From the chains the leadsman cried, "No bottom, sir! "
Adam said, "Keep your eyes open, lads." He saw Martin looking at him. "Put a good bosun's mate at each cathead, Mr. Martin. If we have to anchor we will have to shift ourselves! "
"By the mark ten! "
Adam kept his face composed. Partridge was right; it had begun to shelve. From no bottom, where the lead would not even reach, to sixty feet.
He tore his mind from the picture of Anemone's keel cruising relentlessly toward the shallows.
Richie suddenly broke away and ran to the mizzen shrouds before anyone could move, and for a moment longer Adam thought he was casting himself to his death without even waiting to see their destruction.
But he pointed wildly as he clung to the tarred ratlines with his other hand.
"Lee bow, sir! " He seemed all excitement. There's the place yonder! "
Adam snatched up a telescope and realised that his fingers were suddenly slippery with sweat.
He saw the gap in the reef immediately, spray bursting on either side and hanging in the air like a shimmering curtain. He felt his heart pounding. It looked about as wide as a farm gate.
The leadsman cried, "Deep eight! "
Adam looked at Richie. He wanted to ask him if he was certain but knew he could not. If his trust was proved false, it would have the same result as if Richie were mistaken.
The masthead called, "Let her fall off a point, sir! " He repeated it and Adam realised he had been unable to think or move.
He called, "Have the braces manned, Mr. Martin. We will steer nor' east by east! "
"By the mark seven! " The seaman sounded completely absorbed, as if he were unaware of or disinterested in the approaching shallows.
"Steady as she goes, sir! Nor' east by east! "
Some men were staring at the island now, suddenly so near. Flat and undulating for the most part but with one hill clearly visible, leaning over like a broken cliff. A good place for a lookout.
Adam clenched his fists. What did it matter? They would never get through. Anemone was not like a brig: she drew nearly three fathoms.
As if to mock him the voice floated aft. "An' deep six! "
Adam said sharply, "Take in the stays' is Mr. Martin! "
Their eyes met across the bare-backed seamen. It was already too late. "By th' mark ten! "
Adam stared at his first lieutenant, then shouted, "Belay that order! "
He raised his telescope again and saw the reef tumbling away on either bow. There was spray and spindrift everywhere so that the sailors' bodies, the guns and the sails shone as if in a tropical downpour.
For the first time Adam heard the reef, the roar and quivering thunder as each wave crashed across it.
He saw Richie clasping his hands together as if in prayer, the spray soaking his face and hair. But he seemed to need to watch, and when he saw Adam he called brokenly, "I was right, sir! Right! 9
Adam nodded, barely trusting himself. "Prepare to wear ship, Mr. Martin! "
"Man the braces there, lively now! "
Men seemed to come out of their stricken postures and ran wildly to the dripping, salt-hardened cordage.
The hull pitched and buffeted, and a great backwash from the reef's undertow gripped the rudder like some underwater monster so that Partridge had to put three more men on the wheel.
The sun swept down on them, the sails releasing clouds of steam as the day's warmth began.
"Stand by to come about! Steer nor' west by north! " It was as close as they could come up into the wind. But it was enough.
Adam stared until his mind throbbed at the two vessels that lay quietly to their anchors in water so calm that it was hard to believe what they had just gone through. One was a brig. Adam felt his mouth tighten. The other was a brigantine, her decks already alive with men as the frigate thrust through the falling spray, her masts steeply angled on her new tack.
Even before the sharp-eyed master's mate called down from his precarious perch, from which he had helplessly watched what he had thought was oncoming disaster, Adam knew it was the ship in his uncle's letter, the privateer Tridente.
"We will engage on both sides at once, Mr. Martin. There will be no time and little room for a second chance. Double-shot ted if you please, so load and run out! "
A moment longer and then he called out loudly, "A guinea to the first gun captain to bring down a spar! "
Martin lingered despite the bustle on every hand, the rammers tamping down the balls and the wads, racing one another as the captain had made them do.
"You never doubted it, did you, sir?"
Then he hurried away without hearing a reply, if there had been one. As the gun trucks squealed up to each open port Martin drew his hanger and glanced aft to the quarterdeck rail. He saw two things. He saw the captain fling the new cutlass over the side; and then he slapped the man Richie on the shoulder.
"As you bear! "
The gun captains were bent double behind the black breeches, each with his trigger-line pulled taut.
Like an avenger Anemone swept between the two vessels, neither of which had found time to up-anchor. They passed the brig at half a cable, and the brigantine Tridente was barely fifty yards abeam when Adam sliced down with his sword.
Trapped by the lagoon, the roar of the controlled broadside seemed to engulf them. Here and there a man fell, probably to musket fire, but the marines' response was swift and savage.
Tridente lost her foretopmast and her deck was littered with wreckage and fallen rigging.
"Stand by to come about! "
Martin forgot himself enough to grip his captain's arm as he yelled, "Look! They've struck! The bastards have surrendered! "
But Adam did not hear him. All he could hear was cheering. His own men were cheering him for the first time.
He was suddenly drained. "Anchor when you are ready and send away the boats." Rear-Admiral Herrick might still be aboard the brigantine, but in his heart Adam knew he was not.
As the anchor splashed down he left the quarterdeck and walked amongst his men. Startled at what they had done, surprised that they were still alive, they nodded and grinned at him as he passed.
He found Lieutenant Dacre having his head bound with a bandage, where a splinter had narrowly missed his eye.
Adam touched his shoulder. "You did well, Robert." He looked around at the peering faces. "You all did, and I'm proud of you, as England will be! "
Dacre winced as a surgeon's mate tightened the bandage.
He said, There was a moment…"
Adam grinned, feeling the elation sweeping through him like a different madness.
"There are always those, Robert, as you will one day discover! "
Rum was being brought on deck. A seaman hesitated and then handed a full mug to the man Richie.
As he watched him drinking it he asked simply, "How was it done, mate?"
Richie smiled for the first time that he could remember.
"It's called trust, " he said.
13. Just Like Us
By late January 1810 Vice-Admiral Sir Richard Bolitho's little squadron was complete, and as far as the Admiralty was concerned no further reinforcements could be expected.
Bolitho was disappointed but hardly surprised. He had been heartened by the arrival at Cape Town of the last army transports, which had been escorted all the way from Portsmouth and the Downs by Commodore Keen's own ships. Fate had decreed that the two seventy-fours that had been the convoy's main protection had both served under Bolitho's flag in the Caribbean campaign, which had culminated in the capture of Martinique. One, the elderly Matchless, was commanded by the testy Irish earl, Lord Rathcullen, a difficult man at the best of times; but it had been he who had disobeyed orders and sailed in support of Bolitho's small force, which had been under attack and hopelessly out-numbered. By hoisting a rear-admiral's flag, Rathcullen had forced the enemy to believe that Herrick was also at sea with a much stronger squadron, when he had in fact remained ashore. Rathcullen's voice often twisted in Bolitho's mind, repeating what Herrick had said. I'll not be blamed twice. Only at Freetown, when he had dined with Herrick for the last time, had Bolitho truly known the strength of his bitterness.