Read Online The Admirals' Game by David Donachie - Free Book Online

unpleasant. It was Martin Dent’s blathering, in this very boat, which had first alerted her to certain discrepancies in the stories she had been told both by her husband and her nephew. Abreast and passing, Pearce raised his hat, to show a clean white forehead and a healthy head of hair. She, in turn, was obliged to nod in response.
    â€˜I wish he was back aboard
Brilliant
, Mrs Barclay, don’t you?’
    â€˜Belay that, you stupid little bugger,’ a quiet voice growled from behind his back, which startled Emily; she had never wondered what the crew of her husband’s ship knew of things. Now she was forced to consider they might be aware of more than was comfortable.

    Approaching the frigate she was struck at how obvious still, new paint notwithstanding, were those parts ofthe upperworks so recently repaired, for the ship had suffered severely in the action that saw her brought in as a French prize. Lord Hood had ordered her to be kept where she lay, in the inner harbour, within easy range of the town quays, the arsenal and those buildings that operated as the headquarters of the French Admiralty. Should matters go awry, HMS
Brilliant
was in a good position, with her upper-deck guns, to subdue any hint of backsliding by the French Navy, or trouble from the Toulonnais.
    Emily was put ashore on the quay, with only a short walk to the gangplank that led up to the maindeck, but that provided enough time for Midshipman Toby Burns to make himself scarce; he had no desire to come face to face with his aunt, who would, if she bothered to grace him with a word at all, want to berate him for his conduct at the recent court martial. Standing on the poop by the taffrail, looking determinedly astern, he was, not for the first time in his life, indulging in a bout of self-pity.
    Toby Burns, as all young boys do, had dreamt of a life afloat – of exciting adventures and heroism – only to find the reality so different as to make him hate the whole notion. Capricious superiors were bad enough, worse still were his fellow midshipmen, horrible, thieving and given to salacious promises that scared him witless. The ordinary tars he was in fear of, ruffians to a man in his way of thinking, and always looking for ways to undermine what little authority he possessed.
    â€˜Mr Burns, you are absent from your place of duty.’
    â€˜Sorry, Mr Glaister,’ Burns cried, hurrying back to the quarterdeck, saluting the Premier with a raised hat, but taking care to avoid the glare emanating from the first lieutenant’s icy blue eyes. These were set in a bony face seemingly devoid of spare flesh, the forehead prominent. The voice, too, was harsh, not in the least softened by the man’s Highland lilt. ‘An anchor watch is yet a watch, Mr Burns.’
    â€˜Aye, aye, sir.’
    â€˜Then attend to it properly.’
    With the captain mainly away at Fort Malbousquet, Glaister was in charge of the ship, and since Ralph Barclay had taken with him a goodly proportion of the crew, the other mids and officers, it fell to Toby Burns to do much of this sort of duty, which consisted of no more than the appearance of some authority on the ship’s deck. It was boring in the extreme, for little of interest happened once he had got tired of watching the distant fall of shot in the endless artillery duels taking place around the bay. Those men still aboard tended to stay below when not required, a body coming up occasionally to ring the ship’s bell on the hour, before turning over the sandglass.
    Dull it might be, but Toby Burns was content with the duty; better that than to be under the basilisk eye of his uncle by marriage, as well as the cannon fire he would be exposed to. Even after he had lied for him in the most outrageous way, Ralph Barclay had shownlittle appreciation, not it seemed in the least aware that in doing so the boy had forfeited the regard of his Aunt Emily, the only person aboard who had