Men hauled wildly at the braces, the yards creaking and allowing the sun to spill more light into smoke-hazed decks.
‘Fire!’
The larboard guns came crashing inboard, one by one, the crews sponging out and yelling like madmen as they reloaded.
Bolitho saw the second French ship rising above the rolling smoke, and knew he had caught the leader unprepared. The second one was already probing towards the larboard bow, and ahead of her, hidden in Lysander’s own gunsmoke, was the gap between the ships, the hole in the line.
‘Set the forecourse!’ Bolitho heard balls whimpering overhead and saw tall waterspouts bracketing the ship on either side. The deck bucked sharply, and several lengths of broken cordage fell unheeded on the spread nets. ‘Hold her, Mr. Grubb!’
Major Leroux yelled, ‘Ready, Marines!’ He had his sword above his head. ‘By sections, fire!’
The sharper cracks of the muskets, the hollow bang of the maintop swivel, must have made the men at the lower battery on the starboard side realise for the first time just how near the Frenchman was. And as Lysander, holding the wind in her increased canvas, surged across the leader’s stern, the crews cheered, blinking in the sunlight, then reeling aside as Lieutenant Steere blew his whistle, and the whole line of thirty-two-pounders roared out at the enemy.
Painted scrollwork, glass and strips of timber flew above the smoke, and Bolitho pictured the terror amongst the supply ships as Lysander’s fierce-eyed figurehead thrust through the line towards them.
‘Fire!’
The second Frenchman, another seventy-four, was changing course rapidly, swinging to larboard and firing as she followed Lysander round. Balls ripped into the hull and hissed above the sweating gun crews, while from the French leader came a less powerful challenge from a stern chaser and a few charges of canister. Several marines had dropped, but Sergeant Gritton was holding them together. The ramrods rising and falling, the balls rammed home, and then the scarlet line back up to the nettings to shoot once more.
Bolitho ran to the lee side and peered through the smoke. The French leader had lost her main topmast and was drifting heavily, with either her steering gone, or so badly hampered by dragging spars and canvas she was temporarily out of control.
‘Again, Mr. Veitch! Full broadside!’
Gun captains yelled to restrain the din-crazed crews, even used their fists, as one by one the starboard guns were trundled to the ports and each captain held a blackened hand towards his officer.
Veitch yelled, ‘Fire!’
Starting with the lower battery, up along the eighteen-pounders, and finally to the quarter-deck nine-pounders, every black muzzle added its havoc to the bombardment.
Bolitho watched the smoke rolling away, trying to see the enemy, his eyes streaming, his mouth like sand.
The sky had gone, even the sun, and the world was confined to a thundering nightmare of flame and earsplitting noise.
He felt the hull shiver, heard muffled screams from far below as enemy iron came through a port and sliced amongst the crowded gun deck. He tried not to think of Pascoe lying hurt or crippled, the horror that a great ball could do in such a confined place.
He saw a flag making a small patch of colour in the smoke, and realised there was no other mast near it. Some of the gun crews started to cheer, their voices strangely muffled after the din of a full broadside. He watched grimly as the other ship showed herself through the fog, her stern and quarter smashed and almost unrecognisable. Only her foremast remained, and some brave soul was risking death to climb aloft and fix a new tricolour to the foretop.
Herrick shouted incredulously, ‘Nicator’s not following!’ He fell back as a man was hurled from a gun, his scream dying in his throat. Herrick lowered him to the deck, his hands spattered with blood. As he scrambled up again he said savagely, ‘Probyn’s not going to help!’
Bolitho glanced at him and ran to the larboard side, seeking the rest of the enemy line, and saw that the remaining two were holding on the same course, while the one which had swung round after Lysander was still trying to overhaul, her forward guns firing towards the quarter.
Bolitho shouted, ‘Direct your fire on that one!’
He winced as men fell kicking from a pair of guns. Splinters and charred hammocks burst across the boat tier, and he saw a ship’s boy smashed to the deck and almost decapitated by a jagged length of planking.
‘Fire!’ Lieutenant Kipling was still walking up and down, but his hat had gone, and his left arm hung useless at his side. ‘Stop your vents! Sponge out! Load!’ He stooped to drag a wounded man from the path of a gun. ‘Run out!’
Thuds along the gangway and decks made some duck away, and Bolitho saw bright darting flames from the enemy’s tops as the sharpshooters tested their aim.
‘Fire!’
There was a ragged cheer as the enemy’s fore topgallant mast toppled, steadied and then plunged into her own gunsmoke. Some of her marksmen would have gone with it.
But she was still firing, and Bolitho could feel the balls slamming into the side and poop, the crash and whine of metal, the dreadful screams.
A midshipman ran across the deck, his eyes fixed on Bolitho.
‘Sir! Immor-Immor-’ He gave up. ‘Captain Javal’s ship is breaking through, sir! Mr. Yeo’s respects, and he saw her thrusting across the third Frenchie’s bowsprit!’
Bolitho gripped his shoulder, feeling him jump with alarm as a ball crashed through the quarter-deck rail and killed two men at a nine-pounder. They fell in a bloody heap at the midshipman’s feet, and it was then that Bolitho realised it was Breen, his ginger hair almost black with smoke.
‘Thank you, Mr. Breen.’ He held his shoulder tightly until he could feel some of the terror ebbing away. ‘My compliments to the boatswain.’ As the midshipman started to run for the ladder he said, ‘Take your time, Mr. Breen!’ He saw his words holding him, steadying him. ‘Our people are looking to their “young gentlemen” today!’ He saw the boy grin.
Herrick called, ‘I can see Nicator, sir! She’s still disengaged!’
Bolitho looked at him. Probyn was well clear. He could apply his strength to the rearmost French seventy-fours which were now exchanging shots with Immortalité. Or he could set more sail and come after Lysander.
He said, ‘General signal. Close action.’
He turned as Herrick hurried away and stared across the nettings. He saw Nicator’s topsails, her hoisted acknowledgement very bright against the smoke.
Bolitho coughed and retched as more smoke funnelled through the ports.
‘Mr. Glasson! Tell your men to keep that signal flying, no matter what!’
Herrick shouted, ‘Glasson’s dead, sir.’
He stepped aside as some marines lifted the acting-lieutenant clear of the guns. His face was screwed into a petulant frown, his mouth open as if about to reprimand the marines who carried him.
‘I’ll attend to it, sir!’
Bolitho turned and saw Saxby staring up at him. He had forgotten all about him.
‘Thank you.’ He tried to smile, but his face felt stiff and unmoving. ‘I want the signal, and our Colours to be seen. If you have to tie them to the bowsprit!’
He heard a chorus of groans, and then Major Leroux shouted from the poop, ‘Captain Javal’s having a hard fight, sir! His mizzen is gone, and he seems to be trying to grapple!’
Bolitho nodded. The French would have recognised Javal’s ship as one of their own. They would try to recapture her first. It was a natural instinct.
He said, ‘More sail, Thomas! Set the t’gallants! I want to get amongst the supply ships!’
A seaman fell from an upper yard and lay with an arm thrust through the net. The dead reaching for the living.
But others were responding to the orders, and under more sails Lysander forged ahead of the French two-decker.
Herrick wiped his grimy face with his sleeve and grinned. ‘Always was a fast sailer, sir!’ He waved his hat, the despe
ration of battle in his eyes. ‘Huzza, lads! Hit ’em, lads!’
Another line of long flashes burst from Lysander’s hull, and with full traverse on the lower battery Lieutenant Steere’s gun captains got several more hits on the enemy. The other ship had lost all her topgallant masts, and her forecastle was a shambles of broken spars and cordage. Several of her ports were black and empty, like blind eyes, where guns had been overturned, their crews killed or wounded.
But she was still following, her jib boom overlapping Lysander’s larboard quarter like a tusk, and less than eighty yards clear.
Leroux’s marksmen were firing without pause, their faces grim with concentration as their tall sergeant picked out what he considered the most important targets.
But the French were also busy, and the air above the poop was alive with musket balls. Splinters flew from planking and gangways, or thudded viciously into the packed hammock nettings. Here and there a man fell from a gun or the shrouds, and the roar of gunfire was becoming unbearable. For across Lysander’s path lay several supply ships, two locked together after colliding in their haste to get away. Kipling was up in the midst of his forward guns, yelling to the carronade crews and encouraging everyone around him. The most forward guns on both decks were already adding their weight to the din, and the entangled supply ships were raked and ablaze with the swiftness of a torch in dry grass.
Veitch yelled wildly through his trumpet, ‘Mr. Kipling! Point your guns to starboard!’
He gestured with the trumpet as a seaman touched Kipling’s arm to catch his attention. Through the dense smoke, displaying her distinctive red wales, was the heavy supply ship from Corfu, yards hard-braced and her foresail filling strongly as she tacked to avoid her burning consorts.
‘As you bear! Fire!’
Bolitho walked as if in a trance. Calling out and encouraging, not knowing if they recognised him, let alone heard his words. All around men were working their guns, firing, and dying. Others lay moaning and holding their wounds. Some merely sat staring at nothing, their minds shattered perhaps forever.
All daylight seemed to have gone, although in his reeling mind Bolitho knew it was no later than eight or nine in the forenoon. It was painful to breathe, and what air there was seemed to be spewed from the guns, as if heated by each blistered muzzle before it reached his lungs.
A blast of canister scythed over the nettings, and he saw Veitch spin round, seizing his arm at the elbow and grimacing in agony as blood poured down his wrist and on to his leg.
A seaman tried to help him to the ladder, but Veitch snarled, ‘Bind it, man! I’ll not quit the deck for it!’
Lysander’s guns were firing from both sides at once, seeking out the blurred shapes which loomed and faded in the dense smoke, and with the din of their broadsides Bolitho could hear the crash of the shots hitting the targets and cutting down masts, sails and men in a devastating onslaught.
Herrick shouted, ‘There she goes!’ He pointed abeam.
The red-striped supply ship was listing steeply, her hull punctured by several heavy balls. The weight of her cargo did the rest. The great siege guns began to tear adrift in her holds, and although there was no sound to rise above the thunder of cannon fire, Bolitho imagined he could hear the sea surging into her, while her crew fought to reach the upper deck before she dived to the bottom.
Hopelessly outgunned, the French frigate which had been trying to herd the supply ships away from the fighting, came out of the smoke, her guns blazing, her deck tilting to the thrust of her canvas. She swept across Lysander’s bows, her iron slamming through the beakhead and foresail, knocking a carronade off its slide and killing Lieutenant Kipling where he stood.
As she forged across the starboard bow, Lysander’s forward gun crews crouched at their ports, eyes reddened and smarting, bodies shining and streaked in sweat and powder smoke, watching the frigate’s progress and awaiting Kipling’s whistle.
The boatswain, Harry Yeo, cupped his hands and bellowed, ‘Fire!’
Then he, too, fell bleeding and dying, and like Kipling did not see the proud frigate changed into a dismasted shambles by the great guns.
A violent explosion stirred the sails like a hot wind, the smoke rising momentarily above the embattled ships and allowing sunlight to probe down like a misty lantern.
The first French ship was still drifting downwind, and the water around her was littered with flotsam and dead men. The second one was dropping astern of Lysander with only one bow chaser which would bear. But Bolitho saw Immortalité and knew it must have been a magazine which had exploded. Javal had managed to grapple one of the Frenchmen, and while the other had tried to cross his stern and rake him from end to end, a fire had started. A lamp blown from its hook, a man running in panic and igniting some powder by accident, nobody would ever know. Of the captured prize there was little to be seen. Her masts had gone, and she was a mass of flame which grew and spread with every second. It had blown to the ship alongside, and with her sails blasted away, her rigging and gangway well alight, she, too, was doomed.
Bolitho wiped his eyes, feeling the pain for Javal and his men.
Then as the smoke swirled down again he heard Grubb yell, ‘Rudder, sir!’
He crossed the deck, ignoring the occasional thud of a ball by his feet as he stared at the helmsmen who were swinging the big wheel from side to side.
Grubb added thickly, ‘That bugger’s chaser ’as shot the rudder lines away!’ He pointed at the fore topsail beyond the quarter-deck rail. ‘She’s payin’ off!’
Bolitho shouted, ‘Get some men aft! Rig new lines!’ He saw Plowman call for seamen from the nearest guns. ‘Fast as you can!’
Herrick stared despairingly at the flapping sails. ‘We must shorten at once!’
‘Aye, Thomas.’
He tried not to think of their following Frenchman. One lucky shot had hit Lysander’s steering gear, and now, as the wind turned her gently downwind, she was swinging her stern towards her enemy. It would be Osiris all over again. He tried not to curse aloud. Except that this time there was no Lysander coming to the rescue.
On every side he saw or heard the chaos caused amongst the supply ships. De Brueys might have soldiers and horse artillery in plenty with his main fleet, but he would never have a single siege gun like the one which had sent Osiris to her death.
Then, as now, Nicator had kept away. Held off by a man so embittered, so twisted by his hatred that he would see his own people die, and do nothing to help.
More crashes came from below, and there was a chorus of yells as Lysander’s main topgallant mast came splintering down through the smoke, taking men and sail with it into the water alongside with a mighty splash.
As more seamen ran with axes to hack it away, Bolitho saw Saxby hurrying to the shrouds, another broad pendant wrapped around his waist like a sash.
As he hauled at the halliards he shouted, ‘Thought I might need an extra one, y’see, sir!’ He was laughing and weeping, his fear gone in the horror which surrounded him. Later, if he survived, it would be harder to bear.
Bolitho looked past him towards the Frenchman’s topsails and beakhead as they towered above the larboard quarter. Guns hammered back and forth between them, and he felt the deck lurching, heard some of his men still able to cheer as they saw their own shots slamming home.
But it was no use. Lysander was still swinging helplessly, her tattered sails streaming through the smoke, her guns barely able to keep firing for want of men to supply their need.
The smoke writhed and blossomed scarlet, and Bolitho reached out for support as the first of the enemy’s iron smashed through the poop. Marines and seamen fell dead and dying in its path. Lieutenant Nepean dropped his sword and fell choking on blood, and when Leroux yelled for his sergeant, he, too, was unable to reply, but sat holding his stomach, his eyes glazing as he tried to respond to his major as he had always done.
Allday drew his cutlass and thrust his body behind Bolitho like a shield.
Through his teeth he said, ‘One more broadside, an’ I reckon they’ll try to board us!’ He pushed a dying marine away and pointed his cutlass through the smoke. ‘Just one man I’d rather kill than any Frog today!’
Herrick walked past, hands behind him, his face very composed.
He said, ‘Mr. Plowman says it will take all of ten minutes more, sir.’
It might as well be an hour, Bolitho thought.
Herrick looked at Allday. ‘And who is that?’
‘Cap’n bloody Probyn, that’s who!’
The French ship was barely feet away from the quarter, although with so much smoke it could have been any distance. What guns would bear were pouring shots into Lysander’s poop and lower hull, and from the bowsprit and spritsail yard marksmen were shooting at Lysander’s quarter-deck as fast as they could aim.
Bolitho shouted to Herrick, ‘How are the supply ships?’
Herrick bared his teeth. ‘Six done for, and maybe the same number crippled!’
Bolitho turned to see a body dragged clear of the poop.
Moffitt, his clerk, his thin grey hair marked with a bright touch of scarlet where a splinter had cut him down. Like Gilchrist’s father, he had known the misery of a debtor’s prison, and now lay dead.
He had to force the words out. ‘I am ordering you to haul down our Colours, Thomas.’
Herrick stared at him, his mouth tight with strain. ‘Strike, sir?’
Bolitho walked past him, feeling Allday close at his back. Protecting him as always.
‘Aye. Strike.’ He looked at the upended guns, the blood, some of which had splashed as high as the tattered forecourse. ‘We did what we intended. I’ll not see another man die to save my honour.’
‘But, sir!’
Herrick hesitated as Veitch lurched over to join him, his arm wet with blood, his face like wax.
Veitch gasped, ‘We’ll fight ’em, sir! We’ve still got some good lads!’
Bolitho looked at them wearily. ‘I know you’d fight.’ He turned towards the enemy. ‘But then our men would die for nothing.’
He looked for Saxby and saw him crouching by the bulwark.
Signal, Close Action! Page 35