Read Online Relentless Pursuit by Alexander Kent - Free Book Online

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    The captain could have been killed that day, like the uncle they had just been talking about. But he came to help me. He put me first.
    He glanced at the swaying cot where the rebel captain Lovatt had died, thinking I was his son. Captain Bolitho had even cared about that. Just as he had been concerned about his mother’s failure to reply to his letters. She had other things on her mind now that he was here in Unrivalled. A man. It had not taken her long to forget.
    But how could Captain Bolitho be expected to understand anything so cheap, so heartless?
    It could not last forever. Nothing did. His mother had said that often enough. Other ships, and perhaps one day . . . He almost ran from the screen.
    â€œYou called, sir?”
    They did not move, and Napier realised they had neither heard, nor called out for him.
    He stood quite still, feeling the regular rise and fall of the cabin around him. And he was a part of it.
    Lieutenant James Bellairs turned his shoulders into the wind and peered at his list. It had been handed round from watch to watch and was barely readable. Fortunately there were only a few more names left on it. Midshipman Deighton stood close by, frowning with concentration. Learning, listening or merely pretending to be interested, it was hard to tell. Bellairs had been a midshipman himself so recently that he often found himself thinking like one, especially when he was left to explain something.
    He knew the old arguments. We had to learn the hard way, so why not them? He might even become like that himself. One day.
    He tried again.
    â€œThe first lieutenant wants to reduce the number of idlers before we reach our destination. And more hands are needed for gun drill.”
    Deighton asked, “What is Sierra Leone like, sir?”
    Bellairs tapped one foot impatiently. Deighton was new to the ship but experienced, and had served in another frigate which had since been paid off for refit. At fifteen, his previous service put him ahead of most of the others. Reserved, almost withdrawn, he had proved what he could do under fire. But he rarely smiled, and Bellairs knew it was because of the rumours which surrounded the death of his father, an acting-commodore. Killed in action; he had heard the others talking about it. But it was now said that he had in fact been shot down by one of his own men. Another ship, but Captain Adam Bolitho had been in command of her also.
    He recalled Deighton’s question. “Oh, one of those rough-and-ready places, you know.” He had never been there.
    Deighton saw some figures below the poop. “There they are, sir.”
    Bellairs waited for the gunner’s mate, Williams, to hustle them over. Two men and a youth. The last was not merely pale, his skin was white.
    Williams reported, “Cooper, Dixon and Ede, sir.”
    Bellairs surveyed them. Just three new hands, nothing out of the ordinary. Except . . . He glanced at Williams, but his face gave nothing away.
    â€œYou will report to Mr Varlo in the first division tomorrow. Gun drill is essential to a man-of-war, and . . .” He looked at the white-faced youth. “Are you unwell, Cooper?”
    The man at the other end of the group called, “I’m Cooper, sir!”
    The third one grinned broadly.
    It was a bad start. Bellairs said sharply, “I asked you a question, Ede is— that right?”
    Landmen, untrained, and somehow out of place.
    Bellairs tried to put it to the back of his mind. He was a lieutenant now. He must look at everything firmly, but fairly.
    Even in his own service he had seen most of them. The hard men and the cowards, volunteers and pressed hands, the godly and the liars. But these men stood apart. They had been released from prison only on the understanding that they would redeem themselves by serving in a King’s ship. There had been about twenty of them all told, but these last three were still without a proper station in the ship.
    Ede said,