An Ill Wind by David Donachie Page A

do.’
    ‘Hardly that, sir,’ said Hood, softly.
    ‘In that, milord, I mean all that was possible. The Dons were tardy, when they were not downright unhelpful.’
    The accusation of treachery hung in the air, the notion that the Spaniards had not pursued the policy of destruction of the French warships with the necessary zeal. It took no great imagination to discern why: Spain, in every conflict since the Armada, had been England’s enemy, often in alliance with Royal France. To have them, in this present war, as allies, had always felt odd, though up till now Hood could not have faulted the desire of their sailors to defeat the ogres of the Revolution.
    If their soldiers had been less than wholly supportive, the senior Spanish naval officer had backed whatever plans Hood mooted to the hilt, deferring to him as the commander of the allied force because the British had the most powerful fleet. Yet a man would have hadto be blind not to see such a policy did not always sit well with the more junior officers: they still saw Albion as the traditional enemy, smarted daily about the occupation of Gibraltar, now ninety years a British thorn in the pride of Spain.
    ‘I suspect they blew the two powder ships, milord,’ said Smith. ‘They did not want us to have them any more than the French.’
    ‘A couple of powder-filled frigates are neither here nor there, Sir Sidney,’ Parker responded, ‘but those ships of the line they failed to burn will come back to haunt us.’
    ‘They feared to make us too powerful,’ Hood snapped, causing both of his other officers to look at him. ‘We are strange bedfellows, you know that and so do they. The last thing they want is a British fleet in the Mediterranean so powerful that it would be unassailable by Spain alone.’
    ‘Are you saying they will desert the alliance, milord?’
    ‘I am saying they have taken precautions to ensure they are not at a disadvantage if they do. Sir Sidney, I require from you a despatch regarding your exploits of last night, to go with mine in due course back to London, where I daresay another nail will be manufactured from my words to seal my coffin.’
    Sam Hood had never looked young, he was after all in his seventies, but he had, up till now, looked sprightly. He did not appear to be that now: he lookedworn down with the cares of his command.
    ‘We must find another anchorage, Parker, and since we still have French capital ships to contend with it will have to be one close enough to cover Toulon. Let’s send out some more sloops and frigates to see what they can find.’
    ‘Corsica, sir?’
    ‘Yes, Sardinia at a push.’
    ‘If you recall the despatch Lieutenant Pearce brought in during the summer, milord, he has noted the main ports, such as Calvi and Bastia, are held by strong garrisons.’
    ‘Then we might have to boot them out, Parker,’ Hood retorted, with some of his old fire. ‘You would do service in that, Sir Sidney, would you not?’
    ‘Happily, sir, as would every officer in your fleet.’
    ‘Right, Parker,’ Hood commanded. ‘Once all is settled signal the combined fleets to weigh for Leghorn.’
     
    The hospital was empty now, and Heinrich Lutyens walked the rooms to ensure that nothing had been left behind, at the same time wondering what a fate had ensured he ended up here, doing that which he had sought to get away from in London, the exclusive practice of his profession. His sea chest was already aboard, but over his shoulder he had a satchel containing his notebooks and the ledger into which the hurried scribblings he had made these past nine months had been copied. Were they complete? Could he, from whathe had already, compile that treatise he had set out to compose, an academic study of the stresses and strains of naval life on the human mind?
    Idly he wondered if he would decline to serve on, and go back to what he had left behind, a highly successful and lucrative practice based on the twin facts that, not only was he