Free False Colors by Alex Beecroft Page B

don’t need me to tell you what they’ll do to us if they capture us. Suffice it to say, it won’t be pretty. If you don’t want to end your life being force fed your own balls for the Dey’s amusement, then there’s nothing for it but to fight until we beat the bastards. That’s all.”
    The thought of making himself an example almost closed his throat. Remembering Algiers was a roil of nausea in his belly. But every man aboard had seen him brought back broken; what better to play on their fear and their desire for vengeance? And he… he propped himself briefly on a knee of the deck above and breathed away the tremble of fury. He would show them that their pity was neither needed nor welcome, because he was fully fit again and perfectly capable of command.
    Going out into the light again, Alfie saw that the helmsmen had taken the ketch between a rocky island and the shore. The sails had been furled and the sweeps put out, oarsmen gently, silently keeping the Meteor in her place, hiding behind a rock. As he watched, two of the topmen swarmed up the cliff and lay down among the colony of gannets on top of the island, glasses fixed on the bright sea beyond the headland. An overpowering scent of guano drifted down from the rock, and it was cold in its eternal shadow. Snails crawled up the walls all around them.
    “Everything’s in readiness, sir.” Alfie returned to the quarterdeck almost on tiptoe, and gave his report in a low voice, conscious of cold and silence.
    “Good.” John—who had such a nervous look about him in every day life—seemed now as calm as the desert sands; empty of emotion, but scorching hot, burning like lime. Even Alfie found the man a little frightening at times like this.
    “Good luck, Mr. Donwell.” John put out his hand, and Alfie took it, holding it for a moment, conscious of the beat of blood through it, living and warm. The devil in his own blood woke then, making him squeeze tighter, turning his smile of thanks into a warmer grin. John snatched his hand back, looking ruffled, just as the lookout on the peak waved his red kerchief to say their pursuer, now their prey, had rounded the cape.
    The xebec swept majestically past their little inlet, so close that the lookouts might have dropped stones onto her deck. The designs on the turbans of the men who worked the sails could easily be seen, and their voices heard, ringing out over the spray. They passed as an eagle passes by the nest of a sparrow, and all the men of the Meteor , like a sparrow on its eggs, made themselves small and silent until they could see the lanterns of its stern, retreating. Then “out sweeps,” said John. “Stand by to make sail.”
    “Make sail.” Danger concentrating their minds, the topmen poured up the rigging, making ready without the usual sequence of commands, pausing occasionally to look at Alfie. Like a conductor with a well-trained orchestra he kept the sequence going with eye contact and small nods, manning the halyards and sheets, hauling taut, letting fall and sheeting home, all in silence. As the oarsmen took her out of the lee of the cliff and the wind filled her sails, Alfie was proud of them all. For a bunch of reject drunkards unfit for any better ship, they had done well.
    She filled. Water began to whisper along the sides, then to thrum as their speed increased. With a slice like a knife they drove out of the shadow into the sunlight, and the ensigns streaming forwards on both masts glowed white and red against the deep blue Mediterranean sky. Light glittered on John’s gold braid and made his buttons glint like sovereigns, and Alfie let go of everything except the joy of being alive in this one perfect moment. “Ready, Mr. Richardson?”
“Ready, sir!”
    In place of their explosive shells, Richardson’s mortars had been armed with makeshift containers of grape shot. One of his men stood by the helm, squinting out at the xebec, making minute adjustments—for the mortars could be