Richard Bolitho – Midshipman

6. Face to Face

'EASY there! Watch your stroke! ' Hope, the Gorgon's fifth lieutenant, hissed in the darkness, craning forward from the sternsheets as if to seek out the noise. Bolitho crouched beside him and turned to peer astern. Only an occasional feather of white spray or a trailing glow of phosphorescence around the oars betrayed the position of the other cutter. It was very dark, and after the cloudless day, surprisingly cold. Which was just as well, he thought, for they had come a long way. The boats had been lowered and manned before dusk, and while Gorgon made more sail and went about to leave them to their own resources they had settled down to a long, steady pull towards the slab of headland. When darkness had arrived it had been sudden, like the fall of a curtain, and Bolitho found himself wondering what was going on in the lieutenant's mind. It was a far cry indeed from the time when he had thrown open the door of the Blue Posts at Portsmouth and bellowed at the midshipmen. He remembered what Grenfell had said then about Hope's worries of promotion. The memory saddened him. Grenfell was dead, and Hope would indeed be moving up a place when the captain chose to accept that the lieutenant who had been in charge of the City of Athens was also killed. Eden was leaning against him, his head lowered almost to the gunwale. Bolitho said quietly, 'Still a way to go yet, torn.' It was an eerie sensation. The cutter thrusting jerkily across the inshore currents, the oars rising and falling on either beam like pale bones, their usual noise muffled by rags and thick layers of grease. Ahead of the boat there was a darker wedge to show the division between sea and sky, and Bolitho thought he could smell the earth, sense its nearness. In the bows, bent over the stem and a viciouslooking swivel gun, was a leadsman, his boat's lead and line sounding the way above sandbars and hidden rocks. Turnbull, the master, had explained to the two lieutenants that it was best to creep right inshore, so that once around the headland they would lie'somewhere between the beach and the anchored ships. It had all sounded so easy. Not now, as a man caught his foot in a cutlass and set it clattering across the bottom-boards, and Hope snarled, 'God, Rogers, I'll have you beaten senseless if you make another sound! ' Bolitho looked at his profile, a shadow against the oars' spray alongside. A lieutenant. A man who knew that Tregorren was following close astern, depending on his ability to lead the way. Thirty men. For a press-gang, or for manning a couple of heavy guns, it was ample. For taking a ship against odds, and without surprise, it was disaster. A strong eddy pushed the hull aside, so that the coxswain had to use his strength at the tiller to bring it back on course. The air felt different again and the sea across the larboard beam looked livelier. Bolitho ventured, 'We are round the headland, sir.' Hope swung on him and then said, 'Yes. You'd know, of course. You must have grown up with rocks like these in Cornwall.' He seemed to be studying him in the darkness. 'But a long pull yet.' Bolitho hesitated, unwilling to break the little contact between them. 'Will the marines attack the battery, sir?' 'Some mad scheme like that.' Hope wiped his face as spray lanced into the boat. 'The captain will tack as close as he dares to the seaward end of the island and pretend to attempt a landing. Plenty of noise. Major Dewar will be good at that, he's got plenty to say in the wardroom! ' The whisper came back along the oarsmen. 'Vessel at anchor on th' starboard bow, sir! ' Hope nodded. 'Steer a point or so to larboard.' He twisted round to make sure the other boat was following. 'That must be the first of 'em. The brig is anchored beyond her, a couple of cables yet.' Someone groaned, more worried apparently at the prospect of pulling a heavy oar for another four hundred yards than the possible closeness of death. 'Watch out! ' The bowman dropped his lead and line and seized a boathook. The oars went into momentary confusion as something large and black, like a sleeping whale, loomed over the cutter, banging into the blades and making what seemed like a tremendous noise. Eden murmured shakily, 'It's p-part of the b-barquentine,