Bolitho lunged and jumped back behind the parapet even before his adversary’s corpse hit the ground.
Little was yelling, “Look at that ’un!”
Bolitho saw a falling column of water mingled with steam where the ball had slammed down between two of the vessels. A miss maybe, but the effect would rouse panic quickly enough.
“Sponge out, lads!” Little capered on the edge of his pit while the men with the cradle dashed back towards the furnace for another ball. “More powder!”
Colpoys crossed the blood-spattered rock and said, “We’ve lost three more. One of my fellows is down, too.” He wiped his forehead with his arm, his gold-hilted sabre hanging from his wrist.
Bolitho saw that the curved blade was almost black with dried blood. They could not withstand another attack like the last. Although corpses dotted the slope and along the broken rim of the parapet, Bolitho knew there were many more men already grouping below. They would be far more fearful of Garrick than a ragged handful of seamen.
“Now!” Little plunged his slow-match down and the gun recoiled again with a savage explosion.
Bolitho caught a brief blur of the ball as it lifted and then curved down towards the unmoving vessels. He saw a puff of smoke, and something solid detach itself from the nearest schooner and fly into the air before splashing in the water alongside.
“A hit! A hit!” The gun-crew, black-faced and running with sweat, capered around the gun like madmen.
Stockdale was already using his strength on a handspike to edge the muzzle round just that small piece more.
“She’s afire!” Pearse had his hands above his eyes. “God damn ’em, they’re tryin’ to douse it!”
But Bolitho was watching the schooner at the far end of the lagoon. She of all the vessels was in the safest anchorage, and yet even as he watched he saw her jib flapping free and men running forward to sever the cable.
He reached out, not daring to take his eyes from the schooner. “Glass! Quickly!”
Jury hurried to him and put the telescope in his fingers.
Then he stood back, his eyes on Bolitho’s face as if to discover what was about to happen.
Bolitho felt a musket-ball fan past his head but did not flinch. He must not lose that small, precious picture, even though he was in danger of being shot down while he watched.
Almost lost in distance, and yet so clear because he knew them. Palliser’s tall frame, sword in hand. Slade and some seamen by the tiller, and Rhodes urging others to the halliards and braces as the schooner broke free and fell awkwardly downwind. There were splashes alongside, and for a moment Bolitho thought she was under fire. Then he realized that Palliser’s boarders were flinging the vessel’s crew overboard, rather than lose vital time putting them under guard.
Colpoys shouted excitedly, “They must have swum out to the vessel! He’s a cunning one is Palliser! Used our attack as the perfect decoy!”
Bolitho nodded, his ears ringing with the crack of musket-fire, the occasional bang of a swivel. Instead of steering for the centre of the lagoon, Palliser was heading directly for the schooner which had been hit by Little’s heated shot.
As they tore down on her, Bolitho saw a ripple of flashes and knew that Palliser was raking the men on her deck, smashing any hope they might have had of controlling the flames. Smoke was rising rapidly from her hatch and drifting down towards the beach and its deserted huts.
Bolitho called, “Little! Shift the target to the next one!”
Minutes later the heated ball smashed through a schooner’s frail hull and caused several internal explosions which brought down a mast and set most of the standing rigging ablaze.
With two vessels burning fiercely in their midst, the remainder needed no urging to cut their cables and try to escape the drifting fireships. The last schooner, the one seized by Palliser’s boarding party, was now under command, her big sails filling and rising above the smoke like avenging wings.
Bolitho said suddenly, “Time to go.” He did not know why he knew. He just did.
Colpoys waved his sabre. “Take up the wounded! Corporal, put a fuse to the magazine!”
Little’s slow-match plunged down again, and another heated ball ripped across the water and hit the vessel already ablaze. Men were leaping overboard, floundering like dying fish as the great pall of smoke crept out to hide them from view.
Pearse lifted a wounded marine across his shoulder, but held his boarding-cutlass in his other hand.
He said, “Wind’s steady, sir. That smoke will blind the bloody battery!”
Panting like wild animals, the seamen and marines scrambled down the slope, keeping the ridge between them and the hill-top battery.
Colpoys pointed to the water. “That’ll be the closest point!” He fell on his knees, his hands to his chest. “Oh God, they’ve done for me!”
Bolitho called two marines to carry him between them, his mind cringing to the din of musket-fire, the sound of flames devouring a vessel beyond the dense smoke.
There was shouting, too, and he knew that many of the schooner’s people had been ashore when the attack had begun and were now running towards the hill-side in the hope of reaching the protection of the battery.
Bolitho came to a halt, his feet almost in the water. He could barely suck breath and his eyes streamed so badly he could see little beyond the beach.
They had done the impossible, and while Palliser and his men took advantage of their work, they were now able to go no further.
He knelt down to reload his pistol, his fingers shaking as he cocked it for one last shot.
Jury was with him, and Stockdale, too. But there seemed less than half of the party which had so courageously stormed the ridge and taken the cannon.
Bolitho saw Stockdale’s eyes light up as the magazine exploded and hurled the gun bodily down the slope amidst a landslide of corpses and broken rocks.
Midshipman Cowdroy stabbed at the smoke with his hanger. “Boat! Look, there!”
Pearse lowered the marine to the ground and waded into the water, his terrible cutlass held above his head.
“We’ll take it off ’em, lads!”
Bolitho could feel their desperation like a living force. Sailors were all the same in one thing. Get them a boat, no matter how small, and they felt they could manage.
Little dragged out his cutlass and bared his teeth. “Cut ’em down afore they slips us!”
Jury fell against Bolitho, and for an instant he thought he had been taken by a musket-ball. But he was pointing incredulously at the smoke and the shadowy boat which was poking through it.
Bolitho nodded, his heart too full to understand.
It was Rhodes standing in the bows of the long-boat, and he saw the checkered shirts of Destiny’s seamen at the oars behind him.
“Lively there!” Rhodes reached down and seized Bolitho’s wrist. “All in one piece?” He saw Colpoys and shouted, “Lend a hand there!”
The boat was so full of men, some of them wounded, that there was barely five inches of freeboard, as like a drunken sea-creature it backed-water and headed once more into the smoke.
Between coughs and curses Rhodes explained, “Knew you’d try to reach us. Only chance. My God, you raised a riot back there, you rascal!”
A burning schooner drifted abeam, and Bolitho could feel the heat on his face like an inferno. Explosions rolled through the smoke, and he guessed it was either another magazine or the hill-top battery shooting blindly across the lagoon.
“What now?”
Rhodes stood up and gestured wildly to the coxswain. “Hard a-starboard!”
Bolitho saw the twin masts of a schooner right above him, and with his men reached out to catch the heaving- lines which came through the smoke like serpents.
Groaning and crying out in pain, the wounded were pushed and hauled up the vessel’s side, and even as the long-boat was cast adrift with a man who had died in sight of safety as her only passenger, Bolitho heard Palliser shouting orders.
