there?'
Adam thought of the exposed quarterdeck and terrible splinters, the combined chorus of yells and screams as men fought each other to win mastery of the ship.
'Bad. But many of the French boarders came from below decks.'
He ducked as a ball slammed through a port and ricocheted from a gun on the larboard side.
He looked at Crocker. 'Could you blow down her mainmast?'
Crocker stared at him and then said hoarsely, 'Course, sir. I'm with you.' He rattled off several names and men ran from the guns to join him.
Hallowes glared at him, the wildness momentarily held at bay.
'Why? What's the point? We'll never get out alive.'
Adam tossed down his scabbard as he had seen Bolitho do and shrugged. How could he explain? Even if he wanted to. In his mind he saw Bolitho up there on the torn and splintered deck. He was the obvious target. Without him there would be no resistance now that Keen was wounded and Quantock killed. In seconds it would too late.
He said simply, 'I owe him everything. Everything, d'you understand?' He did not wait for an answer but shouted as he ran aft, 'Come on, boy, if you care to!'
Hallowes wiped his mouth with his hand and gave a wild laugh.
'Don't you boy me, Mister Bolitho!'
Then he was running after him, others snatching up loaded pistols to follow even though they knew not where.
Evans stared aft to the wardroom, his mind reeling. Then he saw an officer lying propped against one of the guards and knew it was Foord, the fifth lieutenant, who moments earlier had been trying to reassure him.
He knelt beside him and saw the blood which soaked the lieutenant's waistcoat and breeches. He was dying even as he watched, and did not even flinch as another ball slammed into the upper hull and made the ship tremble as if she had hit a reef.
Foord saw the young midshipman and attempted to speak. Evans held his hand, not knowing what to say. 'Tell the captain…' His eyes rolled up in agony. 'Tell him…'
Evans felt his hand stiffen and then go limp. He wondered vaguely why he was no longer afraid. With great care he prised the hanger from Foord's fingers. He could feel the lieutenant's empty stare on him as he stood up and walked deliberately aft towards the wardroom.
'Ready, lads?' Adam looked at their strained faces.
Crocker slung his leather bag over one shoulder and eyed the Frenchman's ornate stern right alongside. The gallery was a few feet higher than the wardroom, but it would provide some cover when they attempted to board her. Crocker nodded. 'Give the word.'
Adam pulled himself through the shattered stern windows and after a small hesitation leapt out on to the other ship's quarter. For a moment he thought he would lose his grip and fall into the sea. There were several corpses already bobbing between the two sterns. Unconcerned and untroubled by the savage battle overhead.
At any moment he expected a face to loom over the gilded rail, to feel the thrust of steel or the blast of a pistol.
He slipped his arm around a life-sized carved figure of a mermaid which adorned the end of the gallery. Her twin on the opposite side had been beheaded by a ball earlier in the battle.
Adam eased himself warily around the mermaid, very conscious of her unmoving stare, the touch of her gold breast under his fingers. All at once he wanted to laugh like Hallowes had done. The complete insanity of it all was beyond his grasp.
He looked again at the mermaid's placid features and thought suddenly of Robina. Just a dream. He ought to have realized it.
Hallowes shouted, 'Move yourself, boy, make way for a King's officer!'
They both laughed like madmen and then Adam was up and over the rail, his feet sliding in broken glass as he kicked open a window and vaulted into the big cabin beyond. As in Achates, the ship had been completely cleared for action. But the place seemed empty except for corpses and moaning wounded, while some other figures were leaning out through the ports to lock blades with the men on Achates' lower gun-deck.
A French petty officer, wounded in one arm, saw the figures burst through the smoke and opened his mouth to yell a warning.
Hallowes hacked him across the face with his hanger and ran on towards the great trunk of the ship's mainmast. It was huge, like a smooth pillar, and when Adam leaned on it to regain his breath he felt it trembling under all its weight of topmast, rigging and spars as if it were alive.
Crocker bent down without hesitation and with a gunner's mate made a quick lashing around the mast with bags of powder arranged at intervals like a necklace.
Figures swayed through the haze and a pistol ball smacked into one of the British seamen like a metal fist. He dropped without making a sound.
Crocker swivelled his good eye. 'Slow-match, matey!'
He pressed it to the short fuse and made to back away.
Hallowes aimed his pistol and fired into the nearest group of shadows. 'We'll hold 'em off! The buggers'Il cut the fuse otherwise!'
Adam bounded forward to touch blades with a French officer. He felt the man's breath on his face as they reeled against one of the guns, the hatred giving way to fear as he pushed him clear with the hanger's stirrup-hilt and then cut him down with a blow across the shoulder.
Hallowes darted past him and hurled his empty pistol into a man's face, and when he staggered hacked him down with two quick slashes across arm and neck.
But more men were clambering down a ladder from the deck above, their legs pale against the trapped smoke and dark paintwork. One of Hallowes' seamen stabbed through the ladder with a pike and sent one of them screaming on top of his companions, but a pistol shot killed him before he could recover his balance.
Adam strained his eyes through the choking smoke. But he could see none of the others. Crocker had probably run aft before his charges exploded, and of Hallowes there was no sign.
Two French seamen loomed around an abandoned gun. One raised a pistol but Adam knocked it upwards so that the ball cracked into a deckhead beam. The second man hurled himself the last few feet and smashed Adam on to his back.
The lanyard around his wrist snapped and he heard his hanger fly clattering across the deck.
The seaman was big and extremely powerful. He held Adam's wrists, his tarred fingers like steel as he forced them out on to the planking, as if he were being crucified.
Adam could feel his knee smashing up between his legs to find his groin and cripple him before he could struggle free.
He tried again but it was hopeless, and knew that despite the battle which raged over both ships this man was enjoying the moment.
Adam heard himself cry out in agony as the man's knee jammed into his groin. He tried not to show his pain and despair, but lights flashed before his eyes as he hit him again.
A small shadow rose above the man's shoulders and then all the pain ceased as the French seaman rolled sideways on to the deck.
Midshipman Evans stared at the man with disbelief. Then, as Adam tried to get to his feet, he lowered the hanger with which he had hit his attacker and said urgently, This way, sir! I've found a place – '
The rest of his words were drowned by one terrible bang.
Adam got to his knees, the pain searing through his loins like a hot iron. He was blinded by smoke and flying dust and his ears had lost all sense of hearing.
He grasped the boy's shoulder and lurched through the choking fog, only partly aware of what was happening.
He felt Evans pull at his torn coat and wanted to protest as he lost his balance and fell headlong between two of the guns. Through his dazed and confused thoughts he knew he could see sunlight where there should be none.
Then as Evans crouched down beside him he saw a great jagged spar which had crashed through the deck
