call it a wind, but with her canvas drawing well Styx was making a favourable eight or nine knots through the water.
He watched the island as it grew larger above the starboard bow. The sun had moved across it in the last few minutes, or so it appeared, and the nearest rise of headland was already in shadow.
The bow-chasers continued to fire at regular intervals, while far ahead of the Styx ’s beakhead the French yawl was wavering from side to side, her master apparently still convinced he was the prime target.
Neale lowered his telescope and said, “Dusk early tonight, sir.” He added bitterly, “It damn well would be!”
Bolitho said nothing but concentrated on the small island. As the ship stood deeper into the channel between it and the mainland, he was conscious of the tension around him, and wondered what the French were doing across that narrowing strip of water. There had been no more shots, and he felt the returning bite of anxiety, the feeling he might have miscalculated, that there was nothing important here after all.
Allday shifted his feet and muttered, “Must be asleep, the lot o’ ’em!”
Browne remarked, “I can see smoke. There, low down, man!”
Neale hurried across the deck, thrusting a midshipman aside like an empty sack.
“Where?” He trained his glass again. “God dammit, it’s not smoke, it’s dust!”
Bolitho picked up a telescope and followed the bearing carefully. Dust it was, and the reason became clear as a team of horses charged from behind some low scrub, a limber and cannon bouncing behind them as they headed for the other end of the island. Within minutes another limber and fieldpiece followed it along the track, the dying sunlight glinting briefly on the outriders’ uniforms and equipment.
Bolitho closed his glass and tried to control his excitement. He had not been mistaken. The French had been so sure of their safe anchorage that they had relied on field artillery rather than a fixed shore battery. They probably intended to remove the guns altogether once the last of the new invasion craft had been delivered to their final destination.
No wonder Styx had not been fired on after the first warning shots. The fall of shot had been too precise, fired by soldiers used to the ways of a land battle. A naval gunner would have laid and fired each of his battery by hand. Just to be certain and to avoid wasting shot. The latter was always paramount in a sailor’s mind when he was aboard ship and a long way from ready supplies, so why should he change his ways ashore?
“Deck there!”
Neale wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and growled, “Well, come on, man, spit it out!”
But the masthead lookout was too well trained to be bothered by the impatient group far beneath his dangling legs.
Then he called, “Ships at anchor round the point, sir!”
One of the leadsmen shouted from forward, “By th’ mark five!” But apart from Bundy, the master, nobody seemed to care. Some peered beyond the bows, others stared up at the masthead, eager for more news.
“A dozen or more at anchor, sir!” Even the distance from deck to topmast could not hide the man’s disbelief as he added hoarsely, “No, sir, far more’n that!”
Neale clapped his hands together. “Got ’em, by God!”
Bundy said quickly, “We’re enterin’ the shallows, sir.” He flinched under Neale’s stare. “Sorry, sir, but you had to know.”
“Deepfour! ” The leadsman’s voice was like a sad chant.
The first lieutenant joined Bundy by his chart. “Tide’s still on the ebb.” He glanced meaningly at his captain and then at the upper yards.
Neale said, “Get the royals on her. We’ll run with the tide.” He looked at Bolitho and added, “With your consent, sir?”
“I agree. We need haste above all.”
He forgot the cries of the seamen as they freed the sails from the upper yards, the bark of orders and squeal of halliards, for as the ship forged on a converging track towards the next headland he saw the first of the anchored vessels. No wonder the lookout was amazed. There were dozens of them, some moored in pairs, others, possibly gun brigs or bombs, anchored separately, a veritable armada of small ships. It was not difficult to imagine them disgorging French dragoons and infantry on to the beaches of southern England.
“Deep four!” The leadsman hauled up his line so rapidly that his muscular arm appeared blurred in the red sunlight.
Neale shouted, “Stand by, starboard battery!” He watched as every gun-captain raised his hand along the side, while behind them their lieutenants continued to prowl up and down like strangers to each other.
The island was much deeper in shadow, and against it the crowded hulls of the newly-built vessels looked like one vast, ungainly raft.
Bolitho stared at the glowing red ball of sunlight. Not long now. If only Sparrowhawk, even Rapid, were here. As it was, it would soon be too shallow to man?uvre without running aground, and they could never sink or damage more than two or three.
He snapped, “Where’s the yawl?”
Neale called, “Fine on the starboard bow, sir. I think she intends to anchor amongst that lot, if she can.”
Bolitho made up his mind. “Tell your gun-captains to hit the yawl. A guinea for the first crew to cripple her!”
There were a few gasps of surprise at the choice of target, but after some quick adjustments with handspikes and tackles, the gun-captains shouted their readiness.
“As you bear!” Neale raised his curved hanger above his head. “On the uproll!” Seconds became hours. “Fire!”
Down the frigate’s side each gun muzzle belched fire and smoke and hurled itself inboard on its tackles. The forward guns were being sponged out and reloaded even as the aftermost division added to the din.
The yawl, caught at the very moment she was trying to change tack towards the other vessels, seemed to collapse under the weight of iron as each double-shotted gun blasted across a range of less than two cables.
Around the stricken yawl the sea was patterned with splashes as falling shot, wreckage and splintered spars cascaded down on every side.
A tiny pin-prick of light winked from the battered hull and almost immediately blossomed into a great gout of fire. A powder cask touched by a spark, a dazed seaman caught off balance with a lantern between decks, it could have been anything.
Bundy exclaimed thickly, “God, she’s ablaze!”
Bolitho tried to contain the sick pity he felt for the men on that blazing vessel. One heavy ball would have been enough to sink her, a broadside had changed her into an inferno. A fireship.
He kept his voice level as he said, “That should make the others up-anchor!”
Something punched through the maincourse and left a hole big enough for a man to climb through. One of those horse artillery gunners had reached his site.
The first lieutenant yelled, “They’s cutting their cables!”
Caught by wind and tide, the wide cluster of moored craft was already opening up as each master endeavoured to fight his way clear, to make sail and to hell with his consorts. Anything but stay and be destroyed by fire or the enemy frigate which was rushing headlong towards them with only a few feet beneath her keel.
“As you bear! Continue firing!”
Neale hurried to the quarterdeck rail as the nearest vessels loomed out of the deepening shadows, his cheeks glowing in the reflected flames.
“Larboard battery, stand by! ”
The crews started to cheer as another vessel appeared on the opposite bow, some sails already set and her stem pointing towards France.
As the larboard battery joined in the fight, the escaping craft was deluged in falling waterspouts, while above her deck masts and canvas were flung about as if lashed by a great gale.
Neale said, “She’s done for.” He flinched as metal shrieked low above the hammock nettings and smashed down in the sea abeam.
Bolitho stared at the chaos which seemed in danger of colliding with and snaring the attacking frigate. Vessels which had cut their cables too soon were drifting down entangled with some of their consorts, and others were
