intention of heaving to on a lee shore, with the added threat of a heavy cannon nearby.
Instead of making for the spur of coral or for the island’s main foreshore, the boats forged ahead of their massive consort and were soon lost from view.
But not from the masthead lookout, who soon reported that the boats were sounding the channel with lead and line to protect their ship from running aground.
Bolitho found he could ignore Palliser’s bitter outbursts, just as he could admire the Spaniard’s skill and impudence. Don Carlos had likely fought the British in the past, and this chance of humiliating them was not to be missed.
But when he glanced aft he saw that Dumaresq appeared unworried, and was watching the other vessel more as a disinterested spectator.
He was waiting. The thought struck Bolitho like a fist. Dumaresq had been pretending all along. Goading the Spaniard rather than the other way round.
Bulkley saw his expression and said thickly, “Now I think I understand.”
The Spaniard fired again to starboard, the smoke gushing downwind in an unbroken bank. More fragments and dust spewed away from the fall of shot, but no terrified figures broke from cover, nor did any gun fire back at the brightly flagged vessel.
Dumaresq snapped, “Let her fall off two points to starboard.”
“Man the lee braces!”
The yards squeaked to the weight of men at the braces, and leaning very slightly Destiny pointed her jib-boom towards the flat-topped hill.
Bolitho waited for his own men to return to their stations. He must be mistaken after all. Dumaresq was probably changing tack in readiness to come about and make a circular turn until they were back on their original approach.
At that moment he heard a double explosion, like a rock smashing through the side of a building. As he ran to the side and peered across the water he saw something leap in the air ahead of the Spanish ship and then drop from view just as quickly.
The masthead yelled, “One o’ th’ boats, sir! Shot clean in ’alf!”
Before the men on deck could recover from their surprise the whole hill-top erupted with a line of bright flashes. There must have been seven or eight of them.
Bolitho saw the water leap and boil around the Spaniard’s counter and a jagged hole appear in a braced topsail.
Without a telescope it looked dangerous enough, but he heard Palliser shout, “That sail’s smouldering! Heated shot!”
The other balls had fallen on the ship’s hidden side, and Bolitho saw the flash of sunlight on a glass as one of her officers ran to peer at the hill-top battery.
Then, as the San Augustin fired again, the carefully sited battery replied. Against the Spaniard’s heavy broadside, the returned fire was made at will, each shot individually laid and aimed.
Smoke spurted from the ship’s upper deck, and Bolitho saw objects being flung outboard and more smoke from her poop as flames took hold.
Dumaresq was saying, “Waited until she had passed the point of reason, Mr Palliser. Garrick is not such a fool that he wants his channel blocked by a sunken ship!” He thrust out his arm, pointing at the smoke as the vessel’s foretopgallant mast and yard plunged down into the water. “Look well. That is where Destiny would have been if I had yielded to temptation!”
The Spaniard’s firing was becoming haphazard and wild, and the shots were smashing harmlessly into solid rock or ricocheting across the water like flying fish.
From Destiny’s decks it appeared as if the San Augustin was embedded in coral as she drove slowly into the lagoon, the hull trailing smoke, her canvas already pitted with holes.
Palliser said, “Why doesn’t he come about?”
All his anger for the Spaniards had gone. Instead he was barely able to hide his anxiety for the stricken ship. She had looked so proud and majestic. Now, marked down by the relentless bombardment, she was heading into helpless submission.
Bolitho turned as he heard the surgeon murmur, “A sight I’ll not forget. Ever.” He removed his glasses and polished them fiercely. “Like something I was once made to learn.”
He smiled sadly. “Now it sounds like an epitaph.”
A rumbling explosion echoed against Destiny’s hull, and they saw black smoke drifting above the lagoon and blotting out the anchored vessels completely.
Dumaresq said calmly, “She’ll strike.” He ignored Palliser’s protest. “Her captain has no choice, don’t you see that?” He looked along his own ship and saw Bolitho watching him. “What would you do? Strike your colours or have your people burn?”
Bolitho heard more explosions, either from the battery or from within the Spaniard’s hull. Like Bulkley, he found it hard to believe. A great ship, beautiful in her arrogance, and now this. He thought of it happening here, to his own ship and companions. Danger they could face, it was part of their calling. But to be changed in the twinkling of an eye from a disciplined company to a rabble, hemmed in by renegades and pirates who would kill a man for the price of a drink, was a nightmare.
“Stand by to come about, Mr Palliser. We will steer east.”
Palliser said nothing. In his mind’s eye he was probably seeing the utter despair aboard the Spanish ship, although with a more experienced understanding than Bolitho’s. They would see Destiny’s masts turning as she stood away from the shore, and in that they would recognize their own defeat.
Dumaresq added, “Then I shall explain what I intend.”
Bolitho and Rhodes looked at one another. So it was not over. It had not even begun.
Palliser closed the screen door quickly, as if he expected an enemy to be listening.
“Rounds completed, sir. The ship is completely darkened as ordered.”
Bolitho waited with the other officers and warrant officers in Dumaresq’s cabin, feeling their doubts and anxieties, but sharing the chilling excitement nonetheless.
All day, Destiny had tacked slowly back and forth in the blazing sunshine, Fougeaux Island always close abeam, although not near enough to be hit by any battery. For hours they had waited, and some had hoped until the last that the San Angustin would emerge again, somehow freeing herself from the lagoon to join them. There had been nothing. More to the point, there had been no terrible explosion and the aftermath of flying wreckage which would have proclaimed the Spaniard’s final destruction. Had she blown up, most of the anchored vessels in the lagoon would have perished, too. In some ways the silence had been worse.
Dumaresq looked around their intent faces. It was very hot in the sealed and shuttered cabin, and they were all stripped to their shirts and breeches. They looked more like conspirators than King’s officers, Bolitho thought.
Dumaresq said, “We have waited a whole day, gentlemen. It is what Garrick would have expected. He will have anticipated each move, believe me.”
Midshipman Merrett sniffed and rubbed his nose with his sleeve, but Dumaresq’s eyes froze him into stillness.
“Garrick will have made his plans with care. He will know I have sent to Antigua for aid. Whatever chance we had of bottling him in his lair until that support arrived vanished when San Augustin made her play.” He leaned on his table, his hands encircling the chart he had laid there. “Nothing stands between Garrick and his ambitions elsewhere but this ship.” He let his words sink in. “I had few fears on that score, gentlemen. We can tackle Garrick’s flotilla when it breaks out, fight them together, or run them down piecemeal. But things have changed. Today’s silence has proved that.”
