The boat swayed over to the unexpected thrust, and even as the seamen ran to shorten sail the hulls collided, surged away and then struck again.
Midshipman Stirling slithered to the deck and almost pitched between the two boats as Hoblin swung the tiller bar and nursed the bows into the other vessel’s bulwark.
Corporal Coote yelled, “Ready! Take aim!” The four muskets poked over the hold’s coaming like lances. “Fire!”
On the opposite deck four men, including two soldiers, dropped where they stood. The swivel exploded with a deafening bang, but the man who held the firing lanyard was also dead, while the full charge of canister scythed harmlessly into the air.
Grapnels held the boats together, and yelling like madmen a handful of boarders leapt on to the Frenchman’s deck, boarding axes and cutlasses painting the scattered rigging and tackle with daubs of scarlet.
Searle shouted wildly, “Cut her adrift! Get back on board, lively, you mad bastards!”
He had seen Hoblin’s frantic signals, and now as the others turned away from the dead soldiers and cowering fishermen they saw the stiff pyramid of sails cleaving from the rain like some terrible dorsal fin.
“Cast off! Make sail! ”
Searle dragged a seaman headlong over the gunwale as the two hulls drifted apart.
Browne watched the desperate preparations, the previous excitement changing into something like panic. But for the unexpected meeting with the other boat and its soldiers they would have escaped undetected.
He turned and stared across the quarter as the boat plunged over the crests and pointed her bows seaward once more. It had all taken a few minutes. It would not take much longer to end it.
The pursuing ship was changing tack with neat precision, her yards swinging together as she headed towards her quarry.
Hoblin remarked, “French corvette. Seen plenty round here.” He spoke with nothing more than professional interest, as if he realized the hopelessness of it.
The other fishing boats had scattered in disorder, like spectators stampeding away from a mad bull.
Browne unfastened his borrowed coat and then threw it over the side. It would make no difference, but he felt better for it. He heard Stirling talking to himself, in prayer, or to hold up his pretence of courage, he did not know.
“How long?”
Searle looked at him calmly. “Thirty minutes. Her captain will try to work round astern of us. There are some shallows near his larboard side, and he’ll want all the sea-room he can get to perform his execution!” Even he spoke without anger or bitterness.
The French man-of-war was small and agile, and from the deck of the fishing boat looked as big as a frigate. She was carrying so much sail it made Browne feel that their own boat was unmoving, and as the distance fell away he thought of Bolitho, waiting for the news he could no longer give him.
He blinked and realized that a tongue of flame had flashed from the Frenchman’s forecastle. Then came the bang and a foreshortened whistle as a ball slapped down to starboard and ricocheted across the waves like a mad thing.
“Ranging shot, sir.”
Searle said sharply, “Alter course two points to starboard.”
The fishing boat responded slowly, and when the next ball sliced through the water it hurled a cascade of spray halfway across the deck.
Corporal Coote lay full length on the deck and tried to aim his musket at the pursuing ship.
Then disgustedly he said, “Can’t do it. I’ll wait a bit longer. Might take a couple with me.”
Midshipman Stirling jammed his knuckles in his mouth and bit on them as another ball punched through the mainsail and threw up a tall waterspout a full cable away.
Searle said, “Trying to dismast us. Wants us taken alive.” He drew his hanger. “Not me.”
The game could not be prolonged for ever. As the land and all the other boats dropped back astern the corvette’s commander must have realized it was taking too long.
He altered course several points to larboard to present three of his forward gunports. Before he resumed his original course each gun fired a carefully laid shot, one of which smashed through the fishing boar’s counter with the force of a reef.
Hoblin lurched back on his feet and gasped, “Helm’s still answering, sir!”
Browne heard water gurgling and sluicing through the hold. It was madness, pathetic and proud at the same time.
Searle nodded sharply, “Steady as you go then!”
Crash. The corvette’s bow-chaser struck home with devastating effect. A marine who had been hurrying to help the seamen with the foresail spun round like a top, one leg severed by the ball before it ploughed on to kill two of the sailors and smash them into a broken, bloody shambles. Wood splinters flew everywhere, and the hull was so deep in the water it was a wonder they were making headway.
Browne stared at the dying marine with dismay. They were all being killed like dumb animals. What was the point? What did it prove?
Another waterspout shot above the bulwark, and Midshipman Stirling spun round, his hand clutching his arm where a feather of jagged wood stood out like a quill.
He gasped, “I’m all right, sir!” Then he stared at the blood which ran through his fingers and fainted.
Browne looked at Searle. “I can’t let them die like this!”
Corporal Coote lurched aft to join them and pointed through the smoke from the last shot.
“Mebbee they won’t ’ave to, sir!”
Browne turned and stared, unable to accept it, or that the corvette was going about, still wreathed in her own gunsmoke.
“It’s Phalarope!”
Nobody spoke, and even the dying marine lay silent as he stared up at the sky and waited for the pain to end.
With her gilded figurehead shining in the weak sunlight, the old frigate was shortening sail, her topmen spread along her yards like birds on perches as they stood inshore towards the sinking hulk.
Then Hoblin exclaimed, “Gawd, she’s taking a chance! If the Frogs come out now…”
“Never mind.” Browne stooped down and lifted the midshipman to his feet. “Get ready to abandon. Help the wounded.” It could not be happening.
A voice echoed across the water. “We’re coming alongside!”
Browne watched the frigate’s yards swinging again, the way her deck lifted to the pressure of canvas as she was steered further and further into the wind.
There would not be much time.
Corporal Coote picked up a fallen musket and looked at the marine who had lost his leg.
“You won’t need this any more, mate.” He turned away from the dead marine, his eyes blank. “Be ready, lads!”
Phalarope towered above them, and faces bobbed on the gangways to reappear on the chains or at the gunports, anywhere a man could be hauled to safety.
The next moments were like the climax of the same nightmare. Startled cries, the splintering of wood and the clatter of falling spars as the frigate drove unerringly against the listing boat.
Browne felt Searle thrust him towards some waiting seamen, and to his astonishment saw that he was half laughing, half sobbing as he shouted, “I’m last off. Only command I’ve ever had, y’see?”
Then Browne felt himself being dragged over hard and unyielding objects before being laid face upwards on the deck.
A shadow covered his eyes and he saw Pascoe looking down at him.
Browne managed to gasp, “How did you manage to get here?”
Pascoe smiled sadly. “My uncle arranged it, Oliver.”
Browne let his head fall back to the deck and closed his eyes. “Madness.”
“Didn’t you know?” Pascoe beckoned to some seamen. “It runs in the family.”
