“Couldn’t help but hear what you said, Cap’n.”
He seemed to swim in Bolitho’s vision as if under water.
“I heard tell of somethin’ durin’ th’ war. Of an English captain who was so short-handed his sloop was almost run ashore and taken by the Frenchies. I also heard tell that the captain was you, sir.” He ignored Allday’s threatening look and added, “You used wounded soldiers instead, right, sir?”
Bolitho tried to see him properly. “I remember. In the Sparrow.” He was going mad. It had to be that. Speaking like this about the past.
“Well, I got to thinkin’, why not use them convicts?”
“What?” Bolitho stepped forward and would have fallen but for Allday.
“I just thought…”
Bolitho seized his wrist. “Fetch Mr Keen!”
Keen’s voice came from his side. “I’m here, sir.” He sounded worried.
“Send the other boats ashore immediately and go with them. You worked at the settlement, they know you better than the rest of us.” He leaned closer and added fervently, “I must have men,
Val.” He saw Keen’s expression and knew he had used Viola’s name for him without realizing it. “Do what you can.”
Keen said despairingly, “You’re ill, sir!” He glanced at Allday’s grim features. “You must have caught…”
“You’re delaying!” He pushed him away. “Get them here. Tell them I’ll try and obtain their passage back to England. But don’t lie to them.”
The guns crashed out again, the trucks hurling themselves inboard on their tackles.
“Enough.” Bolitho tugged at his neckcloth. “Cease firing. Sponge out and reload.”
He saw the surgeon standing directly in his path, his face grave as he snapped, “You will go below, sir. As the surgeon it is my duty…”
“Your duty is on the orlop!” He dropped his voice. “Just fetch some drops, anything to keep my mind alive. A few more hours.”
“It will certainly kill you.” Gwyther shrugged. “You are a stubborn man.”
Bolitho walked unaided to the weather side and stared at the nearest land.
“I’m so cold, Allday. Some brandy. Then I will be myself again.”
“Aye, Captain.” Allday watched him helplessly. “At once.”
Lakey had been near the wheel with his quartermaster and had seen Keen’s anxiety and the hasty arrival of the surgeon. As Allday hurried to the companion he opened his mouth to ask what was happening. Allday always knew. Instead, he turned away, unable to believe what he had seen.
Mackay, his quartermaster, spoke his own thoughts aloud. “In God’s name, Mr Lakey, there were tears in his eyes!”
“Avast, Mr Herrick! I can hear the buggers!”
Herrick lifted his arm and the muffled oars rose dripping on either side of the launch. He hoped that Miller, following closely astern, would have his eyes open and not collide with them.
He heard the distant murmur of voices, then the clang of metal. He swallowed hard and made a circular motion above his head with his sword. They must be almost up to the schooner, but because of the smoke could see nothing. Earlier they had seen her masts poking through the drifting fog, and Herrick had been thankful that nobody had had the sense to send up a lookout.
The men in the boat shifted uneasily, watching his face. Their eyes were red-rimmed from the smoke, and their bodies stank from its filth and greasy persistence.
Herrick looked at those nearest him. Grant, a senior gunner’s mate, who came from Canterbury, not that far from his own home. Nielsen, a fair-haired Dane, who shared an oar with Gwynne, the young recruit he had got from the Eurotas. He knew them all, as he did those in the other boat.
Something tall and dark loomed above them, and as they drifted beneath the schooner’s long jib boom they almost became entangled in her anchor cable.
Not a second left for hesitation. Herrick snapped, “Grapnel! Boarders away! ”
Then, pushed and jostled by his men, Herrick fought his way up and over the bulwark, seeing faces above him, and hearing the muffled voices change just as quickly into violent yells and oaths. Pistols banged, and a seaman fell back into the launch, knocking another down with him.
Herrick sat astride the bulwark, seeing it all through the drifting smoke. The massive gun, the additional tackle it had needed to restrain it on the narrow deck. A man ran at him with a cutlass, but Herrick twisted it with his hilt and flicked it clattering into the scuppers. Now he had both feet inboard, and slashed the man across the face and neck before he could pull out of his charge.
They were outnumbered, but with trained determination the
Tempest’s men made a tight little wedge, backs to the bulwark, their feet already slipping in blood as they clashed together with their enemy.
The clang of steel, the fierce, wild cries of the men, were matched by the screams of the wounded and dying.
But from right aft came the thud of another grapnel, and Miller’s men swarmed over the taffrail yelling and cursing like fiends. Steel on steel, the pent-up fear and hatred bursting in a tide of unrestrained killing. Men rolled upon one another, fighting with dirks, cutlasses, axes, or anything which would beat a man into submission.
Herrick parried a sword aside and realized it was the bearded man who had met Bolitho under a flag of truce. He was even bigger near to, but Herrick had endured enough.
He had never had much time for the fancy swordsmanship of men like Prideaux, or from what he had heard, Bolitho’s dead brother, Hugh. He was a fighter, and relied on his strength and staying-power to carry him through.
He took the man’s heavy sword just six inches above his hilt, forcing him round, but keeping both blades crossed.
The bearded giant shouted, “You bloody bastard! This time you die!”
Herrick’s eye flickered to a patch of blood on the deck, and thrust his hilt away from him with all his strength. He saw the cruel grin of triumph on the man’s face as he was allowed to draw back the full length of his blade. Then it altered to sudden alarm as his heel slipped on the fresh blood, and for a mere second he was off balance.
Herrick thought suddenly of the tiny scene he had watched through his telescope. The terrified French officer, his throat cut in the twinkling of an eye. Like a slaughtered pig.
“No, you die!”
His short fighting-sword seared diagonally across the man’s stomach, just above the belt, and as he dropped his weapon and clutched the torn wound with both hands, Herrick hacked him once and hard on the neck.
There was a wild cheer, and Miller, his axe red in his filthy fist, yelled, “She’s ours, lads!” It was done.
The cheers altered to cries of alarm as the deck gave a violent shiver and threw several men kicking amongst the dead and wounded.
Herrick yelled, “The reef! They cut the cable!”
There was another great lurch, and part of the mainmast thundered across the deck and crushed Gwynne dead, his mouth still open from calling.
Herrick waved his sword. “Fall back! Man the boats!”
He heard the water swilling through a nearby hold, the sounds of loose cargo and stores being hurled against the bulkhead. The reef would make short work of her, and anyone stupid enough to remain aboard.
Carrying the wounded, and kicking the pirates’ weapons into the water, the seamen retreated to their boats.
Half-mad at the swift change of events, some of the pirates, and several whom Herrick guessed to be Frenchmen from the Narval, turned on each other, while with each violent lurch the schooner lifted and ground still further on to the reef.
Miller’s cutter discharged its swivel gun for good measure as they pulled away.
Herrick shouted, “To the ship! Give way all!”
He held his breath as a great shoulder of shell-encrusted reef rose out of the sea almost under the bows. He waited for the crash, the inrush of water, and then as the boat pulled clear he turned his thoughts to his men. Poor
