Passage to Mutiny Read Free

recalled to England for new orders. To be sent to the West Indies perhaps, to the Channel Fleet, or to the territory which was in dispute with Spain.
    He looked at Herrick again and wondered. Herrick said nothing of his own views now, although he had once made them plain enough. Apart from his coxswain, John Allday, Bolitho knew of no other who risked his anger by such plain speaking.
    It had all come back to him when Tempest had anchored at Madras two months ago. Even as his boat’s crew had made their desperate efforts to pull him through the angry surf without getting their captain soaked to the skin he had remembered his first visit. When he had carried Viola Raymond, wife of the British Government’s adviser to the East India Company, as passenger. Herrick had spoken out then to warn him of the real dangers, of the risk to his name and advancement in the one life he loved.
    Automatically he touched the shape of the watch in his breeches pocket. The watch she had given him to replace one broken in battle.
    Where was she now?
    During his brief return to England he had gone to London. He had told himself he would not really try to see her again. That he would just pass her house. See where she lived. At the same time he had known it was a lie. But he could as easily have stayed content with her memory. The house, apart from the servants, was empty. James Raymond and his wife were away on the government’s business. Raymond’s steward had been offhand to a point of rudeness. Aboard a King’s ship a captain was second only to God, and many said that was merely due to seniority. In the streets and terraces of St James’s he ranked not at all.
    He heard Herrick call, “Stand by to let go, Mr Jury!”
    Jury, the barrel-chested boatswain, needed no advice about watching the anchor party, so Herrick must have sensed Bolitho’s mood and was trying to jerk him from it.
    Bolitho smiled wearily. He had known Herrick since taking command of Phalarope, and they had rarely been apart since. He had not changed much. Stockier perhaps, but the same round, open face with those bright blue eyes which had shared so much with him. If, as Bolitho now suspected, his brief affair with Viola Raymond had made its mark in high places, then Herrick was being punished too, and without cause. The thought angered and saddened him. Maybe the commodore would shed some light on things. But this time he would not hope. He did not dare.
    He thought of his despatches, of the extra news he would give Commodore James Sayer. He remembered Sayer quite well, and had met him in Cornwall once or twice. They had served in the same squadron on the American station before that. Both lieutenants.
    With the echoes of the final shot hanging in the air Tempest glided the last half cable to her prescribed anchorage.
    Bolitho said curtly, “When you are prepared, Mr Herrick.”
    Herrick raised his speaking trumpet, his reply equally formal.
    â€œAye, aye, sir.” Then he shouted, “Man the lee braces there! Hands wear ship!”
    The motionless seamen sprang into life.
    â€œTops’l sheets!”
    Bolitho saw Thomas Gwyther, the surgeon, hovering by the larboard gangway, trying to avoid the hurrying seamen. How unlike the last surgeon Bolitho had had. He had been a violent, towering drunkard of a man. One who had let his passion for drink and the memories he had tried to contain with it destroy him entirely. Gwyther was a stooped, dried-up little man with wispy grey hair, whose frail looks were at odds with his apparent toughness and durability. He attended to his duties readily enough, but showed far more interest in plants and vegetation in whatever place the ship touched land than he ever did in humanity.
    â€œTops’l clew lines!”
    The master said in his flat, unemotional voice, “Put the helm a’lee.”
    Tempest, obedient to rudder and to the dying breeze, turned slowly above her own image,