Signal, Close Action!

by Alexander Kent

  Bolitho shouted, ‘Now, Thomas! Pass the word to the carronade crews forrard!’

  Herrick nodded, his face a stiff mask as more shots crashed into the side or sliced between the sails.

  Bolitho strode down the deck to the lee side, seeing the leading French ship’s stern rising like a golden horseshoe above the eddying smoke. Lysander’s forecastle was already passing through the gap between them. He winced, in spite of his warning, as a carronade blasted out its great grape-packed ball with an accompaniment of Veitch’s foremost eighteen-pounders as they came to bear on the enemy’s most vulnerable point.

  Veitch was almost screaming. ‘Stop your vents! Sponge out! Load!’

  The thunder of cannon fire, the squeal and rumble of guns being run out, the endless mad chorus of yells and cheers seemed to be reaching out from another world, or from the depths of hell.

  Severed rigging twisted like snakes on the protective nets across the upper deck, and as the gun crews stooped and heaved, their naked bodies running with sweat and powder, they looked like the servants and not the masters of their bellowing black charges.

  ‘Fire!’

  Bolitho heard a man scream, saw a body bounce down from the main top before pitching over the side.

  More shots slammed through the smoke, but he heard Grubb exclaim hoarsely, ‘The old smasher ’as done it, sir!’ He took off his crumpled hat and waved it over his head. ‘Must ’ave got ’er rudder!’

  Bolitho watched narrowly, realising that although Lysander had sailed through the gap, the leading Frenchman’s stern was still pointing straight at him. The murderous charge of grape from the carronade, accompanied by the forward guns, which by their harsher bark suggested they had been double-shotted for the purpose, must have ripped through the stern and disabled the steering. She was falling downwind, swinging her stern round, and he saw that her once ornate gallery was in ruins, her poop pitted and splintered from the onslaught.

  As he watched he saw her mizzen stagger, held upright by stays and shrouds a while longer, and then begin to fall. Tiny figures were sliding down from the mizzen top, others ran like mad things to escape the great plunging mass of rigging and spars as with a crash, audible even above the thunder of guns, it swayed down into the smoke, the bright, flapping tricolour with it.

  ‘T ’other one is tryin’ to follow us round, sir.’ Grubb’s eyes were streaming. ‘’E’ll take our wind.’

  Bolitho pointed towards the second ship. ‘Mr. Gilchrist! Prepare the larboard carronade!’

  He saw the other ship’s jib boom thrusting through the smoke like a black lance, the tiny pin-pricks of musket fire from her beakhead and foretop. With her yards hard-braced and the wheel over, she was struggling round to starboard, presenting more and more of her scarred side as the range shortened rapidly.

  The larboard carronade slammed back on its slide, the ball exploding in a whirling mass of splinters and broken rigging directly abaft the enemy’s beakhead.

  Herrick yelled, ‘By God, his fore is coming down!’

  As the enemy’s foremast started to totter drunkenly towards the sea his broadside rippled along his exposed side, a few of the gun ports remaining silent as a mark of Veitch’s earlier success. But Bolitho knew it was the most carefully prepared attack so far. The deck bounded repeatedly, and from below he heard a metallic clang and a great chorus of shrill screams. The French marksmen were still firing, too, and as he paced restlessly about the deck Bolitho saw thin splinters flying from the planking as a sharpshooter tried to hit Lysander’s officers.

  A sharper bang came down from the pockmarked sails which now seemed to be towering above the nettings like a cliff, and a second later the after end of the quarter-deck was filled with kicking, screaming men. The French had a swivel gun in the top, and the canister fired at close range was evidence enough of the enemy captain’s anxiety.

  Herrick shouted, ‘The Frog’s out of control! She’s swinging towards us!’ He peered through the smoke. ‘Mr. Grubb, put up your helm!’

  But the master was coughing and cursing through the smoke, dragging corpses and wounded alike from the wheel, or what was left of it. The whole charge of canister had struck the wheel like a target and had scythed away in all directions, marking deck and guns, men and fragments in a great pattern of blood. More men ran dazedly to Grubb’s aid, hauling at the remaining spokes, their eyes squinting as if fearful of the mutilated bodies around them.

  Bolitho said harshly, ‘It’s too late.’

  The enemy’s bowsprit, the great dragging mass of severed mast and yards was directly across Lysander’s bows. The enemy was still firing, as were his own men. At the most forward positions the range was down to about thirty feet.

  Balls whimpered overhead or thudded into the hull with great hammer-blows. One burst through a port and ploughed into a gun crew which was sponging out for the next shot. The eighteen-pounder, freed from its tackles, careered across the tilting deck, its trucks making little bloody lines as it thrust through the remains of its crew.

  Harry Yeo, the boatswain, was bawling for his men to get the gun under control, brandishing a boarding axe like some primitive warrior.

  Bolitho looked at Herrick. ‘We will ram her!’ He sought out Gilchrist. ‘Get the tops’ls off her!’ He felt a musket ball zip past him. ‘We must fight free before the other Frenchman recovers!’

  Herrick nodded jerkily. ‘Mr. Gilchrist! Pass the word! Repel boarders!’

  Bolitho heard more cries, and then Leroux’s voice, ‘Kill those marksmen in the main top!’

  He said urgently, ‘No, Thomas. We must board her! They’ll cut our people to fragments.’

  He seized the rail as with a great groaning crunch Lysander’s jib boom smashed through the enemy’s beakhead. The impetus carried both ships in a slow embrace, the guns falling silent and giving way to the sharper cracks of musketry.

  Bolitho drew his sword. ‘Work the ship clear, Thomas.’ He wanted to reassure him in some way, and saw the uncertainty on Herrick’s grimy face giving way to something worse as he replied, ‘Let someone else go, sir!’

  A great chorus of shouts and yells came from forward, and through the dangling remains of rigging and drifting smoke Bolitho saw men already trying to swarm down along the bowsprit.

  He snapped, ‘There’s no time!’ Then he ran along the starboard gangway, pointing down at every other gun on the disengaged side, shouting at their crews to follow.

  When he reached the forecastle there were already a dozen or more corpses lying amidst the fighting seamen from both sides. Cutlasses rang against each other, and from the shrouds and the forechains of both ships the marksmen kept up a haphazard fire to add to the chaos.

  Bolitho shouted, ‘Carronade!’

  He thrust a wounded man aside and hacked a French petty officer across the neck, feeling the blow lance up his arm and bring a stab of fire to his wounded shoulder.

  A wild-eyed matine seemed to understand what he wanted and threw himself on the carronade’s tackles, while Midshipman Luce and some more seamen came running to his aid.

  ‘Fire!’

  The carronade’s explosion made most of the boarders fall back in momentary confusion. When they peered at their own ship and saw the bloody remains of the men who had been about to swarm on to Lysander’s deck they decided to retreat.

  Bolitho yelled, ‘Boarders away, lads!’

  He waved his sword, feeling his hat plucked from his head by a pistol ball from somewhere, and then he was leaping and half falling down on to the enemy’s shattered beakhead. When he stared back to see how many of his men were following he found himself looking into the eyes of Lysander’s massive, unsmiling figurehead, and he felt the insane grin coming to his lips, the uncontrollable wildness which forced him on through upended ladders and broken spars, gaping corpses and great coils of fallen rigging.

  Steel to steel, the men swaying back and forth locked together, feet stamping, teeth bared in curses and fear as they hac
ked and slashed their way aft along the forecastle deck.

  From one corner of his eye Bolitho saw his flagship, nudging firmly through the enemy’s torn shrouds, the smoky scarlet of Leroux’s marines as they maintained a murderous fire on the Frenchman’s upper deck.

  From the direction of the drifting smoke he knew that both ships were standing downwind, the darkened water between the arrowhead of their embrace littered with splintered wood and a few bobbing corpses.

  Sunlight lanced through the smoke, and he saw the gap widening. Herrick had succeeded in easing Lysander’s bulky hull round to a point where she could use sails and rudder to work clear.

  He saw a man darting towards him, an upraised pistol aimed at his chest. In those split seconds he shared the moment with the unknown French sailor. He had a thin dark face, teeth bared in frantic concentration as he took aim. Bolitho was too far away to reach him with his sword, and his arm ached so much from fighting his way through the yelling press of men that he felt he could not raise it even to defend himself.

  The blade of a heavy cutlass cut downwards across his vision, so fast that it made an arc of silver in the hazy sunlight.

  The French sailor gave a shrill scream and lurched away, staring with agonised horror at the pistol still gripped with his own hand on the far side of the deck.

  Allday ran to Bolitho’s side, the cutlass edge red against his coat.

  ‘A moment, sir!’

  He ducked under two fallen spars and hacked the wounded man across the neck, felling him with no more than a sob.

  He said between gasps, ‘Better’n letting him live with one hand!’

  Bolitho shouted, ‘Fall back, lads!’

  A few more minutes and they could take the French ship. He knew it. Just as he knew that the other seventy-four was probably working round again to pour a broadside into Lysander before she was able to return the fire.

  ‘Fall back!’

  The cry ran along the bloodied decks and mingled with the cheers of Leroux’s marines, some of whom were squatting in Lysander’s beakhead picking off their enemy like wildfowlers in a marsh.

  Many hands reached out to haul the boarders back into Lysander’s protection, as with a splintering, jerking symphony she tore free from her opponent’s fallen spars and shrouds and swung heavily downwind.

  The lower gun deck erupted in one more savage broadside, the thirty-two pounders smashing into the enemy’s side and making the holed and battered timbers shine with tiny tendrils of blood which ran freely from her scuppers.

  Pascoe yelled, ‘Huzza! Huzza for the commodore!’

  Bolitho strode aft, taking his hat from a grinning, pigtailed seaman who had somehow managed to retrieve it from the vicious fighting.

  Herrick greeted him hoarsely, his eyes moving over him as if anticipating some terrible wound.

  Bolitho asked, ‘Where is the other one?’

  Herrick pointed vaguely over the larboard quarter. ‘Standing off, sir.’

  ‘I thought she would.’

  Bolitho looked from foremast to quarter-deck. The fore topgallant mast had gone, and several guns lay upended. There were plenty of shot holes along the upper deck, and the busy thuds of hammers, the dismal clank of pumps, told him that there was damage enough below the waterline also.

  He said, ‘Get the ship under way.’

  He saw Pascoe kneeling beside a dying marine. Holding his hand and watching his face losing its understanding and recognition.

  Grubb peering at his compass, and his new helmsmen staring fixedly at the flapping sails and waiting for them to respond, their bare feet slipping on blood.

  The marines falling back from the hammock nettings, checking their muskets, their faces dull now that the fight had gone out of them.

  Midshipman Luce using one of his flags to staunch the terrible wound in a man’s thigh. The wounded seaman peering up at him, repeating like a prayer, ‘Promise you’ll not send me to the orlop, Mr. Luce!’

  But, like ghouls, their aprons scarlet, the surgeon’s assistants came for him, carrying him bodily down to the horrors of the orlop deck.

  Bolitho saw it all and more. Like so many, that seaman who had faced the terrible demands of battle was unable to accept the horrors of a surgeon’s knife.

  Grubb muttered, ‘She’s answerin’, sir.’

  ‘Steer nor’-east.’ Bolitho looked up as the wind explored the holed sails. ‘And signal Harebell to stay in close company.’ He wondered briefly how Inch had felt as an impotent spectator.

  Herrick came aft and touched his hat. ‘We beat ’em, sir.’

  Bolitho looked at him. ‘It was no victory, Thomas.’ He listened to a man sobbing from the deck below the rail. Like a young boy. A child, with all defences gone. He added quietly, ‘But it has shown all of us what we can do.’ He nodded to Leroux as he walked past with his sergeant. ‘And next time we will do that bit better.’

  He walked to the poop ladder and paused halfway up it to look for the enemy ships. With missing masts and spars, and their attendant snares of trailing rigging, they made a sorry sight.

  Lysander’s company had done well in their first battle together. But to attempt more, even though he had been tempted, would have invited disaster.

  Allday climbed up beside him.

  ‘It feels strange, sir.’

  Bolitho looked at him. Allday was quite right. Before, they had been kept too busy after a sea fight to brood or to find pain in misgivings. He saw Herrick. The captain. The man who really counted just now.

  Allday sighed. ‘They did proudly, all the same. There’s a different air in the ship.’

  Bolitho walked slowly aft to the taffrail, letting the wind explore his stained clothes and aching limbs like a tonic.

  Harebell was tacking across the larboard quarter, very clean and bright in the glare.

  He pulled out his watch. The whole battle had taken less than two hours. Some corpses drifted astern, pale-faced in the clear water, and he guessed they were some of the French boarders who had fallen in the attack. And what of their own bill? How many lay dying or awaiting burial?

  Two seamen ran along the poop, marlin spikes in their hands as they peered round for ropes which needed repair. For them it was over. For now. They chatted to each other, thankful to be whole, grateful to be alive.

  Bolitho watched them in silence. Perhaps Herrick was right. About people in England who did not spare a thought for men like this.

  He nodded to the two seamen as he strode to the ladder. If it were the case, he decided, then it was their loss. For men such as these were worth a thought, and much more beside.

  8

  Aftermath

  JOSHUA MOFFITT, THE commodore’s personal clerk, tapped his teeth with a pen and waited as Bolitho leaned back at his desk and took another swallow of coffee.

  Bolitho let the strong black coffee explore his stomach, and tried to concentrate his mind on the report he was dictating for the admiral. If it would ever be sent. If it would ever be read.

  He knew Moffitt was watching him but was almost used to his strange opaque stare by now. In the sleeping cabin he could hear Ozzard, his servant, making up the cot, his feet barely audible on the deck, and wondered at the fates which had made these two men fill their present roles. It would be better for them both if they were reversed, he thought. Ozzard, who attended his daily wants, from shaving water to a clean shirt, had been, it was said, a lawyer’s clerk. He certainly had education, more than some of the officers. Moffitt, on the other hand, whose duties involved the careful writing of every order and despatch, of noting down each of Bolitho’s personal signals and instructions for the other captains in the squadron, was a product of the slums. He had wispy grey hair and glazed staring eyes which peered out from his parchment face like those of a man near to death. Or, as Allday had remarked unsympathetically, ‘I’ve seen better looking rogues dangling on a gallows!’

  From the little he had been able to discover, Bolitho had learned
that Moffitt had been in a debtors’ jail, awaiting transportation to the new penal colony at Botany Bay. A hopeful lieutenant with a court’s warrant for encouraging recruitment to His Majesty’s Navy as a direct substitute for transportation to the other side of the world, had arrived at the jail, and with several others Moffitt had begun a new life. His first ship had been an eighty-gun two-decker, and in a brief skirmish off Ushant her captain’s clerk had been killed by a stray musket ball. Moffitt had used the opportunity well, and had made yet one more change in his affairs by assuming the dead man’s duties. Transferred to Lysander at Spithead, he had been ready and willing to offer himself as commodore’s clerk, unless or until a better fitted person could be found. The rush to get the ship ready for sea and complete all repairs in time to receive Bolitho’s broad pendant had allowed Moffitt to slip into his new role with barely a ripple.

  Bolitho looked into his cup. It was only too easy to send Ozzard to make fresh coffee. It was one of his weaknesses. But he would stick to his rule and try to eke out his supply as long as possible.

  He heard the insistent thud of hammers and the rasp of saws. The work of repairing the damage was still going on without a break. This was the morning of the fourth day after the battle. Lysander, with the sloop and the prize in company, had continued in a slow north-easterly crawl, the hands turned-to until there was no proper light in which to work, to get her ready to fight again when required.

  In his mind’s eye he could see the chart when he had examined it before his meagre breakfast. They had been forced to maintain a very slow progress. Tattered sails had had to be sent down from aloft for repair or replacement from their stocks. The jib boom had been almost entirely refashioned after its thrusting collision with the French seventy-four, and he could join with Herrick’s report in complimenting Tuke, the carpenter, for his energies and devotion to perfection.

  Herrick quite rightly had written well of Lieutenant Veitch. The third lieutenant had controlled the gunnery throughout the battle, but more than that, he had decided, without calling for permission or advice, to double-shot some of his guns to help the carronade’s attack on one of the enemy ships. Doubleshotting was a risky thing under perfect conditions and with experienced seamen. Yet Veitch had managed to keep his head enough to select such men from disengaged guns and use the bombardment to maximum effect. Midshipman Luce, Yeo, the boatswain, and Major Leroux, all had been placed on the captain’s record for Bolitho’s approval.