Bolitho turned his back on the approaching ships and raised his glass to study the Spartan. With the little sloop close astern of her she was plunging through steep swells about a mile to windward. He caught a brief glimpse of Farquhar's elegant figure, his face turned towards him, and then lowered the glass again.
"Make a signal to Spartan and Dasher." He saw Carlyon's hands shaking as he picked up his slate and pencil. "Attack and harass the enemy's rear."
The suddenness of Farquhar's acknowledgement and the instant activity on the frigate's deck and yards told him of the relief his signal had unleashed. Unlike the twodeckers, Farquhar had no need to wait to be pounded blow for blow. As his sails filled to the wind and more canvas billowed from his topgallant yards Bolitho knew he would give of his best. At any other time it would have been sheer lunacy to despatch such frail vessels headlong into the fray, but as Farquhar had observed, the enemy had no frigates left, and feint attacks around the French rear might help to cause some momentary diversion.
Inch whispered, "The Dasher too, sir?"
Bolitho glanced at him. "There can be no spectators today."
There was a sporadic rumble of cannon fire, and he saw the Tornade's upper battery light up in a long ripple of orange tongues. But the Spartan was already thrusting past and ahead of Hyperion's larboard bow, her ensign streaming from the gaff as she spread more sail and headed towards the opposite end of the French line. Some of the balls ripped through the water and raised more spray beyond her, but she was a difficult target, and it was obvious that the sudden move was quite unexpected.
Flags soared up the Tornade's yards, and the two rearmost two-deckers began to idle clear of the line, their topsails flapping as they tacked slowly and ponderously towards the oncoming frigate.
Bolitho smiled tightly. The treasure ship meant more to Lequiller than anything. Without her and her cargo of men and wealth this would be a battle of no value, either to him or his, country.
Some of te other ships were firing now, the sounds intermingled and jarring as their gunners tried to wing the two spray-shrouded vessels before they could sail past.
Bolitho held his breath as the sloop rocked violently, her low hull completely bracketed with leaping columns of water. But she sailed on, her driver and maintopsail punctured in a dozen places. One of those balls from the French line would smash her delicate timbers to boxwood, and her commander needed no encouragement to spread more sail and clap on speed.
Bolitho turned away and stared fixedly at the leading enemy ship. They were almost bow to bow now, with the three-decker less than half a cable away and slightly to starboard.
Inch murmured, "We have the wind-gage it seems."
"And the wind is still fresh, Mr. Inch." Bolitho looked up as one more gun fired from the Tornade's lofty forecastle and a ball slapped through the mizzen topsail directly overhead. "But the smoke from our broadsides will be better protection than agility."
He pressed his palm on the sword's flat blade. "Stand by on the main deck!" He saw the gunners crouching down, their faces tight with concentration as they peered through the open ports, hands like claws on tackles and rammers, as if they would never move again. He heard the word being passed below decks, and tried not to think of the lower battery, the hell it would be soon, and his nephew down there enduring the living nightmare.
The three-decker's yards moved very slightly and he saw her swing away. Lequiller's captain intended to pass exactly parallel with the English line and not waste a single ball.
Bolitho watched the oncoming giant, her triple row of guns shining dully in the light, the lower battery comprised of massive thirty-two-pounders.
He lifted his left hand very slowly and could almost feel Gossett tensing behind him. He made himself wait until the Tornade's yards had settled again and then shouted, "Larboard your helm!" He heard the spokes creaking frantically and saw the bowsprit beginning to swing slowly until it was pointing straight for the enemy's figurehead. "Steady!" He slapped the rail, his voice harsh but controlled. "Now, Mr. Gossett! Bring her back on course!" The wheel started squealing again, and along the main deck he saw vague impressions of men hurling themselves at the braces, while overhead the yards creaked and grated in protest. He ran to the nettings and peered at the French flagship. She was turning away, her captain momentarily unnerved by what must have looked like a head-on collision.
He yelled, "Broadside!"
Stepkyne dropped his sword, his voice cracked with strain.
"Fire!"
Every gun hurled itself inboard, the crashing roar of explosions seemingo to drive into Bolitho's, brain with the force of a musket ball. He watched as the dense smoke billowed away and heard the splintering thunder of his broadside striking home.
The smoke lifted violently as if touched by some other wind, and lit up scarlet and orange, while around and above the Hyperion's quarterdeck the air came alive with screaming metal as the Tornade's gunners recovered their wits and fired back.
Bolitho staggered and seized the rail to stop himself falling as a ball sliced through the bulwark and smashed into a nine-pounder on the opposite side. He heard screams and yells, and more cries as another burst of cannon fire raked the hull from stem to poop.
Above the writhing fog he saw the Frenchman's masts, the speckled flashes from unseen marksmen in her tops, and waited counting seconds as the Hyperion's second broadside blasted the smoke aside and shook the deck beneath him as if striking a reef._
He yelled, "Lively, Mr. Roth!" The rest of his words were drowned as the quarterdeck nine-pounders jerked inboard on their tackles, their earsplitting barks adding to the din and confusion about him.
Musket balls thudded into the deck planking, and he saw a marine staggering and reeling like a drunken man, hands pressed to his stomach, his eyes closed as he reached the rail and pitched headlong into the net below.
But the Tornade's topmasts were already passing the starboard quarter, and as the Hyperion's lower battery fired again he saw the balls smashing into the threedecker's tall side, the splinters and lacerated shrouds lifting above the smoking gunports in crazy torment.
And here came the second one, a two-decker with a figurehead in the form of a Roman warrior, her bowchaser firing blindly through the gunsmoke as she endeavoured to keep station on her flagship.
Bolitho cupped his hands, "Fire as you bear, Mr. Stepkyne!" He saw the lieutenant crouching inboard of the leading gun, his hand on the captain's shoulder.
More heavy firing came from astern, and Bolitho knew the Hermes was engaging the flagship, but when he peered over the nettings he could see nothing but topmasts, all else hidden in the great pall of smoke.
"Fire!"
Gun by gun the main deck battery engaged the second ship, the men cheering and cursing as they threw themselves on the tackles, their naked bodies shining with sweat and blackened from powder smoke, while they sponged out the muzzles and rammed home the, next charges.
Bolitho felt the hull quake below his feet, and winced as more balls smashed along the ship's side, hurling splinters into the smoke or ripping through ports to plough into the men beyond. He saw a complete gun hurled bodily on to its side, with one of its crew pinned screaming and writhing beneath it. But his cries were lost in the roar and crash of the next broadside, and Bolitho forgot his agony as he turned to watch the two-decker's foremast begin to slide down into the smoke.
He grabbed Inch's arm so that the lieutenant jumped as if receiving a musket ball. "The carronades!" He did not have to add anything and saw Inch waving his speaking trumpet towards the hunched figures on the forecastle. The throaty roar of a carronade fanned the smoke downwards into the main deck, and he saw the massive ball explode just belo* the Frenchman's poop. When the wind laid bare the damage he saw that the wheel and helmsmen had vanished and the poop looked as if it had been struck by a landslide.
Crippled, and momentarily not under command, the ship started to swing downwind, her high stern and flapping Tricolour rising above the smoke like an ornate cliff.
The second carronade lurched back on its slide, and Bolitho heard someone cheering as the ball burst inside the stern cabin above her name, Cato, and the handful of marksmen who were still trying to shoot at the Hyperion's forecastle as she edged past. He could picture the murderous devastation as the ball sent its contents scything through the crowded gundeck to add to the confusion already apparent on her shattered poop.
Vaguely he could see a marine waving and gesturing from the forecastle, and when he ran to the weather side he saw something dark and covered with green weed sliding past the larboard bow like a grotesque sea monster.
Inch cried hoarsely, "Christ Almighty! The Dasher!"
Bolitho pushed past him as the third ship's topmasts and braced yards loomed above the fog of battle. The sloop must have taken a full broadside, or sailed too close to the Spanish treasure ship. Her upturned keel surrounded by bursting air bubbles and flotsam was all that remained.
He snapped, "Ready, lads!" He could feel himself grinning, yet was conscious only of numb, pitiless concentration.
A voice yelled, "Ship. on th' weather bow!"
As the smoke swirled abeam he saw the other twodecker across the larboard bow, her sails almost aback as she drifted towards him. She was one of the ships detached to protect the San Leandro, and as her upper guns blasted their orange tongues from the ports he knew it would be a double engagement.
He felt the salvo ripping overhead and saw the net bouncing with fallen blocks and full lengths of rigging. A man dropped from the mizzen top and fell hard across the breech of a nine-pQunder. Bolitho heard his ribs cracking like a wicker basket trodden underfoot, saw the terrible agony on the man's face as the seamen pulled him clear and rolled his body free of their gun.
"Stand by the larboard battery!" He was hoarse with shouting and his throat felt like raw flesh. "Get ready to show them, my lads!" He waved his sword at the waiting gunners and saw more than one of them grinning up at him, their teeth very white through the grime.
"Fire!"
The larboard guns crashed out for the first time, the double-shouted charges blasting into the newcomer's bow and side with the sound of thunder. Bolitho watched coldly as the enemy's foremast and main topgallant buckled and curtsied into the drifting smoke, and then shouted, "Mr. Stepkyne! All spare hands to the larboard gangway!" He saw Stepkyne, hatless and dazed, staring up at him. "Repel boarders!" He gestured with his sword as the French ship began to sidle slowly towards the larboard bow.
The third ship in the enemy line was abeam now, but had tacked further away than her predecessors. She seemed to lift from the Hyperion's smoke, and then as the grey light touched her figurehead and catted anchor she fired a full broadside, the shockwave of the double line of guns blasting the air apart with the power of a searing wind.
Bolitho fell choking and spitting as the deck bucked and staggered beneath him. Men were crying and yelling all around him, and he stared up as Captain Dawson rolled across the splintered planking, blood gushing from h s
mouth and one eye bouncing grotesquely on his cheek.
When his hearing came back he heard the marines calling to each other, firing and loading, and vying with their comrades in the tops as they tried to pick off the French marksmen with their muskets.
Inch yelled, "The bastards are boarding us!"
Bolitho dragged himself to the rail and felt the ship lurch as the other two-decker came to rest across the forecastle bulwark.
The larboard guns were firing with hardly a break, their balls smashing into the enemy's hull at a few yards range. But across the bows he could see the glint of steel, an occasional flash of a pistol as the boarders and his own men came to grips.
"Get the marines up forrard!" He was almost knocked from his feet as the scarlet coated figures charged past him, their bayonets shining in the gunflashes as the passing ship fired once more through the smoke.
Inch shouted wildly. "The mizzen topmast! It's coming down!"
Bolitho looked up and then pushed Inch against the nettings as with a splintering crack the topmast, complete with topgallant and yards came pitching through the smoke to smash across the larboard side. Men were falling and dying, their blood running in great patterns across the deck, while some were still trapped in the severed rigging, their cries lost in the thunder of Hyperion's guns.
Tomlin was here with his men, faces grim and intent, axes flashing while they cut the dragging wreckage clear, their ears deaf to the pitiful reams and pleas from those still enmeshed in the broken topmast. As it pitched into the water alongside Tomlin gestured with his axe and stood aside while his men began to throw the mangled corpses overboard and others dragged the protesting wounded down the ladder towards the main hatch and the horror of the orlop.
Bolitho stared up, his eyes smarting from the gunfire. It seemed bare and vulnerable without the great mast overhead and all its complex rigging and spars. He shook himself angrily and ran to the lee gangway to try and see the ship which was still locked around the bows.
There were scarlet coats there now, and the arrowhead of choppy r!rater between the two hulls was covered with bodies, dead or wounded, it was impossible to say. Blades hacked and flashed above the nettings, and here and there a man would fall kicking into the melee, or be thrown bodily into the sea by the press behind him.
But Stepkyne was holding the boarders off, although the French captain appeared to have stripped his guns of men to overwhelm his enemy by sheer numbers. He was paying for it now. For as the Hyperion's big twenty-fourpounders smashed ball after ball into the lower hull, the French guns remained silent. But the musket fire was fierce and accurate, and Bolitho saw more than one gun on the main deck with the dead heaped around it like so much meat.
He seized Roth's sleeve. "Get the marksmen, for God's sake!"
Roth nodded grimly and strode along the larboard gangway to yell up at the swivel gunners in the maintop. He had moved only a few paces when he received a charge of canister full in the chest. His body rose like a tattered, bloody rag and then bounced across the nets to lie gaping at the sails above.
Bolitho snapped, "Mr. Gascoigne! Lively there!" He watched the young acting-lieutenant scramble along the nettings and begin to climb up the shrouds. Just a boy, he thought dazedly.
Inch clapped his hand to his head and then beamed foolishly as his hat was plucked over the rail.
Bolitho grinned. "Walk about, Mr. Inch! You make a promising target it seems!"
"Blast!" Allday pounced forward, his cutlass raised as some handful of figures started along the gangway towards the poop. They were French seamen, a young lieutenant running ahead with drawn sword and a pistol pointing at the quarterdeck.
The sharp crack of the maintop's swivel gun made some of the men falter, but as the canister swept away many of the others who were pressing forward in readiness to board, the lieutenant waved his sword and charged headlong for the poop. He saw Bolitho and slithered to a halt, his pistol surprisingly steady as he aimed it directly at him.
Allday started towards the gangway but fell back as Tomlin muttered an oath and hurled his axe withh all the strength of his hairy arm. The keen blade struck the lieutenant, in the chest, and as he toppled amongst his men his yes were popping with astonishment as they stared at the axe, firmly embedded as if in a tree.
The others broke and ran back towards their comrades, only to be met by some crazed and jubilant marines.
Bolitho tore his eyes from the flashing bayonets and the blood which splashed down on the gunners below the gangway like scarlet rain.
"Another ensign, Mr. Carlyon!" He nodded as the boy ran past "Walk, Mr. Carlyon!" He saw the midshipman staring at him, his features like chllk. He added gently, "As befits a King's officer.''
More cries came from forward, and as axes flashed he saw the battered two-decker begin to nudge slowly along the Hyperion's side, her hull hammered every yard of the way by the lower battery.
Bolitho ran on to the gangway and waved his sword at the main deck gunners. "Come on, lads! Speed his passing!"
The seamen scrambled back to their guns, pausing only to drag the corpses and moaning wounded aside before hurling themselves on the tackles with renewed effort.
Bolitho stood quite still as captain after captain raised his hand in the air. More than half the larboard battery had been knocked useless, or so denuded of men as to be silent. So it had to be a careful broadside. He saw the stricken ship drifting past while the Hyperion's pockmarked sails carried her slowly and painfully towards the remaining French two-decker which had been sent to protect Perez's San Leandro. On her quarterdeck he could see the dead and wounded heaped around the guns, the great rents in her poop and engaged side. By the carved quarterdeck ladder an officer clung to the rail for support, one leg twisted like that of a broken doll. It must be her captain, he thought absently. He dropped his sword.
"Fire!"
By coincidence both decks fired together, and as the smoke came billowing inboard through the ports and the men groped choking and cursing for the water and sponges, Bolitho saw the enemy's main and foremasts come down as one into the sea between them.
Inch yelled, "Two crippled at least, sir! And that bugger'll never see another dawn if the sea gets up!"
Bolitho wiped his smarting eyes with his sleeve and watched the last guardship's outline hardening through the smoke, her guns already firing while she tacked awkwardly across the Hyperion's bows. He swore savagely. There was not a gun which would bear yet, and if the enemy's broadside was ill aimed, it was still lethal. He jerked round as a great ball smashed through the bulwark and ploughed into the men at the larboard nine-pounders.
The crouching figures, naked to the waist, pigtailed and determined, were like a little group of statuary or part of a great painting of some forgotten battle. As the smoke whipped away Bolitho had to bite on his nausea, to look away from the bloody tangle of limbs and flesh, the bones shining like pale teeth through the carnage.
Trudgeon's men were busy dragging and cursing the screaming wounded into silence, and he saw Carlyon stooped double and vomiting into the scuppers.
Allday said calmly, "That was a poor bit o' shooting, Captain."
But at that instant the French ship fired a second time. Her captain had no intention of grappling with a ship which had already crippled two of his consorts with little outward damage to herself but the loss of a topmast. He was intending to sail downwind, to fire one more broadside into the English seventy-four's bows and then get clear.
The air seemed thick with screaming metal, the deck alive with flying splinters, and men torn and ripped as if from a beast gone mad. Bolitho watched tight-lipped as the foretopmast quivered, like a sapling feeling the first blow of an axe, and then almost wearily pitched down with smashing impact across the crowded forecastle. The ship yawed heavily as the wind groped blindly through the remaining canvas, and from forward he heard the shrill cries of men trapped beneath the great weight of spars and rigging. Seamen and marines, who seconds earlier had been training the carronades towards the enemy, were pulped into the splintered deck planking or swept bodily over the rail and into the sea.
Tomlin and his men were clambering towards the wreckage and confusion, but they were moving more slowly now, and their numbers were fewer.
Inch called, "Here comes the Hermes!"
Bolitho walked to the starboard side, feeling his shoes slipping in blood and flesh as he clambered up to peer above the hammock nettings. The Hermes was without her mizzen, too, but her guns were still firing at a French two-decker, and he could see the balls slamming into the enemy's side and along her waterline.
Further astern the smoke was so tall and dense it was impossible to tell friend from foe, but there was plenty of gunfire, and he knew that Herrick was still there. Still fighting.
He felt Inch dragging at his coat, and as he jumped back to the deck he saw him pointing wildly, his eyes bright with anxiety.
"Sir! The Tornade's gone about!" He followed Bolitho to the side. "She's outsailed Hermes and is coming for us!"
Bolitho watched while the smoke darkened and parted to reveal the outthrust bowsprit and then the figurehead of the great hundred-gun flagship. In spite of the noise and confusion on every side he could still feel a cold admiration for the French captain's superb seamanship as he edged almost into the eye of the wind, his massive armament bursting into life as with methodical savagery he poured a slow broadside into the Hermes' unprotected stern.
Even at the distance of two cables Bolitho could hear the great bombardment raking the ship from stern to bow, the balls smashing the full length of her hull and turning it into a slaughterhouse.
The great thirty-two-pound balls must have sliced away the mainmast at its foot, for it was falling complete with top and yards, with struggling men, and the masthead pendant still whipping defiantly to the wind.
Black smoke belched from her main deck, as if forced upwards by some great bellows, and as the men at the Hyperion's guns stared astern in shocked horror, the air was rent by one deafening explosion. the Tornade had sailed, clear and was already clawing round towards the Hyperion's larboard quarter, but for her it was a close thing
The explosion,.probably her magazine, had blasted the Hermes almost into two halves, in the centre of which a giant fire reached towards the sky, consuming the foremast and remaining sails in one lick, like an obscene dragon plucking down a lance.
Another explosion and another rocked the shattered hull, and within minutes of the broadside she started to roll over. As she tilted steeply into, the waves Bolitho saw the sea pouring through her lower ports, while on her blazing decks the few remaining survivors ran haphazardly in all directions, some ablaze Like human torches, others already driven beyond reason. Her ports glowed like lines of red eyes, until finally as the sea surged into her hull and she began to slide under the littered water, she was completely hidden in a seething wall of steam.
One of the helmsmen had run from the wheel to watch. He dropped on his knees, crossing himself and whimpering, "Jesus! Oh, sweet Lord Jesus!"
Gossett, one hand hiflden in a bloody bandage, pulled him to his feet and snarled, "This ain't no floatin' Bethel! Get back to your station or I'll gut you like a bloody herrin'!"
Bolitho swung away and snapped, "Clear that hamper from the bows!" He saw Inch still staring at the dying ship. "Get forrard and see to it! That ship'll be up to us directly!"
He turned back to watch the _Tornade as she steadied on her new course, her fore topsail pitted with holes from the previous encounter. She had the wind-gage this time, and was preparing to overhaul the crippled Hyperion and smash her to submission as she passed.
He found that he could watch her confident approach almost dispassionately. It was nearly done. They had caused so much damage to Lequiller's force it was unlikely he could continue fully with his plan. Far away he could hear the sharp detonations of the Spartan's guns, and guessed Farquhar was playing cat and mouse with the San Leandro. It had been a brave gesture. He looked down at his own ship and felt the pain in his heart like a knife. There were dead and dying on every hand, and with men working to clear away the wreckage from the bows there was hardly a gun still fully manned.
Then he looked up at the mainmast where a new ensign flapped briskly above the drifting smoke. Lequiller was probably watching it, too. Recalling this same ship which had anchored in the Gironde Estuary alone and outnumbered to block his escape to sea. Now they were meeting again. For the final embrace.
He walked slowly across the broken planking, his chin on his chest. But this time the Hyperion was here to block his return to land. He looked up startled, as if someone had spoken the thoughts loud.
He shouted hoarsely, "Get a move on, Mr. Inch!" Then to Gossett he added, "Will she answer the helm like this?"
The master rubbed his chin. "Mebbee, sir."
Bolitho stared at him, his eyes cold. "No maybes, Mr. Gossett! I just want steerage way, nothing more!"
Gossett nodded, his heavy face crumpled with strain and worry.
Then Bolitho ran to the ladder and down to the main deck. At the top of the hatch he yelled, "Mr. Beauclerk!" He stared as a grubby faced midshipman peered up at him.
"Mr. Beauclerk's dead, sir." He shivered but added firmly, "Mr. Pascoe and I are in charge."
Bolitho looked up at the maintop, seeking out Gascoigne. But there was no time now. He tried to clear his mind. To think. Just two boys. Two boys in command of an enclosed, deafening hell.
He said calmly, "Very well, Mr. Penrose. Send all the starboard side gunners on deck at the double!" He checked the midshipman and added, "Then load and double-shot your guns to larboard." He waited. "Do you think you can do that?"
The boy nodded, his eyes suddenly determined. "Aye, aye, sir!"
Inch strode aft. "It will take another quarter hour, sir."
"I see." Bolitho looked above the tattered hammock nettings and saw the French ship's fore topgallant high above the larboard quarter, moving slowly but surely towards the final contact.
"We have' no more time, Mr. Inch." It was strange how quiet it appeared to be. "Muster all the available men but keep them down below the bulwark. I want fifty of them aft in the wardroom and stem cabin."
Inch's eyes were on the other ship's topgallant and the vice-admiral's command flag which flew above it.
Bolitho continued in the same expressionless tone, "I am going to board her." He saw Inch staring at him but said, "It is the only hope." Then he clapped his shoulder and grinned. "So let us have some enthusiasm, eh?"
He turned and ran back to the littered quarterdeck where Allday stood beside the guns, his cutlass dangling from one hand.
A ball shrieked overhead and slapped through the main topsail, throwing a seaman from his perch on the yard and hurling him down on to the net, where he lay with his arms outstretched, as if crucified.
Bolitho said shortly, "Stand by, Mr. Gossett!" He did not turn as the detailed seamen and marines dashed past him into the gloom beneath the poop, while others hurried to the wardroom on the deck below.
Gossett could not see the enemy because of the poop, but was watching Bolitho's face with something like awe.
Inch clung to the ladder and said, "Here she comes!"
The Tornade's jib boom was already passing the quarter windows, and as she began to overhaul Bolitho saw the men high in her tops, the sudden stab of musket fire as they tried to mark down the Hyperion's officers. The swivel gun banged again and he heard Gascoigne yelling and cheering as the canister ripped away the wooden barricade around the enemy's foretop and blasted the marksmen down like birds from a branch.
The first three guns on the Tornade's side belched tongues of flame, and Bolitho felt the balls smashing into his ship and gritted his teeth against her pain and his own as shot after shot crashed into the old timbers or cleaved through ports to cause carnage and terror inside the lower – battery.
Gossett said between his teeth, "She can't take much more, sir!"
Bolitho replied harshly, "She must!" He flinched as a ball smashed through a group of men who were carrying a wounded comrade towards the main hatch. Arms and legs flew in grisly profusion, and he saw an old seaman gaping at the deck where his hands lay like tom gloves amidst the great spreading bloodstains. Then he was lost from view as the Tornade fired again, the rolling thunder of her broadside matched only by the terrible din as the massive weight of iron drove into the Hyperion's side and upper decks.
Bolitho said, "Now, Mr. Gossett! Larboard helm!" He saw a quartermaster fall kicking and screaming, and threw his own weight to the wheel. He felt the spokes jerking under his hands, as if the ship was trying to hit back at those who were letting her be destroyed. He yelled, "Heave! Over, lads!"
He could see the French ship right alongisde now, barely thirty feet clear, her guns firing and then running out to shoot again almost before the smoke had been driven away. The lower battery was shooting in reply, but the sporadic salvoes were lost in the enemy's deeper roar.
Men were waving weapons and yelling from the Tornade's poop, and he saw others gesturing towards him and pointing him out to the marksmen in the tops.
Inch muttered tightly, "Oh, God, she's feeling it…:' He broke off and threw one hand to his shoulder, his face twisted in agony.
Bolitho held him against the wheel. "Where are you hit?" He tore open his coat and saw the bright blood pouring down his chest.
Inch said weakly, "Dear God!"
Bolitho shouted, "Mr. Canyon!" When the boy ran to him he snapped, "Tend to the first lieutenant!" He added quietly, "Rest easy, Inch."
Then he tore himself away and shouted, "Keep the helm over!" He ran past the helmsman, his ears deaf to the screams and the awful crash of splintering wood which seemed all about him.
On through the stem cabin, half filled with vague figures, and unfamiliar with burned panelling and gaping shot holes.
The ship was sluggish with a dozen rents beneath her waterline, but she was answering. Slowly and painfully she was swinging away from her attacker, the impetus of her turn bringing her battered stern towards that of the threedecker.
Bolitho kicked open the nearest window, the sword in his hand, his eyes wild and suddenly angry.
Then he saw his brother and Pascoe with the others, and felt the despair crowding through his reeling mind like a final torment.
He heard himself shout, "Now lads! Let's get to grips with the bastards!"
He almost fell into the sea as the two ships ground together with a jarring crash, but after a moment's pause he leapt outwards for the ornate sternwalk and clung to it with all his strength, while yelling and screaming like madmen the others surged across with him. Below his legs he saw Stepkyne leading his party from the wardroom windows, and a man failing, seemingly very slowly into the water below the two interlocked sterns.
Guns crashed and men cried in agony, while the ships continued to grind together, but Bolitho threw himself through the stem windows and plunged wildly across a deserted cabin, his sword ready, his mind empty of everything but the fury of battle.
Then there was a door, kicked open by a bosun's mate, who dropped dead from a pistol shot before he could jump aside. A midshipman holding the pistol screamed as a cutlass hacked him down. And then they were through and out on to the Tornade's great quarterdeck. Startled faces and flashing steel seemed to pin Bolitho against a ladder, but as more of his small party surged beneath the poop and fighting became general he forgot everything but the need to reach the forepart of the deck, where he could see a gold-laced hat surrounded by a group of officers and several armed seamen.
When the smoke swirled clear he saw his own ship close alongside, held fast by grapnels which might have been cast by either side. She looked small and strangely unreal, and as he turned away to parry a cutlass he saw her mainmast going over the side, leaving her bare, like a listing hulk in some forgotten shipyard.
He did not even hear the mast fall, but saw only faces and wild eyes, his ears deafened by cries and savage curses, the clash of steel and the fierce determination which gripped his men like insanity.
But it was no use. Step by step they were being forced back to the poop again as more men ran from the guns in support and others fired down from the mizzen top, heedless of friend or foe in the desperation to clear their ship of boarders.
A figure darted beneath his arm and he saw it was Pascoe. As he reached out to stop him a French lieutenant struck the sword from his hand and then brought the hilt savagely against the side of his head, knocking him to his knees. Bodies and swords swerved and slashed all around him, and he saw Pascoe reaching to help him to his feet, while framed against the sky a French petty officer stood quite still, a pistol aimed straight at the boy's shoulder.
Another figure blotted out the light, momentarily silhouetted by the pistol's bright flash. Then as a body rolled against him Bolitho saw it was his brother.
Sobbing for breath he snatched up his sword from betwetn the stamping feet and lunged upwards at the petty office, seeing his face open from mouth to ear in a great scarlet gash. As the ma-i reeled back shrieking he hacked down the French Lieutenant and kicked his body aside even as he fell.
He gasped, "See to him, Pascoe! Take him aft!"
Allday was striding at his side, the cutlass swinging back and forth, up and down with merciless precision. Men were screaming and dying, but so many were crammed on the quarterdeck it was impossible to measure the rising cost. There was no quarter asked or given, and Bolitho threw himself to the forepart of the deck, realising only vaguely that his men were advancing once more. He cut down a distorted face and drove his sword between the shoulders of an officer who was trying to fight his way through the press behind him.
He had lost his hat, and his body felt bruised and broken, as if he had been struck a hundred times.
But above and through it all he saw only his brother. His last gesture as he had thrown himself as a shield for his son, and perhaps for him.
A man in captain's uniform, his forehead laid open in a deep gash, was shouting at him through the struggling seamen, and Bolitho stared at him, trying to understand what he was saying.
The French captain yelled, "Strike! You are beaten!" Then he went down as a marine impaled him on his bayonet.
"Beaten!" Bolitho shouted, "Strike their colours!" He saw a man running to slash away the halyards and drop from a musket ball even as the great Tricolour fell and covered him like a shroud.
Stepkyne was pushing up beside Allday, his curved hanger crossing with a French lieutenant's sword. He raised his arm and then screamed as a man darted beneath his guard and drove a dirk up and into his stomach. The man ran on, too dazed to know what he had done or where he was going. A pigtailed seaman watched him dash past and then hacked him across the neck with his cutlass with no more expression on his face than a keeper killing a rabbit.
Bolitho reeled against the bulwark, his eyes blinded with sweat. He was cracking, he had to be. For above the harsh grate of steel and the awful screams he thought he could hear cheering.
Allday was yelling into his face. "It's Cap'n Herrick, sir!"
Bolitho looked at him. Allday had never called him sir in living memory.
He dragged himself past the interlocked, swaying figures and peered across his ship at the braced yards and tan coloured sails of another vessel driving alongside. Then as grapnels thudded into the splintered bulwark he saw seamen and marines pouring across the Hyperion like a bridge, cheered on by the wounded and the surviving gunners still left to work the dismasted ship, their voices mingling with those of the enraged attackers.
No guns were firing now, and as more men surged hacking their way through boarding nets and defenders alike, Bolitho saw the French admiral's flag fluttering down to the deck, and heard the hoarse cries of Herrick's lieutenants for the French to submit and lay down their arms.
Herrick himself came aft to the poop, his sword in his hand. Bolitho stared at him. All fighting had ceased, and as the wind moved the limp sails overhead he saw the Spartan driving close by, her men cheering in spite of the damage and death around them.
Herrick seized his hand. "Two others have struck to us! And the San Leandro is ours!"
Bolitho nodded. "The rest?"
"Two made off to the north'rd!" He wrung his hand wildly. "My God, what a victory!"
Bolitho released his hand and turned towards the poop. He saw Pascoe kneeling beside Hugh's body, and with Herrick beside him pushed between the exhausted but jubilant seamen.
Bolitho knelt down, but it was over. Hugh's face seemed younger, and the deep lines of strain were gone. He closed his brother's eyes and said quietly, "A brave man "
Pascoe stared at him, his eyes very bright. "He saved my life, sir."
"He did." Bolitho stood up slowly, feeling the pain and exhaustion clawing at his nerves. "I hope you'll always remember him." He paused. "As I will."
Pascoe looked at him searchingly and some small tears ran down his stained cheeks. But when he spoke his voice was steady enough. "I shall never forget. Never."
Allday – said, "They've caught the French admiral, Captain."
Bolitho swung round, the despair and the sense of loss flooding through him like fire. The chase and the disappointments, and all the dead still to be counted. And Lequiller had lived through it.
He stared at the little man standing between Lieutenant Hicks and Tomlin. He was bent and bearded, a-small, wizened man whose stained uniform seemed too large for him.
Bolitho looked away, unable to watch the expression of stunned disbelief on Lequiller's face. He felt suddenly cheated and ashamed.
In war it was better for the enemy to be faceless.
"Take him under guard to Impulsive." He walked towards the ladder, his men cheering him, their hands, some covered in blood, reaching out to touch his shoulders as he passed without a word.
On the Hyperion's quarterdeck he found Inch waiting for him, one arm in a sling, his tattered coat across his shoulders like a cape. Bolitho reached his side and studied him. The sight of Inch did more than he would have thought possible to control his rising emotion.
He said quietly, "I believe I ordered you below?"
Inch showed his teeth in a painful grin. "I thought you would like to know, sir. The commodore was unconscious throughout the battle. But he is astir now and demanding
brandy."
Bolitho grasped his good hand, Inch's face suddenly blurred and out of focus, "And he shall have it, Mr. Inch!"
He looked past Gossett's huge grin. and the capering, cheering gunners. The ship was mastless and heavy in the water, and he could almost feel her pain like his own.
Then he clapped his hat across the rebellious lock of hair and said firmly, "We've sailed a long way together, Mr. Inch."
He unbuckled his sword and handed it to Allday.
"Now, if Hyperion is to be jury-rigged enough to lead our prizes back to Plymouth, there is a great deal of work to be done."
He could feel the emotion pricking his eyes but continued in the same brisk tones, "So what are we waiting for, eh?"
Inch looked at him sadly. Then he replied, "I'll attend to it directly, sir!"