Richard Bolitho – Midshipman

Hope, the fifth lieutenant, had been closer to him than the other officers. He always pretended not to show his concern for the midshipmen under his charge, displayed an outer skin of hardness which had been taken as brutal on some occasions. But his constant presence amongst them had proved that some of his unsympathetic criticism had been both " necessary and beneficial. As he had remarked more than once: This ship needs officers not children. And now he was lying there, broken and helpless. Bolitho said quietly, 'I will come for advice whenever

I can, sir.' One hand moved out of the bloodstained cot and gripped his. 'Thank you.' Hope was barely able to focus his eyes. 'God be with you! ' 'Below there! ' It was Dancer's voice. 'The frigate's running out her starboard guns! ' 'I'm coming! ' Bolitho ran for the ladder. Thinking of Hope, of all of them. In the short time he had been below the sunlight had broken from the land and changed the sea into an endless array of leaping wavecrests. Starkie shouted, 'Wind's backed a piece! Nothing much. But the frigate's going to make a run for us, I reckon! ' BoJitho took a glass from a seaman and trained it over the nettings. The frigate was barely a mile off the larboard quarter, sails braced hard round'to hold the wind, her starboard guns showing above the churning wash along her side like black teeth. He saw her outline alter slightly as she came up a point or so to windward, the sunlight lancing on weapons and telescopes, and on the large black flag at her mainmast truck. He could even distinguish her name painted on weatherworn scrollwork beneath her beakhead. Pegaso. Probably the original name she had carried under the Spanish flag. 'She's fired! ' A stabbing line of orange tongues belched from her gunports, the untimed broadside whipping past Sandpiper's stern and a few moaning above the poop. Bolitho said, 'Alter course, Mr Starkie. Two points to windward, if you can.'