The Flag Captain

He saw Inch watching him anxiously and snapped, “Stand by! They are coming out!”

A ripple of excitement transmitted itself along the deck, and he saw the gun-captains pulling their men down from the bulwarks and breaking the tension of the moment with threats and curses.

Inch murmured, “We have them, sir. They cannot take the advantage from us.”

Bolitho crossed to him, his hand resting on his sword. “They need no advantage. They carry their own power.”

A dozen voices shouted excitedly as the first of the chebecks thrust clear of the shadows, their long prows throwing back foam and spray as they rode over the low breakers.

The drums became clearer and more menacing as one by one they pulled away from the land, and Bolitho heard Inch counting aloud, realising perhaps for the first time the extent of his enemy.

Allday said quietly, “There are many more of ’em than last time, Captain.” He licked his lips. “Twenty, maybe twenty-two.”

Bolitho watched them narrowly, his face a mask to hide his mounting concern. As soon as they were clear of the rocks the chebecks began to open out in a huge fan, so that the whole area of lively water was filled with flashing oars and intermingled bow waves.

On Hekla’s decks was total silence, the gun crews standing like statues to watch the oncoming horde of craft. It was a veritable fleet, the like of which none of them had ever seen, nor would live to describe if they failed to destroy it.

Bolitho strode to the rail, feeling the early excited anticipation giving way to sudden anxiety. He saw their faces turn towards him as he shouted, “Remember, they will no more have seen anything like your Hekla than you have laid eyes on them. I doubt they have faced a carronade before, so stand to and be ready.” He saw some of them glancing at each other and added harshly, “Let each gun-captain select his own target. Shoot as you have never done before, lads.” He looked towards the seamen by the swivels and those who crouched along the bulwarks with loaded muskets. “Keep firing no matter what is happening. If they board us, we will be swamped.” He let his lips turn into a smile. “So make every ball strike home!”

He heard a scrape of steel and saw Inch drawing his curved hanger and tying it to his wrist with a gold lanyard. He looked at Bolitho and grinned almost apologetically. “It was a present,” he said.

A sullen bang echoed back from the shore and a ball whimpered low above the deck. A gun-captain stood back from his carronade but Bolitho shouted, “Hold your fire!” He felt the deck jerk as a chebeck’s bow gun belched smoke and a ball smashed hard into the Hekla’s waterline. The enemy’s formation had fanned out even wider now, so that the ship was almost encircled by them, the furthest ones like the extremes of the crescent flags which some of them were flying above their furled sails.

He watched the range falling away, heard the drums beating faster as the long oars drove the craft towards the slow-moving Hekla like cavalry charging a square of foot soldiers.

He tugged out his sword and held it above his head. “Easy, lads!” Some of the men near him were sweating in spite of the cool wind. To them it must seem as if the chebecks would drive right through their own ship.

The sword caught the frail sunlight as he swung it down. “Fire as you bear!”

Below the rail the nearest carronade exploded with a deafening roar, hurling its blunt barrel inboard on its slide while the crew darted towards it with their sponges and rammer. Bolitho felt the detonation in his head like some terrible pain, and watched the great sixty-eight-pound ball burst into the nearest bank of oars in a blinding orange flash. As the ball exploded to discharge its scything mass of grape the oars broke and flew in all directions, and he saw the hull lurching round to drive against the next chebeck in the converging line. Another carronade belched smoke and fire, and then a third from the opposite side as a chebeck pushed too near to the Hekla’s larboard bow to receive the heavy ball full in the prow. Yelling figures, the raked foremast and the chebeck’s unfired gun all vanished in a pall of choking brown

smoke. As it fanned away Bolitho saw the boat already rolling over, the sea boiling across the submerged oars to finish the kill.

Swivels cracked and banged from both forward and aft, hurling their canister amongst the white-clad figures who still crowded the chebecks’ gangways, waving their scimitars and firing muskets to add to the frightful din of battle.

The hull shivered again, and Bolitho saw a ball smash into the bulwark, scattering seamen and leaving a trail of blood and flesh in its wake.

A chebeck crashed below the taffrail, her helmsman either dead or too crazed by the roar of guns to gauge his approach. As she ground and bumped across the stern the swivels raked her from stem to stern, and as she fell away the larboard carronades put two balls into her so that she broke apart and began to founder.

But two more were already alongside, and as seamen dashed to repel boarders the first yelling figures started to claw their way up and into the nets which Inch had rigged before dawn.

Bolitho cupped his hands. “Now, lads!” And through the hatch came the rest of the extra hands, amongst them many of his own ship’s company who had already faced death in the fight for Djafou.

Yelling and cheering they charged forward, thrusting with pikes and cutlasses at the boarders who hung kicking in the slack nets, impaled by the razor-sharp steel before they could get free.

Somewhere in the smoke he could hear warning cries and knew that up forward at least some of the attackers had hacked their way through the nets.

He shouted at Inch, “Stay here!” To Allday, “Follow me! We must keep these carronades firing or we are done for!”

Sparks flew from the capstan and iron ricocheted overhead. More balls slammed into the lower hull, although the chebecks’ gunners were probably killing as many of their own men as the Hekla’s as they fired their long cannon into the dense smoke.

He saw several seamen falling around the forward carronade,

heard their cries as the first of the attackers loomed into view, scimitars and broadswords slashing and cutting in crazed fury.

A swivel barked from the forecastle and several of them fell kicking in their blood, but others were swarming through a great gap in the nets and locking steel with the seamen.

Bolitho seized a gun-captain’s shoulder and yelled into his face, “See if you can put a ball into this one!” He saw the man nod dazedly before turning to call to his crew to reload.

Allday swung round and cut down a boarder who had somehow fought his way through Lieutenant Wilmot’s men in the bows. The man slithered along the deck, his teeth bared in a another wild shriek as a seaman drove a pike into his ribs.

Bolitho waved his sword and beckoned to another group of seamen below the mainmast. He felt a pistol ball fan his cheek and turned to see Wilmot fall, blood flowing from his mouth, when seconds before he had been leading his men into the attack.

He saw Inch yelling to some of his deck party to take up sweeps and stave off a blazing chebeck which was drifting dangerously close alongside. Above the crackle and roar of flames Bolitho heard terrible screams, and realised the oarsmen must be slaves, held captive by chains to their oars to endure the most horrible death of all.

A man dropped from overhead, his face smashed away by musket fire, another rolled kicking from a carronade, his foot crushed by the slide as the heavy muzzle blasted out into the dense smoke.

Bolitho saw the gun-captain waving at him, his teeth white in his blackened face, and knew he had managed to get a ball into the chebeck below the rent in the nets.

A bearded figure ducked beneath a pike and came towards him, his heavy sword scything in line with his stomach. He stuck out with his sword, saw a spark jump from the steel as the shock darted up his arm. It was enough to turn the man in his charge, and before he could recover he was beaten to the deck by a belaying pin wielded by Broome, the gunner.

Inch was suddenly beside him yelling, “They’re done for!” He was almost capering with wild excitement. “We’ve sunk more’n half and the others are in a bad way!”

He waved his hat in the air, and as the smoke thinned above the sweating gun crews Bolitho saw the sea’s face littered with battered hulls and wreckage, while here and there a damaged chebeck pulled hurriedly towards the land. It would be a long time before Messadi’s name brought terror to these shores again, he thought dazedly. Broome roared, “By God, sir! There’s one across the bows!”