bright in the sun, their voices hoarse and wild with the madness of combat?
Bolitho ran to the rail and jerked the lanyard ob another swivel, seeing the packed canister scything through a bunch of men on Bonaventure's gangway and blasting them aside in its murderous hail?
Then he was running with the second party and pulling himself on to the shrouds, slashing with his sword at a man's arm on the chains below. Screams and curses, the bang of pistols and rasp of steel, he was dazed by the noise. A man plummeted past him to be held like a tortured animal between the two grinding hulls, his blood running pink in the leaping feathers ob foam?
He was on the enemy's deck, his arm jarring as he struck down a man's guard and drove the hilt against his jaw, throwing him back into the struggling figures beyond. Another charged forward with a levelled bayonet, slipped on a smear of blood and took Stockdale's blade across his neck. It sounded like an axe biting into a log?
He yelled wildly, 'Cut the rigging, lads! Cripple the bastard!'
He felt a ball fan hotly past his face, and ducked as another smacked into a seaman's chest right beside him, his cry lost in the other din of battle?
Now he was on a ladder, shoes sliding in blood, his fingers feeling up a rail, conscious of the torn wood where one of the swivels had made its mark. Two officers were parrying aside pikes and swords as they tried to rally their men from the opposite side. Bolitho saw one of them drive his sword into a boatswain's mate, saw the eyes roll with agony as he pitched to the deck below, then he was up and facing the privateer's officer, their swords clashing as they struck and explored their strength and weakness?
'Damn you!' The man ducked and thrust up at Bolitho's throat.' Strike while you are still alive, you mad bugger!'
Bolitho caught the blade across his basket hilt and levered the man clear, feeling the warmth of his body, the fierceness of his breathing?
He yelled back, 'Strike be damned!'
A pistol exploded and the officer dropped his arms staring blankly at the blood which pumped through his shirt in a bright red stain?
Tyrrell strode past and fired a second pistol into the man's chest. When he turned Bolitho saw that Tyrrell's face was like stone?
He shouted, 'I knew that bastard, Cap'n! A bloody slaver afore th' war!'
Then with a gasp he dropped on one knee, blood running from his thigh. Bolitho dragged him asides cutting down a screaming seaman and thrusting the blade through his chest in two swift movements?
'Easy!'
He stared desperately above the nearest men. Much of the enemy's rigging had been slashed, but the attack had made little impression after all. And his men were failing back around him, the lust to fight and win dwindling to match their numbers?
On every hand, or so it appeared, muskets and pistols were firing down into the retreating English seamen, and he saw Heyward standing astride a wounded man and screaming like a madman as he fought off two attackers at once?
As if from a great distance he saw the American captain watching from his poop, a tall, handsome man who was standing quite motionless, either so confident in his men's efforts or so appalled by his attackers, sacrifice that he was unable to tear his eyes away?
Bolitho hacked a cutlass aside and sobbed aloud as his blade broke within inches of the hilt. He hurled the remains at the man's head and saw him fall kicking, impaled on a pike. In a half daze he recalled the trader at English Harbour who had sold him the sword? He would not get his money now, damn his eyes?
To Stockdale he croaked, 'You know what to do!' He had to push him away, and even as he ran from the fighting he was still peering back, his eyes filled with anxiety?
Then there was the distorted voice again, and when he looked up he saw the American captain using his trumpet?
'Strike now! You have done more than enough0
Strike or die!'
Bolitho swung round, his heart bursting, his mind sick as he saw a young seaman fall to the deck, his face opened by a cutlass from ear to chin?
Tyrrell was struggling on his injured knee and pointing wildly, 'Look! Stockdale's done it!'
From the main batch on the Indiaman's deck came a growing plume of dark smoke, spreading and thickening until it seemed to spurt up through the seams like steam under pressure?
Bolitho yelled, 'Fall back, lads! Back!'
Then they were limping and staggering across the bulwarks, dragging their wounded, carrying others too crippled to move. There were not many of thems wounded or otherwise?
Bolitho wiped his streaming eyes, hearing Tyrrell gasp with agony as he half carried, half dragged him to the opposite bulwark. Behind him he could hear frenzied shouts, the sudden click of steel as the Bonaventure's men tried to cut away the lashings which they themselves had so skilfully used to hold both ships together. But it was too late. It had been from the
instant Stockdale had begun the last and most dangerous act. A short fuse, and then the fire had burst amongst the cargo of rum and the massive barrels ob spirits, spreading through the hull at a terrible rate?
Flames licked out of open ports and ran along the Bonaventure's tarred rigging like angry tongues, sails vanished into ashes, and then with a bellow one great sheet of flame leapt between the two hulls, joining them finally in a single pyre?
Bolitho peered down at the one remaining boat tethered to the ship's quarter, riding where it had been since taking his orders across to Graves?
'Abandon ship, lads!'
Some clambered down, while others fell headlong, splashing and yelling until they were helped inboard by their companions. Blazing canvas, ashes and gusts ob sparks rained across their heads, but as a seaman severed the bow rope and they groped half blinded for the oars Bolitho heard another great explosion, as if from the sea itself?
The Indiaman began to settle down immediately, her masts and spars interlocking with her attacker's to throw flames and sparks hundreds of feet into the air?
He watched his small handful of fit men pulling at the oars, feeling the heat searing his back as he steered the boat away from the blazing ships. Exploding powder and toppling masts, a ship's hold splitting wide open in an inferno of noise and shooting flames, and later the engulfing sounds of inrushing water. He heard it all, even pictured the general's gold bullion, which someone might discover one day on the sea bottom?
But it was all beyond him now. They had done the impossible. Miranda was avenged?
He looked sadly at his men, at their faces which now meant so much to him. At young Heyward, filthy and exhausted, a wounded seaman propped across his lap. Tyrrell, a bloody bandage around his thigh, eyes closed with pain, but holding back his head as if to seek the first yellow bars of warmth from the sun. And Stockdale, who was everywhere. Bandaging and baling, lending weight to an oar, or helping to heave a dead man over the gunwale. He was tireless? Indestructible?
He held out his hand and studied it. It was quite steady, even though every nerve and muscle seemed to be quivering. He glanced at his empty scabbard and gave a rueful smile. No matter. Nothing mattered now?
How long they pulled at the oars, the time it took for the two blazing hulks finally to sink, Bolitho did not remember. The sun beat down on their aching, exhausted limbs, the stroke became slower and more hesitant. Once, when Bolitho peered astern he saw the sea's face covered by a great spread of drifting remains from the ships and the men who had fought across them. But the privateer had managed to launch at least one boat, and before it was blotted out in haze he saw it was crammed with survivors. Perhaps they, too, would know the same despair as Miranda's men?
Then a shadow flitted across his face and he stared round, caught off guard as Sparrow's topsails flashed gaily across the sun's path?
The men in the boat watched silently, unable to speak even to each other. Unable yet to realise they had survived?
Bolitho stood by the tiller, his eyes stinging as he watched her careful approach, the lines of heads along her decks and gangways. She had come for him? Despite the danger, the unlikelihood of his plan succeeding, she had
