them, the water surging and spitting between the two hulls even as Indomitable’s long jib-boom and then her bowsprit rammed into the enemy’s shrouds like some giant tusk.
The force of the impact splintered Indomitable’s main-yard, broken spars, torn rigging and wounded topmen falling on Hockenhull’s spread nets like so much rubbish.
Tyacke shouted at his gun crews, “One more, lads! Hit ’em! ”
Then he staggered and clapped one hand to his thigh, his teeth bared against the pain. Midshipman Carleton ran to help him, but Tyacke gasped, “Pike! Give me a pike, damn you!”
The midshipman thrust one towards him and stared at him, unable to move as Tyacke drove the pike into the deck and held himself upright, using it as a prop.
Bolitho felt Allday move closer, Avery too, with a pistol suddenly in one hand. Across the debris and the wounded he saw Tyacke raise a hand to him, a gesture towards the fallen masts. A bridge, joining them with the enemy.
The guns roared out and recoiled again, the crews leaping aside to pick up their cutlasses, staggering as though with a deadly fatigue while they clambered across to the other ship which had been forced alongside, Indomitable’s splintered jib-boom dangling beside the enemy’s figurehead.
There was a bang from the swivel-gun in the foretop, and a hail of canister raked a group of American seamen even as they ran to repel boarders. The marines were gasping and cheering as they fired, reloaded, and then threw themselves on the hammocks to take aim again. And again. Above it all, Bolitho could hear Tyacke shouting orders and encouragement to his men. He would not give in to anything, not even the wound in his thigh. After what he had already suffered, it was an insult to think that he might.
Lieutenant Protheroe was the first on Retribution’s gangway, and the first to fall to a musket which was fired into his body from only a few inches away. He fell, and was trapped between the two grinding hulls. Bolitho saw him drop, and remembered him as the youngster who had welcomed him aboard.
He shouted, “To me, Indoms! To me, lads!”
He was dragging himself across, above the choppy water, aware of flashing pistol fire and heavier calibre shot, and of Allday close behind, croaking, “Hold back, Sir Richard! We can’t fight the whole bloody ship!”
Bolitho was finding it difficult to breathe, his lungs filled with smoke and the stench of death. Then he was aboard the other ship, saw Hockenhull, the squat boatswain, kill a man with his boarding-axe and manage to grin afterwards at Allday. He must have saved him from being struck down. In the terrible blood red rage of battle, the consuming madness, Bolitho could still remember Allday’s son, and that Allday had blamed Hockenhull for posting him to the vulnerable quarterdeck, where he had died. Perhaps this would end that festering grievance.
Avery dragged at his arm, and fired point-blank into a crouching figure that had appeared at their feet. Then he, too, staggered, and Bolitho imagined he had been hit.
But Avery was shouting, trying to be heard above the shouts and cries and the clash of steel, blade to blade.
Then Bolitho heard it also. He lurched against a wild-eyed marine, his bloodied bayonet already levelled for a second thrust, his mind still refusing to understand. Faint but certain. Someone was cheering, and for a chilling moment he imagined that the Americans had had more men than he had believed, that they had managed to board Indomitable in strength. Then Tyacke must be dead. They would not otherwise get past him.
Avery gripped his arm. “D’ you hear, sir?” He was trembling, and almost incoherent. “It’s Reaper! She’s joined the squadron!”
The explosion was sudden, and so close that Bolitho found himself flung bodily to the deck, his sword dangling from the knot around his wrist. It had felt like a searing wind, the dust and fragments from the blast like hot sand. Hands were pulling him to his feet; Allday, with his back turned, exposed to the enemy as he steadied him amongst the press of dazed and breathless men.
Bolitho gasped, unable to speak, to reassure him, but the agony in his eye was making it impossible.
He said, “Help me.”
Allday seemed to understand, and tore his neckerchief from his throat and in two turns had tied it around Bolitho’s head, covering his injured eye.
It was like being deaf, with men crawling or kneeling in utter silence beside the wounded, and peering into the faces of the dead.
Retribution’s seamen were staring at them, bewildered, shocked, beaten. Their flag had fallen with the broken mizzen-mast, but they had not surrendered. They had simply ceased to fight.
The explosion had been confined to the ship’s quarterdeck. A bursting cannon, carelessly loaded for a final desperate show of defiance, or perhaps a burning wad from one of Tyacke’s guns when they had fired that last broadside with muzzles almost overlapping those of the enemy. A small group of American officers were waiting near the shattered wheel, where helmsmen and others lay in the ugly attitudes of violent death.
One lieutenant held out his sword, and instantly Allday’s cutlass and Avery’s pistol rose in unison.
Bolitho touched the bandage across his eye, and was grateful for it. He said, “Where is your commodore?” He stared at the fallen mast, where men were still trapped in the tangled rigging like fish in a net. Reaper was closer, and the cheering was still going on; and he wished that he could see her.
The lieutenant stooped, and uncovered the head and shoulders of his commodore.
He handed his sword, hilt first, to Avery, and said, “Commodore Aherne, sir. He sometimes spoke of you.”
Bolitho stared down at the face, angry and contorted, frozen at the instant of death. But a stranger.
He looked beyond them, toward the open sea. Had Aherne heard the cheers, and recognized Reaper too?
He turned inboard again. It was right, it was justice, that it should be Reaper. Now a witness to victory, and to folly.
He looked around at the breathless, gasping men, the madness gone from them as they dragged the wounded and the dying away from the blood-stained chaos on deck, talking to one another, some without realizing that those who answered were the enemy.
Through the clinging smoke he could see Tyacke facing him across the narrow strip of trapped water, still propped on his pike, with the surgeon on his knees applying a dressing. Tyacke raised one bloodied hand in salute. Perhaps to his ship. To the victor.
Bolitho said, “Help me back to Indomitable.” It was impossible to smile. Had he really cried, To me, Indoms, only minutes ago?
Allday took his arm and guided him, watching out for anything that might take him unaware. He had guessed what had happened, and now he was certain of it. He had seen too much to be shocked or awed by the sights on every hand: in his own way, despite the brutal ugliness of death everywhere, he was satisfied.
Once again they had come through, and they were still together. It was more than enough.
Bolitho hesitated, and looked around at the two embattled ships. Men had leaned over to touch his coat as he had passed; some had grinned and spoken his name; a few had openly wept, ashamed, perhaps, that they had survived when so many had fallen.
Now they all fell silent to listen as he looked beyond them and saw Reaper’s topsails suddenly bright in the hard sunlight. He touched the locket beneath his stained shirt, and knew she was close to him.
“It is a high price to pay, and we have paid it many times before. But we must not forget, for if we do, it will be at our peril!” He raised his head and stared up at his flag at the mainmast truck, so clean, and removed from the suffering and the hate.
“Loyalty is like trust, and must surely reach in both directions.” He looked at the slow-moving topsails again. “But it is the greatest reward of all.”
It was over.
Epilogue
THE CARRIAGE with the Bolitho crest on its doors, freshly washed that morning, came to a halt by the church. It was cold even for March, but Catherine Somervell did not notice it.
Bryan Ferguson opened the door and lowered the step for her.
“Why not wait in there, my lady? ’Tis warmer, to be sure.” He seemed concerned, anxious that something
