Galbraith said steadily, “I shall be ready, sir!”
“A close thing.”
“We would have run them down, sir. The way you handled her…”
Adam touched his sleeve. “Not that, Leigh. I wanted them dead.”
Galbraith turned away, beckoning urgently to one of his petty officers. Even when the quarter-boat had been warped alongside and men were clambering down the frigate’s tumblehome, he was still reliving it.
The Captain had called him by his first name, like an old and trusted friend. But more, he remembered and was disturbed by the look of pain on the dark features. Anguish, as if he had almost betrayed something. Or someone.
“Bear off forrard! Give way all!”
They were dipping and rising over the choppy water, the boat’s stem already clattering through drifting flotsam and lolling corpses. Galbraith shaded his eyes to look up at the other vessel, huge now as they pulled past her bows, seeing the damage which Unrivalled’s guns had inflicted.
“Marines, take the poop! Creagh, put your party below!” He saw the boatswain’s mate nod, his weather-beaten face unusually grim. He was the man who had first recognised Tetrarch, and perhaps remembered the blackest moment in her life, when she had been surrendered to the enemy.
Sergeant Everett of the marines called, “Watch yer back, sir! I’d not trust a one of ’em!”
Galbraith thought of the captain again. It might have been us. Then he lurched to his feet, one hand on the shoulder of an oarsman in this overcrowded boat, his mind empty of everything but the grapnel thudding into the scarred timbers and the hull grating alongside.
“With me, lads!”
Within a second he might be dead, or floating out there with the other corpses.
And then he was up and over the first gunport lid, tearing his leg on something jagged but feeling nothing.
There were more people on deck than he had expected. For the most part ragged and outwardly undisciplined, the sweepings of a dozen countries, renegades and deserters, and yet… He stared around, taking in the discarded weapons, the sprawled shapes of men killed by Unrivalled’s slow and accurate fire. It would need more than greed or some obscure cause to weld this rabble into one company, to stand and fight a King’s ship which for all they knew might have been expecting support from other men-of-war.
He thought of the hand on his sleeve, and pointed with his hanger.
“Where is your captain?” He could not recall having drawn the blade as he had scrambled aboard.
A man stepped or was pushed towards him. An officer of sorts, his uniform coat without facings or rank.
He said huskily, “He is dying.” He spread his hands. “We pulled down the flag. It was necessary!”
One of Creagh’s seamen shouted, “Fire’s out!” He glared at the silent figures below the poop as if he would have cut each one down himself. “Lantern, sir! Knocked over!”
The ship was safe. Galbraith said, “Run up our flag.” He glanced at Unrivalled, moving so slowly, the guns like black teeth along her side. Then he looked up at the squad of Royal Marines with their bayoneted muskets. They had even managed to depress a swivel-gun towards the listless men who were now their prisoners. A blast of canister shot would deter any last-minute resistance.
Sergeant Everett called, “Captain’s up here, sir!”
Galbraith sheathed his hanger. It would be useless in any case if some hothead tried to retake the ship. The groups of men parted to allow him through, and he saw defeat in their strained features. The will to fight was gone, if it had ever been there. Apathy, despair, fear, the face of surrender and all it represented.
Tetrarch’s captain was not what he had expected. Propped between one of his officers and a pale-faced youth, he was at a guess about Galbraith’s age. He had fair hair, tied in an old-style queue, and there was blood on his waistcoat, which the officer was attempting to staunch.
Galbraith said, “M’sieur, I must tell you…”
The eyes opened and stared up at him, a clear hazel. The breathing was sharp and painful.
“No formalities, Lieutenant. I speak English.” He coughed, and blood ran over the other man’s fingers. “I suppose I am English. So strange, that it should come to this.”
Galbraith stared around. “Surgeon?”
“None. So many shortages.”
“I will take you to my ship. Can you manage that?”
What did it matter? A renegade Englishman; there was a slight accent, possibly American. Perhaps one of the original privateers. And yet he did not seem old enough. He stood up; he was wasting time.
“Rig a bosun’s chair. You, Corporal Sykes, attend this officer’s wound.” He saw the doubt in the marine’s eyes. “It is important!”
Creagh shouted, “’Nother boat shovin’ off, sir!”
Galbraith nodded. Captain Bolitho had seen or guessed what was happening. A prize crew, then. And there was still the dismasted brig to deal with. He needed to act quickly, to organise his boarding party, to have the prisoners searched for concealed weapons.
But something made him ask, “What is your name, Captain?”
He lay back against the others, his eyes quite calm despite the pain.
“Lovatt.” He attempted to smile. “Roddie-Lovatt.”
“Bosun’s chair rigged, sir!”
Galbraith said, “We have a good surgeon. What is the nature of your wound?”
He could hear the other boat hooking on, voices shouting to one another, thankful that reinforcements had arrived. All danger forgotten, perhaps until the night watches, when there would be thoughts for all men.
Lovatt did not conceal his contempt as he said bitterly, “A pistol ball. From one of my gallant sailors yonder. When I refused to haul down the flag.”
Galbraith put his hand on the shoulder of the boy, who had not left the wounded man.
“Go with the others!”
His mind was full. An English captain who was probably an American; a ship which had been handed to the enemy after a mutiny; and a French flag.
The boy tried to free himself and Lovatt said quietly, “Please, Lieutenant. Paul is my son.”
Two seamen carried him to the hastily rigged boatswain’s chair. Once, Lovatt cried out, the sound torn from him, and reached for his son’s hand. His eyes moved to the newly hoisted flag at the peak, the White Ensign, so fresh, so clean above the pain and the smell of death.
He whispered, “Your flag now, Lieutenant.”
Galbraith signalled to the waiting boat’s crew and saw Midshipman Bellairs peering up at him. He would learn another lesson today.
Lovatt was muttering, “Flags, Lieutenant… We are all mercenaries in war.”
Galbraith saw blood on the deck and realised it was his own, from the leg he had cut when climbing aboard.
The chair was being hoisted and then swayed out over the gangway.
He said, “Go with him, boy. Lively now!”
Creagh joined him by the side as the chair was lowered into the boat, where Bellairs was waiting to receive it.
“Found this, sir.” He held out a sword. “Th’ cap’n’s, they says.”
Galbraith took it and felt the drying blood adhering to his fingers. A sword. All that was left of a man. Something to be handed on. He thought of the old Bolitho blade, which today his captain had worn. Or forgotten.
He studied the hilt. One of the early patterns, with a five-ball design, which had been so resented by sea officers when it had been introduced as the first regulation sword. Most officers had preferred their own choice of blade.
Deliberately, he half-drew it from its leather scabbard and read the engraving. He could even picture the establishment, in the Strand in London, the same sword-cutlers from whom he had obtained the hanger at his hip.
He stared across at his own ship, and at the boat rising and dipping in the swell on its errand of mercy.
Better he had been killed, he thought. A King’s officer who had become a traitor: if he lived through this, he might soon wish otherwise.
He sighed. Wounded to be dealt with, dead to be put over. And a meal of sorts. After that… He felt his dried lips crack into a smile.
He was alive, and they had won the day. It was enough. It had to be.