that first devastating broadside. The lethal spray of canister combined with the round shot to produce an appalling effect. The destructive power of the shot was augmented by the splinters it caused while the range concentrated its effect. French resistance was robbed of its edge. Half of La Torride's gun crews were already dead or wounded, her wheel was shot away, her rudder stock split and her commander mortally wounded in the space of a few minutes.
Hellebore ran past her adversary as La Torride swung to starboard, broaching into the trough of the sea, out of control. Hellebore also swung to avoid being raked and came round to starboard, tacking through the wind and, once on the larboard tack, running back on to her victim. As the yards were secured there was a mad rush across the deck where the starbowlines returned to their guns.
'Maximum elevation there!' yelled Drinkwater, judging the angle of heel as the brig lay over to the wind. 'Cripple her, Rogers!' roared Griffiths and Drinkwater leapt at the after guns to pull out the quoins. Spinning round he grabbed a tiny powder monkey. 'Boy! Get Mr Trussel to send up some bar shot.'
But La Torride had recovered slightly, her men were not yet finished. Under her first lieutenant she had had the time to prepare another broadside for the British.
'Heel's too much, sir,' shouted Drinkwater straightening up from sighting along a gun barrel. 'Leggo t'gallant sheets!'
The pressure at her mastheads eased slightly and the brig came nearer the vertical as she sped past La Torride. Both ships fired their broadsides simultaneously. Amidships a gun was dismounted at the moment of discharge with a huge crash. Men fell back and blood spurted from the a dozen wounds while splinters of wood flew about. Griffiths was spun round by a musket ball that left his single epaulette hanging drunkenly from his shoulder. Drinkwater was hit by a splinter which lanced across his face, missing his eye and cheek and nicking his right ear. Then Hellebore was past and preparing to tack again. In the temporary respite Drinkwater supervised clearing the deck of wounded, while Lestock hauled the yards. He was aware of a large number of casualties, of blood staining the sanded planks in the waist but also of an unshaken band of men who toiled to make their lethal and brutish artillery ready for another broadside.
La Torride had had enough. A cheer from first one gun's crew then another spread along Hellbore's deck. Looking up Drinkwater saw the tricolour that lay over the corvette's shattered rail. Her foremast had gone by the board.
'Take possession, Mr Drinkwater; Mr Lestock, heave to.' Drinkwater went to inspect the boats and found the cutter serviceable. Griffiths came up to him.
'I want neither prisoners nor prize, Nathaniel. Toss her guns overboard and order an officer aboard her as hostage against her good conduct. They may proceed to Suez if they are able.'
'Aye, aye, sir.'
'I think we have winged the eagle, Nathaniel,' he added confidentially. Drinkwater grinned back. 'Indeed sir, I believe you are right.'
Drinkwater threw a leg over the rail to descend to the cutter bobbing alongside.
'Knocked the bollocks of that Froggie, eh, Drinkwater?' said Rogers, smiling broadly, his tendency to criticise temporarily quiescent.
'Then perhaps you will consider our commander less senile than you are wont to assert.'
Drinkwater and his party scrambled over the side of the corvette to the disquieting crackle of musketry and the shouts and screams of intense fighting. The sight that met their eyes was astonishing. Amid the ruin of her upper deck, covered as it was by the wreckage of her foremast, broken spars and torn sails, amid the tangled festoons of rope, amid the bodies of her dead and the writhing tortures of her wounded La Torride's survivors fought a furious hand to hand action with Yusuf ben Ibrahim and his men. The Arab's sambuk had held off, awaiting the outcome, but was now alongside the defeated corvette her men boarding in search of loot. Catching sight of the British a young aspirant waved frantically at the folds of the tricolour lying over the stern.
'M'sieur… J'implore… m'aidez…' The boy looked wildly round, seeing Drinkwater's bare sword blade, drawn in self defence at what he might find aboard the prize. The young officer had fallen at his feet in terror and Drinkwater put a calming hand upon his shoulder, but even so it was several minutes before the combined bullying of Drinkwater and his men had beaten off the fury of the Arabs.
Yusuf himself seemed angry at Drinkwater's refusal to allow his men to butcher the French. 'In'sh Allah,' he said shrugging, his eyes wild with the effects of hashish: 'It is the will of Allah.'
Drinkwater shook his head 'Bism' Allah,' he said in the only Arabic he knew, 'In the name of God, Emir Yusuf, the dhows…' he conveyed the gift of the captured dhows with dramatic gestures, knowing Griffiths was not interested in prizes so far from home. God knew there were enough Frenchmen aboard them to satisfy Yusuf's bloodlust without putting the corvette's crew to the sword. 'You,' he said pointing at Yusuf's chest, 'take dhows. This,' he said stabbing a finger at the deck of La Torride and to the French cadet, 'this belongs to me…' he waved his arm in a circular motion ending up pointing at his own chest.
To Drinkwater's surprise Yusuf rocked back on his heels and roared with laughter. Several members of his crew that had come menacingly to his support during the argument joined the laughter, after Yusuf had addressed a stream of Arabic at them. Yusuf made an aggressively sexual gesture with his forearm, tousled the cadet's hair and slapped the amazed Drinkwater upon the back. Then, still laughing, he took himself off, followed by his men who made a series of good naturedly obscene gestures in Drinkwater's direction.
Beneath his tan Nathaniel flushed at the implication. 'Dirty bastards, zur,' muttered Tregembo loyally but Drinkwater was not to escape so lightly. To his further embarrassment the young Frenchman, who was trying to smile while tears made furrows through the powder grime upon his face, embraced him.
Drinkwater shook the youth off. 'Vôtre capitaine? Où est vôtre capitaine?' he asked. The reply was a torrent of French, incomprehensible to Drinkwater but containing what he took to be names, each succeeded by the word mort, from which he deduced that most of La Torride's officers were either dead or dying. Certainly no other uniformed figure appeared. Leaving the aspirant to muster his crew and draw up a list of the casualties Drinkwater made a brief inspection of the ship before returning to Hellebore.
'She's the ship corvette La Torride of the Rochefort squadron, sir, hulled in several places and unmanageable with her steering destroyed…' He went on to outline the shambles he had found. When he had finished Griffiths pursed his lips and thought for a moment.
'If we can get a dhow back from Ben Ibrahim we'll let them go, bach, on parole for Suez. Take out of her powder, any useful shot, stores, water and rope, I recollect you want rope. In fact ransack her, though no man is to touch an item of personal belongings, we'll leave looting to our Arab friends. Go on, get back to her, quick now. I'll send Rogers and the other boat to requisition a dhow if that pirate has already grabbed them all. Bring back the cadet, he may be more forthcoming than a recalcitrant officer with ideas of his honour.'
There followed a day of back-breaking endeavour in which Drinkwater, with an enthusiasm engendered in first lieutenants when storehouses are thrown open to them, replenished almost every want of the Hellebore. On the basis that there were no officers surviving to lay claim to her cabin stores, he judiciously appropriated a quantity of wine which brought a gleam to Trussel's eye comparable to that bestowed on the French powder. Trussel begged Drinkwater for a pair of fine brass chase guns but the condition of the boats and the state of the sea prevented their removal. The operation was carried out despite the sharks that were congregating astern, round the flotilla.
By nightfall, when Drinkwater's weary party finally returned to Hellebore, La Torride was stripped of useful moveables, an empty shell with smoke issuing from her hatchways and sufficient powder left aboard to dismember her. She blew up and sank an hour later but by then Hellebore with her attendant dhows was five miles to the southward, standing towards the Strait of Tiran and the Red Sea.
Leaving the deck to Lestock, Drinkwater stumbled wearily below, called for Merrick to pour him a glass of grog. He was relaxing as Dalziell entered, thrusting the French cadet before him with a vicious shove. He seemed
