Bolitho 13 - The Flag Captain by Alexander Kent

Author:Alexander Kent [Kent, Alexander]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction:Historical
Publisher: Arrow
Published: 2011-06-19T13:01:11+00:00

demanding assurances that they were not really dying. That by some miracle they would live to see daylight. Here, the language and intonation were different, but all else the same. He could recall the time as a frightened midshipman aboard the Manxman, an eighty-gun ship-of-the-line, seeing men fall and die for the first time and watching their agony after the fight was finished.

He could remember being ashamed, disgusted with himself for feeling nothing but an overwhelming joy and relief at being whole and spared the agonies of the surgeon's saw and knife.

But he had never been able to conquer his feelings completely.

As now, compassion and helplessness, something as impossible to control as his fear of heights.

He heard Allday say, "There he is, Captain. Down by the lamp room."

He stepped over two inert shapes, their faces already covered by scraps of canvas, and followed closely on Allday's heels. Around and beyond the swaying lantern he could hear voices moaning and gasping and the gentler crooning assurances of women. Once when he turned his head he saw several of the Spanish peasant women resting momentarily from their work on the pumps. They were naked to the waist, their breasts and arms shining with sweat and bilge water, their hair matted in the filth and the effort they had given to their work. They made no attempt to cover their bodies, nor did they drop their eyes as he had passed, and one gave him what might have been a smile.

Bolitho paused and then knelt down beside Luis Pareja's body.

He had been stripped of his fine clothes, and lay like a fat child staring at the gently swaying lanterns, his eyes unmoving, dark pools of pain. The great bandage around his chest was sodden with blood, the centre of which gleamed in the dim light like a bright red eye as his life continued to pump steadily away.

Bolitho said softly, "I came as soon as I could, Senor Pareja."

The round face turned slowly towards him, and he realised that

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what he had taken for a pillow was in fact a soiled apron spread across someone's knees to keep his head from the deck. As the lantern lifted higher he saw it was Pareja's wife, her dark eyes not on her dying husband but staring fixedly away into the darkness.

Her hair was hanging loose and disordered about her face and shoulders, and yet her breathing seemed regular, as if she was composed, or perhaps numbed by what had happened.

Pareja said thickly, "You saved these people, Captain. From those murderous Saracens." He tried to reach up for his wife's hand but the effort was too much and his fist dropped against the bloodied blanket like a dead bird. "My Catherine will be safe now. You will make sure." When Bolitho did not reply he struggled violently on to one elbow, his voice suddenly strong again.

"You will, Captain? You give me your word, eh?"

Bolitho nodded slowly. "You have it, senor."

He glanced quickly at her face, half hidden in shadow.

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