For My Country’s Freedom

The eighteen-pounders recoiled down the side. Each gun captain seemed able to ignore the chaos and death, men pulped by incoming shots while they crouched at the guns on the disengaged side.

Adam did not even blink as two marines fell from the maintop to join the crawling, pleading wounded and those who were already beyond aid.

Hudson yelled, 'Get those guns working, Mr Vicary! Lively now!'

The lieutenant turned and peered aft through the thickening smoke, like a drowning man reaching for a line.

'Load! Run out!' He staggered as shots hammered into the lower hull, and more rigging fell on to the gangways to add to the destruction and chaos.

Vicary looked up and stared with disbelief as the American’s upper yards and punctured sails rose above the fog of gunfire like a cliff. Hudson retched and turned away as Vicary fell, his fingers clutching what a charge of canister had found and destroyed. There was no face left. Even in this murderous hell Hudson heard

his mother’s voice. Such an English face. Now, in a split second, he had become nothing.

'Sir! The Cap’n’s hit!' It was Starr, Adam’s loyal coxswain.

'Fetch the surgeon!'

Hudson knelt beside him and gripped his hand. 'Easy, sir! He’ll soon be here!'

Adam shook his head, his teeth bared against the pain. 'No- I must stay! We must fight the ship!'

Hudson shouted to the sailing-master, 'Let her fall off two points!' His brain cringed to the constant crash of shots hitting the hull. But all he could think of was the captain. He saw Starr pulling open the coat with the bright epaulettes, and swallowed as he saw the blood pumping out of Adam’s side, covering him, encircling him like something foul and evil.

Another great splintering crash, and the roar of trailing rigging, as the whole of the foremast went over the side taking sails, broken planking and screaming men with it into the sea.

Cunningham bent down and applied a dressing, which within seconds was as bloody as his butcher’s apron. He looked at Hudson, his eyes wild and afraid. 'I can do nothing! They’re dying like flies down below!' He ducked as more balls ripped overhead or exploded into lethal splinters against one of the guns.

Adam lay quite still, feeling his Anemone being torn apart by the unwavering bombardment. His mind kept fading away, and he had to use all his remaining strength to bring it back. There was little pain, just a numbing deadness.

'Fight the ship, Dick!' The effort was too much. 'Oh, dear God, what must I do?'

Hudson stood up, his limbs very loose, unable to believe he was unmarked amongst so much suffering and death.

He raised his hanger and hesitated. Then with one slash he severed the ensign’s halliards, and in the sudden silence that followed he saw the flag running out to the full extent of the line

until it floated above the water like a dying bird.

Then there was cheering, deafening, it seemed, from Anemones bloodied and splintered decks.

Hudson stared at the blade in his hand. So much for glory. Nobody would use it to taunt them in defeat. Blindly he flung it over the disengaged side, then knelt down again beside his captain.

Adam said vaguely, 'We held them off, Dick. The convoy should be safe now in the dark.' He gripped Hudson’s hand with surprising strength. 'It was… our duty'

Hudson felt the tears stinging his eyes. The sunshine was as bright as before. There was more movement as the great frigate came alongside, and armed seamen swarmed across the deck as Anemones company threw down their weapons. Hudson watched as the men he had come to know so well accepted defeat. Some were downcast and hostile; others greeted the Americans with something like gratitude.

An American lieutenant called, 'Here he is!'

Hudson saw the massive figure climbing up past the abandoned wheel. Even the sailing-master had fallen. Always a quiet man, he had died just as privately.

Nathan Beer looked around at the carnage on the quarterdeck.

'You in charge?'

Hudson nodded, remembering Adam Bolitho’s description of this man. 'Yes, sir.'

'Is your captain still alive?' He stood staring down at Adam’s pale features for several seconds. 'Take him across, Mr Rooke! Get our surgeon to see him right away.'

To Hudson he said, 'You are now a prisoner of war. There is nothing to be ashamed of. You had no chance.'

He watched as Adam was carried away on a grating. 'But you fought like tigers, as I would have expected.' He paused. 'Like father, like son.'

The deck gave a lurch and someone called, 'Better clear the ship, sir! That was an explosion!'

The boarding party were hastily rounding up their prisoners and dragging some of the wounded to the ship alongside.

Starr, the captain’s coxswain, walked past. He touched his hat to Commodore Beer, and for only a second, looked at Hudson.

'They’ll not take his ship away from him now, sir.'

The deck was tilting over. Starr must have prepared Anemone for this all on his own. Now she would never fight under an enemy flag.

And I shall never fight under mine.

As darkness covered the misty horizon, and the Unity still lay hove-to carrying out makeshift repairs, Anemone drifted clear and began to settle down stern first, the lovely figurehead holding on to her last sunset. How he had wanted it. He thought of Nathan Beer’s quiet comment, and did not understand.

Like father, like son.

He looked at his hands as they began to shake uncontrollably.

He was alive. And he was ashamed.

Every moment roused a fresh thrust of agony, pain which defied even the need to breathe, to think. Sound welled and faded, and despite his inner torment Adam Bolitho knew he was in constant danger of losing consciousness, even as his reeling mind told him he would not live if he did.

He was on board the ship which had defeated him, but it was not like that at all. Voices cried and sobbed, it seemed on every side, although somehow he knew the awful din came from elsewhere as if through a great door, muffled and full of anguish like the abyss of hell itself.

The air was still sharp with smoke and dust, and strange lurching figures pushed past, some so near that they brushed against his outflung arm. Once again he tried to move and the pain held

him in an iron fist. He heard another voice cry out and knew it was his own.

At the same time he knew he was naked, yet could recall nothing of it, only Hudson holding him in his arms while the battle thundered all about the ship. There was a vague recollection that his coxswain Starr had not been with him.

He screwed up his eyes and tried to clear a part of his mind. The foremast going over the side, taking rigging and spars with it, dragging the ship round like some great sea anchor and laying open her side to those murderous broadsides.

The ship. What of Anemone?

His hearing was returning, or had it ever left him? Distant, patient sounds. Men working with hammers; blocks and their tackles squeaking in that other place where the sea was still blue, the air free of smoke and the smell of charred rigging.

He raised his right hand but was almost too weak to hold it above his nakedness. Even his skin felt clammy. Already that of a corpse. Someone beyond that final door screamed. 'Not my arm!' Then another scream, which was suddenly cut short. For him the door to hell had closed behind him.

There was a bandage, wet and heavy with blood. A hand reached out and grasped his wrist. Adam was helpless to protest.