Second to None by Alexander Kent Read Free Book Online

to their thoughts, Adam Bolitho eased himself into position and looked down at the ship, which seemed to pivot from side to side as if his perch in the crosstrees was motionless. He had never tired of the sight since he had made his first dash aloft as a midshipman in his uncle’s old
Hyperion
. Even when he had been mastheaded for some prank or indiscretion, he had always managed to marvel at what he saw. The ship, far beneath his shoes, the little blue and white shapes of the officers and master’s mates, the clusters of seamen and scarlet-coated marines.
His ship
, all one hundred and fifty feet of her, over a thousand tons of weapons, masts and spars, and the men to serve and fight her.
    His uncle had confided that he had always hated heights, had feared going aloft when his ship had made or reefed sails. Another lesson Adam had learned, that fear could be contained if it seemed more dangerous to reveal it.
    He glanced at his companion. A leathery face and a pair of the keenest eyes he had seen, like polished glass.
    He hesitated. ‘Sullivan, isn’t it?’
    The seaman showed his uneven teeth. ‘Thass me, sir.’ He smiled slightly as Adam unslung the telescope.
    â€˜Where away?’ It was strange: despite his attempt to stay at arm’s length, the ship was closing in. A face he could barely recall. A typical Jack, some would say. Hard, rough, and, in their way, simple men.
    â€˜Same bearin’, sir.’
    He steadied the glass, raising it very carefully as breaking crests leaped into view, magnified into small tidal waves in the powerful lens.
    He felt the spar quiver and shake against his body, mast upon mast, down to the ship’s keelson. He could remember the genuine pleasure and pride of the men who had built her when he had insisted they come aboard for her commissioning.
    And there she was,
rising and dipping, her canvas dark against the scudding clouds.
    The lookout said, ‘Square-rigged at the fore, sir.’
    Adam nodded and waited for the glass to steady again. A brigantine, handling well in the offshore wind, almost bows-on. When he lowered the glass she seemed to drop away to a mere sliver of colour and movement. It never failed to surprise him that men like Sullivan, who would scorn a telescope, or trade it for a new knife or fresh clothing, or drink if it was offered, could still see and recognise another vessel when a landsman might not even notice it.
    â€˜Local, d’ you think?’
    Sullivan watched him with sudden interest. ‘Spaniard, I’d say, sir. I seen ’em afore, as far to the south’rd as Good Hope. Handy little craft.’ He added doubtfully, ‘Rightly ‘andled, er course, sir!’
    Adam took another look. The master was right. They would never catch her with the wind against them. And why should they care? Lose more time and distance when tomorrow they should lie in the shadow of the Rock?
    It was like yesterday. He had been returning to Plymouth and it had been reported that a boat had been heading out to meet them. Not merely a boat: an admiral’s barge, the flag officer himself coming to tell him, to be the first to prepare him for the news of his uncle’s death. Vice-Admiral Valentine Keen. His uncle’s friend. He felt the same stab of guilt; he would never lose it. Zenoria’s husband. After her death he had married again. But like that moment alone in the silence of the house, he had thought only of Zenoria. What he had done.
    Keen had told him what he knew, the circumstances of Bolitho’s death and of his burial at sea. Nothing was definite, except that his flagship had engaged two frigates, manned by renegades and traitors who, with others, had aided Napoleon’s escape from Elba; he had marched on Paris almost before the allies had recovered from the shock.
    Bethune would know more of the details by now, where the frigates had taken refuge prior to their unexpected meeting