19

TRUE COLOURS

WITH HER great yards braced so hard round that to a landsman they might appear to lie fore-and-aft, Black Prince steered as closehauled to the wind as was possible. For most of the previous night they had clawed their way up the narrow Sound from Copenhagen, pursued all the while by the continuous thunder of the bombardment.

Somehow Nicator had held station on the flagship, but for Black Prince, a powerful three-decker, it had been a trial of nerves as well as skill. Urgent voices had passed each sounding aft from the leadsmen in the forechains, and at one time Bolitho had sensed that only a few feet lay between the ship’s great keel and disaster.

Dawn had found them heading out into the Kattegat, still comparatively shallow, but after the Sound it felt like the WesternOcean. Later, when Bolitho watched the pink glow on the choppy water, he knew that darkness would be upon them early that night. A glance at the masthead pendant assured him that the wind was holding steady, north-east. It would help them tomorrow, but had he waited until daylight as Gambier had suggested, the wind’s sudden veer would have bottled them up in harbour. He thought of Herrick for the hundredth time. Lady Luck.

Keen crossed the deck and touched his hat, his handsome features raw from a full day on deck in chill wind.

“Any further orders before nightfall, sir?”

They looked at one another, like friends across a common garden wall at the close of an ordinary day.

“It will be tomorrow, Val. Or not at all. You know what these supply convoys are like, the speed of the slowest vessel in it, necessary for mutual protection. RearAdmiral Herrick’s convoy apparently numbers some twenty ships, so if there was a battle, some of the fastest must surely have reached the Skagerrak at least by now?” He forced a smile. “I realise you think me morbid, even mad. Herrick will probably doff his hat to us at first light tomorrow, and sail past full of noble contentment!”

Keen watched him, the man he had come to know so well.

“May I ask something, sir?” He glanced round as the calls twittered in the endless daily life of a man-of-war: Last dogwatchmen to supper!

“Ask away.” He saw the gulls pausing to rest on the pink water like flower petals and thought of the dead Captain Poland, who had seen nothing but the path to duty.

“If you were in RearAdmiral Herrick’s position, what would you do, if an enemy second—or even first-rate as it now appears—and other vessels hove in sight?”

Bolitho looked away. “I would scatter the convoy.” He looked at him again, his eyes dark in the strange glare. “Then I would engage the enemy. A waste of time … who knows? But some might survive.”

Keen hesitated. “But you do not think he would order them to break formation, sir?”

Bolitho took his arm and guided him a few paces past the big double-wheel, where Julyan the tall sailing-master was speaking to his mates in his deep rumbling tones. Worth his weight in gold, Keen had claimed several times; he had certainly proved his skin with wind, tide and rudder when they had struggled up the Sound.

“I am concerned, Val. If the enemy is searching for his ships, he will see it as something …” He groped for the word but saw only Herrick’s stubborn eyes.

“A personal thing, sir?”

“Aye, that’s about the strength of it.”

A sickly smell of pork came from the galley funnel and Bolitho said, “After both watches have eaten, have the ship cleared for action. But keep the galley in use until the last. More warm bellies than steel have won battles in the past, Val!”

Keen gazed along the broad length of his command, seeing it probably already enmeshed in the chaos and destruction of close-action.

“I agree.” He added suddenly, “Your Mr Tyacke could be right about the largest Frenchman, but then precious few know about Black Prince as yet—she is far too new.”

The officer-of-the-watch glanced at Keen and cleared his throat impressively.

“A chill, Mr Sedgemore?” Keen grinned with easy humour. “You wish to have the watch relieved?”

They both turned, startled, as Bolitho interrupted sharply, “What did you say?”

He stared at Keen’s bewilderment. “About Black Prince’s unknown strength?”

“Well, I simply thought—”

“And I did not.” Bolitho glanced up at the ensign curling above his head. “You have a good sailmaker?”

The watch was changing, but they stood quite alone in the midst of its quiet disorder.

“Aye, sir.”

“Then please ask him to lay aft.” He watched the soft light of a northern dusk. “This needs to be quick. I must pass word to Captain Huxley before we adopt night-stations!”

Keen sent a midshipman off at the double. Bolitho would explain. Perhaps when he had decided for himself what he intended.

Black Prince’s sailmaker’s name was Fudge. He was so like the many of his profession that he might have been cut from the same bolt of canvas. Bushy grey hair and sprouting eyebrows, and the familiar leather jerkin which was hung about with tools, thread, needles and, of course, a palm or two.

“This is he, sir.”

They all looked at him in silence. Keen, the officer-of-the-watch, midshipmen and master’s mates.

Fudge blinked his watery eyes.

“Aye, sir?”

Bolitho asked, “Can you make me a Danish ensign, Fudge—full-scale, not some trifling boat-pendant?”

The man nodded slowly, visualising his stocks, neatly stored in one of the holds.

He answered, “Foreign, then, Sir Richard?”

Lieutenant Sedgemore opened his mouth to add a sharp comment of his own, but Keen’s glance left it unspoken.

Bolitho said, “Foreign. White cross on red ground, with two tails like a commodore’s broad-pendant.”

Fudge said, “I was in Elephant with Nelson at Copenhagen, Sir Richard.” The bent back and stiffness of his trade seemed to fall away as he glanced around at the silent watchkeepers. “I knows what a Danish flag look like, sir!”

Bolitho smiled. “So be it. When can you provide it for me?”

Fudge showed his uneven teeth, surprised at being asked.

“No more’n a couple o’ days, Sir Richard!”

“This is very important, Fudge. Can I have it by dawn?”

Fudge studied him feature by feature, as if to find an answer to something.

“I’ll begin now, Sir Richard.” He looked around at the seamen and Royal Marines, as if they were of some inferior race. “Leave it to me!”

As Fudge bustled away Keen asked quietly, “Some deception, sir?”

“Aye, mebbee.” He rubbed his hands together as if they were cold. “A favour, Val.” He glanced at the shimmering reflection on the water, the first hint of sunset. He held his hand over his left eye and said, “I would like to walk through your ship with you, if I may?”

It was like sighting a signal from a far-off frigate. An end to speculation. It was tomorrow.

Keen said, “Of course, sir.”

“But first, please signal Larne to close on us. I shall have a written instruction for your old ship, Val—there will be no time later on. Larne can then haul up to windward. If the French do come, they will surely recognise Tyacke’s brig and may decide to stand away. Whatever that French ship is, I want her.”

“I see, sir.” He beckoned to Jenour. “A signal for you!”

It was a short note, which Bolitho wrote in his own hand while Yovell waited in the pink glow, ready to apply the seal before putting it into an oilskin bag for Nicator’s captain.

Then he said to Keen, “It is fair that you should know a part of what I wrote. Should I fall, you will assume command; and if Black Prince is overwhelmed, Captain Huxley is to take Nicator out of the fight and return to Admiral Gambier.” He watched Keen gravely. “Did I forget anything?”

“I think not, sir.”

Later, as the last dogwatchmen were finishing their evening meal, Bolitho and Keen, accompanied by the ship’s junior lieutenant and, of course, Allday, went slowly along each deck and down every companion ladder into the very bowels of the ship.

Many of the startled seamen at their mess tables started to rise at the unheralded tour, but each time Bolitho waved them down.

He paused to speak to some of them and was surprised at the way they crowded around him. To see what he was like? To assess their own chances of survival; who could tell?

Pressed men and volunteers, hands from other ships, dialects which told their own stories. Men from Devon and Hampshire, Kent and Yorkshire, “foreigners” too, as Fudge would describe any one from north of the border.

And of course a man from Falmouth, who said awkwardly before his grinning messmates, “O’ course ‘ee won’t know me, Sir Richard—name o’ Tregorran.”

“But I knew your father. The blacksmith near the church.” For a brief instant he laid his hand on the man’s shoulder while his mind sped on wings back to Falmouth. The man Tregorran stared at the two lines of gold lace on Bolitho’s sleeve as if he had been mesmerised.

“He was a good man.” The mood left him. “Let’s hope we’ll all be back home soon after this, lads!”

The overcrowded messdeck was stuffy now with the gunports sealed to contain the familiar smells of tar, bilge and sweat; a place where no tall man could stand upright, where their lives began and too often ended.

He climbed up the last of the companion ladders and some of the men stood to cheer, their voices following him, deck by deck, like other men he had known and commanded over the years; waiting perhaps for him to join them in that other world.

Allday saw his face and knew exactly what he was thinking. Roughknots, thieves and villains, alongside the innocent and the damned. England’s last hope. Only hope—that was what he was thinking right now.

A midshipman’s grubby breeches caught the lamplight on the ladder and there was a quick, whispered conversation, before the lieutenant who had accompanied the unorthodox tour said, “Mr Jenour’s respects, sir!” He was looking at Keen but was very aware of his viceadmiral. “The signal-bag has been passed to Nicator.”

He licked his lips as Bolitho remarked, “All or nothing.” Then he said, “You are Lieutenant Whyham, are you not?” He saw the youthful officer nod uncertainly. “I thought as much, but did not wish to lose the use of memory!” He smiled, as if this were a casual meeting ashore. “One of my midshipmen in Argonaute four years ago, correct?”

The lieutenant was still staring after him as Bolitho and Keen climbed into the cooler air of the upper deck. After the sealed messes it tasted like wine.

Keen said, uncertainly, “Will you sup with me tonight, sir? Before they pull the ship apart and clear for action?”

Bolitho looked at him calmly, still moved by the warmth of those simple men who had nothing but his word to hold onto.

“I would relish that, Val.”

Keen removed his hat and pushed his fingers through his fair hair. Bolitho half-smiled. The midshipman again, or perhaps the lieutenant in the GreatSouthSea.

“What you said in your instructions to Nicator’s captain. It makes one realise, but not accept, how narrow that margin is. Now when I think I have everything I ever wanted …” He did not go on. He did not need to. It was as if Allday had just repeated what he had said before. “An’ then you dies …”

Keen could have been speaking for both of them.

At the very first hint of life in the sky Black Prince seemed to come slowly into her own. Like men from forgotten sea-fights and long-lost wrecks, her seamen and marines emerged from the darkness of gundeck, orlop or hold, quitting that last pretence of privacy and peace which is the need of all men before a battle.

Bolitho stood on the quarterdeck’s weather side and listened to the awakening thud of bare feet and the clink of weapons around and below him. Keen had done his work well: not a pipe given, no beat of drum to inflame the heart and mind of some poor soul who might imagine it was his last memory on earth.

It was as if the great ship herself was coming alive, her company of eight hundred sailors and sea-soldiers merely incidental.

Bolitho watched the sky, his eye at ease in the darkness. First light was not far off, but for the present it was only anticipation, a sense of uneasiness like the sea’s deceptive smile before a raging gale.

He tried to imagine the ship as the enemy would gauge her. A fine big three-decker with her rightful Danish ensign flying directly beneath the English one, to announce her true state to the world. But it needed more than that. Bolitho had used many ruses in his time, especially when employed as a frigate captain, and had been caught out by almost as many triggered against himself. In a war which had lasted so long and killed so many men on all sides and of all beliefs, even the normal could not be accepted at face-value.

If the day went against them, the price would be doubly high. Keen had already passed his orders to the boatswain—no chain-slings could be rigged to yards and spars to prevent them from falling to the deck, to cripple the ship or crush the men at the guns. It would put an edge to their spirits when the time came. There had been no protest from the boatswain about keeping all the boats stacked in their tiers. Bolitho had expected none. For despite the real danger from flying splinters, some like sawtoothed daggers if tiered boats were caught in an attack, most sailors preferred to see them there. The last lifeline.

Keen came up to him. Like all the officers who would be on the upper deck he had discarded his telltale captain’s coat. Too many clues. Too many easy targets.

Keen stared at the sky. “It’s going to be another clear day.”

Bolitho nodded. “I had hoped for rain—cloud at least with this nor’-easterly.” He looked towards the empty blanket beyond the bows. “We shall have the sun at our backs. They must sight us first. I think we should shorten sail, Val.”

Keen was peering around for a midshipman. “Mr Rooke! Tell the first lieutenant to pipe the hands aloft, to take in t’gan’s’ls and royals!”

Bolitho smiled in spite of his dry tension. Two minds working together. If they were sighted first, any enemy would be suspicious of a prize-ship being driven under full sail when there was nothing to fear.

Keen looked at the vague shapes of men rushing aloft up the shrouds, to take in and fist the heavy canvas to the yards.

He said, “Major Bourchier knows what to do. He will have marines on the forecastle, aft here, and up in the maintop, just as he would if he were controlling a prize with her original company still aboard.”

There was nothing more they could do.

Cazalet called, “Sailmaker, sir!”

Fudge and one of his mates came through the shadows and held out the makeshift Danish flag between them.

Bolitho said, “True to your word. A fine job.” He beckoned to Jenour. “Help Fudge to run up our new flag—his should be the honour!”

It would have been something to see it, he thought. But even in the raw darkness, with the spray occasionally pattering over the decks like rain, it was a moment to remember. Men crowding inboard from the guns to peer at the strange flapping ensign as it mounted up to the gaff beneath the ship’s true colours.

Someone called out, “Yew musta used all yer best gear fer that ‘un, Fudge!”

The old sailmaker was still staring at the faint, curling shape against the black sky. Over his shoulder he said dourly, “Got enough to sew you up in after this day’s over, mate.”

Keen smiled. “I’ve put one of our master’s mates in the masthead, sir. Taverner—used to be with Duncan. Eyes like a hawk, mind like a knife. I’ll see him made sailing-master even if it does mean losing him!”

Bolitho licked his dry lips. Coffee, wine, even the brackish water from the casks would help just now.

He shut it from his mind. “We shall soon know.”

Keen said, “RearAdmiral Herrick could have taken another course, sir. He may have turned the convoy towards England where he could expect to meet with the patrolling squadron.”

Bolitho imagined he could see Herrick’s round, honest features. Turn the convoy? Never. It would be like running away.

Tojohns, the captain’s coxswain, was kneeling on the deck to secure Keen’s curved hanger, the lightweight fighting sword he always carried in battle. As he had when Hyperion had gone down under him.

Bolitho touched the hilt of the old family sword at his hip and shivered. It was like ice. He felt Allday watching him, caught the heady scent of rum as he released a great sigh.

Keen was busy again with his master and lieutenants and Bolitho asked, “Well, old friend, what say you about this?”

For just a few seconds the darkness was gone, the night torn apart by one great, searing explosion which laid bare the whole ship, the men caught at their guns like statues, the rigging and shrouds sharpened by the glare like the bars of a furnace. Just as suddenly the light vanished, as if snuffed out by a giant’s hand. Then, it seemed an eternity later, came the volcanic roar of the explosion, and with it a hot wind which seemed to sear the canvas and throw every sail aback.

Voices called out in every direction as the silence, like the darkness, hemmed them in once more.

Allday said harshly, “One o’ the vessels carryin’ powder an’ shot, I’ve no doubt!”

Bolitho tried to imagine if any one had known, be it only for a split second, that his life was ending in such a terrible way. No last cry, no handshake with an old friend to hold back the scream or the tears. Nothing.

Keen was shouting, “Mr Cazalet, send midshipmen to each gundeck to tell the lieutenants what has happened!”

Bolitho looked away. Keen had managed to remember even that, as his ship sailed blindly on … into what?

Keen was heard to say, “God, they must have felt that like a reef on the lower gundeck!”

A small figure emerged from somewhere, groping past the helmsmen and officers, the men at the braces, as if he did not belong here at all.

Allday growled, “What th’ hell are you doin’ on deck?”

Bolitho turned. “Ozzard! What is it? You know your place is below. You were never a Jack Tar like poor Allday here!” But the old joke fell flat as he realised that Ozzard was quivering like a leaf.

“C-can’t, s-sir! In the dark … down there. Like last time …” He stood trembling, oblivious to the silent men around him. “Not again. I c-can’t do it!”

Bolitho said, “Of course. I should have thought.” He glanced at Allday. “Find him a place close to hand.” He knew the words were not reaching the terrified little man. “Near to us, eh?” He watched their shadows merge with the greater darkness and felt it like an old wound. Hyperion again.

Allday returned. “Snug as a bug, Sir Richard. He’ll be all right after what you just said.” If only you knew the half of it, he thought.

There were whispers as the upper yards and masthead pendant suddenly appeared against the sky, as if caught in another explosion, or even separate from the ship.

From the foremast crosstrees the master’s mate’s voice: “Deck there! Land on the larboard bow!”

Keen exclaimed, “Excellent, Mr Julyan—that must be The Skaw! Be prepared to alter course to the west’rd within the hour!”

Bolitho could share the excitement in many ways. They would soon be out and into the Skagerrak with sea-room which had no bottom, where it was said wrecks and drowned sailormen shared the black caverns with blind creatures too terrible to imagine.

Be that as it may … when the jib-boom pointed west again, nothing stood between them and England.

The light was spreading down on them to reveal each deck like a layer of a cake. Following astern, the seventy-four Nicator was completely laid bare in the weak sunlight, when minutes earlier she had been invisible.

Taverner the master’s mate, who was sharing the lookout, yelled, “Deck there! Ships burnin’!” He seemed choked for words. “God, sir, I can’t count ‘em!”

Keen snatched a speaking-trumpet. “This is the Captain!” A pause, to give the slender link time to fasten, the months of training and years of discipline to reassert themselves. “What of the enemy?”

Bolitho walked to the quarterdeck rail and watched the upturned faces, the stark contrast with the almost cheerful air when Keen had explained what he had intended for this very moment.

“Two sail of the line, sir! One other dismasted.” He broke off and Bolitho heard the master murmur, “That’s not like Bob. It must be bad then.”

The speed with which daylight was ripping away their defences made every moment worse. The enemy must have stumbled on the convoy before dusk yesterday, while they had been crawling out of the Sound with no thought but rescue in their hearts.

They must have taken or destroyed the whole convoy, leaving the clearing up to do until daylight. Until now.

Keen said in a tired voice, “Too late after all, sir.”

The sudden echo of cannon fire vibrated over the sea and sighed through the masts and flapping canvas like an approaching squall.

Taverner called, “Dismasted ship has opened fire, sir! She’s not done in after all!” Discipline seemed to leave him and he yelled, “Hit ‘em, lads! Hit th’ buggers! We’m comin’!”

Keen and Bolitho stared at one another. The mastless, helpless ship was Benbow. There was no other possibility.

Bolitho said, “Hands aloft, Val. Full sail. Just as we would if we were a prize and escort.” He saw the eagerness and despair in Keen’s eyes and said, “There is no other way. We must hold the surprise, and we must keep the wind-gage.” He felt his muscles harden as a responding broadside overlapped another and knew that the enemy would divide Benbow’s remaining firepower, then board and take her. The ship could not even be manoeuvred to protect her stern from a full broadside. He clenched his fists together until they ached. Herrick would die rather than surrender. He had already lost too much.

Black Prince leaned steadily under the mounting pressure in her sails, and began to turn towards the western horizon beyond the blurred finger of land, a sea where the darkness still lingered.

With every minute the daylight revealed the awful evidence of a lost fight. Spars, hatch-covers, drifting boats, and further out, the long dark keel of a vessel which had capsized under the bombardment. As the darkness continued to retreat they sighted other ships. Some were partly dismasted, others outwardly undamaged. All flew the French Tricolour above their English flags, mocking patches of gaiety in a panorama of disaster.

Of the second escort which Tyacke had described there was no sign at all. Under Herrick’s flag she would have gone down, too, rather than strike.

Taverner’s voice was controlled again. “Deck there! They’ve discontinued their fire!”

Keen raised his speaking-trumpet almost desperately. “Have they struck?”

Taverner was watching from his private eyrie. All his years in ships under every kind of captain; but always learning, stowing it all away like rhino in a ditty-box.

He called, “The big ship’s standin’ away and makin’ more sail, sir!”

Bolitho gripped Keen’s arm. “They’ve sighted us, Val. They’re coming!”

He saw his nephew, Midshipman Vincent, staring wildly over the nettings as far-off screams ebbed and flowed through the lengthening pall of dense smoke from one or more of the wrecks.

Tojohns said between his teeth, “What’s that, in Hell’s name?”

Keen looked at him and answered flatly, “Horses. Caught below decks when their ship was torn apart.”

He saw Bolitho touch his injured eye. Remembering too. The awful cries of army mounts dying in terror and in darkness until the sea finally ended it.

Bolitho noticed some of the seamen staring at each other with anger and sick dismay. Men who would barely turn a hair when they saw an enemy fall, or even one of their own if the time was wrong. But a helpless animal—that was always different.

“May I, Val?” Then all at once he found himself at the rail again, his voice surprisingly level and controlled as every man turned aft towards him.

“That ship is coming for us, lads! Whatever you may think or feel, you must stay your hand! Behind each port is a double-shotted gun with Englishmen to use them when I give the word!” He hesitated as he saw Ozzard’s tiny shape scurrying along the starboard gangway towards the forecastle with one of the big signals telescopes over his shoulder like a mace.

He dragged his mind away from what it must have been like here. Helpless ships; Herrick standing like a rock between them and impossible odds. Perhaps Herrick was dead. In the same breath he knew he was not.

“Stand together! This is our ship and those people yonder were our kin! But this is not revenge! It is justice!”

He fell silent, exhausted, empty. He said quietly, “They don’t have the heart for it, Val.”

“Right, lads! Huzza for Our Dick!” The ship seemed to shiver to the sudden wild burst of cheering. “An’ huzza for our Cap’n whose bride’s waitin’ for ‘m in England!”

Keen turned, his eyes full of tears. “There’s your answer—they’ll give you all they have! You should never have doubted it!”

Allday seized Ozzard and cursed the men for cheering when they had no minds for what they were facing.

“What the hell were you doin’? I thought you’d run dizzy like them natives do in the sun!”

Ozzard put down the telescope and stared at him. He seemed very composed. More so than Allday could ever recall.

He said, “I heard what Sir Richard just told them. That it’s not revenge.” He looked at the powerful telescope. “I don’t know much about ships, but I know that one right enough. How could I forget?”

“How d’you mean, matey?” But the throbbing pain in his chest had already warned him.

Ozzard glanced towards Bolitho and the captain. “I don’t care what they call her or what flag she flies. She’s the same one that destroyed our Hyperion. It will be revenge all right!” He peered at his friend, his courage gone. “What shall we do, John?”

For once there was no answer.

Midshipman Roger Segrave pressed his palms on the quarterdeck rail and took in great gulps of air, as if he were being suffocated. His whole body was like taut wire, and when he looked at his hands and arms he expected to see them shaking uncontrollably. He glanced quickly at the figures around him. The master and his mates by the compass, the four helmsmen, with extra hands standing by but pretending to look like men with nothing to do. It was like a madness. The larboard gangway, the one which was nearest to the tall enemy three-decker, was packed with sailors, all unarmed, apparently chatting to each other and occasionally pointing at the other ships as if they were not involved. Segrave dropped his eyes and saw the lie revealed. Beneath the gangway and matched by the two decks below that, the gun crews were crammed against their weapons. Handspikes, rammers and sponges were close to hand, and even the breechings were cast off to avoid even a second’s delay.

He looked at Bolitho who was standing with Captain Keen, hands on hips, sometimes pointing at the other ships but mostly keeping his eyes inboard. Even without their uniforms they stood out from the rest, Segrave thought wildly. The lordly Midshipman Bosanquet was speaking with the flag lieutenant and Segrave saw signal flags rolled and ready to bend on, partly hidden by some hammocks stretched out to dry in the sunshine. Only the marines made no pretence of hiding their true identities. Their scarlet coats filled the maintop by the depressed swivel guns, and two more squads were properly deployed with fixed bayonets on the forecastle and aft near the poop.

Segrave heard Bolitho say, “Mr Julyan, you are supposed to be the captain today!”

The tall sailing-master gave a broad grin. “I feels different already, Sir Richard!”

Segrave felt his breathing and heartbeat steady. He must accept it, as they did.

Bolitho added in the same easy way, “I know that our Danish opposites dress somewhat more soberly than we do, but I think a hat might make all the difference.”

More grins as Julyan tried first Keen’s cocked hat and then Bolitho’s, which fitted him perfectly.

Bolitho glanced around the quarterdeck and Segrave tensed as the grey eyes rested momentarily on him. “The waiting’s over. Stand by!”

Segrave looked again at the enemy. The second large ship, a two-decker, was falling downwind and changing tack, flags rising and vanishing from her yards as she exchanged signals with her superior. She would confront Nicator, which was making full sail as if to head off any attack on her “prize.”

Keen watched his former ship and murmured, “She was a good old girl.” Was.

Segrave jumped as the first lieutenant’s harsh voice smashed through his thoughts.

“Lower gundeck, Mr Segrave! Report to the third lieutenant there!” He glared round the darkly shadowed deck. “That bloody Vincent should have been here by now! Tell him I want him if you see him!” His eyes fell on Segrave and something perhaps from an old memory made him say, “Easy, young fellow. Men will die today, but only if chosen.” His hard features cracked into a smile. “You’ve proved your worth—it’ll not be your turn yet!”

Segrave ran to the ladder and suddenly remembered the rough kindness shown to him in Tyacke’s Miranda before she had been blown to pieces. He was a year older. He had lived a full lifetime since then.

He paused for a last glance before losing himself in the hull’s darkness. A captured scene, which he would never forget. Bolitho, his frilled shirt blowing in the fresh breeze, one hand on the old sword, with his coxswain just behind him. Keen, Jenour, Bosanquet, master’s mates and seamen, people now, more real than any he knew at home.

As he turned he felt his mouth go dry. Beyond the larboard gangway was a solitary flag, like a lance-pendant above an armoured knight in one of his old storybooks.

As close as that. He knew it was the foremast truck of the enemy ship.

Someone shouted, “She’s luffed! She wants to speak!” There was no defiant response, no ironic jeers such as he had heard from sailors in danger. It was like a single animal growl, as if the ship were speaking for them.

He found himself hurrying down, deck by deck, ladder by ladder, past wary marine sentries posted to prevent men from running below, and ship’s boys as they ran with fresh powder for the guns which had yet to be fired.

He saw a midshipman cowering by the carpenter’s extra stock of wedges and plugs, and knew it was Vincent.

He said, “Mr Cazalet wants you on deck!”

Vincent seemed to shrink into the heap of repairing gear and sobbed, “Go away, damn you to hell! I hope they kill you!”

Segrave hurried on, shocked more than anything by what he had seen. Vincent was finished. He had not even begun.

The lower gundeck was in total darkness, and yet Segrave could feel the mass of men who crouched there. In places chinks of sunlight probed down the gunports to touch a naked, sweating shoulder, or a pair of eyes white and staring like a blind man’s.

Flemyng, the third lieutenant, commanded here. This was the main power of Black Prince’s artillery, where twenty-eight 32-pounders and their crews lived, trained and waited for just this moment.

Flemyng was a tall man, and was crouched over with his face pressed against the massive hull by the first division of guns. Only when he looked inboard did Segrave see the small round observation port, no bigger than a sailor’s basin, where the lieutenant could watch the nearness of an enemy before any one else.

“Segrave? Stay with me.” His voice was clipped, sharp. He was usually one of the easiest of the lieutenants. “Gunner’s Mate! See to Mr Segrave!” He dismissed him and turned back to his little port.

Segrave’s eyes were getting used to the darkness and he could see the individual guns nearest him, the black breeches resting on the buff-painted trucks, men crowded around them as if in some strange ceremony, their backs shining like steel.

The gunner’s mate said, “‘Ere, Mr Segrave.” He thrust two pistols into his hands. “Both loaded. Just cock an’ fire, see?”

Segrave stared at the closed gunports. Would the enemy come swarming in here? Into the ship herself?

The gunner’s mate had gone, and Segrave jumped as somebody touched his leg and murmured, “Come to see ‘ow the poor live, Mr Segrave?”

Segrave got down by the gun. It was the man he had saved from a flogging, the one Vincent had discovered in the hold below them at this moment.

He exclaimed, “Jim Fittock! I didn’t know this was your station!”

A voice barked, “Silence on the gundeck!”

Fittock chuckled. “You got yer pieces then?”

Segrave thrust them into his belt. “They’ll not be allowed to get that close!”

Fittock nodded to his mates on the opposite side of the great thirty-two-pounder. It said that this young officer was all right. The reasons were unnecessary.

“Aye, we’ll rake the buggers after what they done!” He saw a sliver of sunlight glance off one of the pistols and gave a bitter smile. How could he explain to such an innocent that the pistols were for shooting any poor Jack who tried to run when the slaughter began?

A whistle shrilled and a voice piped from the companion ladder, “Right traverse, sir!”

Someone growled, “She’s that close, eh?” Handspikes rasped across the deck to move the guns to a steeper angle; this division would be firing directly from the larboard bow.

Lieutenant Flemyng had drawn his hanger. “Ready, lads!” He peered through the darkness as if he were seeing each of his men. “They’ve been calling to us to heave-to!” His voice sounded wild. “All nice and friendly!” As he turned back to look through his observation port, the sunlight, which had held his face suspended against the darkness like a mask, was cut off. It was as if a great hand had been laid across the port like a shutter.

Fittock hissed, “Keep with us!”

Segrave heard no more as the whistles shrilled and Flemyng yelled, “Open the ports! Run out!”

The air was filled with the squeak of trucks as the seamen threw themselves on their tackles and ran the great, lumbering guns up to the waiting sunshine. Gun-captains crouched and took the slack from their trigger-lines, faces, eyes, hands in various attitudes of hate and prayer while they cringed and waited for the order; it was like one vast incomplete painting.

Segrave stared with disbelief at the high beakhead and ornate gilded carving—a ship’s tall side already smoke-stained from bombardment and conquest.

It was like being held in time. No voice, nor motion, as if the ship, too, was stricken.

Flemyng’s hanger slashed down. “Fire!”

As each gun came lurching inboard to be seized, sponged out and reloaded in the only fashion they knew, Segrave stood gasping and retching, the smoke funnelling around him and blotting out everything. And yet it was there. Frozen to his mind. The lines of enemy guns pointing at him, some with men peering around them, watching their latest capture until the massive weight of iron smashed into them at less than fifty yards’ range.

The ship was swaying over as deck by deck the full broadside was fired across the smoky water. Men were cheering and cursing, racing one another to run out the guns and hold up their hands in the swirling mist of powder smoke.

“Run out! Aim! Fire!”

A ragged crash thundered against the side and somewhere a gun rolled inboard and overturned like a wounded beast. Men screamed and fell in the choking mist and Segrave saw a severed hand lying near the next gun like a discarded glove. No wonder they painted the sides red. It managed to hide some of the horror.

“Cease firing!” Flemyng turned away as another midshipman was dragged towards the hatchway which would take him to the orlop. From what he could see he had lost an arm and a leg. There was not much point …

Segrave also tore his eyes away. The same age as himself. The same uniform. A thing. Not a person any more.

“Open the starboard ports!”

Fittock punched his arm. “Come on, sir! The Cap’n’s comin’ about and we’ll engage the buggers to starboard!” They scrambled across the deck, stumbling over fallen gear and slipping on blood as sunlight poured through the other ports and the enemy seemed to slide past, her sails in complete disorder. Unless engaged on both sides together, the gun crews usually helped each other to keep the broadsides timed and regular.

“Ready, sir!”

“On the uproll, lads!” Flemyng was hatless and there was blood splashed like paint on his forehead. “Fire!”

Men were cheering and hugging each other. “‘Er bloody foremast’s comin’ down!”

By one of the guns a seaman held his mate in his arms, and frantically pushed the hair from his eyes as he babbled, “Nearly done, Tim! The buggers are dismasted!” But his friend did not respond. Together they had lived and yarned by this one gun. Every waking hour it had been here—waiting.

A gunner’s mate said roughly, “Take that man an’ put ‘im over! ‘E’s done for!” He was not an unduly hard man, but death was terrible enough without seeing it lingering on.

The seaman clutched his friend closer to him so that his head lolled across his shoulder as if to confide something. “You won’t put ‘im over, you bastards!”

Segrave felt Fittock’s hard hand helping him to his feet as he called, “Leave them, Gunner’s Mate!” He did not recognise himself. “There is enough to do!”

Fittock glanced across at his own crew, his teeth very white in his grimy face.

“Told you, eh? Right little terrier!” Then he guided Segrave to the curve of one great timber so that the others should not see his distress. He added, “One of the best!”

Throughout the ship men stood or crouched at their tasks, bodies streaked with sweat, ears bandaged against the deafening roar of cannon fire, fingers raw from hauling, ramming and running-out again and again.

It took time for the marine’s trumpet call to penetrate each deck, and then the cheering clawed its way up towards the smoky sunlight, that other place where it had all begun.

Bolitho stood by the quarterdeck rail and watched the enemy ship. As she drifted downwind she turned her high stern towards him, the name San Mateo still so bright in the sunlight. He had thought it would never stop, and yet he knew that the whole action, from the time the Danish flag had been hauled down and his own run up to the fore, had lasted barely thirty minutes.

He said, “I knew we could do it.” He felt Allday near him, heard Keen yell, “Stand by to starboard!”

There had been casualties. Men killed when seconds before they had been waiting to start the game.

“Nicator’s signalling, sir!” Jenour sounded hoarse.

Bolitho raised a hand in acknowledgment. Thank God. Jenour was safe too. Black Prince must have fired three broadsides before the enemy had gathered wits enough to return a ragged response. By then it was already too late.

He said. “Signal Nicator to close with the convoy. Make certain that she tells the boarding parties that if they try to scuttle our ships or harm the crews, they will have to swim home!” He heard men muttering with approval and knew that had he so much as suggested it, they would have run every French prisoner up to the mainyard.

It was what war dictated. A madness. A need to hurt and kill those who had brought fear to you.

He thought suddenly of Ozzard. So innocuous, and yet he had known, had recognised that it was that same ship which had so brutally destroyed Hyperion. Maybe it was the ship, and not the men who crewed her? French flag, Spanish, and now if she surrendered, an addition to His Britannic Majesty’s fleet. Would she, the ship, remain unchanged, like something untamed?

It still sickened him to recall how San Mateo had poured her broadsides into Hyperion, regardless of the destruction and murder she was causing to her own consorts, which were unable to move clear. The ship then.

Keen walked round to face him.

“Sir?” He watched quietly. Feeling it. Sharing it. There was pride too. More than he had dared to hope for.

Bolitho seemed to rouse himself. “Has she struck yet?” Is that me? So cold, so impersonal … An executioner.

Keen answered gently, “I believe her steering is shot away, sir. But their guns are still, and I think many of her people are dead.”

Bolitho said, “A glass if you please.” He saw their surprise as he crossed to the opposite side and levelled the telescope on Herrick’s flagship. Unmoving and heavy in the water, her masts and trailing rigging dragging from either side. Thin scarlet threads ran down from the upper deck scuppers to the littered surface and the ship’s unmoving reflection. As if she herself were bleeding to death. He felt his heart leap as he saw the tattered ensign still trailing from the poop where someone had braved hell to nail it there. Beyond Benbow, the other vessels drifted to no purpose. Spectators, victims; waiting for it all to end.

He called sharply, “Prepare all divisions to fire, Captain Keen!” There was no reply, and he could almost feel them holding their breath. “If they do not strike, they will die.” He swung round. “Is that clear?”

Another voice; another still alive. Bosanquet called, “Brig Larne is closing, sir!”

Perhaps his meticulous interruption helped. Bolitho said, “Call away my barge and ask the surgeon to report to me. Benbow will need help. Your first lieutenant would be a great asset.” He shook himself and walked to his friend. “My apologies, Val. I had forgotten.”

Cazalet had fallen to the first exchange. A ball had all but cut him in half while he had been sending men aloft to attend repairs.

They were cheering again; it went on and on and Bolitho believed he could see men in Nicator’s yards waving and capering, their voices lost in distance. Like great falling leaves the two French flags drifted down from San Mateo’s rigging and men stood back from her guns, silently watching like mourners.

Keen said harshly, “She’s struck!” He could not contain his relief.

Bolitho saw his barge lifting and then dipping over the nettings, and knew that Keen had been dreading the order to re-open fire, flags or not.

Allday touched his hat. “Ready, Sir Richard.” He studied him anxiously. “Shall I fetch a coat?”

Bolitho turned to him and winced as the sunlight pricked at his eye.

“I have no need for it.”

Julyan the sailing-master called, “What about your hat, Sir Richard?” He was half-laughing, but almost sobbing with relief. Men had died right beside him. He was safe—one more time. Another step up the ladder.

Bolitho smiled through the smoky sunshine. “You have a son, I believe? Give it to him. It will make a good yarn, one day.”

He turned away from the surprise and gratitude in the man’s face and said, “Let us finish this.”

It was a silent crossing, with only the creak of oars and the bargemen’s breathing to break the stillness.

As Benbow’s great shadow loomed over them, Bolitho did not know where he would find the strength to meet whatever lay ahead. He pinched the locket beneath his filthy shirt and whispered, “Wait for me, Kate.”

Followed by the others, he clambered up the side. Shot holes pitted the timbers from gangway to waterline, rigging, some with corpses trapped within it like weed, tugged beneath the sea, pulling her down.

Bolitho climbed faster. But a ship’s heart could be saved. He saw faces staring at him from open gunports, some driven half-mad, others probably killed at the outbreak of the battle.

He reached the quarterdeck, so bare now without the main and mizzen to protect it.

He heard Black Prince’s surgeon calling out orders, and another boat already hooking alongside with more willing hands; but at this moment he was quite alone.

The centre of any fighting ship, where it all began and ended. The shattered wheel with the dead helmsmen scattered like bloodied bundles, even caught in attitudes of shock and fury when death had marked them down. A boatswain’s mate who had been kneeling to fix a bandage to the flag lieutenant’s leg, then both of them killed together by a hail of cannister shot. A sailor still bending on a signal when he had fallen, and the halliards were torn from his hands as the mast had gone careering overboard.

Propped against the compass box with one leg bent beneath him was Herrick. He was barely conscious, although Bolitho guessed that his pain was deeper than any gunshot wound.

He held a pistol in one hand, and raised his head, holding it to one side as if the broadsides had rendered him deaf.

“Ready, Marines! We’ve got ‘em on the run! Take aim, my lads!”

Bolitho heard Allday mutter, “God, look at it.”

The marines did not stir. They lay, from sergeant to private, like fallen toy soldiers, their weapons still pointing towards an invisible enemy.

Allday said sharply, “Easy, sir.”

Bolitho stepped over an out-thrust scarlet arm with two chevrons upon it and gently took the pistol from Herrick’s hand.

He passed it to Allday, who noted that it was in fact loaded and cocked.

“Rest easy, Thomas. Help is here.” He took his arm and waited for the blue eyes to focus and recover their understanding. “Listen to the cheering! The battle’s o’er—the day is won!”

Herrick allowed himself to be raised to a more comfortable position. He stared at the splintered decks and abandoned guns, the dead, and the scarlet trails which marked the retreat of the dying.

As if speaking from far away he said thickly, “So you came, Richard.”

He uses my name and yet he meets me as a stranger. Bolitho waited sadly, the madness and the exhilaration of battle already drained from him.

Herrick was trying to smile. “It will be … another triumph for you.”

Bolitho released his arm very gently and stood up, and beckoned to the surgeon. “Attend to the RearAdmiral, if you please.” He saw the dead marine corporal’s hair blowing in the breeze, his eyes fixed with attention as if he were listening.

Bolitho looked at Jenour, and past him to the waiting, listless ships.

“I think not, Thomas. Here, Death is the only victor.”

It was over.