Bolitho said, "Get under way, Mr Simcox. The sooner we can meet with Truculent, the faster we can-" He left the rest unsaid.
Allday said gruffly, "He's all aback, an' that's no error! "
Bolitho called, "Mr Simcox, once I am in Truculent you will follow the fireship." He had not used her name. By accident or design, he wondered? Perhaps to make Simcox accept her brutal role. What it might well mean for her crew.
Simcox stared at him. "Pretend to give chase, Sir Richard?" He sounded vague.
"Yes. It is an old trick but it may well work, and give Mr Tyacke the opportunity to stand closer to the enemy."
He glanced at his cuff and saw the gold lace suddenly clear and bright; even felt the first warmth as the sunlight rolled down from the horizon.
Jenour asked, "What are their chances, Sir Richard?"
Bolitho looked at him, steadily "Not good. With the wind against them they will have to lose valuable time tacking back and forth. After Mr Tyacke has fired the fuses he will have to pull away in the boat and head for the shore. They will fall into Dutch hands, but with our army so near I feel certain they will not be harmed." He saw the doubt on Jenour's young face. "If Mr Tyacke fails and is too late to get away, we will lose twelve good men. In a frontal attack we could lose every ship and every soul in the squadron."
Allday gazed towards the land. "Not a choice I'd care to make, Sir Richard."
Bolitho pushed the lock of hair from his forehead. Allday understood. One man or a thousand; life or death; it was a decision which was damned either way.
Allday added, "I'll lay odds at the Admiralty they never gives it a thought, nor lose a wink of sleep."
Bolitho saw patches of cloud scudding out from the land and imagined he could feel dust between his teeth.
Allday was studying him grimly and said, "I was a mite bothered back there, Sir Richard. Knowin' you, I did think once or twice that you might take charge o' the fireship."
Bolitho looked at Simcox, who was still staring after Albacora as she laid herself over on her new course.
"Not this time, old friend."
Allday watched Truculent's pyramid of pale canvas rising above the departing shadows while she bore down on the schooner.
His worry had been real enough, until he had remembered what Bolitho had said when they had been together. I want to go home. It was as if the words had been torn from his throat. Allday had shared most things with Bolitho but he had never heard him speak like that before. He released a huge sigh. But they were still a long way from England.
Even as the deck planking began to steam in the first morning warmth, Truculent went about and then lowered the gig smartly from her quarter.
Bolitho waited for Simcox to have his depleted company piped to halliards and braces to heave-to and await the boat, then said, "I wish you well, Mr Simcox. I have written a report which will not come amiss at your final interview."
Simcox nodded and replied, "I am grateful, Sir Richard." He struggled for the right words. "Y'see, Sir Richard, we was friends, an' I know why he's doin' this for me."
Bolitho said, "If anyone can do it, he can." He thought of that last handshake, firm and hard like Herrick's; and of Herrick's Lady Luck in whom he had always believed so fervently.
He saw the frigate's boat pulling strongly towards them, a lieutenant trying to stand upright in the sternsheets while the hull bucked beneath him. So like Poland, he thought, everything correct and beyond criticism.
To Simcox he said, "I hope we meet again. You have a good company and a fine little ship." Even as he spoke he knew what was wrong. It was better not to know them, see and recognise their faces, before you made a decision which could kill them all. He had told himself often enough in the past, and after Hyperion's end he had sworn it to himself again.
"Stand by, on deck! "
Bolitho nodded to those by the bulwark. Old Elias Archer the gunner, Jay the master's mate who would probably take Simcox's place when he quit the ship. Faces he had come to know in so short a while. He noticed that Sperry the boatswain was not here. It was good to know he would be with Tyacke. He wondered why the midshipman had insisted on going with the prize crew when he had just received orders to return to his old ship. Perhaps the one riddle answered the other? In Tyacke's hands they might manage to reach the shore. He shut it from his thoughts like slamming a door.
"And I shall not forget the beer, Mr Simcox! "
Then he was down and into the boat, gripping the lieutenant's shoulder and trying not to allow his legs to be caught by his sword.
Only Allday saw his face when he made that last carefree comment.
He was also the only one who knew what it had cost him.
"So this is where it happened?" Tyacke stooped to peer into the Albacora's cabin. "It's like a pig-sty! "
Midshipman Segrave darted a quick glance at the bunk as if he expected to see the naked slave-girl still chained there. Like the rest of the crew's quarters, the cabin was full of inflammable material of every sort which had been piled or thrown on top of the original master's possessions. The whole schooner stank of it. Oil, old canvas and oakum soaked in grease, wood dipped in tar which had been gathered from Warren 's two transports: anything which would transform Albacora into a raging torch. Segrave felt the air playing around his face from one of the jagged vent holes which had been cut in the deck to fan the flames. For the first time since he had pushed himself forward to volunteer he knew true fear.
Tyacke's voice helped to reassure him. He sounded completely absorbed in his own thoughts, almost matter-of-fact. As if he accepted the inevitability of his fate with the same coolness as he had changed roles with Simcox.
Segrave said, "It seems easier, sir."
"What?" Again, so distant. "Yes, we're closer inshore. But the wind's as much an enemy as before." He sat down unexpectedly on a cask and looked at the youth, his awful wound in shadow. "Mr Simcox told me about your other injuries." He eyed him calmly as if there was nothing to do, with all the time in the world to do it. "Beat, you, did they? Because you were no use on board?"
Segrave clenched his fists. Remembering the first time, and all the others which were to follow. The captain had been uninterested in what went on in the midshipmen's berth, and as he had been heard to tell his first lieutenant on several occasions, he was only concerned with results. Another lieutenant had been chosen to divide the midshipmen into teams, and would set one against the other in all drills and exercises in seamanship, gunnery and boatwork. There were penalties for the laggards, minor awards for the winners.
Tyacke was not far from the truth in his casual summing-up. Except that it was persecution of the worst kind. Segrave had been stripped naked and bent over a gun and flogged without mercy either by the lieutenant or some of the midshipmen. They had humiliated him in any way they could, had worked off a kind of madness in their cruelty. It was doubtful if he would ever lose the scars, any more than a sailor flogged at the gratings.
Segrave found that he was blurting it out in short, desperate sentences although he did not recall beginning to speak at all.
Tyacke said nothing until he had fallen silent. Then he said, "In any ship where such brutality is tolerated it is the fault of her captain. It is the way of things. Disinterest in how his lieutenants administer discipline or enforce his orders must lie at his door. No lieutenant would dare to act in this fashion without the full knowledge of his captain." His eyes gleamed in the shadows. "The orders to return to your old ship in due course prompted you to volunteer, is that it?" When Segrave remained silent he said harshly "By God, boy you would have done better to kill that lieutenant, for the end will likely be the same, without the satisfaction! " He reached across suddenly and gripped his shoulder. "It was your choice." He turned away and a shaft of sunlight filtered through the filthy skylight to lay bare his disfigurement. "As it was mine."