Enemy in Sight! (39 page)

He said calmly, “Very well, Mr Penrose. Send all the star- board 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 ward- room and stern 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 top- sail, 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 win- dows, 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 grit- ted 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 torn gloves amidst the great spreading blood- stains. 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 alongside 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 Carlyon!” 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 stern 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 water- line, but she was answering. Slowly and painfully she was swinging away from her attacker, the impetus of her turn bringing her bat- tered stern towards that of the three-decker.

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 falling, seemingly very slowly into the water below the two interlocked sterns.

Guns crashed and men cried in agony, while the ships con- tinued to grind together, but Bolitho threw himself through the stern 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 every- thing 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 between the stamping feet and lunged upwards at the petty officer, seeing his face open from mouth to ear in a great scarlet gash. As the man 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 scream- ing 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 per- haps 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 liv- ing 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 exhaus- tion 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 checks. 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 flood- ing 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.