Free To Glory We Steer by Alexander Kent Page B

the expression on Vibart’s heavy features altering to shocked surprise. “Well, we are going back to war, Mr Vibart, and I intend to seek out and engage the enemy, any enemy, at every opportunity!” He dropped his voice. “And when that happens I will expect to see every man acting as one. There will be no room for petty jealousy and cowardice then!”
    A deep flush rose to Vibart’s cheeks, but he remained silent.
    Bolitho said, “You are dealing with men, Mr Vibart, not things! Authority is invested with your commission. Respect comes later, when you have earned it!”
    He dismissed the first lieutenant with a curt nod and then turned back to stare at the creaming wake below the windows. As the door closed the tension tore at his body like a whip, and he gripped his hands together to prevent their shaking until the pain made him wince. He had made an enemy of Vibart, but there was too much at stake to do otherwise.
    He slumped down on the bench seat as Stockdale pattered into the cabin and began to spread a cloth across the table.
    The coxswain said, “I’ve told your servant to bring your supper, Captain.” There was mistrust in his tone. He disliked Atwell, the cabin steward, and watched him like a dog with a rabbit. “I don’t suppose you’ll be havin’ any officer to dine with you, sir?”
    Bolitho glanced at Stockdale, battered and homely like an old piece of furniture, and thought of Vibart’s seething bitterness. “No, Stockdale. I will be alone.”
    He leaned back and closed his eyes. Alone and vulnerable, he thought.
    Lieutenant Thomas Herrick tightened the spray-soaked muffler about his neck and shrugged his shoulders deeper into his watch-coat. Above the black, spiralling masts the stars were small and pale, and even in the keen air he could sense that the dawn was not far away.
    The labouring ship herself was in darkness, so that the shapes around the deserted decks were unreal and totally unlike they appeared in daylight. The lashed guns were mere shadows, and the humming shrouds and stays seemed to go straight up to the sky, unattached and endless.
    But as Herrick paced the quarterdeck deep in thought, he was able to ignore such things. He had seen them all too often before, and was able to pass each watch with only his mind for company. Once he paused beside the ship’s big double wheel where the two helmsmen stood like dark statues, their faces partly lit in the shaded binnacle lamp as they watched the swinging compass or stared aloft at the trimmed sails.
    Three bells struck tinnily from forward, and he saw a ship’s boy stir at the rail and then creep, rubbing his eyes, to trim the compass lamp and adjust the hour glass.
    Time and again he found his eyes drawn to the black rectangle of the cabin hatch, and he wondered whether Bolitho had at last fallen asleep. Three times already during the morning watch, three times in an hour and a half the captain had appeared momentarily on deck, soundless and without warning. With neither coat nor hat, and his white shirt and breeches framed against the tumbling black water, he had seemed ghostlike and without true form, with the restlessness of a tortured spirit. On each occasion he had paused only long enough to peer at the compass or to look at the watch-slate beside the wheel. Then a couple of turns up and down the weather side of the deck and he had vanished below.
    At any other time Herrick would have felt both irritated and resentful. It might have implied that the captain was too unsure of his third lieutenant to leave him to take a watch alone. But when Herrick had relieved Lieutenant Okes at four o’clock Okes had whispered quickly that Bolitho had been on deck for most of the night.
    Herrick frowned. Deep down he had the feeling that Bolitho had acted more by instinct than design. As if he was driven like the ship, by mood rather than inclination. He seemed unable to stand