Enemy in Sight! (38 page)

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 screams 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 water 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 mêlée, 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 over- whelm his enemy by sheer numbers. He was paying for it now. For as the
Hyperion'
s big twenty-four-pounders 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 promis- ing 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 oth- ers 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 with all the strength of his hairy arm. The keen blade struck the lieutenant in the chest, and as he toppled amongst his men his eyes were popping with aston- ishment 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 chalk. 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 quarter- deck 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 deter- mined, 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 scream- ing 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 fore-topmast quiv- ered, 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 slip- ping 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 impos- sible 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 out-thrust 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 method- ical 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 slaugh- terhouse.

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 whip- ping 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 deafen- ing 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 com- pletely 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 hidden 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 for- rard
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.