A Divided Command Read Online Free PDF

was generally held by those on the receiving end that his pique was caused by his discomfort at being dependent on the tars to both get him ashore and to provide and man the guns necessary to subdue the place.
    None of what had occurred could be observed from the cell shared by the prisoners, but their spirits were raised by the lack of gunfire, something that had been a constant for a whole month now. Then the French army bugles blew and Buchanan knew enough to identify the calls as signals for thegarrison to stand down, donning his shirt and dust-streaked red coat as the sounds faded away.
    Silence promised freedom and that was borne out within the hour by the arrival of their sergeant gaoler, who roughly told them, more by gestures than in his halting and very bad English, to gather their possessions and be prepared to leave. Not that what they owned amounted to much, no more than the garments with which they had arrived. Buchanan immediately enquired about the prisoners in the dungeon, to be told that they would be released at the same time.
    Toby Burns had not worn his blue midshipman’s coat for weeks and, despite what he had said to Buchanan about longing to be out of this cell, when he put it on now – service dignity demanding that he do so – it was with reluctance, not only for the fact that it was too hot for such an article, but for the way it underlined to him that he was back in the navy, his hat, once donned, highlighting a fact that made him miserable.
    Buchanan, full of good cheer, displayed the same level of kindness he had shown since he had crossed swords with Watson over the slops pail, singling him out for an honour. ‘Since you were first to occupy this damned cell, Mr Burns, I think it fitting that it should fall to you to lead us to freedom.’
    The glowering face of Lieutenant Watson gave the lie to the word ‘freedom’, making it hard to respond with the appropriate animation; Toby Burns now realised that this cell had represented liberty; outside these stout walls was where he was really a prisoner for here he had been safe from harm – and not only from the risk of death in fighting the French. The malevolence, which he knew animated Admiral Hotham, would once again be in play.
    Added to that there was the mad insistence, from the same person, that Burns should sit for promotion to lieutenant, an inquisition he was bound to fail. There was some hope that such an examination, to which a goodly number of senior midshipmen would have been invited, had already taken place; they would not wait upon him, but laying that minor worry to potential rest did not induce any feeling of ease.
    Hotham would volunteer him for some new and dangerous duty, just as he had already done at Toulon and twice at Bastia, once with an army column and secondly with that madcap and fearless fool Nelson, who saw nothing stupid in manning posts that were well within enemy range. He had found himself ashore here at Calvi under the command of the same fellow, who was responsible for the very action that had not only put him in mortal danger but had led to his incarceration. What would the old goat, Hotham, come up with next?
    Added to that was the situation regarding his uncle’s flawed court martial, or to be more accurate a fellow called Lucknor, an attorney employed, he assumed by John Pearce, to probe Burns about his actions in lying under oath. He claimed to have been present at the illegal impressment of Pearce and his friends from the Pelican Tavern when, in fact, he had been aboard
HMS Brilliant
, his uncle’s frigate, berthed at Sheerness on the night in question.
    That lie was compounded by another more serious act, taking upon himself responsibility for a navigation error that had landed the press gang and his uncle at the wrong location on the River Thames, putting them ashore in the Liberties of the Savoy, a place in which the navy was forbidden by law to operate, when the intention had been to land by