The shadow of the eagle

Ashton looked across the deck to where Frey, ever diligent, peered out of a gun-port, striving to see the enemy frigate coming up from astern. Frey was senior to him, but who knew? Perhaps he too would stop a ball before the day was over.

'I can't see a damned thing,' Frey complained, crossing the deck and passing close to Ashton as he bent to stare out of one of his own larboard battery gun-ports. Ah, here she comes. Looks as though it's your turn for it first.' Frey smiled and patted him on the shoulder. 'Good luck.'

'Good luck,' Ashton replied with more duty than true sincerity.

A moment later one of the gun-captains called out, 'Here she comes, me lads!' and a ripple of expectation ran through the waiting men, like a breeze through dry grass.

'Lay your guns,' Ashton commanded. He waited until, like statues, the crews stood back from their loaded and primed pieces, their captains behind the breeches, lanyards in hand. Eventually, all along the deck the bare arms were raised in readiness.

'Fire!' Ashton yelled, and the gun captains jerked the lanyards and jumped aside as the still-warm guns leaped inboard with their recoil, and their crews fussed round them again.

On the deck above, Sergeant McCann had ensured each marine checked his flint and filled his cartouche box. Worn flints would cause misfires, and most of his men had fired profligately.

'Make every shot count,' McCann warned them, 'and every bullet find its mark.'

His men muttered about grandmamas and the sucking of eggs, but they tolerated Meticulous McCann. He was a thoughtfully provident man and though few knew him enough to like him, for he had too many of the ways of an officer to enjoy popular appeal, they all respected him.

When the captain's warning to stand-to and prepare to receive fire came, Hyde merely nodded to McCann, who repeated the order. It was then, in the idle, fearful moment before action, McCann thought of Ashton, and as he lowered his weapon and lined foresight and backsight on a small cluster of gilt just forward of L'Aigle's mizen mast, it was Josiah Ashton's image that his imagination conjured up beyond the muzzle of his Tower musket.

It was almost three bells when Ashton's guns barked again, beating the enemy by a few seconds. Although the range was short, Drinkwater had Birkbeck edge Andromeda away from L'Aigle, to prevent Lejeune running up too close and attempting to board and exploit his greater numbers. Even so, the storm of enemy musketry was prodigious, and the rows of hammocks were destroyed by lead shot ripping into them, fraying the barricade they made, so that the shredded canvas fluttered in the breeze. Those balls which passed over the hammocks in their nettings, either buzzed harmlessly overhead, or found a target. Most passed by, but a few struck the masts, or the boats, and a few knocked men down.

As for the enemy's round shot, they thudded into the hull or struck the lighter bulwarks, sending up an explosion of splinters. Occasionally a ball came in through a port, struck a carronade and ricocheted away with a strident whine. Others flew higher, aimed to bring down Andromeda's upper spars, discommode those on the upper deck and rob the British frigate of the ability to manoeuvre which she had thus far so brilliantly exploited to avoid such a fate. The cries of the dying and the wounded filled the air again, and a large pool of blood formed at the base of the mizen mast, pouring in a brief torrent from the shattered body of a topman lying across the trestle-tree boards of the mizen top high above.

The action had reached its crisis, and Drinkwater, increasingly assailed by the agony of his wounded arm, knew it. He fought the excruciating ache and the desire to capitulate to its demand to lie down and rest; his mouth was dry as dust and his voice was growing hoarse from shouting, though he could not recall much of what he had said in exhorting his men.

He knew too, that whatever the shortcomings of his ship and her company, they could not have fought her with more skill and vigour. From Birkbeck masterfully conning her, to the men who put the master's orders into practice; from the solicitous and grateful

Marlowe running about the upper-deck directing the carronades, to the lieutenants and gunners below, he could not have asked for more. Nor should he forget Kennedy and his mates, labouring in the festering stink of the orlop, plying scalpel and saw, curette and pledget to save what was left of the brutalized bodies of the wounded. His own mortality irked him: he would have to submit to the surgeon's ministrations if he survived the next hour, for his bandaged arm oozed blood.

The thunder of their own guns bespoke a furious cannonade; the decks trembled with the almost constant rumblings of recoil and running out of the 12-pounders of the main armament, and it was clear to Drinkwater's experienced ear that Frey's unengaged gunners had crossed the deck to help fight the larboard battery. In fact Frey had assumed command of the forward division, an order Ashton had not liked receiving, though he could not avoid obeying it, for to do so would have been to have transgressed the Articles of War in refusing to do his utmost in battle.

But Ashton could not deny the effectiveness of the reinforcement, and so furious did the gunfire become that not even the brisk breeze could now clear the smoke and the gap between the two ships became obscure. Neither the officers in the gun-deck nor those upon the quarterdeck could now see very much. L'Aigle was marked by her lines of flashing muzzles and the tops of her masts above the cloud of powder- smoke. Then they heard a cheer ripple along the upper-deck and watched as, in an almost elegant collapse, L'Aigle's main topmast went by the board. Within a quarter of an hour, however, Andromeda had lost her own mizen mast and the wreckage brought down her main topgallant. Two carronades on the quarterdeck were also dismounted in the general destruction of her bulwarks adjacent to the mizen channels. A moment later she had lost her wheel and all those who manned it as her upper- deck was swept by a hail of grape-shot.

Marlowe was nowhere to be seen in the confusion as Drinkwater summoned a hatless and dishevelled Birkbeck who seemed otherwise unscathed. 'She'll get alongside us now, by God!' the sailing master bellowed above the din.

'We must have given as good as we've got!' Drinkwater roared back.

For a few moments there was utter confusion, then L'Aigle loomed close alongside and through the clearing smoke they could hear cries of 'Vive L'Empereur!' and 'Mort a l'Anglais!' as the French soldiers whipped themselves into a frenzy.

'Prepare to repel boarders!' Drinkwater shouted, his voice cracking with the effort as his head reeled, and then the two ships came together with a sudden lurching thud and a long, tortured grinding. Above their heads on the quarterdeck, L'Aigle's mainyard thrust itself like a fencer's extended and questing epee, wavering as the two ships moved in the seaway. Shapes like ghosts appeared over the rail as veterans of Austerlitz and Borodino, of Eylau, Friedland, Jena and Wagram prepared to launch themselves across the gap between the two frigates, on to Andromeda's deck.

Lower down, beneath the pall of smoke that lay in the gulf between the two ships, Frey had seen the approach of L'Aigle and heard the excited shouting of the battle-mad troops. The cry to repel boarders came down through the thick air in the gun-deck and passed along the lines of cannon in shouted warnings.

Frey withdrew from his observation post and hurried aft to where Ashton was scurrying up and down his guns, half bent as he squinted along first one and then another as they jumped inboard for reloading. Steam sizzled as the wet sponges went in, adding a warm stickiness to the choking atmosphere. Frey tapped him on the shoulder.

'Josh!' Frey bellowed until he had attracted his colleague's attention. 'Josh! I'm taking my fellows to reinforce the upper-deck.'

'What?' Ashton was almost deaf from the concussion of the cannon and Frey had to shout in his filthy ear before Ashton understood.

'No, let me. You fight the guns.' The words were uttered before Ashton realized the implications: he had given voice to his thoughts and wavered briefly, half-hoping Frey would contradict the suggestion.

'If you want to go fire-eating good luck to you.' Frey nodded assent, straightened up and hastened back up the deck, half bent to avoid collisions with the beams. 'Starbowlines!' he bellowed, 'Small arms from the racks and follow Mr Ashton on deck! D'ye hear there? Starbowlines with Mr Ashton to the upper-deck! We're about to be