The Price of Glory (39 page)

“Ease away the outhaul! Clew up!”

His boarding party was assembled in the waist and the master at arms and his lads handing out pikes and cutlasses and whatever other lethal weaponry the crew favoured. Only the officers would carry pistols, to cut down the risk of an accidental discharge that would alert the brig. Tully would take Holroyd and Anson with him, but not Whiteley and his marines. This was not a job for marines.

“Haul tight! Rig in!”

The moment the studding sails were in, they backed the foretopsail to deaden way and let the boarding party down into the boats.

“Good luck, Mr. Tully,” Nathan called out to him as he went over the side. “We will do our best to distract him for you.”

The boats had barely vanished into the darkness when a sudden gust laid them over almost on their beam ends and threw Nathan sprawling into the scuppers.

“Very well, Mr. Perry,” he said, when he had found his feet and wiped the blood from his lip where he had knocked it against one of the quarterdeck carronades. “You may shorten all the sail you like.” He grinned bashfully at him, even with the pain in his lip, but the master was already turning away and roaring again.

“Topmen aloft, reef and lay in!”

Nathan was worried for Tully and his boats, bobbing about in the darkness off an unknown shore and a gale coming on. And there was no certainty that the brig had followed them. They had got in the royals and topgallants and were putting the first reef in the courses when Mr. Lamb cried out that he had sighted her, standing out from the point directly off their larboard beam. Nathan still could not see a thing but he took the midshipman's word for it.

“Very well, Mr. Duncan,” he said, “run out the guns.”

The gun crews were shorthanded with so many hands aloft and the boarding party away, but Nathan only meant to make a show of it. There was no chance of hitting her at this range and in the darkness, but the more attention that was paid to him the less chance they had of noticing what was coming up on their weather side.

He heard the squeal of the trucks as the guns were run out.

“Remember, now, you are to load with cartridge only,” Mr. Duncan was fretting in a harsh, low voice, repeating the instruction all along the gundeck, as if he was afraid it might carry to the brig in the darkness off their quarter.

“Where away, Mr. Lamb?” Nathan sang out to the midshipman with the eyes.

“There, sir!” Pointing frantically towards the headland as if he could not believe she had not been seen. “Directly amidships.” And at last Nathan saw her … Creeping along the foot of the headland, the sly dog, and so close to shore; the charts
must
be wrong. He must be able to go in closer … But too late now, he could not be firing upon his own boats. He felt another gust of wind on his cheek, nothing like as bad as the last one, but it was fair warning.

“Ease your helm,” Nathan ordered, for the brig had drawn a little ahead of them now. And as they fell off the wind: “Fire at will, Mr. Duncan.”

The guns went off at five-second intervals and in the brief flashes Nathan saw the brig's topsails outlined against the cliff. He could not see his boats. They must be right in among the rocks.

“Shall we fire again, sir?” Duncan requested.

“Yes, Mr. Duncan, and keep firing until I instruct you to stop,” Nathan commanded him sharply. He supposed the first lieutenant must bemoan the waste of powder, but it was not he who was paying for it. Then, in the pause before they resumed, he saw the flash of small arms on the deck of the brig and heard the sharper crack of pistol shots. Moments later, he saw the light at her stern: the signal that Tully had taken her. A cheer rose from the guncrews and even some of the men aloft.

“Belay there!” the first lieutenant roared but there were grinning faces all round and a few minutes later the brig, ablaze now with lights at stem and stern, came heading towards them across the bay, towing the
Unicorn
's boats behind her.

“She is the
Bonne Aventure
privateer,” Tully informed him when he had come aboard. “Eight guns. Six swivels. Crew of sixty-five.”

“Well done, sir,” Nathan congratulated him with a broad grin. It was the first prize the
Unicorn
had taken in all her long voyaging back and forth across the Atlantic. “Very well done. And did they put up much of a fight?”

“Not to speak of it, sir, for they did not spot us until we were safe over the side. We have two men wounded, neither of them serious. They lost a half-dozen before they decided to throw up the sponge.” For once he sounded almost as excited as Nathan.

“And she is a privateer?”

“Well, the captain has a letter of marque from the French authorities but he is more of a pirate in my opinion. She was making for San Remo, which has been her base for the best part of a year, and most of her crew are Genovese: smugglers, I would say, taken to buccaneering since the war.”

“Even so, I would have thought they would have put up a better fight than that.”

“Well, I did have my sword at the captain's throat,” Tully explained diffidently, “and he may have been anxious not to provoke me.”

“That would make a difference,” Nathan agreed. “And what condition is she in?”

“Oh in good shape, sir, as far as I can tell, and armed with eight-pounders.”

They would almost certainly buy her into the fleet. Nelson had been complaining he did not have enough gunboats that could run close inshore. Nathan began to do sums in his head. He might count on a thousand pounds if he was lucky.

“There is something else I should like to report, sir,” said Tully. “In private.”

Nathan looked into his face.

“Very well. Let us go below.”

When they were in Nathan's cabin, Tully reached into his pocket and took out a velvet purse. He emptied it carefully upon the table. Nathan stared.

“I did not want them rolling about the deck in the dark,” said Tully dryly, “or we might have had a riot on our hands.”

Nathan picked up one of the stones and held it up to the light between his finger and thumb. It was oval in shape and about the size of his thumbnail, cut into a score or so of facets. “Are they real?” he said wonderingly.

“Well, I am not a jeweller. The captain of the
Bonne Aventure
assures me they are.”

“Where did he get them?”

“He did not say. But I think we may take it they are a recent acquisition or he would not have kept them aboard the brig. They took a
barca-longa
off Île de Levent, according to the crew, carrying a Jewish family from Genoa fleeing the war. I would think it came from them.”

“And what happened to them?”

But Tully only inclined his head. “I doubt we will ever know,” he said.

Nathan looked at the jewels again. He was having trouble keeping his eyes off them. There were ten of them in all. A blue sapphire set in garnets that might have been worn as a brooch, a pair of emerald earrings, a ruby pendant set in silver filigree and the rest diamonds.

“They must be worth a fortune,” he said.

“The captain thought so. He offered me half if I would let him keep the rest.”

Nathan subjected Tully to serious scrutiny but he did not appear to be speaking in jest.

“He asked to speak with me alone in his cabin. He had them in his desk—knew we would have found them. ‘A straight division of the spoils,' he said, ‘and you do not speak of it.'”

Nathan grinned at him. “I knew you were too honest to make a decent smuggler.” He swept the gems back into their velvet pouch and raised his voice. “Gabriel! Gilbert Gabriel there! We had better get the purser to make a record of this,” he said to Tully, “before I am tempted to offer you the same deal.”

“I was counting on it,” said Tully. “Oh, but there is something else. There was an Irishman among the crew.”

Nathan winced. “Hell, Martin, if he has been serving the enemy … You know how much I hate to hang a man. I had much rather you had cut his throat.”

But Tully was shaking his head. “He says he was pressed into service,” he said. “After being shipwrecked.” He was smiling as he watched Nathan's face. “On the coast, just west of Monaco—in a brig called the
Childe of Hale
.”

“Where is he?”

“I had him brought aboard. I thought you would wish to speak with him. Young Anson has him in charge.”

“Ask the purser to come and see me,” Nathan instructed Gabriel who was waiting on him at the door. “And ask Mr. Anson to bring down the seaman that is with him.”

“Do you wish to speak with him alone?” Tully enquired tactfully. “No, you might as well stay and hear this,” Nathan told him, “as you know so much already.”

The seaman's name was Flynn. Matthew Flynn from Dublin. And a most nervous, garrulous Dubliner he was, too.

“I swear to God, sor,” he said, “I would never have raised a hand against a man in the King's Service. You know that, don't you, sor?” He appealed to Tully. “You seen me knock one of them on the head for you. I knocked one of them on the head for him, sor,” he assured Nathan, “soon as I knew they was King's men come aboard.”

“Very well, Flynn. Tell me the truth and it will not go hard for you.”

“I swear to God, sor, every word is the honest truth.”

“So what about the
Childe of Hale?
”

“Oh, is it that?” He sounded relieved. “Oh, that was my last ship, sor. Wrecked off the coast hereabout. That is when I fell into the hands of the Frenchies, sor.”

“And you had sailed out of Genoa, had you not? Bound for Leghorn.”

“We had that, and right into the bitch of a storm, the worst …” He gave Nathan a shrewd look. “But how did you know that, sor?”

“Never mind how I knew it. What happened to you? Did you run before it?”

“We did that. And was like to run on Cap Ferrat, so the skipper, he thought to beach her.” He scowled. “I tell you, sor, you could not see a blessed thing for waves and spray. I never seen the like. I thought we was done for.”

“But you survived.”

“Yes, sor. God and the Holy …” He recalled that he was among Protestants. “Praise God we did, sor. For he run her close in upon the shore before she went over and we run up along the masts to the shore like rats, we did, and we watched her break up from the shore in the pouring rain, like drownded rats it was.”

“And the passengers?”

“Sor?”

“You had passengers aboard, I believe.”

“Aye, we did, sor. Two men and two women and two little ones. A boy and a girl they was.”

“The Grimaldis.”

“Was that their name? I did not catch it, though I knowed they was Italian.”

“What happened to them, Flynn? Did they go down with the ship?”

“Oh no, sor. No. I see what you're driving at. No, we got them ashore, sor. We would not save ourselves and leave them in the ship at the mercy of the wind and the waves, Christ Jesus, no.”

“You got them ashore.”

“Every man jack of them, sor.”

“And then what?”

“Sor?”

“Then what did you do?”

“Well, when the rain eased off a bit, like, the skipper thought as we would try to get along the coast ‘cos we knowed we was not far from the border. Only the devil of it was the French nabbed us as we was trying to slip past the Rock—a cavalry patrol it was—and locked us up in the fort there and that was when they made me take service on the
Bonne Aventure,
only that they knew I was from Dublin and inclined to think the worse of me for it, but I would never …”

“And what of the Grimaldis? Were they taken with you?”

“Oh no, sor. No. I take your meaning. No, they decided to go a different route. Inshore like. The old man, he was not looking so chirpy, do you see, and they said as there was a monastery that would take them in, a few miles up from the coast, run by the Benedictines. They seemed to know it pretty well, from what they was saying to the skipper, that part of the coast and all. I reckon we should have gone with them but the skipper was all for trying to get back over the border, the idyot.”

Nathan leaned closer to him.

“Now Flynn,” he said. “I want you to tell me the exact truth and don't flannel with me. Did you tell the French this?”

“No, sor, I did not. For whatever else I am, I am no informer. Nor was I ever asked.”

“So the French never suspected there was anyone else with you?”

Flynn shook his head.

“And this was what—about three weeks ago?”

“Three weeks to the day, sor, I can tell you straight. No, that is a lie. Three weeks and a day it was.”

“Very well, Flynn. But if I find you have been lying to me you will be for the high jump. In the meantime, as you had no violent objection to serving with the French you can attempt to redeem yourself with King George.” The seaman closed his eyes. “Come, sir, it is better than hanging and I will cut you in for a share of the prize money for the
Bonne Aventure
as you knocked one of them on the head. I will have you rated ordinary seaman and we will see how you go along.”

When Nathan went up on deck the weather was much worse and they were standing out from the cape with the brig close behind under shortened sail.

“I would like to send down the topgallant yards, if you will let me, sir,” said Mr. Perry, “and close reef the topsails.”

“Very well, Mr. Perry, make it so.”

He sought out the first lieutenant. “I am going to give Mr. Tully the
Bonne Aventure
to run up to Voltri,” he told him. “But I would like us to stand off Monaco for a day or so, for I may have business ashore.”

He saw the look on the lieutenant's face and turned away to hide his own, but then there was a sudden flash of lightning and a cry from one of the lookouts in the tops, quite obscured by the clap of thunder that followed.