Second to None by Alexander Kent Read Free Book Online Page A

with
Frobisher,
who was involved, how it had been planned. He found he was gripping the telescope so tightly that his knuckles were almost white. Spain was an ally now. And yet a Spaniard had been involved.
    He repeated quietly, ‘Spaniard, you say?’
    The man regarded him thoughtfully. Sir Richard Bolitho’s nephew. A fire-eater, they said. A fighter. Sullivan had been at sea on and off for most of his forty years, and had served several captains, but could not recall ever speaking to one. And this one had even known his name.
    â€˜I’d wager a wet on it, sir.’
    A wet.
What John Allday would say. Where was he now? How would he go on? The old dog without his master.
    Adam smiled. ‘A wager it is then. A wet you shall have!’ He seized a stay and began to slide towards the deck, heedless of the tar on his white breeches. Instinct? Or the need to prove something? When he reached the deck the others were waiting for him.
    â€˜Sir?’ Galbraith, poised and guarded.
    â€˜Spanish brigantine. He’s a damned good lookout.’
    Galbraith relaxed slowly. ‘Sullivan? The best, sir.’
    Adam did not hear him. ‘That vessel is following us.’ He looked at him directly. It was there. Doubt. Caution. Uncertainty. ‘I shall not forget that craft, Mr Galbraith.’
    Wynter leaned forward and said eagerly, ‘An enemy, sir?’
    â€˜An assassin, I believe, Mr Wynter.’
    He swung away; Jago was holding his hat for him. ‘See that the wardroom mess provides a double tot for Sullivan when he is relieved.’
    They watched him walk to the companion way, as if, like the two midshipmen he had seen earlier, he did not have a care in the world.
    Midshipman Fielding stood examining the telescope which the captain had just returned to him. He would put it in the next letter to his parents, when he got round to it. How the captain had spoken to him. No longer a stranger . . . He smiled, pleased at the aptness of the phrase. That was it.
    He recalled the time he had gone to waken the captain when Lieutenant Wynter had been concerned about the wind. He had dared to touch his arm. It had been hot, as if the captain had had a fever. And he had called out something. A woman’s name.
    He would leave that out of the letter. It was private.
    But he wondered who the woman was.
    It was like sharing something. He thought of the captain’s easy confidence when he had slithered down to thedeck like one of the topmen. Perhaps the others had not noticed it.
    He smiled again, pleased with himself.
No longer a stranger
.
    Vice-Admiral Sir Graham Bethune walked to the quarter window of the great cabin and observed the activity of countless small craft in the shadow of the Rock. He had visited Gibraltar many times throughout his career, never thinking that one day his own flagship would be lying here, with himself at the peak of his profession. Although a frigate captain earlier in the war, he had been surprised and not a little dismayed to discover how his post at the Admiralty had softened him.
    He glanced at the dress coat with its heavy gold-laced epaulettes which hung on one of the chairs, the measure of the success which had brought him to this. He was one of the youngest flag officers on the Navy List. He had always told himself that he would not change, that he was no different from that young, untried captain in his first serious encounter with the enemy, with only his own skills and determination to sustain him.
    Or from the midshipman.
He stared at the shadowed side of the Rock. Aboard the little sloop-of-war
Sparrow,
Richard Bolitho’s first command.
    He still could not come to terms with it. He could remember the signal being brought to his spacious rooms at the Admiralty, the writing blurring as he had read and understood that the impossible had happened: Napoleon had surrendered. Abdicated. It had ended. A release for so many, but for him like a great door