between the arrowhead of their embrace littered with splintered wood and a few bobbing corpses.
Sunlight lanced through the smoke, and he saw the gap widening. Herrick had succeeded in easing Lysander's bulky hull round to a point where she could use sails and rudder to work clear.
He saw a man darting towards him, an upraised pistol aimed at his chest. In those split seconds he shared the moment with the unknown French sailor. He had a thin dark face, teeth bared in frantic concentration as he took aim. Bolitho was too far away to reach him with his sword, and his arm ached so much from fighting his way through the yelling press of men that he felt he could not raise it even to defend himself.
The blade of a heavy cutlass cut downwards across his vision, so fast that it made an arc of silver in the hazy sunlight.
The French sailor gave a shrill scream and lurched away, staring with agonised horror at the pistol still gripped with his own hand on the far side of the deck.
Allday ran to Bolitho's side, the cutlass edge red against his coat.
'A moment, sir!'
He ducked under two fallen spars and hacked the wounded man across the neck, felling him with no more than a sob.
He said between gasps, 'Better'n letting him live with one hand!'
Bolitho shouted, 'Fall back, lads!'
A few more minutes and they could take the French ship.
He knew it. Just as he knew that the other seventy-four was probably working round again to pour a broadside into Lysander before she was able to return the fire.
'Fall back!'
The cry ran along the bloodied decks and mingled with the cheers of Leroux's marines, some of whom were squatting in Lysander's beakhead picking off their enemy like wild-fowlers in a marsh.
Many hands reached out to haul the boarders back into Lysander's protection, as with a splintering, jerking symphony she tore free from her opponent's fallen spars and shrouds and swung heavily downwind.
The lower gun deck erupted in one more savage broadside, the thirty-two pounders smashing into the enemy's side and making the holed and battered timbers shine with tiny tendrils of blood which ran freely from her scuppers.
Pascoe yelled, 'Huzza! Huzza for the commodore!' Bolitho strode aft, taking his hat from a grinning, pigtailed seaman who had somehow managed to retrieve it from the vicious fighting.
Herrick greeted him hoarsely, his eyes moving over him as if anticipating some terrible wound.
Bolitho asked, 'Where is the other one?'
Herrick pointed vaguely over the larboard quarter. 'standing off, sir.'
'I thought she would.'
Bolitho looked from foremast to quarterdeck. The fore topgallant mast had gone, and several guns lay upended. There were plenty of shot holes along the upper deck, and the busy thuds of hammers, the dismal clank of pumps, told him. that there was damage enough below the waterline also.
He said, 'Get the ship under way.'
He saw Pascoe kneeling beside a dying marine. Holding his hand and watching his face losing its understanding and recognition.
Grubb peering at his compass, and his new helmsmen staring fixedly at the flapping sails and waiting for them to respond, their bare feet slipping on blood.
The marines falling back from the hammock nettings, checking their muskets, their faces dull now that the fight had gone out of them.
Midshipman Luce using one of his flags to staunch the terrible wound in a man's thigh. The wounded seaman peering up at him, repeating like a prayer, 'Promise you’ll not send me to the orlop, Mr. Luce!'
But, like ghouls, their aprons scarlet, the surgeon's assistants came for him, carrying him bodily down to the horrors of the orlop deck.
Bolitho saw it all and more. Like so many, that seaman who had faced the terrible demands of battle was unable to accept the horrors of a surgeon's knife.
Grubb muttered, 'she's answerin', sir.'
'steer nor'-east.' Bolitho looked up as the wind explored the holed sails. 'And signal Harebell to stay in close company. 'He wondered briefly how Inch had felt as an impotent spectator.
Herrick came aft and touched his hat. 'We beat 'em, sir.' Bolitho looked at him. 'It was no victory, Thomas.' He listened to a man sobbing from the deck below the rail. Like a young boy. A child, with all defences gone. He added quietly, 'But it has shown all of us what we can do.' He nodded to Leroux as he walked past with his sergeant. 'And next time we will do that bit better. '
He walked to the poop ladder and paused halfway up it to look for the enemy ships. With missing masts and spars, and their attendant snares of trailing rigging, they made a sorry sight.
Lysander's company had done well in their first battle together. But to attempt more, even though he had been tempted, would have invited disaster.
Allday climbed up beside him.
'It feels strange, sir.'
