The Corvette

deck, taking the men with it. They picked themselves up unhurt, but Drinkwater's eyes met those of Hill and both men knew Melusine was immobilised. Two minutes later she bore off before the wind and with a jarring crash that made her entire fabric judder she struck Nimrod amidships.

'Boarders awa-a-way!' Mad with frustration and anger Drinkwater lugged out his borrowed sword and grabbed a pistol from his waistband and ran forward. Men left the guns and grabbed pikes from the racks by the masts and cutlasses gleamed in the sunshine that beat hot upon their backs as they crowded over the fo'c's'le and scrambled down onto the whaler's deck.

Quilhampton was ahead of Drinkwater and had reached the Nimrod's poop where Ellerby stood aiming his great brass harpoon gun into the Nimrod's waist as Drinkwater led his boarders aft. A cluster of men had gathered round him but the majority of his crew, over twenty men, were dodging backwards into whatever shelter the deck of the whaler offered, making gestures of surrender and calling for quarter.

'Mr Q! Stand aside, damn it!' Drinkwater called, his voice icy with suppressed fury. He saw Ellerby raise the huge gun, saw its barrel foreshorten as the piece was aimed at his own breast and heard the big Yorkshireman yell:

'Stand fast, Cap'n Drinkwater! D'you hear me! Stand fast!'

But Drinkwater was moving aft and saw the smoke from the gun. He felt the rush of air past his cheek as the harpoon narrowly missed him and a second later he was shoving Quilhampton aside.

Somebody had passed Ellerby a whale-lance and its long shaft kept Drinkwater at a distance. 'You traitorous bastard, Ellerby. Put that thing down, or by God, I'll see you swing…'

Drinkwater was forced backwards, stumbled and fell over as Ellerby, his face a mask of hatred, stabbed forward with the razor-sharp lance. Suddenly Ellerby had descended the short ladder from Nimrod's poop and stood over Drinkwater.

Aware of the quivering lance and the fanatical light in Ellerby's pale blue eyes Drinkwater could think only of the pistol he had half fallen on. Even as Ellerby stabbed downward Drinkwater rolled over, his thumb pulling the hammer back to full cock and his finger squeezing the trigger.

He felt the lance head cut him, felt the cleanness of the keen edge with a kind of detachment that told him that it was not fatal, that the lance had merely skidded round his abdomen, through the thin layer of muscles over his right ribs. He stood up, bleeding through the rent in his coat.

Ellerby was leaning drunkenly on the lance that, having wounded Drinkwater, had stuck in the deck. The beginnings of a roar of pain were welling up from him and streaming through his beard in a shower of spittle. Drinkwater could not see where the ball had entered EUerby's body, but as he crashed forward onto the deck its point of egress was bloodily conspicuous. His spine was shattered in the small of his back and the roar of impotence and pain faded to a wheezing respiration.

Drinkwater pressed his hand to his own flank and looked down into his fallen foe. EUerby's wound was mortal and, as the realisation spread men began to move again. The whale-ship crew threw down their weapons and James Quilhampton, casting a single look at Drinkwater, gave orders to take possession of the Nimrod.

Drinkwater turned, aware of blood warm on his hand. Before him little Mr Frey was trying to attract attention.

'Yes, Mr Frey? What is it?'

Frey pointed back across Melusine's deck to where the Requin could be seen looming out of the smoke.

'B… beg pardon, sir, but Mr Hill's compliments and the Requin is bearing up to windward.'

As if to lend emphasis to the urgency of Frey's message the multiple concussion of Requin's broadside filled the air, while at Drinkwater's feet Ellerby gave up the ghost.

Chapter Nineteen The Plagues of Egypt

 August 1803

Drinkwater felt the relief of the broad bandage securing the thick pledget to his side. He stared through the smoke trying to ignore Skeete who was tugging his shirt down after completing the dressing.

'That'll do, damn it!' he shouted above the noise of the guns.

'Aye, aye, sir.' Skeete grinned maliciously through his rotten teeth and Drinkwater tucked his shirt tails impatiently into his waistband still trying to divine the intentions of Requin's commander.

Leaving Lord Walmsley in command of Nimrod Drinkwater and the boarding party had returned to Melusine although the whaler and sloop still lay locked together. Requin lay just to windward, firing into the British ship with her heavier guns. At every discharge of her cannon they were swept by an iron storm. There were dead and dying men lying on the gratings where their mates had dragged them to be clear of the guns and from where the surgeon's party selected those worthy to be carried below to undergo the horrors of amputation, curettage or probing. The superficially wounded dressed themselves from the bandage boxes slotted into the bar-holes in the ship's capstans, and held against such an eventuality. Drinkwater saw that stained bandages had sprouted everywhere, that the larboard six-pounders were being served by men from both batteries and that Gorton was wounded.

The noise was deafening as the Melusines fired their cannon as fast as each gun could be sponged, charged and laid. Ropes and splinters rained down from aloft and below the mainmast three bodies lay where they had fallen from the top. Only the foremast stood intact, the foretopsail still filled with wind.

The stink of powder smoke, the noise and the confusion and above all the unbelievably hot sun combined with the sharp pain in his flank to exhaust Drinkwater. It crossed his mind to strike, if only to end the killing of his men and the intolerable noise.

Something of this must have been evident in his face, for Hill was looking at him.

'Are you all right, sir?' Hill shouted.

Drinkwater nodded grimly.

'Here sir…' Hill held out a flask and Drinkwater lifted it to his lips. The fiery rum stirred him as it hit the pit of his stomach.

'Obliged to you, Mr Hill…' He looked up at the spanker. It was too full of holes to be very effective, but an idea occurred to him.

'Chapel that spanker, Mr Hill, haul it up against the wind. Let us swing the stern round and try and put Nimrod between us and that bloody bastard to windward!'

A shower of splinters were struck from the adjacent rail and Drinkwater and Hill staggered from the wind of the passing ball, gasping for breath. But Hill recovered and bawled at the afterguard. Drinkwater turned. He must buy time to think. He saw Mount's scarlet coat approaching after posting his sentries over the prisoners aboard Nimrod.

'Mr Mount!'

'Sir?'

'Mr Mount, muster your men aft here…'

The katabatic squall hit them with sudden violence, screaming down from the heights to the south of them, streaking the water with spray and curling the seas into sharp, vicious waves in the time it takes to draw breath. The air at sea level in the fiord had been warmed for hours by the unclouded sun. Rising in an increasing mass, this air was replaced by cold air sliding down from its contact with the ice and snow of the mountain tops to spread out over the water as a squall, catching the ships unprepared.

Melusine's fore topgallant mast, already weighed down by the wreckage of the main topmast and its spars, carried away and crashed to leeward. But the chapelled spanker, hauled to windward by Hill's men, spun the sloop and her prize, while Nimrod's sails filled and tended to drive