sharp- er notes of gunfire, and knew Javal was there, fighting probably two enemies at once.
The masthead yelled above the din, 'some of the French are making sail!'
Bolitho said, 'Cutting their cables.'
He did not blame them. With one or more of their number ablaze or badly crippled by Osiris's broadsides, they had nothing to gain by remaining where they lay. He felt the deck under his feet. Lifeless, but for the guns' savage vibration. And nobody could stop them.
Something fanned past him, crashed against a nine-pounder in a shrieking wave of splinters. Men fell kicking and gasping, and Bolitho felt blood splashed across his breeches like paint.
He turned and saw Farquhar leaning back against the quarterdeck rail, his gaze fixed on the lower yards while he clutched his chest with both hands. Bolitho ran to his side. 'Here! Let me help!'
Farquhar's eyes swivelled down towards him. He bared his teeth, spacing out each word to hold back the pain. 'No. Leave me. Must stay. Must.'
He had bunched the front of his new uniform coat into a tight ball. A ball which was already bright red.
Allday said, 'I’ll take him below.'
The ship quivered again as the lower battery vented its anger on the anchorage. Several masts had fallen, and the two leading ships were listing towards each other, one almost awash, the other a blackened wreck in the path of that terrible explosion.
Farquhar tried. to shake his head. 'Keep your damned hands off me!' He reeled against Bolitho. 'Mr. Outhwaite!' But the first lieutenant was sitting against one of the abandoned guns, his head lolling, and the deck around him spreading in blood.
Bolitho looked at Allday. 'Get Mr. Guthrie! Tell him I want all the wounded brought to the lower gun deck, larboard side, and be quick about it!'
He saw the smoke from the hillside mingling with that from the guns. At least Veitch's courage had given the wounded a chance. Without the smoke's screen, any attempt to get boats alongside would have been prevented by the two siege guns. As it was, the French were still firing blindly across the water, the great balls adding their strange notes to the screams of the dying and wounded men.
A small man darted through the smoke, and Bolitho saw it was the surgeon.
Despite Farquhar's protests, he ripped open the gold-laced coat, his hair blowing in the wind from another shot directly above the deck, and placed a heavy dressing above the bright stain.
Farquhar gasped, 'Get below, Andrews! See to our people!'
The surgeon looked despairingly at Bolitho. 'I’m getting the wounded up, sir.' He peered dazedly at the shattered bulwarks and sprawled corpses. Even after the gruesome work he had to perform deep on the orlop deck, this must seem a worse horror. 'Will you strike, sir?'
Farquhar heard him and gasped, 'strike? Get below, you bloody fool! I’ll see you in hell before I strike my colors!' Bolitho beckoned to Pascoe. 'Attend the captain. You stay here, too, Allday.'
He ignored their anxiety and ran to the rail, straining his eyes through the smoke until he had found the boatswain. He could not remember his name, but shouted wildly until the man looked up at him, his face as black as any Negro's from powder-smoke and charred wreckage.
'Get the quarter boats alongside to larboard! A raft, too, if you can manage it!'
He turned as Pascoe called him and saw a pale square of canvas rising through the smoke, the ship beneath still hidden.
His sword blade touched the deck as his arms dropped to his sides. Time had run out. The Frenchman was here. Crossing their stem with the precision of a hunter stalking a wounded beast.
He saw, too, the enemy's broad pendant lifting and curling in the offshore wind, and wondered vaguely if its owner had seen his above the ruin and carnage.
The smoke seemed to fan upwards to a freak gust, but the ripple of red and orange tongues which spurted through it told Bolitho that this wind was man-made…
Deck by deck, pair by pair, the seventy-four's armament poured its broadside into Osiris's stern.
It seemed to go on and on forever. The cringing, reeling men around him lost shape and meaning, their faces merely masks of pain and terror, their gaping mouths like soundless holes as they ran blindly before the onslaught.
Bolitho found that he was on his knees, and as his hearing started to return he groped for his sword, using it like a lever to prise himself from the deck.
Hardly daring to breathe, he staggered to the rail, or what was left of it, and saw that Pascoe and Allday stood as before, with the captain propped between them. Allday had a bad cut on one arm, and Pascoe had a 'dark weal on his forehead where he had been hit by a flying piece of timber. Bolitho could not get his breath to speak, but clung to them, nodding to each in turn.
Beyond the quarterdeck there was not a mast left standing, and the whole of the upper gun deck, forecastle and gang-ways were buried under a mountain of broken spars and rigging. Smoke billowed from everywhere, while beneath the heaped wreckage he heard voices calling for help, for each other, or cursing like men driven mad.
Allday gasped, 'Mizzen’ll come down any minute, sir!' He sounded faint. 'Only the shrouds holding it, I’d say!' Faintly through the din of shouts and splintering woodwork Bolitho heard cheering. Frenchmen cheering their victory.
Farquhar thrust Pascoe away and reeled towards the broken hammock nettings. His uniform was torn, and several wood splinters were embedded in his shoulders like darts. Blood ran unheeded down his chest and marked his passage towards the side, and when Bolitho caught him he had his eyes tightly shut.
He gasped, 'Did we strike, sir?'
