Beyond the Reef

by Alexander Kent

  Keen said, ‘Let her fall off two points. I want to draw the others away.’

  It was at that moment that Valkyrie and then Relentless opened fire, the pale smoke fanning through their sails and rigging like low cloud. Much of the broadside fell short, flinging up banks of broken water, some of which reached the enemy vessels. The air quivered as the French line responded, the long orange tongues spitting out along the gunports. As Bolitho had predicted it was not a powerful reply; the lower guns were cruising just above the sea, and it seemed likely that the officers could not elevate them enough to reach the two seventy-fours.

  ‘Steady as you go!’ Keen crossed the quarterdeck, his eyes everywhere as he stared from the set of the sails to the enemy formation. They were beginning to draw near on a converging tack, whilst beyond them he could make out the sleek hull of the solitary frigate. He turned to say so to Bolitho, but saw him smile.

  ‘I’ve seen her. She flies a rear-admiral’s flag. It would be exactly what Baratte would do. This way he can remain in control, but move between the formations without delay.’

  Keen found himself able to smile back. ‘What you might do, sir, if I’m not mistaken!’

  Sedgemore was striding along the upper gundeck, his bared sword resting on his shoulder as he looked quickly at each crew. From the gun-captains with their trigger-lines already pulled taut, to the seamen on either side of the carriage, ready to sponge out the smoking muzzles and reload as they had done so many times in Keen’s relentless drills. The boys had sanded the decks, while others stood ready to fetch fresh powder from the magazine so long as it was needed. Boys from the seaport slums, or unwanted children from families already worn down by childbirth. The same age as the midshipmen for the most part. A million miles apart.

  Keen drew his sword and tossed the scabbard to Tojohns, his coxswain. He would not sheath it again until the enemy struck, or it was dragged from his dead hand.

  The leading French ship was changing tack very slightly. Bolitho imagined Joyce and his subordinates on the lower gundeck, watching the square ports, the glittering expanse of water and then out of nowhere, the enemy’s bowsprit and beakhead.

  Bolitho glanced at the masthead pendant. It was pointing stiffly, like a lance, and he felt the deck tilting even further to leeward. The shrill of Joyce’s whistle was drowned by the first pair of guns, and another, and still more until the air was filled with choking smoke. In the confines of that great gundeck it would be far worse.

  The leading Frenchman seemed to wilt, her canvas writhing as if torn apart by giant claws, and with a sliding crash which could be heard across the water her foremast and rigging fell over the side, taking shrouds, spars and shrieking men with it.

  The second ship, another seventy-four, had been obeying a signal to close on the leader, and now because her consort was staggering out of line, her forecastle strangely bare with the mast gone, there was danger of collision.

  Keen shouted, ‘Fire at will!’

  Whistles again, the upper and middle gundecks roared out at the enemy. Bolitho saw wreckage fly from the second ship, and holes punched through her flapping sails as the iron raked her from bow to poop.

  Allday gritted his teeth. ‘For what we are about to receive …’

  Every port along the enemy’s side flashed fire and Bolitho gripped the quarterdeck rail as he felt the shots smashing into the hull like great hammers. But nothing fell from above, and already several of the gun-captains below him had their hands in the air, ready to fire again.

  Keen yelled, ‘On the uproll, Mr Sedgemore!’

  ‘Fire!’

  The long twelve-pounders flung themselves inboard on the tackles, their black muzzles streaming smoke and hissing like live things as the wet sponges were rammed into them.

  ‘Run out!’ Sedgemore wiped his sweating face. ‘As you bear, lads! Fire!’

  The third ship had dropped down wind to avoid the leading two and swayed over to the force of a full broadside as she fired directly into Black Prince’s quarter.

  There were crashes and screams from below the poop, and the rumble of a gun being upended.

  ‘Put your helm down!’ Keen watched the leading ship swinging towards them, still out of control because of the great mass of rigging and spars hauling her round like some huge sea-anchor. He raised a glass and saw the gleam of axes as men tried to cut away the fallen mast, while others stood, apparently unable to move as Black Prince’s jib boom passed their own.

  At this range Joyce’s great thirty-two pounders could not miss. The enemy stood at barely thirty yards’ range when his guns thundered from every port, and another broadside of screaming metal ripped through the remaining masts and spars or across the deck itself.

  Major Bourchier watched with little more than professional interest as his lieutenant snapped, ‘Marines! Fix bayonets! Stand-to!’

  They stepped smartly up to the packed nettings and slid their muskets across the hammocks to take aim.

  Smoke swirled over the deck. Bolitho felt Allday flinch beside him as a ball crashed through a port and splintered on the breech of a gun even as it was being run out.

  The gun’s crew were hurled in all directions, some cut to pieces to cover the men at the neighbouring twelve-pounder with blood, others smashed down where they had been standing in their fixed attitudes before they fell to the deck.

  Midshipman Hilditch, one of the twelve-year-olds who had joined Black Prince at Spithead, had been running messages to and from the lower gundeck. He fell down the open hatchway, but not before Bolitho had seen that half of his face had gone. Like Tyacke.

  ‘She’s trying to cross our stern, Val!’

  Bolitho watched men running to Keen’s commands, hauling on braces and halliards to allow the ship to turn even further downwind. Their immediate danger was the third ship in the French line. If she managed to press astern, and at this close range, she could pour a full broadside deck by deck through Black Prince’s unprotected stern. Any fighting ship, once cleared for action, was open from bow to counter; a single carefully timed broadside would turn the open gundecks into a bloody shambles. But the enemy had left it too late, and was now coming about to overreach the flagship’s starboard quarter.

  ‘Marines! Open fire!’

  Like puny pop-guns amidst the thunder of the main armament the muskets obeyed, while far away in an unreal war the other battle raged on unheeded. When Bolitho raised his telescope he saw with dismay that Relentless was drifting, her steering apparently shot away, her main and mizzen cut down like savaged trees as she continued to fire into the dense smoke. Valkyrie’s masts were still intact, and he could see her flag floating above the drifting pall as if detached from any vessel.

  More shots hammered into the lower hull, and men screamed and fell dying as two balls burst through the nettings, killing gun crews on the disengaged side.

  A terrified midshipman ran across the quarterdeck, his eyes wide, probably from seeing Hilditch’s body on the ladder. If, mercifully, the iron splinter had killed him.

  Keen shouted, ‘Walk, Mr Stuart! The people are looking to you today!’

  Bolitho winced as another ragged burst of firing exploded over the deck. Keen’s remarks had been like hearing himself, all that time ago. He heard the boy gasp, ‘No more bar-shot, sir!’

  ‘Get below. Tell Mr Joyce to resume firing at the ship on our quarter.’

  The boy left the quarterdeck, walking, a small lost figure not daring to look at the sights around him.

  Some of the crews of the forward division broke away, cowering, as another ball screamed past them and overturned another gun.

  Sedgemore was there instantly. ‘Get back! Fight your gun, you bastards, or fight me!’

  They ran to the tackles again, the gun-captain watching them with a shame Bolitho could sense even from the quarterdeck.

  The nettings above the deck were bouncing with fallen cordage, and a musket dropped by someone from the maintop. Some seamen were strugg
ling up the lee shrouds with a boatswain’s mate to try to repair dangling rigging. One fell almost at once as marksmen fired from the other ship to test their aim and prepare to mark down the officers.

  ‘The second ship is closing, sir!’ Keen’s hand went to his head as his hat was knocked to the deck. The shot had missed him by inches.

  In a brief lull Bolitho heard the sharper bang of Tybalt’s guns. She must be among the supply ships.

  ‘Must concentrate on the last one, Val!’

  He almost fell as a ball smashed across the deck and cut down two of the helmsmen.

  Two more ran to replace them but the quartermaster yelled, ‘She don’t answer, sir!’ His white trousers were splashed with bright blood from his two companions but all he could think of was the wheel. The ship was already going out of control.

  More shots hammered the stout hull, and Bolitho found himself recalling Hyperion’s last fight. She would have been no match for this merciless bombardment. A great explosion made the air cringe, but the intensity of the crossfire from all the engaged ships soon recovered.

  It must have been a supply vessel blowing up, like the one Adam had destroyed.

  Bolitho lifted a glass and watched the men swarming across the forecastle of the French ship, some exchanging fire with the marines, others brandishing hangers and axes, preparing to board as Black Prince continued to fall downwind.

  Keen stared at him with wretched eyes. ‘If we had some support, sir!’ It was like a cry of despair.

  Major Bourchier shouted hoarsely, ‘More marines down aft, Mr Courtenay!’ But the lieutenant lay dead beside his sergeant, and Bolitho was reminded of those first terrible seconds when he had boarded Herrick’s flagship. Herrick had still been calling out orders to his marines, who had been strewn across the bloodied decks like broken toy soldiers.

  Allday drew his cutlass and said, ‘Together again, eh, Sir Richard?’ He watched narrowly as Tojohns hurried to give Keen his hat. There was a neat hole punched through its brim.

  Keen felt suddenly at ease. The madness, then. He had seen some of the new men break and run from their stations when death had moaned amongst them. But not I. This is my ship. They will take it from me on pain of death.

  Balls hammered into the deck nearby and he guessed that the French marksmen were shooting from the two-decker’s foretop. Then he heard Tojohns cry out, and saw him lurch against an unmanned gun, blood spilling from his mouth. Jenour knelt beside him but shook his head. ‘He’s gone, sir.’

  Bolitho shouted, ‘Come here, Stephen!’ He had seen the tell-tale splinters spurting from the deck. The enemy marksmen must have seen Jenour’s uniform even through the choking barrier of smoke.

  Jenour had caught the same unreasoning madness: he lifted his hat in salute towards the enemy’s foretop, and then strolled unhurriedly across the deck to join him.

  Allday glanced at the other coxswain, glaring and ugly in death, and sliced the air defiantly with his blade. ‘Never volunteer, matey!’

  There was a shuddering lurch as the other ship’s bowsprit drove into the mizzen rigging like a tusk. Men were falling or leaping down on to Black Prince’s chains and gangway only to be hurled off, screaming, by seamen with pikes who thrust them through the nettings, forcing them into the narrowing wedge of trapped water.

  Lieutenant Sedgemore yelled, ‘Two men! Over here! Help train this gun round as far as …’

  A heavy ball struck him in the chest, and he dropped very slowly to his knees, his face filled with disbelief. He was dead before he hit the reddened planking.

  Keen shouted, ‘I’ll not strike!’

  Bolitho drew the old sword and saw Allday’s big shadow overlap his own.

  ‘Nor I!’

  Somewhere a trumpet wailed through the sporadic firing.

  As if to a signal, every ship fell silent. It was like being rendered deaf, until the cries and screams of the wounded and dying betrayed the gruesome reality of the battle.

  Keen wiped his mouth with his sleeve. ‘What is happening?’ He saw Midshipman Houston staring at him, his cheek laid bare by a wood splinter. ‘Aloft with you!’

  Bolitho heard Lieutenant Whyham taking charge of the upper deck, and wondered if he saw the corpse of his superior as his chance of promotion, as Sedgemore had once done.

  He heard Houston’s voice too, shrill above the other sounds, shocked perhaps by the torn corpses in the maintop, which had received a full charge of grape shot.

  ‘From Valkyrie, sir! Ships to the north-west!’

  Bolitho gripped Keen’s arm until he winced with pain. ‘He came after all, Val!’ He looked around the deeply stained decks, the sprawled dead, the crawling, sobbing wounded. ‘If only it had been sooner!’

  The French ships were making sail, and as the smoke began to roll downwind Bolitho saw the enemy’s solitary frigate, a rear-admiral’s flag at the mizzen truck, and then, slowly emerging through the smoke beyond her, Tybalt. Her sails were peppered with holes, and there were deep scars along her hull.

  But Bolitho could only stare at the motionless enemy frigate. He rubbed his eye until the pain made him cry out.

  ‘The flag, Val! Look at it and tell me I’m not insane!’

  Keen forced a smile; the madness was draining away. Afterwards it would be worse. But now … He replied, ‘It’s our flag, sir,’ and then, surprised. ‘There’s more to Tybalt’s captain than I realised!’

  Houston’s voice intruded. ‘The leading ship is Matchless, seventy-four, sir! She flies a rear-admiral’s flag!’ A short pause as if the words had caught in his throat. ‘The others are our ships too!’

  Whatever else was said was drowned by a wild burst of cheering. Men spilled out of hatchways and from guns; others hung in the rigging and cheered as if the rest of the squadron could hear them.

  Keen asked, ‘Shall we give chase to the enemy, sir?’

  Bolitho rested against the sun-dried woodwork. There was fresh blood on his sleeve, but whose and when he did not know.

  ‘No chase. There has been enough butchery today, and the enemy’s plans are broken in the Indies.’ He wiped his face again. Herrick had not forgotten. But for him, Black Prince and the others would have been overrun. But they had scattered the enemy. To some the price would be seen as paltry. Whereas, if they had struck to the enemy to save lives, they would have been dishonoured, damned by those same politicians who would eventually give him credit.

  He gazed at the tired, powder-stained faces he knew and loved – that was the only word to describe it.

  Allday, massive and unhurt, turning to take a mug of something from Ozzard as he crept past the damage and the gaping corpses. Keen, already thinking of his men, and the need to prepare his ship again for any challenge, be it from the enemy or the ocean.

  And those he only knew by sight and name. Like the two midshipmen nearby who were sobbing quietly, not caring who saw their relief. Julyan the sailing-master, tying his favourite red handkerchief around the wrist of one of his mates.

  And all those who were cheering still, at him and to one another. And here came William Coutts the surgeon, more like a slaughterman in his bloodstained apron. Bringing the bill to his captain, the price they had paid on this day in February. The names of those who would never see England again, or know pride in anything they had done.

  Jenour said, ‘Orders, Sir Richard?’

  Bolitho reached out and gripped his arms, and said quietly. ‘Over there – the captured frigate Triton.’ He saw it shake Jenour even from the brutal reality of battle.

  ‘I … I don’t want to, Sir Richard …’

  ‘You will take my despatches to London yourself, Commander Jenour. Their lordships will doubtless give her to another, more experienced or with more influence, but certainly not more worthy. Equally, they must offer you a command of your own.’

  Jenour could not speak, and Allday turned away, unwilling to watch.

  Bolitho insisted, ‘I shall miss you, Stephen, more than you r
ealise. But war is war, and I owe your experience to the men you will command.’

  Jenour nodded, his face lowered. ‘I shall never forget …’

  ‘And something else, Stephen. I want you to see Lady Catherine yourself and give her my letter. Will you do that?’

  Jenour could say nothing. His face was drawn and mask-like.

  ‘Tell her what it was like, tell her the truth – the way only you can. And give her … my deepest love.’ He himself could no longer speak; his eyes were distant, seeing her walking on that wintry headland.

  Someone called, ‘Matchless is lying-to, sir!’

  Her Irish captain, Lord Rathcullen, must have sailed her like a madman, like the day he had all but dismasted her. The remaining ships of the squadron were still far astern of him.

  Keen said, ‘I can’t make it out, sir. They’ve lowered the rear-admiral’s flag.’ Then he said sharply, ‘Muster the side party – Matchless has dropped a boat!’

  Bolitho said, ‘That is to let me know that I am in command again – he wants no part in all this.’

  But when the boat came alongside there was no Herrick aboard.

  Bolitho greeted the tall Irish peer at the entry port and said, ‘You arrived just in time, sir!’

  Rathcullen looked around at the dangling rigging, the dull smears where corpses had been dragged away, the hanging smoke and lingering chaos he had missed.

  ‘I thought we were too late, Sir Richard. When I discovered what …’

  ‘But where is Rear-Admiral Herrick? Is he well?’

  Rathcullen was shaking hands with Keen. ‘It was a ruse, Sir Richard. I guessed that if the enemy saw an admiral’s flag they would assume a far larger squadron was about to engage them.’

  Keen said shortly, ‘It succeeded. Nothing else would have saved us, and we captured the French admiral for good measure.’ But his voice was dull; he was haunted by the disbelief, the deepening hurt on Bolitho’s face.