The Flag Captain

He braced himself, and as the man raised the axe above his head, seemingly oblivious to the terrible wound left by the sword, he darted forward, the blade pointed straight for his bearded throat. But his shoe slipped on a patch of blood, and before he could recover he felt himself falling hard against one of the guns, the sword clattering from his hand and beyond his reach.

In those split seconds he saw everything like one great painting, the faces and expressions standing out as if fixed in the mind of an artist. Allday, too far away to help, parrying with a red-turbaned pirate. Grindle and some seamen grappling wildly below the larboard gangway, sword-blades flashing and ringing, eyes wide with ferocity and terror.

He saw too the man with the axe, pausing, balancing on his great bared toes as if to measure this final blow. He was actually grinning, savouring the moment.

Bolitho did not hear the shot through all the other awful sounds, but saw his attacker tilt forward, his expression changing to one of complete astonishment and then a mask of agony before he pitched forward at his feet.

Witrand’s pistol was still smoking as he lowered it from his forearm and yelled, “Are you ’urt, Capitaine?”

Bolitho groped for his sword and stood up, shaking his head.

“No, but thank you.” He grinned. “I think that we are winning this fight!”

It was true. Already the boarders were retreating along the gangway, leaving their dead and wounded to be trampled underfoot as the battle swayed back and forth above the deck.

Bolitho pushed past several yelling Spaniards and stood beside Allday, his sword parrying a scimitar and opening the shoulder of its owner in a long scarlet gash. Allday watched the man reel towards the side and slashed him down with his heavy cutlass, gasping, “That’ll speed him on his way, by God!”

Bolitho wiped his streaming face and peered down into the boat alongside. Already it was being poled clear, and he could see some of the boarders leaping back on to its narrow side deck, beneath which the hidden oarsmen were trying to free their blades from the Navarra’s side.

Several muskets were banging from below, and he felt a ball rasp against the rail by his fingers, and saw a red-robed figure pointing him out to some marksmen on the chebeck’s slender poop.

But the oars were gaining control, and as the drumbeat rose above the yelling Spanish seamen, the screaming wounded and those of her own crew who were floundering in the water, the chebeck began to move down the ship’s side.

Bolitho noticed that her consort was some mile distant, and must have stayed out of range for the whole fight.

He thought of Meheux in the cabin and shouted hoarsely, “I must tell them to use the gun!”

He turned to run aft and almost fell across a sprawled corpse, its face glaring fixedly at the lifeless sails and one hand still grasping a bloodied sword. It was Grindle, the master’s mate, his grey wisps of hair giving the impression that it was somehow managing to stay alive without him.

Bolitho said, “Take him, Allday.”

Allday sheathed his cutlass and watched Bolitho hurrying away. To the dead master’s mate he said wearily, “You were too old for this kind of thing, my friend.” Then he dragged him carefully into the shade of the bulwark, leaving a smeared trail of blood behind him.

Meheux managed to get one more shot into the enemy before the power of their oars carried them safely out of range. The chebeck which had so daringly boarded the Navarra had dropped almost three cables astern when Meheux was satisfied enough to fire. The ball smashed the other vessel on the poop, carrying away the small lateen mizzen and ripping through the carved scrollwork before plunging into the sea in a welter of spray.

The leading chebeck had sunk, leaving only a few pieces of flotsam and corpses as evidence. The rest made off to the south as fast as their oars could drive them, while the Navarra’s dazed and bleeding defenders stared after them, still unable to accept their own survival.

Bolitho returned to the poop, his legs heavy, his sword arm throbbing as if from a wound.

The Spanish seamen were already heaving the enemy’s corpses overboard, to bob alongside in a macabre dance before they drifted away like so many discarded rag dolls. There were no prisoners, for the enraged Spanish were in no mood to give quarter.

Bolitho said to Meheux, “They’ll not attack us again today, I’m thinking. We had best get the wounded below. Then I will inspect the damage to the hull before it gets dark.”

He looked round, trying to free his mind from the dragging aftermath of battle.

“Where’s Pareja?”

Allday called, “He took a musket ball in the chest, Captain. I tried to keep him from showing himself!” He sighed. “But he said that you would expect him to help. To keep the crew’s spirits up.” He gave a sad smile. “He did too. Funny little fellow.”

“Is he dead?” Bolitho recalled Pareja’s eagerness, his pathetic subservience in his wife’s presence.

“If not, Captain, then it will soon be so.” Allday ran his fingers through his thick hair. “I had him put below with the rest.”

Witrand crossed the blood-spattered deck and asked calmly, “Those pirates will return, Capitaine?” He glanced round at the limping wounded and the exhausted, lolling survivors. “And what then?”

“ We will fight again, m’sieu.”

Witrand eyed him thoughtfully. “You saved this hulk, Capitaine. I am pleased I was here to see it.” He pursed his lips. “And tomorrow, who knows, eh? What ship will come and discover us, I wonder?”

Bolitho swayed and then said tightly, “If we are met by one of your frigates, m’sieu, I will surrender the ship. There would be no point in letting these people suffer any more.” He added quietly, “But until that time, m’sieu, this ship, like her flag is mine.”

Witrand watched him go and shook his head. “Stupefiant!” was all he said.

Bolitho ducked his head beneath the low deck beams and looked gravely at the untidy lines of wounded. Most of them lay quite still, but as the ship yawed sluggishly and the lanterns spiralled from the deckhead it seemed as if every shape was writhing in agony, condemning him for their suffering.

The air was foul with a stench of cooking oil and blood, of bilge and vomit, and he had to steel himself before he could continue on his way. Allday was holding a lantern in front of him, so that some of the faces of the injured and wounded leapt into focus as he passed, only to fade into darkness again, their pain and despair mercifully hidden.

Bolitho wondered how many times he had witnessed sights like these. Men crying and weeping for forgiveness. Others

demanding assurances that they were not really dying. That by some miracle they would live to see daylight. Here, the language and intonation were different, but all else the same. He could recall the time as a frightened midshipman aboard the Manxman, an eighty-gun ship-of-the-line, seeing men fall and die for the first time and watching their agony after the fight was finished. He could remember being ashamed, disgusted with himself for feeling nothing but an overwhelming joy and relief at being whole and spared the agonies of the surgeon’s saw and knife.

But he had never been able to conquer his feelings completely. As now, compassion and helplessness, something as impossible to control as his fear of heights.

He heard Allday say, “There he is, Captain. Down by the lamp room.”

He stepped over two inert shapes, their faces already covered by scraps of canvas, and followed closely on Allday’s heels. Around and beyond the swaying lantern he could hear voices moaning and gasping and the gentler crooning assurances of women. Once when he turned his head he saw several of the Spanish peasant women resting momentarily from their work on the pumps. They were naked to the waist, their breasts and arms shining with sweat and bilge water, their hair matted in the filth and the effort they had given to their work. They made no attempt to cover their bodies, nor did they drop their eyes as he had passed, and one gave him what might have been a smile.

Bolitho paused and then knelt down beside Luis Pareja’s body. He had been stripped of his fine clothes, and lay like a fat child staring at the gently swaying lanterns, his eyes unmoving, dark pools of pain. The great bandage around his chest was sodden with blood, the centre of which gleamed in the dim light like a bright red eye as his life continued to pump steadily away.