would be disastrous anyway if the enemy dismasted him at the first encounter.
The French frigate was still anchored, and by using a glass Bolitho could see her boats plying backand forth to the headland, and when he saw the smoke rising from the top of the slope he knew that the loud explosion must have been some sort of bomb to breach_ the battery wall or ignite a magazine.
He felt Pelham-Martin's hand on his arm. 'Sir?'
The commodore said, 'Signal Abdiel to engage the frigate!' He wriggled his shoulder beneath the heavy coat. 'Well?'
'I suggest she stays to windward, sir. Until we start our attack. If they suspect for one moment we are not trying to seek the protection of the harbour, I fear we may be out-manoeuvred.'
'Yes.' Pelham-Martin stared fixedly at some point above the headland. 'Quite so.'
Bolitho tore his eyes away and hurried to the opposite side to watch the leading ship. He thought suddenly of something Winstanley had said when he had first gone aboard Indomitable to meet the commodore. He'll need you before we're done. As his senior captain Winstanley must have known Pelham-Martin's weaknesses better than anyone. The commodore surely owed his rank to influence, or perhaps he had just been unfortunate at being available for the appointment when he had not the experience to back up his authority.
A dull bang echoed across the water and Bolitho looked up as around hole appeared suddenly in the fore topsail. The Frenchman had used a bowchaser for a ranging shot. He turned to watch as a thin feather of spray lifted above the sea far out on the weather beam.
He said, 'Pass the word to the lower gundeck of my intention, Mr. Inch.' As a midshipman darted to the ladder he snapped, 'Walk, Mr. Penrose!' The boy turned and blushed. 'There may be a French telescope watching your feet, so take your timel'
There was another bang, and this time the ball slammed hard alongside the larboard bow, throwing spray high above the nettings and making some of the men at the headsail sheets duck down with alarm.
Bolitho called, 'Keep those hands out of sight on the main deck, Mr. Stepkyne! We will wear ship in a moment, but I don't want a single man to lay his hand on anything until I give the order!'
He saw Stepkyne nod and turn back to watch the enemy. He wondered what Pascoe was doing at his station on the lower gundeck, and was torn between wanting him within reach and leaving him below behind the additional thickness of the hull.
Strangely, it was usually the older men who took the waiting badly, he thought. The youngsters and the untried were too awed or too frightened to think clearly about anything. Only when it was all over and the sounds and sights were branded into their memories did they start to think about the next action, and the one after- that.
The next ball from the Frenchman's bowchaser smashed into the boat tier, lifting the launch bodily from its chocks and filling the air with wood splinters. Three men at the starboard bulwark fell kicking and whimpering, one almost transfixed by a jagged spear of planking.
Bolitho called, 'Send some more hands to the weather forebrace, Mr. Stepkyne!' He saw the lieutenant open his mouth as if to shout back at him and then turn away to pass the order, his face angry and resentful.
As yet another shot crashed into the ship's side Bolitho
found time to sympathise with Stepkyne's feelings. To keep taking these carefully aimed shots without firing back was almost more than anyone could stand. But if he allowed any sort of reprisal the French commander might immediately guess his true intention while there was still time to alter course.
Gossett murmured, 'The Frogs are sailin' as close to the wind as they can, sir.' He cursed as a ball shrieked over the nettings and ricocheted across the wave crests far abeam. 'If he tries to tack 'e'll be in irons!'
Bolitho saw the wounded seamen being dragged towards the main hatch, their blood marking every foot of the journey, while some of the gunners turned to stare, their faces stiff and unreal.
Closer and closer, until the leading enemy ship was a mere cable's length off the larboard bow.
Bolitho gripped his hands behind him until the pain steadied his racing thoughts. He could wait no longer. At any second now a well-aimed ball, or even a random one might bring down a vital spar or cripple his ship before he could make his tun.
Without looking at Gossett he snapped, 'Starboard your helml' As the spokes began to squeak over he cupped his hands and yelled, 'Wear ship! Hands to the braces!'
He saw the sails' long shadows sweeping above the crouching gunners, heard the whine of blocks and the frantic stamp of bare feet as the waiting men threw themselves back on the braces, and then, slowly at first, the ship began to swing round towards the Frenchman.
For a second or two longer he thought he had acted too soon, that both ships would meet head on, but as the yards steadied and the canvas bucked and filled overhead he saw the other two-decker drifting across the larboard bow, her mastss almost in line as she drove towards him on the opposite tack.
As Gossett had observed, the enemy could not regain the advantage without turning directly upwind, nor could she swing away unless her captain was prepared to receive Hyperion's broadside through her stern.
Bolitho shouted, 'Full broadside, Mr. Stepkyne!'
He saw the gun captains crouching back from their breeches, the trigger lines bar taut as they squinted through the open port and their crews waited with handspikes to traverse or elevate as required.
A ball smashed through the larboard gangway and a man screamed like a tortured animal. But Bolitho did not even hear it. He was -watching the oncoming ship through narrowed eyes, the men around him and the commodore excluded from his thoughts as he saw the Hyperion's topgallants cast a distorted pattern of shadows across the Frenchman's bows.
He raised his hand. 'On the uproll!' He paused, feeling the dryness in his throat like sand. 'Fire!'
The crash of the Hyperion's broadside was like a hundred thunderstorms, and while the whole ship staggered as if driving ashore, the enemy's hull was completely blotted out in a billowing wall of smoke.
Across some fifty yards of water the effect of the.broadside must have been like an avalanche, Bolitho thought wildly. He could see men's mouths opening and yelling, but as yet could hear nothing. The sharper, earprobing cracks of the quarterdeck nine-pounders had rendered thought and hearing almost too painful to bear. Then above the mounting bank of drifting smoke he saw,the Frenchman's yards edging round and then halting as the topsails quivered and shook in the face of the wind.
As his hearing returned he heard his gun captains shouting from every side, and saw Dawson's marines stepping up to the nettings, their muskets lifting to their shoulders as if on parade. Then as Dawson dropped his sword the muskets fired as one, the shots going somewhere beyond the smoke to add to the confusion.
Stepkyne was striding aft along the maindeck guns, his hands chopping the air as if to restrain his men. 'Stop your vents! Sponge out!' He paused to knock down a man's arm. 'Sponge out, I said, damn you!' He seized the dazed seaman by the wrist. 'Do you want the gun to explode in your bloody face?' Then he strode on. 'Jump to itl Load and run outl'
At each gun the men worked as if in a trance, conscious only of the drill they had learned under their captain's watchful eye and of the towering pyramid of sails which now rose high above, the larboard gangway; and the flapping Tricolour whih seemed barely yards-,away.
Bolitho shouted, 'Fire as you bear!' He stepped back choking as the guns roared out again, the smoke and flames darting from the ship's side and making the water between the two vessels as dark as night.
Then the French ship fired, her full broadside rippling down her side from bow to stern in a double line of darting orange tongues.
Bolitho felt the shrieking balls scything through shrouds and sails, and the harder, jarring thuds as some struck deep into the hull itself.
A seaman, apparently unmarked, fell through the smoke from the maintop and bounced twice on the taut nets before rolling lifelessly over. the edge and into the sea alongside.
A gun captain behind him- was bellowing above the crash of cannon fire and the sporadic bark of muskets, his eyes white in his powder-stained face as he coaxed and pushed his men to the tackle falls.
'Run out, you idle buggers! Us'll give they sods a quiltin'!'
Then he jerked his trigger line and the nine-pounder hurled itself inboard again, the black muzzle streaming smoke even as the men threw themselves forward to the task of sponging and reloading.
Through the drifting curtain of smoke the powder monkeys ran like dazed puppets, dropping their cartridges and scampering back to the hatchways with hardly a glance to left or right.
Pelham-Martin was still by the rail, his heavy coat speckled with powder ash and splintered paintwork. He was
