Inshore Squadron (29 page)

Browne cleared his throat. “From
Lookout,
sir.
Sail in sight.
”

Herrick stared at
Benbow
's flapping topsails with fixed attention. “But
which one,
for God's sake?”

Speke called, “One ship has gone down, sir. The other seems to be crippled!”

The masthead pendant whipped out, and Bolitho felt the deck give a sudden tremble as the strengthening gust pushed over the quarter to fill the sails.

He trained a telescope through the rigging, saw a man's face leap into focus as it passed over the carronades on the forecastle to reach far ahead of the ship.

He saw the pall of smoke, two masts with yards and sails in holed fragments standing above it like mute witnesses of the fight.

Then he heard the lookout cry, “She's a Frenchie, sir!”

Bolitho looked at Browne. “The
Ajax.
”

Allday came from the poop and watched with the others. “She'd done her repairs an' was trying to get back to France, I reckon.”

“Probably.”

Bolitho gripped his sword hilt until the pain made him think more clearly. Allday was right, had to be. After such a mauling from
Styx
the French captain would have needed at least five months to effect repairs. He had probably chosen a port which had become hemmed in by the ice, and now here he was, bringing with him a terrible revenge.

He said harshly, “Tell
Lookout
to investigate but not to engage.” He turned and glanced at the sailing master's ruined features and added, “Lay a course to take the wind-gage off that one, Mr Grubb.”

Herrick lowered his telescope. “
Ajax
is not moving. She's lost her mizzen, and I think her steering may have gone.”

The torment of waiting, watching the battered frigate growing larger and larger while
Lookout
moved warily nearby like a hunter who has discovered a wounded lion, was made more terrible by the silence.

Then Wolfe said, “
Lookout
's dropped her boats, sir. Looking for survivors, though after that explosion . . .” He fell silent as Herrick shot him an angry glance.

Major Clinton had left his marines to join Herrick by the quarterdeck rail. Suddenly he pointed with his stick and said, “I think the Frenchman's getting under way!”

Wolfe nodded. “He's cut the wreckage free. Now he's set another topsail.”

They faced Bolitho as he said, “Run out the lower battery, Mr Wolfe.”

Even the repeated order was hushed. Then the deck gave a long quiver as the great thirty-two-pounders trundled noisily up to their open ports.

“Run out, sir!”

Blackened woodwork and a length of trailing rigging clattered along the
Benbow
's side. There were corpses, too, or what was left of them.

“Fire a warning shot, Mr Wolfe.”

The gun nearest the bows erupted with a violent bang, and as the smoke fanned out over the water Bolitho saw the great ball slam down almost in line with
Ajax
's figurehead.

But the tricolour which had replaced the one lost overboard on the mizzen showed no sign of dipping, and even as he watched Bolitho saw the frigate's shape shortening as she began to turn away.

Wolfe asked, “Broadside, sir?”

Bolitho stared past him, the French ship blurred in his vision as if through thick glass.

At a range of just over a mile, a full broadside from those great guns would smash the damaged frigate to fragments. The leaks caused by her fight with
Relentless
and the weight of her own artillery would finish it.

He heard Clinton exclaim, “That captain is a fool!”

Bolitho shook his head. “Tell the gun captains to fire in succession.”

The second ball smashed through the
Ajax
's quarter, hurling wreckage and shattered spars high into the air like straw in a wind.

Bolitho watched the tricolour as it was hauled down and added quietly, “He is also a brave man, Major.”

A master's mate said, “
Lookout
's boats have picked up some people, sir!”

Bolitho barely recognized his own voice. “Alter course to intercept
Lookout.
Make a signal to
Indomitable
to board the
Ajax
and take off her company.” He hardened his voice. “Then sink her.”

Speke, still on his lofty perch in the cross-trees, yelled, “Six hands, sir! Five seamen and a marine!”

Bolitho ducked beneath the furled boarding nets and stood on the starboard gangway as he watched the slow-moving boats, the drifting remains of Peel's command. Flotsam, burned timber, fire-blackened canvas. And men. The men so torn and disfigured that they would have known very little about it.

He gripped the shrouds and almost cried out as his wounded thigh grated against the iron-hard cordage.

A hand reached up and he saw Midshipman Penels staring at him. “Let me, sir!”

“Thank you.” Bolitho rested his elbow on the boy's shoulder as he waited for the pain to ebb away.

Damerum, however unwittingly, had found an assassin after all.

He made himself look at the procession of bobbing remnants as they parted beneath
Benbow
's staring figurehead.

Behind him he could hear some of the seamen yelling, congratulating each other on preventing
Ajax
's escape.

Penels said in a small voice, “Sir, I think I saw something move out there.”

Bolitho raised his glass and followed the direction of his arm. Half of an upturned boat and a long spar with one end blasted off like chalk.

There were several corpses floating nearby, and for a moment he thought Penels had imagined it, or had wanted to say something to please him.

He said, “I see it!” It was just an arm, sticking up over the spar. But it was moving. Alive. Someone who had survived. Who might know . . .

He was gripped by something like panic. Even in these few moments the ship had moved some fifty yards.

“Captain Herrick! Man in the water, starboard side! Quarter boat,
quick!
”

He almost fell as Penels darted from beneath his elbow. He had a vague impression of the boy's terrified face, matched only by some last spark of determination, before he was up and diving straight for the water. He broke to the surface and was swimming strongly before Herrick understood what had happened.

Bolitho saw the quarter boat appear around the stern, the coxswain staring blankly at his officers.

Herrick cupped his hands. “Follow that boy, Winslade! Fast as you can!”

Bolitho climbed back to the quarterdeck as Browne said apologetically, “I am sorry, sir, but
Indomitable
has signalled to say the
Ajax
will be destroyed once we are standing clear of the danger.”

Loveys, the surgeon, hurried across the quarterdeck, his white face alien amongst the guns and the seamen.

He said calmly, “The boat is returning, sir. I took the liberty of borrowing a telescope. There are two survivors.” He relented slightly. “One is Mr Pascoe.”

Bolitho clasped his arm then hurried past him to the rail as the boat nudged carefully alongside.

Winslade, the boat's coxswain, waited for more seamen to climb down the tumblehome to assist and then called, “Just the two, sir!” He swallowed hard before adding, “I'm afraid we lost young Mr Penels, sir! He just seemed to give up as he reached the boat!”

Bolitho reached the entry port as the two limp figures were handed through. The first he did not recognize, a pigtailed seaman with one arm so badly burned it looked inhuman.

Loveys was on his knees running his hands over Pascoe's body while his aproned assistants hovered behind him like butchers.

Bolitho watched the painful rise and fall of his nephew's chest, the sea water running from beneath his closed lashes like tears. His clothes had been all but blasted from his body and he gave a quiet groan as the surgeon's boney fingers felt for internal damage.

Loveys said at length, “He's young and fit, of course. Nothing broken. He's lucky.”

He turned to the seaman and said, “Now, let me have a look at you.”

The seaman muttered vaguely, “I didn't hear nothin'. One minute the cap'n was yellin' and cussin' about fire.” He shook his head and winced as Loveys touched his burned arm. “Next thing I was deep underwater. Goin' down. I can't swim, y'see?” He realised that Bolitho and Herrick were there and stammered, “Beggin' yer pardon, sir!”

Bolitho smiled. “Easy now. What happened next?”

“Our new third lieutenant, sir. Mr Pascoe 'ere, 'e pulls me to some floatin' wreckage, then goes back for my mate, Arthur. But he died afore the boat come for us. It was just me an' Mr Pascoe, sir. The rest is all gone.” He had to repeat it as if he still could not accept the enormity of it.
“All gone!”

As the seaman was carried away to the sick-bay, Pascoe opened his eyes. Surprisingly, he smiled and said weakly, “I've come back after all, Uncle!” Then he fainted.

17 THE
P
RIME TARGET

B
OLITHO
sat at a small table in the stern cabin, a pen poised above his report. Someone would read it, he thought grimly, log books and written reports always seemed to survive no matter what.

It was a strange feeling, like sitting in an abandoned house. The furniture had all been taken below, and without looking up from the table he knew that the gun crews of the nearest nine-pounders were sharing the space with him. Screens had been taken down, and the ship, as she moved very slowly towards the Danish coastline once again, was cleared for battle from bow to stern.

Unlike Nelson's fleet, Bolitho's squadron had been under way throughout the night, his four ships of the line divided into two short columns so that they could watch as much of the area as possible.

The seamen and marines had worked watch and watch, snatching a few hours rest beside their guns and nourished by neat rum and stale food. The galley fire had long since been doused for safety's sake, for each ship in the squadron had to be prepared to fight at minutes' notice.

Bolitho looked at the lines he had written about Mr Midshipman George Penels, aged twelve years and nine months, who had died the previous day in one desperate act of courage.

What had the boy been thinking of? Of Pascoe, whom he had got involved in Babbage's desertion, of his admiral, who had cared enough to put him in Browne's charge when everyone else had shunned him?

This carefully worded report might help the boy's mother when the news eventually reached her in Cornwall. Bolitho had no doubt that Herrick would make certain no mention of Babbage would mar his memory for her.

Allday walked to an open port and leaned down to watch the sea, cold and grey in the morning light. Two cables abeam,
Nicator,
followed by Inch's
Odin,
brought life to the dreary scene.

He said, “Not long now, sir.”

Bolitho waited for Yovell to seal the envelope and replied, “The attack will begin in two hours, if everything is timed correctly.”

He glanced along the deck, past where the screen door would normally be, to the gloom beneath the poop and beyond to the crowded activity of the quarterdeck.

“Our part will happen at any moment.” He stood up and tested his leg warily. “Get my sword, will you?”

How quiet the ship was, he thought. The excitement of the
Ajax
's capture and her terrible end when the fuses had been fired in her magazine had been dulled by the loss of Peel's ship. Altogether,
Lookout
had found ten survivors. With Pascoe and the burned seaman also rescued, that meant a total bill of some two hundred sailors and marines killed. It was too much of a price to pay.

Bolitho had visited his nephew several times during the night. Each occasion had found Pascoe wide awake, defying Loveys' efforts to make him rest and save his strength.

Perhaps those last moments in the water were too stark in his mind, as if by going to sleep he would never reawake and find his survival only part of a nightmare.

But Pascoe's descriptions, brief though they were, completed a full and horrific picture.

The cruellest part of it had been that Peel had been winning. But some last fury had brought the
Ajax
too close, so that both frigates had collided bowsprit to bowsprit, bringing down the Frenchman's mizzen and hurling many of the men from their feet.

Pascoe vaguely remembered Peel shouting about smoke even as
Relentless
's cheering boarders had rushed to grapple the enemy hand to hand.

He had been on the quarterdeck, the second lieutenant having been killed in the opening broadsides. The next minute he had felt himself flying through the air and then being smashed, choking, into the sea.

Pascoe had started to swim for a drifting boat when one of the
Relentless
's topmasts had dropped from the sky like a giant's lance and had cut the boat in half and some struggling men with it.

The thing which Pascoe had not been able to accept was the actual explosion. It had blasted the thirty-six-gun frigate to pieces, yet he had heard nothing.

The collision between the two ships had probably caught a man off balance below decks. A lantern overturned, some powder spilled as a boy ran to serve his gun, or even a flaming wad from the enemy's broadside, it could have been caused by any one of many things.

Bolitho walked slowly beneath the poop, his head ducking automatically between the deckhead beams.

Faces turned to watch him pass, faces which after nearly seven months were no longer strangers.

The figures on the quarterdeck came alive as he stepped out into the morning light, and he saw Herrick with a telescope trained across the nettings towards the
Lookout
which stood well away on the larboard bow.

The sea was rising and falling in a slow swell, with no crests to break the surface or the motion. There was quite a lot of haze about, and far ahead of the two columns of ships it looked pale green. A trick of the eye and distance. The haze was real enough but the green layer was land. Denmark.

Herrick saw him and touched his hat.

“Wind's backed two more points, sir. More than I hoped. I shall continue on this tack, nor'-nor' east, until I can make a proper landfall.” Some of the old, uncertain Herrick stepped out of memory as he added, “With your permission, that is.”

“Aye, Thomas. That should suit us well.”

He strode to the nettings and peered across the opposite quarter. There was
Styx,
alone and watchful, ready to dash downwind and assist when required.

Ajax
's captain had probably imagined the
Relentless
to be her, Bolitho thought. It would be just enough to drive him to the last edge of anger and hatred.

Midshipman Keys, who was assisting Browne, called excitedly, “Signal from
Lookout,
sir.
Two strange sail to the north-west!
”

Men bustled around in a flurry of lively flags as the signal was repeated down the line and to the distant
Styx.

“Two sail, eh?” Herrick rubbed his chin.

Bolitho said, “General signal, please. Prepare for battle.”

Wolfe chuckled and gestured abeam to the
Nicator.
“Listen, sir! They're cheering already!”

Browne reported, “All acknowledged, sir.”

Bolitho met his eyes. “All right now?”

The flag lieutenant smiled stiffly. “Better, sir. A bit better.”

“Deck there! Enemy in sight! Two sail of the line!”

Wolfe strode back and forth, his ungainly feet miraculously missing ring-bolts and the crouching gun crews with their rammers and handspikes.

“No frigates then? That's something!”

Herrick stiffened and held his glass in direct line with the lar-board cathead.

“Got 'em!”

Bolitho raised his own glass and saw the two towering spans of canvas emerging from the mist as the other ships continued towards him on a converging tack.

Two-deckers, each with a great curling flag at her gaff, red with a white cross, the Danish colours.

Benbow
's forecourse lifted and puffed itself out like a huge chest as a strengthening breeze pushed across the dull water.

Bolitho said, “They're holding their course, Thomas. Strange. They're heavily outnumbered.”

Herrick grinned. “Makes a change, sir.”

Bolitho thought of the man in the book-lined room at the Danish Palace. What was he doing at this moment? Did he still remember their brief meeting, with Inskip hovering around like a nursemaid?

Somebody chuckled, the sound unnatural in the tension of the quarterdeck.

Bolitho turned and saw Pascoe coming from the poop, very pale but trying not to show his uncertainty. He was wearing a borrowed uniform which was far too large for him.

He touched his hat and said lamely, “Reporting for duty, sir.”

Herrick stared at him. “My God, Mr Pascoe, what are you thinking of?”

But Bolitho said, “Welcome back.”

Pascoe smiled at the grinning seamen nearby. “The coat belongs to Mr Oughton, sir. He is a bit, well, larger.”

Bolitho nodded. “If you feel weak, say so.”

He could understand Pascoe's need to get on deck. After his experience in
Relentless,
he would be unwilling to stay on the orlop with its grim reminders.

Pascoe said simply, “I heard about Penels, sir. I feel to blame. When he first came to see me . . .”

Herrick interrupted, “There was nothing you could have prevented. If wrong was done, then I must bear it, too. He needed advice, and I damned him for his one foolish act.”

“Deck there!” The lookout hesitated, as if unable to describe what he saw. “Galleys! Between the two ships!” His voice cracked in disbelief. “So many I can't count 'em!”

Bolitho levelled his glass just in time to see another hoist of signals appear on
Lookout
's yards. He did not need to read it. Between the two oncoming ships was a veritable flotilla of galleys, sweeps rising and falling like crimson wings, flags streaming above the hidden oarsmen and each massive bowgun.

“Load and run out, Captain Herrick.” His sharp formality swept away the momentary easing of tension. “Upper gundeck with grape and bar-shot.”

He turned towards the marine officers. “Major Clinton, there'll be work for your best shots today.”

The two marines touched their hats and hurried away to their men.

Speaking his thought aloud, Bolitho said, “They will try to separate us. Signal
Styx
and
Lookout
to harry the enemy's rear as soon as we are engaged.”

The young midshipman who had taken the place of the dead Penels wrote scratchily on his slate and then waited, his mouth half open, as if he could not get his breath.

Bolitho looked at him impassively, seeing in those few seconds his youth, his hopes and his trust.

“Now, Mr Keys, you may hoist number sixteen, and make sure it stays flying.”

The youth nodded jerkily and then ran back to his seamen. He yelled, “Jump to it, Stewart! Hoist the signal for
Close Action!
”

At a guess, Keys was about fourteen. If he lived after today he would remember this moment forever, Bolitho thought.

Slowly and inexorably the two formations continued to close one another. It was as if they were being drawn by some irresistible force, or that their captains were blind and unaware of the approaching danger.

Herrick asked, “Line of battle, sir?”

Bolitho did not reply immediately. He moved his glass carefully from ship to ship, each with her broadsides run out like dull teeth, her yards and taut canvas unchanged.

During the night Bolitho's squadron had kept to the carefully rehearsed plan. After standing well clear of Copenhagen the squadron had slowly changed tack, taking advantage of the wind's backing to move closer again to the land, like drawing the noose of a halter. At first glance the plan had worked perfectly. Here were the galleys, heading north towards Copenhagen to offer their massive support just as soon as the British admiral made his move to attack. Bolitho could either continue to close with them or could harry them all the way to their objective.

The presence of the two third-rates puzzled him. Big men-ofwar rarely worked with fast-moving vessels under oars. The varying scales of mobility and fire-power would hinder rather than help.

Perhaps the Danes were merely sending the ships to add to their fleet in Copenhagen, using the cluster of galleys as a useful escort for the passage there.

He said, “No. We will remain in two columns. I am not happy about the enemy's intentions. In a fixed line of battle we would be more vulnerable.”

Herrick sounded surprised. “They will not dare to attack us, sir! I'd stake
Benbow
's chances alone against the pair of 'em!”

Bolitho lowered the telescope and wiped his eye. “Have you ever seen galleys at work?”

“Well, I've no personal experience, sir,
but
. . .”

Bolitho nodded. “Aye, Thomas, but.”

He thought of the picture he had just seen compressed in the lens. Two, maybe three lines of galleys gliding abreast between the two big men-of-war. There was something unnerving about their unwavering approach, how it must have been in ancient days at Actium and Salamis.

He said, “We will test their range. The first four guns of the lower battery. Maximum elevation, Thomas. See if that deters them.”