With All Despatch Read Free Page B

once lived and loved like other men. A felon, a common thief, now denied even the dignity of burial.
    Bolitho climbed down from the carriage and stamped his feet to restore the circulation. He could smell salt from here, and beyond a ragged procession of trees he saw the great curving outline of the river. It looked flat and unmoving, more like pewter than water hurrying to join the sea.
    Through the haze of distant rain he saw the old town of Rochester, the ruins of some ancient fortification near the water’s edge. A town which, like many others around this part of Kent, lived off the navy and its great dockyard and victualling jetties. In times of war the townspeople listened at their locked doors when darkness fell, for fear of the hated press gangs which roamed the streets in search of men for the fleet. To begin with they combed the inns and lodging houses for prime seamen, but as the toll of war mounted, and every King’s ship cried out for still more hands, the press gangs had to be content with anyone they could find. Ploughmen and boys, tailors and saddle-makers, none was spared.
    Many a ship would be forced to put to sea with only a third of her company trained seamen. The remainder, punched, threatened, and chased by boatswain’s mates with their “starters,” learned the hard way. Many were killed or injured in the process long before their captain had to face an enemy. Falls from aloft in a screaming gale, bones broken by waves surging inboard to sweep a man against a tethered cannon, and those who merely vanished, lost overboard with nobody able to help, or even to hear them go.
    And now, with the clouds of war rising above the Channel, the press gangs were out again. This time they were seeking deserters and unemployed seamen. The press would never be popular, but as yet there was no other way. England needed ships; the ships needed men. The equation had not altered in a hundred years.
    Bolitho looked up and felt a shaft of watery sunlight touch his cheek. A captain of his own ship. Once an impossible dream, the greatest step anyone could make from wardroom to the privacy of the great cabin. But to gain it and then have it taken away was even harder to accept.
    His new command consisted of three topsail cutters, fast, highly manoeuvrable craft similar to those used by the Revenue Service. One was completing a refit in the dockyard, and the others doubtless awaited his arrival with curiosity or displeasure, and probably wondered why their world was to be invaded by a post-captain.
    Bolitho had studied all the available reports with care, hoping to discover some glimmer of purpose which might make this appointment bearable. But it seemed as if in south-east England, and the Isle of Thanet in particular, the cat and the dog lived side by side. The revenue cutters hunted for smugglers, and the press gangs searched for unwilling recruits and deserters. The lawbreakers, the smugglers who in many cases seemed better equipped and armed than their opposite numbers, seemed to do much as they pleased.
    Bolitho remounted the coach and saw Allday watching him, his pigtail poking over the collar of his coxswain’s blue jacket.
    Their eyes met. “Back again, Cap’n. Frigate or no, ’tis still the sea. Where we belong.”
    Bolitho smiled up at him. “I shall hold to that, old friend.”
    Allday settled down again and watched the horses lean forward to take the strain.
    He had seen the tightening of Bolitho’s jaw. Like those other times when the deck had been raked with the enemy’s iron, and men had fallen on every side. And when he had forced himself to accept that his lady had gone, fathoms deep, to a peace he had been too late to offer her. And like the times when they had ventured from the old grey house, for those first pitiful walks together after the fever had released its grip. A few yards at first, and the next day, then the next, until Bolitho had thrust him