Success to the Brave (19 page)

Bolitho exclaimed, “Throw him a line! I'll not leave him!”

In his heart he knew Tyrrell intended to remain in the boat, to be carried away by the current. He had purposefully guided
Achates
from one false scent to another, and had even suggested that the boats should examine a cove directly alongside the other ship's real hiding-place. Nobody would ever have known. But something at the very last moment had persuaded him to act as he had.

Now the truth would come out. He would be lucky to escape with his life for what he had done.

Bolitho saw a heaving-line snake over the drifting boat, watched Tyrrell's uncertainty and anguish before he caught the line and took two turns around the abandoned swivel-gun.

Keen waited only long enough for Tyrrell to be seized by the waiting hands at the entry port before he yelled his orders and sent his men rushing aloft again to set the topgallant sails in what seemed like a rising wind.

Bolitho felt the ship shudder, the urgent clatter of blocks and rigging as
Achates
responded to the pressure.

Keen stared at him and said, “What was the damn fool trying to do anyway? What chance will—” But the rest of his words were lost in the jarring roar of gunfire.

Along the other ship's side the heavy muzzles were jerking back into their ports and suddenly the air above
Achates
' decks was filled with deadly iron. Several holes appeared in the tightly braced sails, and Bolitho felt the familiar jerk through his shoes as other balls struck hard into the hull.

He watched as Knocker's helmsmen took control and very slowly at first, and then more confidently, the ship pointed her bowsprit towards the land, the wind pushing her over with an invisible hand. The other ship was following suit to take the maximum advantage of the wind.

Had Bolitho ordered Keen to beat up the Mona Passage to take advantage of this same wind on the other side of the islands, it would have taken days to reach San Felipe. The ship which was now almost bows on as she clawed away from the shallows would have beaten them with time to spare. The little
Electra
would have fought to the finish, but nothing could have stopped the inevitable.

Keen held out his arm. “
Easy,
Mr. Knocker! Easy now!”

Achates
continued to turn, her sails bulging hard on the opposite tack as the seamen on braces and halliards threw their weight against the swing of the yards.

The master grunted over his shoulder and the helmsmen slowed the great spinning spokes of the wheel.

“Steady, sir! West by north!”

Bolitho licked his lips. The enemy's ports were at too extreme an angle to fire. She had made her challenge prematurely. But she was a well-handled ship and was already responding to the wind as she came about.

“Starboard battery!” Keen's sword came out of its scabbard with a hiss. “On the uproll!”

Down the
Achates
' side and on the deck below the gun captains would be peering through their ports, trigger lines taut, as they watched their target swim into view.

The bright blade flashed down in the sunlight, and with a drawn-out roll of thunder the eighteen- and twenty-four-pounders of both decks hurled themselves inboard on their tackles.

The smoke billowed towards the bows and Bolitho watched as the enemy's rigging and canvas danced wildly under the onslaught. Tall waterspouts lined the enemy's bilge as other balls slammed hard down alongside, but she returned the fire even as she completed her manoeuvre.

Bolitho felt the deck shake and heard a terrible shriek from one of the hatchways.

Every gun crew was working like madmen, sponges, charges and rammers moving like parts of the men themselves. Finally those shining black balls from the shot-garlands, rammed home with a last tap for good measure. Each crew was racing its neigh-bour, and as every captain held up his hand Keen shouted hoarsely, “Broadside!
Fire!
”

This time there was no mistake, and at a range of barely two cables it was possible to see
Achates
' weight of iron smashing into the other ship's hull, splintering a gangway and bringing down a tangled heap of rigging from the mizzen.

But the enemy's heavier thirty-two-pounders were already reloaded and poking through their ports like angry snouts. Again the stabbing line of orange tongues, the terrible commotion and crash between decks as many of the balls found their mark.

Bolitho saw a man hurled from his gun, his face a mask of blood. He also saw Midshipman Evans standing stiff and unmoving as he stared at the other ship. If he was afraid of the din of battle he did not show it, but in his pale features Bolitho saw the enemy through the boy's own eyes. He was remembering her as he had last seen her, when his ship had been smashed and set ablaze, when Duncan had died beside him.

Bolitho called, “Walk about, Mr Evans!” He saw the boy look at him without understanding and added, “You are small but still a prime target.”

Evans gave what might have been a smile and then went to aid the fallen seaman.

The guns rolled inboard again on their tackles, the air cringed to their explosions and men gasped in the dense smoke and charred fragments which surrounded them.

Hallowes, the fourth lieutenant, strode behind the forward division of guns, his hanger across his shoulder as he peered at his crews.

“Stop your vents!”

“Sponge out!”

Several men ducked as hammocks burst from the nettings and metal screamed against one of the guns on the opposite side. Two men fell, another limped away and crouched below the gang-way like a frightened animal.

“Load!”

Hallowes pointed at the crouching seaman and shouted, “Back to your station,
now!
”

“Run out!”

Again the squeaking rumble of trucks as gun by gun the ship presented her full broadside to the enemy. The latter had changed tack slightly and was converging on
Achates,
her guns firing again and again.

Bolitho watched Keen moving from one side of the quarter-deck to the other. More shots hammered the side, and there was a great chorus from the lower gun-deck and Bolitho knew that a twenty-four-pounder had been upended or, worse still, had broken away from its tackles.

Both ships were evenly matched.
Achates
mounted more guns, but the enemy's heavier broadside was taking a terrible toll. One lucky shot was all it would take. He stared at Keen's shoulders, as if to will him to act.
Close the range,
Val. Get to grips before he dismasts you.

More cries and screams echoed through the crash and recoil of cannon, and a marine staggered away from the poop nettings, his hands to his face, his chest punctured by flying wood splinters.

“Jesus, what a mess!” Tyrrell limped between the trailing tackles and pieces of torn rigging which had found their way through the nets overhead.

Bolitho said, “Get below. You're a civilian.”

Tyrrell winced as a ball shattered on the breech of a quarter-deck nine-pounder and splinters cracked around them and flung two more seamen into a puddle of their own blood.

Keen turned round and glared at Tyrrell. “What the hell are you doing here?”

Tyrrell showed his teeth. “Get that bugger alongside, Captain, your people can't keep up this pace!”

Keen looked at Bolitho. “They'll know it's your flagship, sir!”

So that was it. Bolitho pulled out his old sword. “Put the helm over. We'll give them a fight,” he raised his voice,
“eh, lads?”

He turned away as they cheered him. Half-naked, blackened by powder smoke, their sweat cutting channels through the grime, they were hardly the romantic heroes portrayed in the fine paintings he had seen in London.

He felt the madness welling up inside him. “Lively there!”

The yards swung slightly as the helm went over, and within minutes the range had fallen to a cable, then half as much; then as the other ship's sails rose high above the nettings and muskets joined in the deafening onslaught, it was down to fifty yards and still closing.

The other captain had no choice. He could not turn and run. The land which had hidden him was now a deadly enemy, with breakers in plenty to show the lie of the reefs. If he tried to come about he would be all aback for those vital moments when Keen's gun crews would rake him from end to end.

There was a loud, splintering crack and voices yelled, “Heads below there!” Part of the mizzen cross-jack yard ploughed through the nets, rebounded and crashed down in a welter of rigging, blocks and trailing canvas.

Bolitho felt a blow on the shoulder like an iron fist, then he was face down on the deck. His first thought was near to terror. Another wound. Fatal. Then he cursed into the smoke which had almost blinded him when his presence would be most missed.

He felt Adam holding his arm, his grimy face set in a grim stare, then Allday dragging something away from his back and easing him over on to his knees, then to his feet. A huge block, cut down by a shot through the mizzen rigging but swinging on its cordage like a bludgeon, had laid him low. He was not even cut, and he managed to force a grin as someone gave him his hat and another yelled, “You'll show them buggers, sir!”

Bolitho faced the enemy, his eyes smarting, his shoulder throbbing from the blow. If it had struck his skull he would be dead at this very instant.

Musket shots punched into and through the packed hammocks, and wooden splinters flew from the quarterdeck or stood motionless like quill pens.

Axes flashed in the smoky sunlight, and more wreckage was hacked free and levered over the side with handspikes.

All the relentless gun and sail drill was showing its worth. When a man fell wounded, or was dragged away to await the surgeon's mates, another was instantly in his place from one of the opposite guns.

Now the marines could join in with their muskets, Sergeant Saxton counting out the time and tapping the deck with his boot as the ramrods rose and fell like one, and then as the muskets rose once more to the nettings he would shout, “Take aim! Every shot a Don!” The crackle of musketry from the fighting-tops showed that more marines were up there trying to mark down the enemy's officers.

Bolitho paced this way and that, his shoe catching a jagged splinter as the other ship's marksmen tried to hit him.

Closer, closer still, and the guns were thundering at almost point-blank range, their crews blinded and deafened as their feet and hands fought to keep control over their massive weapons.

“Cease firing!”

Quantock had to repeat the order before the last gun on the lower deck fell silent. As the enemy did likewise the other sounds broke through the stunned stillness. Men crying out in pain, voices calling for help, orders shouting for men to clear away the wreckage, to release the trapped wounded.

“Hard over!”

As the wheel went down
Achates
' jib-boom swept through the other ship's foremast shrouds like a battering ram. There was a terrible splintering sound and both hulls rocked together in a deadly embrace.

Men were running forward, leaving the guns to snatch up cutlasses and boarding pikes, axes and anything they favoured for hand-to-hand fighting.

Lieutenant Hallowes, his hat knocked awry, his hanger waving above his head, yelled, “At 'em, lads!”

With a wild cheer the seamen raced to the point of collision to hack and slash their way across a glistening sliver of water.

Some were impaled by pikes as they clung to the boarding nets, others were shot down by marksmen even before they had left their own ship. But others were through, and as more followed Bolitho saw the fourth lieutenant dashing on to the enemy's larboard gangway, hacking down a shrieking figure with his hanger and slashing aside another before he was overtaken by his whooping, battle-crazed men, their cutlasses already reddened from the first challenge on the forecastle.

The marines were bustling to the side, their faces grim beneath their hats as they fired into the men along the enemy's quarterdeck, reloaded with less precision than usual and fired again.

Captain Dewar drew his sword. “Forward, Marines!”

The scarlet coats and white crossbelts vanished into the smoke, the boots slipping on blood, the bayonets thrusting away any resistance as they joined the others on the enemy's deck.

Keen had gone forward to encourage his men, and Bolitho heard the seamen cheering, “Huzza, huzza!” and even though some were falling to the enemy's fire others were already fighting their way on to the quarterdeck.

There was a great cry from
Achates
' boatswain. “Fire! She's afire!”

Bolitho said, “I can see the smoke!”

Tyrrell gripped the rail as he stared at the enemy who were suddenly throwing away their weapons and screaming for quarter as the wild-eyed sailors tore among them.