Enemy in Sight! (14 page)

There was another bang, and this time the ball slammed hard alongside the larboard bow, throwing spray high above the net- tings and making some of the men at the headsail sheets duck down with alarm.

Bolitho called, “Keep those hands out of sight on the main deck, Mr Stepkyne! We will wear ship in a moment, but I don't want a single man to lay his hand on anything until I give the order!”

He saw Stepkyne nod and turn back to watch the enemy. He wondered what Pascoe was doing at his station on the lower gun- deck, and was torn between wanting him within reach and leaving him below behind the additional thickness of the hull.

Strangely, it was usually the older men who took the waiting badly, he thought. The youngsters and the untried were too awed or too frightened to think clearly about anything. Only when it was all over and the sounds and sights were branded into their memories did they start to think about the next action, and the one after that.

The next ball from the Frenchman's bowchaser smashed into the boat tier, lifting the launch bodily from its chocks and filling the air with wood splinters. Three men at the starboard bulwark fell kicking and whimpering, one almost transfixed by a jagged spear of planking.

Bolitho called, “Send some more hands to the weather fore- brace, Mr Stepkyne!” He saw the lieutenant open his mouth as if to shout back at him and then turn away to pass the order, his face angry and resentful.

As yet another shot crashed into the ship's side Bolitho found time to sympathise with Stepkyne's feelings. To keep taking these carefully aimed shots without firing back was almost more than anyone could stand. But if he allowed any sort of reprisal the French commander might immediately guess his true intention while there was still time to alter course.

Gossett murmured, “The Frogs are sailin' as close to the wind as they can, sir.” He cursed as a ball shrieked over the nettings and ricocheted across the wave crests far abeam. “If he tries to tack 'e'll be in irons!”

Bolitho saw the wounded seamen being dragged towards the main hatch, their blood marking every foot of the journey, while some of the gunners turned to stare, their faces stiff and unreal.

Closer and closer, until the leading enemy ship was a mere cable's length off the larboard bow.

Bolitho gripped his hands behind him until the pain stead- ied his racing thoughts. He could wait no longer. At any second now a well-aimed ball, or even a random one might bring down a vital spar or cripple his ship before he could make his turn.

Without looking at Gossett he snapped, “Starboard your helm!” As the spokes began to squeak over he cupped his hands and yelled, “Wear ship! Hands to the braces!”

He saw the sails' long shadows sweeping above the crouch- ing gunners, heard the whine of blocks and the frantic stamp of bare feet as the waiting men threw themselves back on the braces, and then, slowly at first, the ship began to swing round towards the Frenchman.

For a second or two longer he thought he had acted too soon, that both ships would meet head on, but as the yards steadied and the canvas bucked and filled overhead he saw the other two- decker drifting across the larboard bow, her masts almost in line as she drove towards him on the opposite tack.

As Gossett had observed, the enemy could not regain the advantage without turning directly upwind, nor could she swing away unless her captain was prepared to receive
Hyperion'
s broad- side through her stern.

Bolitho shouted, “Full broadside, Mr Stepkyne!”

He saw the gun captains crouching back from their breeches, the trigger lines bar taut as they squinted through the open port and their crews waited with handspikes to traverse or elevate as required.

A ball smashed through the larboard gangway and a man screamed like a tortured animal. But Bolitho did not even hear it. He was watching the oncoming ship through narrowed eyes, the men around him and the commodore excluded from his thoughts as he saw the
Hyperion'
s topgallants cast a distorted pat- tern of shadows across the Frenchman's bows.

He raised his hand. “On the uproll!” He paused, feeling the dryness in his throat like sand.
“Fire!”

The crash of the
Hyperion'
s broadside was like a hundred thunderstorms, and while the whole ship staggered as if driving ashore, the enemy's hull was completely blotted out in a billow- ing wall of smoke.

Across some fifty yards of water the effect of the broadside must have been like an avalanche, Bolitho thought wildly. He could see men's mouths opening and yelling, but as yet could hear nothing. The sharper, ear-probing cracks of the quarterdeck nine- pounders had rendered thought and hearing almost too painful to bear. Then above the mounting bank of drifting smoke he saw the Frenchman's yards edging round and then halting as the top- sails quivered and shook in the face of the wind.

As his hearing returned he heard his gun captains shouting from every side, and saw Dawson's marines stepping up to the net- tings, their muskets lifting to their shoulders as if on parade. Then as Dawson dropped his sword the muskets fired as one, the shots going somewhere beyond the smoke to add to the confusion.

Stepkyne was striding aft along the maindeck guns, his hands chopping the air as if to restrain his men. “Stop your vents! Sponge out!” He paused to knock down a man's arm. “
Sponge out,
I said, damn you!” He seized the dazed seaman by the wrist. “Do you want the gun to explode in your bloody face?” Then he strode on. “Jump to it! Load and run out!”

At each gun the men worked as if in a trance, conscious only of the drill they had learned under their captain's watchful eye and of the towering pyramid of sails which now rose high above the larboard gangway, and the flapping Tricolour which seemed barely yards away.

Bolitho shouted, “Fire as you bear!” He stepped back chok- ing as the guns roared out again, the smoke and flames darting from the ship's side and making the water between the two ves- sels as dark as night.

Then the French ship fired, her full broadside rippling down her side from bow to stern in a double line of darting orange tongues.

Bolitho felt the shrieking balls scything through shrouds and sails, and the harder, jarring thuds as some struck deep into the hull itself.

A seaman, apparently unmarked, fell through the smoke from the maintop and bounced twice on the taut nets before rolling lifelessly over the edge and into the sea alongside.

A gun captain behind him was bellowing above the crash of cannon fire and the sporadic bark of muskets, his eyes white in his powder-stained face as he coaxed and pushed his men to the tackle falls.

“Run out, you idle buggers! Us'll give they sods a quiltin'!”

Then he jerked his trigger line and the nine-pounder hurled itself inboard again, the black muzzle streaming smoke even as the men threw themselves forward to the task of sponging and reloading.

Through the drifting curtain of smoke the powder monkeys ran like dazed puppets, dropping their cartridges and scampering back to the hatchways with hardly a glance to left or right.

Pelham-Martin was still by the rail, his heavy coat speckled with powder ash and splintered paintwork. He was staring at the French ship's masts, seemingly mesmerised by the nearness of death as musket balls hammered the deck around him and a sea- man was hurled down the poop ladder, blood gushing from his mouth and choking his screams as he fell.

Inch shouted, “We'll be past her soon, sir!” His eyes were streaming as he peered through the smoke to seek out the next French ship. Then he pointed wildly, his teeth shining in his grimy face.
“Her mizzen's going!”
He waved his arms in the air and turned to see if Gossett had heard. “There it goes!”

The Frenchman's mizzen was indeed falling. A lucky shot must have struck it solidly within some ten feet of the deck, for as Bolitho clung to the nettings to see better he saw stays and shrouds parting like cotton while the whole mast, spars and wildly flapping canvas staggered, swung momentarily enmeshed in the tangle of rigging, before pitching down into the smoke.

But the enemy was still firing, and when Bolitho strained his eyes aloft he saw that the
Hyperion'
s topsails were little more than remnants. Even as he watched the main royal stay parted with the sound of a pistol shot, and when men swarmed aloft to splice another in its place others were falling, dead or wounded, on to the nets below as the hidden French marksmen kept up a mur- derous fire across the smoke.

The severed mizzen must have fallen close alongside the enemy's quarter, for as more long orange tongues darted through the smoke and one of the twelve-pounders lifted drunkenly before smashing down across two of its crew, the French ship's blurred outline shortened, and slowly and inexorably she began to turn away.

Gossett was yelling hoarsely, “The mizzen must be actin' as a sea anchor!” He was pounding the shoulder of one of the helms- men. “By God, there's hope yet!”

Bolitho knew what he meant. As he ran to the rail seeking out the scarlet shape of Lieutenant Hicks on the forecastle he knew that once the enemy had cut loose the trailing mass of wreckage he would still be ready enough to give battle.

He snatched Inch's speaking trumpet and yelled, “The lar- board carronade! Fire as you bear!”

He imagined that the marine lieutenant was waving his hat, but at that instant the enemy fired another ragged broadside, some of the balls smashing through open ports, others hammer- ing the hull or whipping like shrieking demons overhead.

But through the pall of smoke he heard one resonant explo- sion, and felt it transmit itself from bow to poop as the fat, crouching carronade hurled its giant sixty-eight pound ball towards the enemy's stern.

As a freak down-eddy pushed the fog aside Bolitho saw the massive ball explode. Hicks had been too eager or too excited, and instead of passing through the enemy's stern windows and along the full length of her lower gundeck it had struck just below her quarterdeck nettings. There was a bright flash, and as the ball exploded and released its closely packed charge of grape he heard screams and terrified cries as a complete section of bulwark col- lapsed like so much boxwood.

Gossett roared, “That showed 'em! The old
Smasher's
taken the wind out o' their guts!”

Bolitho said, “Her steering seems to be damaged, or else that shot cut down most of her officers.” He felt a musket ball pluck at his shirt with no more insistence than the touch of a child's fingers, and behind him a seaman screamed in agony and rolled away from his gun, his hands clawing into his stomach as the blood spattered across the planking and the men around him.

The whole ship seemed to be in the grip of fighting mad- ness. Men worked at their guns, wild-eyed and so dazed by the din of battle and the awful cries of the wounded that most of them had lost all sense of time or reason. Some gun captains had to use their fists to drive their men through the changeless pat- tern of loading, running out and firing, otherwise they would have fired at empty sea or hauled a gun back to its port still unloaded.

“Cease firing!” Bolitho gripped the rail and waited as the last few shots roared from the lower battery. The French ship had all but vanished down wind, only her topgallants showing above the attendant curtain of smoke.

Inch said between his teeth, “The second one's going about, sir!”

Bolitho nodded, watching the two-decker's yards swinging round as she turned lazily to starboard. The
Hyperion
had already started her second turn, but now instead of passing between the two ships she would—if the Frenchman intended to maintain his new course—be running parallel with the enemy. Above his head the torn sails lifted and cracked in a sudden gust as with tired dignity the
Hyperion
tilted to the wind and then settled on her course away from the land.

Bolitho shouted, “Starboard battery ready!” He saw Stepkyne signalling sharply to some of the men from the other side and ordering them to the starboard guns.

Pelham-Martin lifted one hand to his face and then stared at his fingers as if surprised he was still alive. To Bolitho he mut- tered tightly, “This one'll not be so slow in returning fire!”

Bolitho looked at him steadily. “We shall see, sir.”

Then he jerked round as more gunfire rolled through the haze of smoke, and he guessed that the
Abdiel
was closing with the enemy frigate.

Inch called, “We're overhauling him, sir!”

In spite of her torn canvas the old
Hyperion
was doing just that. Maybe the French captain had waited too long to tack or perhaps he had been unable to accept that the solitary two-decker would stand and fight after the first savage encounter. The jib boom was already passing the Frenchman's larboard quarter with less than thirty yards between them. Above the familiar horse- shoe shaped stern with its gilded scrollwork and the name
Emeraude
Bolitho could see the flash of sunlight on levelled weapons and the occasional stab of musket fire.