A carronade banged loudly, biting fragments from Argus's stern- and smashing her small quarter-gallery to fragments. Gun by gun the twelve-pounders followed its example, the balls slamming into the stern, or scything through the gaping windows to create death and confusion within.
Men were cheering, despite threats and blows from their petty officers, and above the great writhing wall of smoke Bolitho saw the French frigate's masts moving slowly away and beyond the starboard quarter. But it was no time to falter now.
'We will wear ship, Mr. Herrick! Lay her on the starboard tack!'
'Aye, sir!' Herrick wiped his streaming face. Above the stains on his cheeks and mouth his bandage shone in the filtered sunlight like a turban. 'It's lively work today, sir!'
'Man the braces! Stand by to wear ship!'
A man screamed as he was dragged from a gun, bleeding badly. As Whitmarsh's mates lifted him he struggled and kicked to free himself, more terrified of what waited below than of dying on deck.
Sails thundering, and spilling wind from countless shotholes, Undine changed tack yet again, turning her bowsprit away from the islands and towards the sun.
The sea looked much wilder now, with short wavecrests crumbling to the wind, or throwing sheets of spray above the gangways with hardly a break.
Bolitho wiped his eyes and tried to restrain from coughing.
Like his eyes, his lungs were raw with powder smoke, the stench of battle. He watched the other ship as she swam above the leaping spindrift. Willingly or not, Le Chaumareys had the wind-gage, and his ship now stood off Undine's starboard bow, a bare cable's length away. If Undine continued to overhaul her, both ships would run parallel, a musket shot apart. Argus would get her revenge at such a murderous range.
He glanced quickly at Mudge. He, too, was watching the sea and the masthead pendant, but was it for the same reason?
But to ask him now, to show that he was in need of a miracle and had nothing to replace one, would take the fight out of his men no less than an instant defeat. He saw them at their guns, panting and gasping, tarred hands gripping tackles and rammers, sponges and handspikes. Their naked bodies were streaked with sweat which cut through the powder grime like the marks of a fine lash. Their eyes shone through their blackened faces as if trapped.
The marines were reloading their muskets, and Bellairs was strolling with his sergeant by the taffrail. At the helm another had taken the dead man's place, and Carwithen's coarse face was working on a plug of tobacco, his eyes cold, without expression. There were fewer men on the gun deck, although Bolitho had not seen many fall. Yet they had gone, had died or been maimed without a word from him to give reason for their sacrifice.
He reached out to steady himself as the deck tilted more steeply. When he peered over the riddled hammocks he saw the sea's face forming into short, steep ranks, ranging towards the two ships as if to push them away.
He yelled, 'Mr. Davy! Are yon ready?'
Davy nodded dully. 'Every gun loaded with chain-shot, sir!'
'Good.' Bolitho looked at Herrick. 'I hope to God that the master knows his weather!' In a sharper tone he added, 'Get the forecourse on her!'
With the great foresail set and drawing, Undine began to overhaul the other ship at a remarkable pace.
Bolitho flinched as more balls crashed alongside from Argus's stern-chasers, one of them hurling the quarter- boat into spinning pieces.
A last challenge. That was what it had to look like. Gun to gun. No quarter until Undine was a sinking wreck.
He said, 'We will alter course when I give the word.'
He waited, aching in ever muscle, his mind jumping to each gunshot from the Frenchman's poop. Undine's jib- boom seemed to be prodding her larboard quarter like a lance. A few stabs of fire above her shattered stern showed where marksmen had taken fresh positions, and Bolitho saw two of his marines drop like red fruit from the foretop, their cries lost to the mounting wind.
Mudge said worriedly, 'We may lose our sticks when we comes round, sir!'
Bolitho ignored him.
'Ready lads!'
He watched the sea rising and breaking against Argus's opposite quarter, the mounting pressure against her yards.
'Now!'
He gripped the rail as the helm went over and the bows started to pull towards the-enemy. He saw Argus trimming her yards, the hull tilting steeply as she followed Undine's turn.
Sunlight flashed on her quarterdeck, and then her side exploded in a line, of great flashes, the air rent apart with the savagery of her broadside.
Bolitho almost fell as the massive weight of iron crashed into the hull or screamed and tore through the rigging overhead. He was choked by swirling smoke, his mind reeling from the combined noises of screams and yells, of musket fire from all angles.
Somehow he dragged himself up the angled deck and peered towards the Argus. Smoke was drifting from her last broadside so fast that Undine seemed to be moving abeam to meet her. The illusion told him Mudge had been right, and as he watched Argus's sails bellying out towards him, he also saw her gunports awash as the wind thrust her over. Thank God for the
wind.
'Fire!' He had to repeat the order to make himself heard.
'Fire!'
Undine's disengaged gunports were also awash, and her runout battery was pointing almost towards the sky as each captain jerked his lanyard.
Even above the roar of cannon fire and the wail of the wind Bolitho heard the chain-shot whimpering through the air and ripping into Argus's fully exposed topsails and braced yards. He heard, too, the immediate clatter of severed rigging, the louder explosions of bursting stays and shrouds as foremast and maintopmast swayed together like great trees before booming and splintering into the smoke.
Bolitho waved his sword above his head. 'Hold her steady, Mr. Mudge! She'll be alongside directly!'
He ran to the gangway, and then stopped dead as the wind sucked the smoke downwind and away from the two drifting hulls. Dead and wounded lay everywhere, and as the marines ran to their places for boarding Bolitho saw Shellabeer mangled beneath a gun, and Pryke, the carpenter, pinned across a hatch coaming by a broken length of gangway, his blood linking with all the rest around him. And Fowlar, could that thing really be him?
But there was no more time to regret or to think. Argus was here, alongside, and as Soames led his men across the bows Bolitho shook his sword and yelled hoarsely, 'Over you go, lads!'
The French seamen were struggling to free themselves from the great tangle of spars and rigging, the broken cordage lying in heaps like giant serpents.
But the steel was ready enough. Bolitho crossed swords with a petty officer and then slipped in some blood, the breath driven from his body as the Frenchman pitched headlong across him. He felt the man jerk and kick, saw the awful agony in his eyes as Carwithen pulled him away, a boarding axe locked into his collar bone.
On every hand men were fighting and yelling, the pikes and bayonets waving above the more desperate work of sword and cutlass.
Davy was heading for the quarterdeck ladder, shouting to the men at his back, when a rally of French seamen left him momentarily isolated and alone. Bolitho watched his contorted face above the thrusting shoulders, saw his mouth shaping unheard screams as they cut him down, their weapons not still even after he had dropped from sight.
Midshipman Armitage stood shaking on the gangway, his skin like chalk as he shouted, 'Follow me!' Then he, too, was dead, pushed aside and trodden underfoot as the two opposing groups surged together again.
Bolitho saw it all as he fought his way aft towards the main quarterdeck ladder. Saw it, and recorded it in his mind. But without sequence, like a nightmare. As if he were a mere onlooker.
He reached the ladder and saw the French lieutenant facing him, the one named Maurin, who had an English wife. The rest seemed to fade into a swirling, embattled fog as the two swords reached out and circled each other.
