pulped remains of the maintop’s captain. The ball had cut him completely in half, leaving his stomach against the mast like a pancake.
Somehow Blissett managed to shout, “Deck! Battery on th’ larboard bow!”
It was then he realized that apart from the corpse he was alone. His friend and the other marine must have been hurled bodily to the deck below.
Blissett leaned his musket against the barricade and trained the swivel towards the shore.
The first shot from the shore was followed instantly by another, bringing cries of alarm from the Tempest’s gundeck as it passed between the masts and ploughed into the beach on the opposite beam.
Bolitho yelled, “Engage with both batteries, Mr Keen!”
He turned away as blood and flesh fell across the nets which had been spread above the guns. Someone had been killed on the maintop, and two marines had gone over the side after hitting the same nets then bouncing into the water, dead or alive, he did not know.
Some of the men at the starboard battery were shouting and cheering, the sound strangely wild. They were probably trying to drown their sudden surprise at the bombardment, the unexpected deaths right amongst them. But soon they would hit back themselves. Even the score.
The shouting faltered and broke up into more confusion as the hidden guns fired again, putting down a heavy ball almost alongside.
Bolitho watched the spray falling across the hammock nettings, a seaman peering up at it as if expecting to see a boarder. He felt chilled, unable to move his thoughts in time with the swift change of events.
Bang! That was surely a third gun, perhaps halfway up a slope and above the blazing huts. The ball went wide, and he turned to see it raise a tall waterspout near the rocks.
Keen had his sword above his head. “Ready, lads! Ready! ”
Bolitho saw the sword drop to Keen’s side and for an instant feared he had been hit by some hidden marksman.
Then Keen came running aft, heads turning from each gun to watch his passing.
“What the hell, Mr Keen?” Borlase’s voice was shriller than ever.
But Keen ran halfway up the larboard ladder and shouted to Bolitho, “Sir! The masts are false! There are no ships!”
To add menace to his words a shot crashed through a gunport and upended a twelve-pounder over two of its crew; the air rent with screams and sobs as the ball shattered in fragments on a gun across the deck. Men fell kicking and plucking at their bodies with hands like claws, their dying progress across the planking marked by trails of dark blood.
“Engage to larboard!” Bolitho walked quickly to the compass. “Broadside, and then reload with grape!”
Through his reeling thoughts came a spark of hope. That they might hit some of the carefully sited guns and give themselves time to beat clear of the inlet.
“Fire!”
The ship bucked and vibrated as if she had struck a sandbar, the smoke rolling away downwind in a dense pall from the uneven broadside. Shouting like madmen the gun captains urged their men to reload with heavy grape, while around them the ship’s boys darted with more powder, dodging the gaping corpses and crawling wounded, their faces like tight masks.
“Ready!”
Hand by hand each gun captain looked at Keen, his trigger line pulled almost taut.
“On the uproll! Fire! ”
This time it was better timed, and Bolitho thought he saw the trees and burning huts shiver as the packed grape sliced through them.
But the reply came just as swiftly, almost two together. One hit the forecastle, and Bolitho heard the crash and whine of splinters, saw men flung down as if by a terrible wind. He felt the air throb over his head, and winced as a ball cut through rigging and clawed down another seaman who was pulling himself aloft to repair some of the damage.
The man fell with a sickening thud across one of the quarterdeck guns, and for a few moments he moved like some obscene, bloody creature before he died and was hauled away by the stonefaced crew.
“We will come about, Mr Lakey!”
Bolitho staggered as the deck jumped to another long-drawnout broadside. Thank God the smoke was going towards the hidden guns. It was their only protection.
Lakey nodded, his head jerky. “At once, sir.” He cupped his hands. “Man the braces if you please, Mr Borlase!”
Borlase peered aft, his eyes bulging from his head. Another shot whined low over the nettings, and it seemed to bring the lieutenant’s limbs back into motion.
“Man the braces! Clear the starboard battery if you must but lively there!”
Bolitho watched coldly. No room to wear and take full advantage of the wind. They would have to pass right through its eye, pivoting round with those four mocking masts their only adversary. He could feel the anguish blinding and choking him.
It was his fault. He should have seen the flaw, felt his enemy’s cunning. No, skill.
“Ready ho!”
Several men let go a brace as a ball splintered through a portion of the gangway and ground three men into a writhing shambles.
Bolitho saw it all. Felt it. One second a scene of pain and survival as two men dragged a wounded companion towards a hatchway and safety. Now they kicked and screamed in one hideous gruel.
“Put the helm down!”
Bolitho ran to the lee side to try and see any sign of the enemy. But apart from several scattered fires on a hillside, caused no doubt by Keen’s grapeshot, it was as before.
He watched the men hauling at the braces, their features grim and shining with sweat. Here and there a warrant officer, even some of the wounded, added their weight to drag the great yards round, while above the proud figurehead the jib, with broken rigging drifting amongst it like weed, flapped in abandoned confusion.
“Helm a’lee!”
The quartermaster had to repeat it as the guns hurled themselves inboard on their tackles, one of them making red tracks through the remains of a fallen seaman.
“Off tacks and sheets!” Borlase’s voice was like a scream through the speaking trumpet.
“Let go and haul!”
Bolitho watched, hardly daring to breathe, as the land began to move very slowly to larboard as his ship responded to rudder and canvas.
A grating crash brought more startled shouts, and he saw a ball upend another gun, slewing it right round amidst its severed tackles and gasping men as if to turn upon its own ship in revenge.
Rigging fell from the maintopmast in black, glittering coils, and heavy blocks bounced and trailed over the nets like live things.
Through it all, urging and threatening, sliding in blood or colliding with men employed at trimming the yards, Keen and his subordinates sent more hands across to the still unfired starboard battery.
All these things were recorded in Bolitho’s brain like writing on parchment. Keen was keeping his head, knew that once around they might have a faint chance of finding and hitting their attackers before they reached open water again.
Crash! Lakey yelled, “Main t’gallant, sir! Watch out on deck!”
Like a giant, murderous tree, the whole topgallant mast and yard, all its canvas, blocks and shrouds swept down and through the flimsy protection with the sound of an avalanche. It fell across the larboard side, breaking down nettings, whipping men from their feet and flinging them aside like dolls.
Bolitho felt the ship stagger under the onslaught, sensed the change in motion as the tangle dragged at the hull like a great sea-anchor.
Jury was booming, “Axes there! Clear it away! Get those wounded below!”
His great voice seemed to rally the dazed gun crews along the side where the topgallant mast had fallen. More trailing halliards and ratlines, followed by the masthead pendant, splashed over the side, surging around some
