watch to close with them!”

Cousens confirmed it. “Chase, sir.”

Galbraith was beside him again. “They might run for it when they see Halcyon, sir.”

“I think not. The man in command will lose his head if he fails this time. And he will know it!”

He looked back at the signals party.

“Anything, Mr Cousens?”

Sullivan’s voice broke the spell, “Deck thar! Frigate’s opened fire, sir!”

He heard the distant thuds, bow-chasers, he thought, testing the range, hoping for a crippling shot.

Cousens shouted, “Signal Chase is still flying, sir!”

Adam walked to the compass, the helmsmen gazing past him as if he was invisible, the big double-wheel moving slightly this way or that, each sail filled and fighting the rudder.

He said, “Then acknowledge it, Mr Cousens.” And swung away, as if he might see in the boy’s eyes the folly of his own decision. “Get the hands aloft, Mr Galbraith! T’gallants and royals!” He grinned, the strain and doubt recoiling like beaten enemies. “The stuns’ls too, when we may!” He strode over to Cristie and his mates. “How so?”

“West-by-north, sir.” The master gave a wintry smile, as if the madness was infectious. “It’ll give ’er room to run down on the bugger!”

“Stand by, on the quarterdeck! Man the braces there!”

Another squall moaned through the stays and shrouds, and the canvas cracked as if it would tear itself from the yards as the helm went over.

“Flag is repeating our number, sir!” Cousens’ words were almost drowned by the distant reverberating crash of mortars. The bombardment had begun.

Galbraith shook his head. “Hoist another ensign, Mr Cousens,” and attempted to smile, to share what the captain was doing. “That will be duty enough for you today!”

He watched the seamen running from one task to the next, not one tripping over a gun tackle or snatching up the wrong line or halliard. All the training and the hard knocks had paid off. It was insanity, and he could feel it driving away his reserve and his concern at the captain’s deliberate misinterpretation of the admiral’s signal. He had even found time to note it and sign the log, so that no one else could be officially blamed.

Galbraith saw Napier handing his captain a clean shirt, laughing at something he said as he pulled it over his unruly hair. The sunlight was stronger now, enough to shine briefly on the locket the captain was wearing, the one he had seen in the cabin with the letters.

He felt a sudden chill as the boy handed Captain Bolitho his coat, not the one he had been wearing when he had first appeared on deck, if he had ever left it, but the gold-laced dress uniform coat with the bright epaulettes. A ready target for any marksman. Madness again, but Galbraith could imagine him wearing no other this day.

“West-by-north, sir! Steady she goes!”

Adam looked along his ship, hearing the intermittent crash of gunfire. Halcyon was under fire already, long-range shots, like the ones laid on Aranmore.

He thought of Avery, his comments concerning the infamous Captain Martinez, and touched the locket beneath the clean shirt, and said aloud, “You were right, George, and nobody saw it. The face in the crowd.”

He turned to see the other ensign breaking to the wind, seeming to trail on the dark horizon as the ship heeled over, knowing that his mind must be empty now of everything which might weaken his resolve. But a memory of his uncle came, as he had seen him all those other times.

“So let’s be about it, then!”

Luke Jago stood by the mainmast’s great trunk and looked along the frigate’s main deck. So many times; different ships and in all weathers, but always the same pattern. The whole larboard battery of eighteen-pounders had been run in, hauled up the tilting deck by their sweating crews, held in position by their taut tackles and ready for loading. Each crew was standing by with the tools of their trade, rammers and sponges, handspikes and charges, while every gun captain had already selected a perfect ball from his shot garland for the first, perhaps vital broadside. Around and at the foot of every mast the boarding-pikes had been freed from their lashings, ready to snatch up and spit anyone brave or stupid enough to attempt to board them. The weapons chests were empty, and each man had armed himself with cutlass or axe with no more uncertainty than a farm-hand selecting a pitchfork.

He could sense the new midshipman watching him, breathing hard in his efforts to keep up with the captain’s coxswain. Jago had wondered why the captain had given him the task of nursing Commodore Deighton’s son. One day he would be an officer like Massie or so many others he had known, quick to forget past favours, and the secret skills which only true seamen knew and could pass on.

He felt the deck jerk to the double crash of the bomb’s two mortars. Even at this distance, the ships were barely visible through the haze and dust, and yet the mortars’ recoil seemed to rebound from the very seabed.

He had heard some of the men joking about the captain’s reading of the flagship’s signal. They would be putting bets on it too, if he had made a serious mistake. He loosened the cutlass in his belt, swearing quietly. Captain Bolitho would be a marked man anyway, as far as the admiral was concerned.

He said to the midshipman, “You’ll be needed to pass messages between the forrard guns, under Mr Massie,” he jerked his thumb in the direction of the quarterdeck, “An’ the cap’n. And if he falls, to th’ next in command aft.”

He saw the boy blink, but he showed no fear. And he listened. He glanced at Midshipman Sandell by the empty boat tier, even now snapping at some luckless seaman. He’d be no bloody loss to anyone.

He said, “An’ remember, Mr Deighton, always walk, never run.

That only makes the lads jumpy.” He grinned at Deighton’s seriousness. “Stops you bein’ a target too!”

Then, seeing his expression, he touched the midshipman’s arm. “Forget I said that. It just came out.”

He stared at his own scarred hand on the boy’s sleeve. Let him think what he damn well likes. He’ll not care a straw for a common seaman. But it would not hold.

He said, “Now we’ll carry on aft.”

Deighton said, “It seems so empty without the boats on deck.”

“Never you mind them. We’ll pick ’em up afore sunset.”

Deighton said softly, “Do you believe that, really?”

Jago nodded to Campbell, who was leaning on a handspike near his gun. Like most of the crews he had stripped to the waist, his scarred back a living testimony to his strength. Jago sighed. Or stupidity. It was not long since he had done the same, his defiance of the authority which had wrongly punished him, leaving him scarred until the day he dropped.

The boy murmured, “I’ve never been in a real sea-fight before.”

Jago knew that Deighton had transferred from the old Vanoc, a frigate said to be so infested with rot that she was as ripe as a pear, with only her copper holding her together.

He looked up at the towering masts and their bulging pyramids of canvas. From down here, the topgallant masts appeared to be bending like whips to the mounting pressure.

It was there again. Pride. Something he had all but taken an oath against. But she was flying through the water, spray bursting through the beak-head and drenching the figurehead’s naked shoulders, a veritable sea nymph. He saw Halcyon, so much closer now, heeling over at a steep angle from Unrivalled’s bow. A well-handled ship, he conceded. But no match for the big Dutchman.

And the lookouts had reported that the merchantman Aranmore was somewhere ahead. Victim or prize, it depended on which side you took.

Jago thought of the girl he had helped to carry below. He stared at the poop, the officers’ figures leaning over to the sloping deck as if they were nailed to it to hold them in position. And now she was out there with her bullyboy of a husband and God alone knew how many other important passengers. Jago had seen the captain’s face that night, and again when he had gone ashore to see her, even if he had not intended to meet her or it had been a complete accident. Jago thought otherwise. He shaded his eyes and saw the captain standing with one hand on the quarterdeck rail. By that same ladder.

And why not? As smart as paint, she was. He smiled crookedly. And she knew it, what’s more.

The sound of cannon fire across the sea’s face, and for an instant Jago imagined that the wind had changed direction.

Sullivan’s voice cut through the boom of canvas and the groan of straining cordage. “Deck thar! Halcyon’s under fire!”

Jago ran to the side and stood on a gun truck to get a better view. Halcyon was as before, cutting through the water, her ensigns very white against the hazy sky, their scarlet crosses like blood. Then there was a sudden groan, and her fore-topmast and spars began to topple; the sea and wind muffled the sound, and yet he seemed to hear it clearly, the slithering tangle of masts and rigging, snapping cordage and torn canvas, and then the complete mass plunging over the lee bow, flinging up spectres of spray. There would be men there, too, some killed in the fall, others dragged over the side by broken shrouds and stays, dying even as he watched, while others ran to hack the debris away. There was never time for pity.

Within minutes the fallen fore-topmast was dragging Halcyon around like a giant sea anchor, and her guns were pointing impotently at open water.

“Stand by to wear ship!» That was the first lieutenant, voice distorted by his speaking-trumpet. “Pipe the hands to the braces!”

Jago waited, feeling the ship’s response to wind and rudder. The afterguard tramping past those same officers, hauling at the mizzen braces while Unrivalled altered course to windward, as close as she’d come, some of the sails already whipping and cracking in protest until more hands brought them under control.

Midshipman Deighton called, “What are we doing?”

Jago watched the tapering bowsprit and jib-boom, the enemy frigate clearly visible for the first time, as if sliding downwind to larboard. Captain Bolitho was going to try and overreach the enemy, to claw into the wind and then run down on them, much as he had heard the dour sailing-master describe.

But all he said was, “We’re going to fight. So be ready!” Then, together, they climbed the ladder to the quarterdeck.

Adam Bolitho looked only briefly at the scene on the quarterdeck. The marines, their boots skidding on the wet planking while they secured the braces again before snatching up their muskets and running back to their stations. Four men on the wheel now, one of Cristie’s mates adding his weight to the fight against wind and rudder.

He glanced up at the masthead pendant, almost hidden by the wildly cracking canvas. The wind was still steady, from the northeast, but from aft he could believe it was almost directly abeam. The ship lay hard over, and his eyes stung as a shaft of sunlight found them for the first time.

And the enemy was still firing at Halcyon. There was no smoke to betray the shots, the wind was too strong, but he could see the other frigate’s sails pockmarked with holes, and great, raw gashes along her engaged side; the enemy was trying to rid himself of one foe before dealing with the real threat from Unrivalled. He fought back the anger. Rhodes was so intent on humiliating him that he had been blind to the true danger. Dutch-built frigates were heavier, and could take a lot of punishment. Halcyon could not even close the range and hit back. He saw her main-topmast reel drunkenly now in a tangle of black cordage, like something trapped in a net, before crashing down across her gangway.

He took a telescope from its rack and trained it on the other frigate. Magnified in the powerful glass, he could see terrible damage, could feel her pain, and knew he was thinking of his beloved Anemone in her last fight against odds. When he had been badly wounded, and unable to prevent her colours being struck to the American.

He heard Cristie yell, “As close as she’ll come, sir! Nor’-west-by-west!”

He realised that Midshipman Deighton was beside him at the rail, and said, “Take a good look, Mr Deighton. That is a ship to be proud of.” He lowered the glass, but not before he had seen the tiny threads of scarlet running down Halcyon’s tumblehome from the forward scuppers, as if the ship and not her people was bleeding to death. But an ensign was still flying, and from what he had heard of her captain another would be in readiness to bend on if it was shot away.

What sort of men were they about to fight?

He had heard one of the master’s mates ask Cristie the same question.

He had answered harshly, “The scum of a dozen waterfronts, gallows-bait the lot of ’em! But they’ll fight right enough. Pirates, deserters, mutineers, they’ve no choice left any more!”

More shots found their mark in Halcyon. Her steering had been carried away, or perhaps there were only dead men at her wheel now. She was drifting, but occasionally a single gun would fire at her attacker, despite the range.

Adam said, “You may load and run out now.” The gun captains would know. Single shots this time; an overloaded eighteen-pounder would be useless. He watched the sea boiling away from the lee side, the one thing he had dreaded about holding the wind-gage. Maximum elevation for the first broadside. And after that…

He found that he was holding the locket through his spray soaked shirt. At least she was free of the worry and the strain at every separation.

And I have nobody to grieve for me.

“Sir!” It was Galbraith, reaching out as if to drag him from his sudden despair.

“What is it?”

Galbraith could not seem to find the words immediately. “Halcyon, sir! They’re cheering!” He fell silent, as if shocked at his own emotion. “Cheering us!”

Adam stared across the wind-torn water at the battered, defiant ship, and faintly, above the shipboard sounds and the squeal of gun trucks, he heard it. The hand reaching out again. The lifeline.

He shouted, “As you bear, Mr Massie! On the uproll!”

It was too far, but the other frigate was changing tack. Preparing to fight, and, if possible, to board on their own terms.

“Fire!”

Adam gripped young Deighton’s arm and felt him jump as if he had been shot.

“Go forrard to the carronades. Remind them not to fire until ordered!” He shook him gently. “Can you do that?”

Surprisingly, the youth smiled, for the first time.

“Aye, ready, sir!”

He hurried down the ladder and walked purposefully forward, not even faltering when, gun by gun, the larboard battery recoiled from their open ports. Adam heard muffled shouts and felt the impact of a heavy ball smashing into the side, and thought of O’Beirne below in his domain, his glittering instruments laid out with the same care as these gun captains took with theirs.

“Sponge out! Reload! Move yerself, that man!”

“Take in the courses, Mr Galbraith.” Adam leaned over the rail and saw the spare hands running to obey the call. With the big courses brailed up and loosely furled it was like being stripped naked, with the ship open from forecastle to taffrail.

And there was the enemy. In mid-tack, sails all in disarray, some ports empty, others with their guns already run out for the next encounter.

“Ready, sir!”

Every gun captain was staring aft with raised fist, the gun crews barely flinching as another mass of iron slammed into the lower hull. They were on a converging tack, like a great arrowhead painted on the sea. Two ships, all else unimportant, and even Halcyon’s brave defiance forgotten. The other ship was beginning to lean to the wind on the opposite tack, but just for a minute she would be bows-on, unable to lay a single gun on Unrivalled. A minute, maybe less.

Adam found that his sword was in his hand, and that he was standing away from the rail, and yet he remembered neither.

“As you bear, lads!” How could a minute last so long?

He thought he heard the far-off rumble of heavy guns. Rhodes was still bombarding the fortifications, as timeless as those ancient ramparts in Malta where the invisible orchestra had played for them and they had taken, one from the other. Without question.

The sword sliced down, like glass in the sunlight.

“Fire!”

Gun by gun, each hurling itself inboard to be manhandled and reloaded without a second to fumble or consider.

He saw holes appear in the other ship’s foresail and jib, and long fragments of gilded woodwork blasted from the ornate beakhead. But she was swinging through the wind; they would be alongside and mad for revenge. The boarding nets would merely delay the inevitable.

He heard Napier shout; it was more like a scream. “Foremast, sir!”

Adam had seen some of Unrivalled’s shots cutting through the water beyond the target. It was too difficult for them to lay their guns with any hope of accuracy.

It was impossible, but the enemy’s whole foremast was going over the side, as if severed by some great, invisible axe.

Shots hammered into the deck and he saw two marines fall from the hammock nettings. He heard the bang of swivels from the tops and knew that Bosanquet’s men were following their orders, their marksmen already firing down into the mass of figures scrambling through and over the fallen mast to reach the point of collision. But Bosanquet would never know. He lay with one immaculate leg bent under him, his face destroyed by a splintered ball which had come through one of the gunports.

Luxmore, his second-in-command, was already down there with his own party, bayonets gleaming in the smoky light, all mercy gone as the first boarders leaped wildly across the narrow gap of water only to be hacked down or impaled. Closer and closer, until Unrivalled’s long jib-boom, its canvas in rags, was pointing directly at the enemy’s forecastle.

Adam sliced the air with his sword again. Had the carronade crews understood? Had Deighton managed to reach them or had he, too, been killed? But Deighton was here beside him, and he shook himself, feeling the despair falling away.

It was more a sensation than a sound; the carronades were almost touching the other ship when they belched smoke and lurched inboard on their slides.

Adam yelled, “To me, Unrivalleds!” Then he ran along the gangway, hearing the shots, feeling some of them crack into wood and metal and flesh. The nets hung in shreds, and the massed boarding party was blasted into a pile of bloody gruel.

Men were running to follow him, and he saw Campbell wielding a boarding-axe, hacking down anyone who tried to prevent

Unrivalled’s people from boarding.

And all the while, through the bang of muskets and the clash of steel in the hand-to-hand fighting, and the screams and pleas which went unheard in any language, he could think only of one fact which stood out above all else. Pirates, corsairs, mercenaries, the names by which the enemy were known meant nothing.

Somehow he knew that the man who had offered shelter to the French frigates in the event of Napoleon’s escape from Elba was here in this ship. It was all that counted. Martinez, indirectly or otherwise, had killed Richard Bolitho, as surely as if he had aimed the weapon.

Someone lunged at him with a sword and he heard Jago shout, “Down you go, you bastard!” The man fell over some broken timber to be crushed between the two hulls.

His arm felt like lead and throbbed with pain, and there was blood on his hand, his own or another’s he neither knew nor cared.

They were halfway along the unfamiliar deck, some of the enemy still putting up a fierce resistance, but many falling as his marines directed a swivel-gun from the ship’s gangway.

Massie was down, his hands like claws across his stomach as he fell. Adam saw Lieutenant Wynter stoop to help him, and Massie’s angry rejection, shaking his head as if to urge him back into the fight. Then the blood came and it did not stop. Massie had had his way, and had remained quite alone to the end.

He heard Galbraith shouting above the din, and saw more men climbing over the fallen rigging to join the first boarders and their own captain. There was cheering too, and he wondered how they could find the strength. He hacked a sword aside and felt the pain tear his muscles as the point grated against the man’s ribs before the blade found its mark, choking the scream before it had begun.

It seemed to take all his strength to tug it free. Somehow he had dragged himself up a ladder, where smaller groups of figures were locked in what he knew was the final resistance.

Jago gasped, “I can see smoke, sir! Fire below, by my guess!”

Adam gripped a stanchion and gulped at the air. “Get our wounded across to the ship! Leave nobody! ”

Jago peered at him. How did he know it was over? Men were still fighting, or chasing some of the defenders, hacking them down.

Adam wiped his face with his sleeve and almost laughed. It was his best uniform, the one he had been wearing when he had gone to her room. Madness. A wild dream. He gripped his sword even more tightly, knowing that if he allowed himself to laugh he would be unable to stop it.

He heard someone gasp and swung round to see Napier on one knee, a wood splinter protruding from his thigh like a bloody quill.

“Here, my lad, you’re coming with me!” Then, as he bent to give the boy his arm, he saw Martinez, crouching behind a raised hatch, a pistol in one hand. It had to be him; but how could he be so sure? It was only a glimpse, too quick for him to see the dark eyes widen with shocked disbelief as he had stared first at the slim figure in a post-captain’s soiled coat, and then, instantly, at the old sword. Something like recognition, something he had never forgotten.

And it was too late. Adam could not reach him with his sword, and if Martinez fired now he would surely kill the boy he had lifted from this stained and fought-over planking.

Martinez said thickly, “Bo-lye-tho.” And took careful aim.

But the shot seemed louder, or came from a different bearing. It was the marine corporal Bloxham, Bosanquet’s crack shot. He stepped carefully over a corpse and kicked the unfired pistol across the deck.

He said, “’Ere, sir, I’ll take the lad from you,” and grinned, the strain slipping from his features. “But I’ll just reload old Bess ’ere first, to be on the safe side!”

Adam touched his arm, and walked across to look at the dead man. He heard the sudden wave of frantic cheering. The fight was over.

My men. And they had won the day, because of a trust which few could explain. Until the next time. Now he must go and face these same men, and share it with them before the pain of loss intruded.

He gazed along the disputed deck, with its bloody scars of battle. Soon only the dead and the poor wretches who had fled below would remain.

He saw his own ship angled away from the bows, suddenly clear in the fresh sunlight, her wounds hidden by drifting smoke, and only then did he know what had held him here. He looked down into the dead face, frozen at the instant of impact. As he had sworn to do.

Perhaps he had expected elation, or a sense of revenge. There was nothing.

He heard voices calling out and knew they would come to find him, interrupting this moment which he could share with only one.

He let his sword arm fall to his side and turned once more to look at his ship, and smiled a little, as if he had heard someone speak.

“Thank you, Uncle.”

The Most Coveted Gift.