The Only Victor by Alexander Kent Read Free Book Online Page B

strain of a faster current. Allday had not been very optimistic about shifting to the old sixty-four. The company had been aboard too long, pressed from passing merchantmen in the Caribbean, survivors from other vessels, even pardoned prisoners from the courts of Jamaica.
    Like Warren, the ship was worn out, and suddenly thrust into a role she no longer recognised. Bolitho had seen the old swivel-gun mountings on either gangway. Not facing a possible enemy but pointing inboard, from the time when she had carried convicts and prisoners-of-war from a campaign already forgotten.
    He thought he heard Ozzard pattering about in his newly-occupied pantry. So he could not sleep either. Still remembering Hyperion ’s last moments—or was he nursing his secret, which Bolitho had sensed before that final battle?
    Bolitho yawned and gently massaged his eye. It was strange, but he could not clearly remember why Ozzard had not been on deck when they had been forced to clear the ship of the survivors and the wounded.
    He thought too of his flag captain and firm friend, Valentine Keen, his face full of pain, not at his own injury but for his vice-admiral’s despair.
    If only you were here now, Val.
    But his words went unspoken, for he had fallen asleep at last.

3 THE A LBACORA
    A N ONLOOKER , had there been one, might have compared the little topsail schooner Miranda with a giant moth. But apart from a few screaming and wheeling gulls, there was none to see her as she came about in a great welter of bursting spray, her twin booms swinging over to refill the sails on the opposite tack.
    She leaned so far to leeward that the sea was spurting through her washports, rising even above her bulwark to surge along the streaming planking, or breaking over the four-pounder guns like waves on rocks.
    It was wild and exhilarating, the air filled with the din of sea and banging canvas, with only the occasional shouted command, for nothing superfluous was needed here. Each man knew his work, aware of the ever-present dangers: he could be flung senseless against some immovable object to suffer a cracked skull or broken limbs, or be pitched overboard by a treacherous wave as it burst over the bows and swept along like a mill-race. Miranda was small and very lively, and certainly no place for the unwary or the inexperienced.
    Aft by the compass box her commander, Lieutenant James Tyacke, swayed and leaned with his ship, one hand in his pocket, the other gripping a slippery backstay. Like his men he was soaked to the skin, his eyes raw from spray and spindrift as he watched the tilting compass card, the flapping mainsail and pendant while his command plunged again, her bowsprit pointing due south.
    They had taken all night and part of the day to claw out of Saldanha Bay, away from the impressive formations of anchored men-of-war, supply ships, bombs, army transports and all the rest. Lieutenant Tyacke had used the time to beat as far out as possible to gain the sea-room he needed before heading back to Commodore Warren’s small squadron. There was another reason, which probably only his second-in-command had guessed. He wanted to put as much ocean as possible between Miranda and the squadron before someone signalled him to repair aboard the flagship yet again.
    He had done what he had been ordered, delivered the despatches to the army and the commodore. He had been glad to leave.
    Tyacke was thirty years old and had commanded the speedy Miranda for the last three of them. After her grace and intimacy, the flagship had seemed like a city, with the navy seemingly outnumbered by the red and scarlet of the military and the marines.
    It was not that he did not know what a big ship was like. He tightened his jaw, determined to hold the memory and the bitterness at bay. Eight years ago he had been serving as a lieutenant aboard the Majestic, a two-decker with Nelson’s fleet in the Mediterranean. He had been on the lower gundeck when Nelson had