The Only Victor Read Free

day when their old Hyperion had given up her last fight and gone down. Only Allday himself knew that it had been Ozzard’s intention to stay and go with her to the seabed, with all the dead and some of the dying still on board. Another mystery. He wondered if Bolitho knew or guessed what had almost happened. To speculate why, was beyond him.
    Then he saw Bolitho’s pale figure framed by the broad stern windows. He was sitting with one knee drawn up on the bench seat, his shirt very white against the tumbling water beyond.
    For some reason Allday was moved by what he saw. He had seen Bolitho like this in so many of the ships they had shared after that first meeting. So many mornings. So many years.
    He said uncertainly, “I’ll fetch another lantern, Sir Richard.”
    Bolitho turned his head, his grey eyes in dark shadow. “It will be light enough soon, old friend.” Without noticing it he touched his left eyelid and added, “We may sight land today.”
    So calmly said, Allday thought, and yet his mind and heart must be so crammed with memories, good and rotten. But if there was bitterness he gave no hint of it in his voice.
    Allday said, “Reckon Cap’n Poland will cuss an’ swear if there ain’t, an’ that’s no error!”
    Bolitho smiled and turned to watch the sea as it boiled from the rudder, as if some great fish was about to break surface in pursuit of the lively frigate.
    He had always admired the dawn at sea. So many and such different waters, from the blue, placid depths of the Great South Sea to the raging grey wastes of the Western Ocean. Each unique, like the ships and men who challenged them.
    He had expected, hoped even, that this day might bring some relief from his brooding thoughts. A fine, clean shirt, one of Allday’s best shaves; it often gave a sense of well-being. But this time it eluded him.
    He heard the shrill of calls again and could picture the orderly bustle on deck as the sails were sheeted home, the slackness shaken from braces and halliards. At heart he was perhaps still a frigate captain, as he had been when Allday had been brought aboard as a pressed man. Since then, so many leagues sailed, too many faces wiped away like chalk off a slate.
    He saw the first hint of light on the crests, the spray leaping away on either quarter as the dawn began to roll down from the horizon.
    Bolitho stood up and leaned his hands on the sill to stare more closely at the sea’s face.
    He recalled as if it were yesterday an admiral breaking the painful truth to him, when he had protested about the only appointment he could beg from the Admiralty after recovering from his terrible fever.
    â€œYou were a frigate captain, Bolitho . . .” Twelve years ago, maybe more.
    Eventually he had been given the old Hyperion, and then probably only because of the bloody revolution in France and the war which had followed it, and which had raged almost without respite until this very day.
    And yet Hyperion was the one ship which was to change his life. Many had doubted his judgment when he had pleaded for the old seventy-four as his last flagship. From captain to vice-admiral; it had seemed the right choice. The only choice.
    She had gone down last October, leading Bolitho’s squadron in the Mediterranean against a much more powerful force of Spanish ships under the command of an old enemy, Almirante Don Alberto Casares. It had been a desperate battle by any standards, and the outcome had never been certain from the first broadsides.
    And yet, impossibly, they had beaten the Dons, and had even taken some prizes back to Gibraltar.
    But the old Hyperion had given everything she had, and could offer no further resistance. She was thirty-three years old when the great ninety-gun San Mateo had poured the last broadside into her. Apart from a short period as a mastless stores hulk, she had sailed and fought in every sea where the flag was challenged. Some rot