Cross of St George by Alexander Kent

the gig when it’s time. I’ll go around her once more. We might still have to move some of that extra powder and shot further aft.” He was not aware of the pride that had crept into his voice. “This lady will want to fly when she finds open water again!”
    Daubeny had noticed. He knew he would never be close to the captain: Tyacke kept his emotional distance, as if he were afraid to reveal his true feelings. Only with Sir Richard Bolitho had Daubeny ever seen him change, had sensed the warmth, the unspoken understanding and obvious respect of each for the other. He recalled them together, here, on this same untroubled deck. It was hard to believe that it had happened, that such chilling sights were possible. His inner voice spoke for him. That I survived.
    He said, “I shall be glad to see Sir Richard’s flag hoisted again, sir.”
    He did not even flinch when Tyacke faced him, as he had once done. How much worse it must be for him, he thought. The stares, the revulsion, and yes, the disapproval.
    Tyacke smiled. “You speak for us both, Mr Daubeny!”
    He turned away as York, the sailing-master, emerged from the companion, without a glance at the receding fog.
    â€œYou were right, Mr York! You have brought better weather for us!” Then he held up his hand and said sharply, “Listen!” The hammering and the muted thuds between decks had stopped. Only six months since that last ball had smashed into the carnage of broken men. They had done well.
    York studied him gravely. So many times in the last two years he had watched the captain’s moods, his anguish and his defiance. He had once heard Tyacke say of Sir Richard Bolitho, “I would serve no other.” He could have said the same himself, of this brave, lonely man.
    He said, “Then we’re ready, sir!”
    Daubeny was listening, sharing it. At first he had thought he would be unable to fill Lieutenant Scarlett’s shoes after he had fallen. He had even been afraid. That was yesterday. Now Scarlett was just another ghost, without substance or threat.
    He stared up at the furled sails, moisture pouring from them like tropical rain. Like the ship, the Old Indom as the sailors called her, he was ready.
    Three weeks outward-bound from Portsmouth, Hampshire, to Halifax, Nova Scotia, His Britannic Majesty’s Ship Wakeful was within days of her landfall. Even Adam Bolitho, with all his hard-won experience as a frigate captain, could not recall a more violent passage. February into March, with the Atlantic using every mood and trick against them.
    Although it was Wakeful ’s young captain’s first command, he had held it for two years, and two years in a frigate used almost exclusively for carrying vital despatches to flag officers and far-flung squadrons was equal to a lifetime in a lesser vessel. South-west and into the teeth of the Atlantic gales, with men knocked senseless by incoming seas, or in danger of being hurled from the upper yards while they kicked and fisted half-frozen canvas that could tear out a man’s fingernails like pips from a lemon. Watchkeeping became a nightmare of noise and cruel discomfort; estimating their daily progress, unable even to stream the log, was based on dead reckoning, or, as the sailing-master put it, by guess and by God.
    For the passengers down aft, it was uncomfortable but strangely detached from the rest of the ship and her weary company, piped again and again to the braces or aloft to reef the sails when they had only just been given a moment’s rest in their messes. Simply trying to carry hot food from the swaying, pitching galley was a test of skill.
    Sealed off from the life of the ship, and her daily fight against the common enemy, Adam and his new flag officer remained curiously apart. Keen spent most of his time reading his lengthy instructions from the Admiralty, or making notes as he studied various charts beneath the wildly spiralling