With All Despatch

Bolitho called, 'On the uproll, Mr Paice! It's our only hope at this distance!' So it had happened just as Hoblyn had predicted. His mind cringed as Triscott's hanger sliced down and the six guns on the starboard side crashed out in unison. The carronade was useless at anything more than point-blank range, and undoubtedly the schooner's master knew it.

He saw the sails dancing above the schooner's deck and watched as some blocks and cordage plummeted over the side to trail like creeper in the water.

'Reload! Run out!' Triscott's voice was shrill. 'As you bear, lads!' He dropped his hanger again. 'Fire!'

Bolitho saw several of the men peering round at their fallen comrades-how many had died or been cruelly wounded it was impossible to tell. At the same time Bolitho thought he saw their anxiety and sudden terror changing its face to anger, fury at what had been done to them.

Chesshyre yelled, 'Down here-take over from Quin!' The helmsman in question had been hit in the head and had slumped unnoticed and unheard across the tiller bar, his eyes fixed and staring as they lowered him to the deck.

Chesshyre caught Bolitho's glance and said, 'They've a bit to learn, sir, but they'll not let you down.' He spoke so calmly he could have been describing a contest between boats' crews.

Bolitho nodded. 'We must hit her masts and rigging.' He shouted in the sudden lull. 'Gun-captains! Aim high! A guinea for the first sail!'

'Fire!'

Paice said harshly, 'That bastard's using nine-pounders if I'm any judge!' He gasped as a ball smashed hard down alongside and flung spray high over the bulwark.

Bolitho saw his expression as men ran to the pumps. Like pain. As if he and not the cutter had been hit.

There was a wild cheer and Bolitho swung round to see the schooner's foresail tearing itself apart, the wind bringing her down as she fought against the confusion of sea and helm.

Bolitho bit his lip as another ball screamed overhead and a length of halliard whirled across the deck like a wounded snake. It could not last. One ball into Telemachus's only mast would finish it.

Paice said wildly, 'He can't depress his nine-pounders, sir!'

Bolitho stared. Paice was more used to this kind of vessel and would know the difficulty of mounting a long nine-pounder on the deck of a merchantman.

'He's trying to put about!' Triscott waved at his gun crews. 'Into him, lads!' He watched as their grimy hands shot up. 'Fire!'

Paice whispered, 'Holy Jesus!'

Luck, the skill of an older gun-captain, who could say? Bolitho saw the schooner's bowsprit shiver to fragments, the forecastle suddenly enveloped in torn shrouds and writhing canvas.

Paice searched through the drifting smoke for his boatswain.

'Mr Hawkins! Stand by the arms chest!' He tugged out his own hanger, his eyes back on the schooner. 'By God, they'll pay for this!'

Bolitho saw the distance dropping away as the crippled schooner continued to pay off downwind. His eyes narrowed and he heard the vague bang of muskets, the balls slamming against the cutter's hull. How long? He gestured urgently. 'Can you man-handle the other carronade to the starboard side?'

Paice nodded, his eyes blazing. 'Clear the larboard battery, Mr Triscott! Lay the smasher to starboard and prepare to fire!' He glanced at Bolitho and added, 'They may outnumber us, but not for long!'

Bolitho watched the punctured sails rising above the cutter as if to swoop down and enfold her, smother her into the sea. Fifty yards. Twenty yards. Here a man fell coughing blood, there another clapped one hand to his chest and dropped to his knees as if in prayer.

Bolitho pushed the boy down beside the companionway.

'Stay there!' He drew the old sword and pictured Allday right here beside him, his cutlass always ready.

'Stand by to board!' He saw their faces, some eager, others fearful now that the enemy was alongside. They could hear them yelling and firing, cursing while they waited for the impact.

Bolitho walked behind the crouching seamen, his sword hanging loosely from his hand.

Some glanced at him as his shadow fell over them, stunned, wild, filled with disbelief as he showed himself to the schooner's marksmen.

'Ready!' Bolitho winced as a ball cut through the tail of his coat. Like a gentle hand plucking at it. 'Now!'

The two carronades exploded in adjoining ports with a combined roar which shook the cutter from truck to keel. As the smoke fanned inboard and men fell about coughing and retching in the stench, Bolitho saw that most of the schooner's forecastle had been ripped aside, and the mass of men who had been waiting to attack or repel boarders were entwined in a bloody tangle, which turned and moved as if one hideous giant had been cut down. The weight of grape with canister from the poop swivel had turned the deck into a slaughterhouse.

Bolitho gripped the shrouds and shouted, 'To me, lads! Grapnels there!' He heard them thudding on the schooner's bulwark, saw a crouching figure beside an upended gun, as if watching the attack. But it was headless.

The two hulls ground into each other, lurched apart, and then responding to the hands at the grapnels came together in a deadly embrace. 'Boarders away!' Bolitho found himself carried across to the other vessel's deck, men thrusting past and around him in their need to get at their adversary.

Figures fell screaming and dying, and Bolitho saw Telemachus's anger and jubilation change yet again to an insane sickness. With cutlass and pike, bayonets, even their bare hands they fell on the schooner's crew with a ferocity which none of them would have believed just an hour earlier.

Bolitho shouted, 'That's enough!' He struck down a man's cutlass with his own blade as he was about to impale a wounded youth on the reddened planks.

Paice too was yelling at his men to desist, while Hawkins the boatswain and a picked party of seamen were already taking charge of halliards and braces, to prevent the two hulls from destroying each other in the swell.

Cutlasses were being collected by the victors, and the schooner's company herded together, their wounded left to fend for themselves.

Bolitho said breathlessly, 'Send men below, Mr Paice-some brave fool might try to fire the magazine.' More orders and some cracked cheers rose around him, and he saw Triscott waving his hat from Telemachus's poop. The boy was standing near him, trying to cheer but almost choked by tears as he saw the devastation and the hideous remains left by the carronades.

Hawkins squeaked through blood and pieces of flesh, his boots like a butcher's as he reported to his commander.

'All secured, sir.' He turned to Bolitho and added awkwardly, 'Some of us was no 'elp to you, sir.' He gestured with a tarred thumb. 'But you was right. The 'olds is full to the deckbeams with contraband. Tea, spices, silk, Dutch by the looks o' it.' He lowered his voice and watched without curiosity as a badly wounded smuggler crawled past his boots. 'I've set some armed hands on the after 'old, sir. Spirits by the cask, Hollands Geneva I'll wager, and there may be more.'

Paice wiped his face with his sleeve. 'Then she is a Dutchie.'

Hawkins shook his head. 'Only the cargo, sir. The master is, or was, from Norfolk. Most of the others is English.' His lip curled. 'I'd swing the lot of 'em!'

Bolitho sheathed his old sword. Hoblyn had been right about that too. The cargo intended for Whitstable had probably begun its journey in the holds of some Dutch East Indiaman. A quick profit.

He looked at the dead and dying, then across at Telemachus, her own pain marked in blood. There had been little profit this time.

Paice asked anxiously, 'Are you well, sir?' He was peering at him. 'You're not hurt?'

Bolitho shook his head. He had been thinking of Allday, always close at times like these, and they had seen more than enough between them.

'I feel as if I have lost my right arm.' He shook himself. 'Have the vessel searched before nightfall. Then we shall anchor until we can attend to our repairs.' He watched as one of the smugglers, obviously someone of