The Devil's Own Luck Read Online Free PDF Page B

jagged where they had broken off. Boats which had been alongside his ship were pulling furiously away. He shrugged off the arms supporting him and staggered towards the bulwark.
    “Stand by to commence firing, Mr Bentley.”
    Harry looked at his ship. The damage to the Medusa was great, but her hull was sound. Given his crew and a little assistance from Carter, she could be jury rigged and sailed home. He fell forward against the side of the ship, struggling hard to avoid passing out again. With a great effort he turned to face Carter. As he opened his mouth to ask the man he hated for help, Carter, looking straight at him, shouted: “Fire!”
    Harry did speak, but his words were drowned out by the roar of the guns. He spun round to see the damage inflicted.
    The Magnanime was a floating gun battery of enormous power. Yet the Medusa should have withstood her broadside for longer. But his poor ship simply blew apart after the first round had been fired. The last thought that Harry held before he passed into oblivion was that Carter had lined the deck of his ship with gunpowder barrels. The Medusa did not sink. She disintegrated.
    Hatred was not an emotion with which Harry Ludlow felt comfortable, sensing that somehow it caused him more suffering than the person it was directed against. So while as capable as the next man of holding a strong dislike, his affable nature and abundant optimism tended to hide this. Few people could, by their mere existence, upset him.
    As he lay in the cot, he thought back to their first meeting. Harry seemed to remember a degree of friendliness. Carter had been the premier of Admiral Hood’s flagship, the Barfleur, a three-decker of a hundred guns. Hood, having held the command in the West Indies, was superseded by Rodney, who commanded a combined fleet of thirty-four ships of the line. A few months later, in March 1782, these two gentlemen were to fight a most decisive battle. Rodney, breaking the French line in defiance of the Admiralty’s Fighting Instructions, changed the whole nature of naval warfare. Harry had joined Hood’s ship in January of that year as fourth lieutenant.
    It would be hard to describe the gulf that separated a fourth lieutenant from the first lieutenant, especially aboard a flagship. Yet the icy reserve, so common in such a situation, was wholly lacking. On meeting the other members of the wardroom, he had been left in no doubt that Carter was a hard man to mess under. For him, nothing could have been further from the facts. Carter, on deck, seemed to go out of his way to praise his abilities. The premier also encouraged Harry to air his opinions at table. Young men find such attention from their superiors flattering. Harry was no exception. If the others in the wardroom had noticed that he was being favoured, they had chosen to ignore it.
    The curtain of his cot was pulled back. Harry kept his eyes shut. Even in the dark of the screened-off cabin, the faint light from the lantern hurt his head. He knew that the man who had tended him on deck was leaning over him by the blast of foul breath that hit his nostrils.
    “Still out cold by the look of him.” The voice was deep and rasping, the kind of voice that denotes the heavy drinker.
    “It is to be hoped that the Lord will see fit to spare him.” Another voice, also deep, but much clearer in tone.
    “If’n there be such a thing. It would be a kindness if he were spared your ministrations. After the damage your lord and master has done, a dose of your supplications could see him off.”
    “Captain Carter has merely done his duty.” Quite a sharp response. Defiant.
    “His duty, you say.”
    “I had the honour to assist him in the writing of the dispatch.”
    “Then I hope you did not imperil your soul.”
    “I shall leave medical matters to you, sir. I would suggest you leave the state of my soul to me.”
    “All I’m asking is that you leave this one, body and soul, in peace.”
    “There is a proper