Man Of War

‘Flagship signalling, sir!’ Midshipman Pelham’s voice revealed the pride with which he alerted his captain.

Peto carefully returned the letter to its oilskin, and his pocket, and took out his watch: it was just gone one-thirty after noon. It was a slower affair by far than Trafalgar, but at Trafalgar they could see the enemy, unlike here. Until now, when the bay opened up before them . . .

‘It can be but the one signal, I imagine, Mr Lambe,’ he said (Asia was a mere couple of cables ahead, and with no room to go about even had Codrington wished it).

‘From flag, sir: “prepare for action”!’

Peto quickened as if by an electric shock. ‘Run out all guns, double-shotted, Mr Lambe!’

‘Ay-ay, sir!’

He had drummed hands back to quarters after dinner with ‘Hearts of Oak’. They had stood or crouched by gun and hatch since, awaiting the order. The entire crew now sprang to frenzied life as if they too had been charged with electricity.

Peto closed to the quartermaster’s side. It was time to take the con directly. ‘One point a-larboard, Mr Veitch!’

‘One point a-larboard, ay-ay, sir!’

He put his glass to his eye again: the Turk forts would see the guns run out; might he see some activity by reply?

‘Captain Antrobus!’

The captain of marines crossed the quarterdeck briskly, and saluted.

‘Yonder fort,’ said Peto, pointing to Sphacteria. ‘Should we need to carry it, it may fall to you and a landing party.’

‘There is nothing I should like better, sir.’

‘We might spare, say, fifty men, perhaps sixty.’ The complement of marines was 138, of whom half had fixed fighting stations; the rest deployed as sharpshooters in the tops and upperworks.

‘Thirty of my men, I suggest, sir, and the same from the afterguard.’

Peto nodded. ‘Very well. Make ready.’ He turned to hail Lambe. ‘Lower two boats, in anticipation, and detail thirty of the afterguard to Captain Antrobus.’

Lambe rattled off the executives to the boatswain and the captain of the afterguard.

The guns running out sounded like distant thunder, noise enough to alert the dullest lookout. Which of the forts would be first to fire? Or would it be the Turk flagship?

Fifteen long minutes passed in silence but for the voice of timber and rigging, and the occasional yap of a petty officer. Asia was now within pistol shot of the entrance, but still the forts were unmoved.

‘I can scarcely credit it,’ declared Peto, spying out every detail of Sphacteria with his ’scope. ‘They’re lounging on the walls, smoking!’ He swung round towards New Navarin. It was the same. ‘Nothing, nothing at all! Not a flag flying or the like. Extraordinary!’ He recalled Ava, when they had sailed up the Rangoon River, the wooden fort sullenly silent, until too late, when the Burmans had fired a futile, suicidal shot at his flotilla. Was the Turk just going to allow them to sail into the bay and take possession of the fleet?

A cannon boomed on Sphacteria. Peto swung round.

‘Unshotted, sir,’ said Lambe. ‘I wonder they’re signalling: the whole Turk fleet must be able to see Asia now.’

Peto nodded. ‘How do you judge the current, Mr Veitch?’

‘Little or none, sir.’

He had thought as much. He would have to bring Rupert round a point or two into the wind to heave to; dropping anchor, even with a spring attached, was out of the question under those guns – and he wanted to have his broadsides as square-on as might be. ‘Prepare to heave to.’

Lambe hailed the sailing-master: ‘Prepare to back main-topsail, Mr Shand.’

Veitch brought Rupert into the wind.

Peto judged it the moment. ‘Heave to!’

The topmen did their work fast and sure. Shand barely needed his trumpet.

‘Boat ahoy!’

Peto looked up, cupping a hand to his mouth. ‘More advice if you please, Mr Simpson!’

‘Pinnace, sir, I believe from the Turkish flagship, heading straight for Asia!’

‘Indeed,’ said Peto to himself, though clearly audible to Lambe.

‘The Turks submitting, sir? The only reasonable course.’

‘The only reasonable course, Mr Lambe, as you say. But what Turkish admiral could present himself in Constantinople in consequence? No, I think there’s a deal of joukery yet ahead.’

‘And a deal of powder for the Turk to hoist himself with.’

Peto looked at the horseshoe of men-of-war. There were no three-deckers, but if it came to a fight they would be closer engaged than ever Nelson managed at Trafalgar. ‘Have the fo’c’s’le lookouts keep a sharp eye on those brûlots yonder,’ he said, pointing ahead and to starboard. ‘It’ll be like the burning fiery furnace if they’re loosed.’

Lambe sent a midshipman forward with the word.