Free Enemy in Sight! by Alexander Kent Page A

and peered across the nettings. He could not see the distant ship, for her shape was well merged with the dull grey blur which he knew to be the French coast. He looked aloft again and bit his lip. Up there, swaying comfortably on his dizzy perch, the lookout would be able to see her quite well, and more important, the lay of the land beyond.
    He made up his mind. “I’m going aloft, Mr Inch.” He ignored the quick exchange of glances, but concentrated all his will on climbing out on to the weather shrouds and slowly step by step up the quivering ratlines. Ever since he had been a midshipman Bolitho had hated heights, and each time he had found himself forced to make such a climb he always expected he would have outgrown such a stupid fear. But it was not so, and with gritted teeth, his eyes fixed firmly towards the swaying topmast, he continued to climb higher and higher. Up and around the maintop, where two startled marines were cleaning a swivel gun, and gritting his teeth still harder to control the rising nausea as he felt the pull of his weight against his fingers while his body hung outwards on the futtock shrouds. But with more eyes fixed upon him than the approaching frigate, he could not take the easier passage of the lubber’s hole.
    When at last he reached the crosstrees he found a grizzled, pigtailed seaman already moving aside to give him room to sit down. Bolitho nodded gratefully, as yet unable to regain his breath. For a few moments he sat with his back against the trembling mast while he groped for his slung telescope and tried not to look down at the deck so far below him.
    He heard Midshipman Gascoigne yelling, “She’s made the recognition signal, sir!” Inch must have said something for sec- onds later the arranged acknowledgement broke in a bright rectangle from the main topsail yard.
    Bolitho trained his glass and saw the sleek frigate swooping across the lens, the spray lifting above her bows in one unbroken curtain. He forgot his discomfort as he remembered his own ser- vice in frigates. Always on the move, with the dash and excitement which only such graceful ships could give. He pitied her captain’s lonely vigil here. Back and forth, day after day, with nothing to show for it. A ship of the line was bad enough in these condi- tions, but within her sleek hull it would be a living nightmare.
    He dragged the glass away from the other ship and swung it across the darkening spit of headland to the north of the estuary. A few patches, probably coastguard houses, he thought. Above the distant offshore current they appeared to be moving and the sea to be still. He lowered the glass and wiped his eye with his sleeve.
    He heard Inch’s voice carried by the wind. “Captain, sir! Ithuriel has nothing to report!”
    By waiting for the mizzen topsail to flap momentarily in the falling wind it was possible for Bolitho to see the shortened fig- ures standing on the quarterdeck, their faces pale blobs against the worn planking. He could see Gascoigne, his signal book flap- ping in the breeze, and Stepkyne with his glass on the frigate as she cruised past on the opposite tack. Even the ship looked small and compact, so that it was hard to accept that six hundred human souls lived out their lives within her fat hull.
    He thought, too, of the frigate’s wretched conditions. One of a chain of ships, weatherbeaten and dependent on their own resources, yet essential if the enemy was to be contained within his harbours.
    Bolitho swallowed hard and seized a backstay. He could not face another long climb, even downwards, so watched by the look- out with something like awe he swung from the crosstrees, and holding his breath made his way to the quarterdeck by a faster, if less dignified method. He arrived panting on deck, conscious of the grinning seamen around him and of the pain in his legs where the thick stay had seared through to his skin in the speedy and heart-stopping