In Gallant Company (31 page)

‘Fire!'

The deck rebounded as if the ship was driving ashore, and then there was a ragged cheer as the enemy's main-topgallant mast swung wildly on its stays before breaking away and plunging down like a lance.

A lucky shot, and nobody would ever know who had aimed it.

Pears' harsh voice carried easily above the squeak of gun trucks and the clatter of rammers.

‘Well done, Trojans! Hit 'em again!'

More cheers, quenched by the enemy's return fire, the terrifying crash of iron smashing into the hull and through some of the gunports below.

Bolitho winced, wondering why the Frenchman had changed his tactics. He heard the rumble of a cannon careering across the lower deck, the sudden lurch as it hit something solid. Men were yelling down there, their voices strangely muffled, like souls in torment.

The
Argonaute
seemed to be gaining, drawing slightly ahead, so that her jib boom appeared to be touching
Trojan
's bowsprit. With the advantage of wind and position, Pears would probably let his ship fall off, then spread more sail and try to cross the enemy's stern.

He heard Cairns' voice through his speaking trumpet. ‘Hands aloft! Loose t' gan'sls!'

Bolitho found himself nodding as if in agreement. The ship was turning again, just a few points, while her topgallant sails flapped and then hardened at their yards.

He watched the other ship, his eyes smarting in the smoke. One giant arrowhead of blue water, and both vessels aiming for some invisible mark which would bring them together.

‘Fire!'

The seamen leapt aside as their guns crashed inboard, groping in the funnelling smoke to sponge out the muzzles before a packed charge was rammed home.

Bolitho felt the hull quiver and realized the enemy had fired again, and saw part of a gangway splinter apart as if under an invisible axe. A seaman ran screaming and stumbling past his companion, his hands clawing at his face.

A marine seized him and pushed him to a hatchway, and others reached up to drag him below.

Bolitho glanced at Quinn and saw him retching. The seaman had taken a giant wood splinter in his eye as big as a marlinespike.

The sharper crack of the quarterdeck nine-pounders told him
that their crews had at last been able to bring them to bear on the enemy.

The noise was growing and spreading as the two ships moved inexorably towards each other. Wood splinters, fragments of cordage and yet another corpse joined the tangle on the nets, and from below Bolitho heard a man screaming like a tortured hare.

A quick glance aft again. Pears still there, unmoving and grim-faced as he studied the enemy. Coutts, apparently untroubled by the din of battle, one foot on a bollard as he pointed to something on the Frenchman's deck for Ackerman's benefit.

‘Fire!'

The guns were recoiling more unevenly now. The crews were getting tired, stunned by the constant thunder and crash of explosions.

Bolitho made himself walk along the deck, ducking to peer through each port as the men hauled their guns back in readiness to fire. A small world, a square of hazy sunlight in which each crew saw just a portion of the enemy.

He felt unsteady, his gait jerky as he moved behind them. His face was stiff with strain, and he imagined he must look halfway between laughing and squinting from shock.

Stockdale glanced round at him and nodded. Another man, Bolitho recognized him as Moffitt, waved his hand and shouted, ‘Hot work, sir!'

More powerful thuds into the lower hull, and then a column of black smoke through an open hatch to bring a chorus of shouts and cries of alarm. But the smoke was quickly brought under control, and Bolitho guessed that Dalyell's men had been ready for such an emergency.

‘Cease firing!'

As the men stood back from their smoking guns, Bolitho thought the silence almost as painful as the noise. The enemy had moved further across the bows, so that it was pointless to try to hit her.

Cairns shouted, ‘Put some men to larboard!' He gestured with his trumpet. ‘We will engage him as we cross his stern!'

Bolitho saw petty officers pushing dazed men across to the opposite side to help the depleted crews there. Pears had timed it well. With the slight change of tack, and extra canvas to give
her more speed,
Trojan
would sweep across the enemy's wake and pour a broadside, gun by gun, the length of her hull. Even if she were not dismasted, she would be too crippled to withstand the next encounter.

He shouted, ‘Ready, James!' Again he felt his jaw locked in a wild grin. ‘Yours is the honour this time!'

A gun captain touched Quinn's arm as he hurried past. ‘We'll show 'em, sir!'

‘Hands to the braces there!'

Bolitho swung round as Cairns' voice echoed from the quarterdeck.

Stockdale gasped, ‘The Frenchie's luffed, by God!'

Bolitho watched, his body like ice, seeing the
Argonaute
swinging steadily up into the wind, her reduced sails almost aback as she turned to face her enemy.

It was all happening in minutes, yet Bolitho could still find time for admiration at the superb seamanship and timing. Round and further still, so that when she had finished her manoeuvre she would be on the reverse tack, while
Trojan
was still struggling to slow her advance.

‘Hands aloft! Take in the t' gan'sls!'

Masts and spars shook and creaked violently as the helm was put over, but it was all taking too long.

As men ran wildly back to the starboard battery, Bolitho saw the enemy's side belch smoke and fire, felt the ship stagger as a carefully timed broadside smashed into the side from bowsprit to quarterdeck. Because of the angle, many of the shots did little damage, but others, which burst through gunports or smashed through the flimsy defences of gangways and nettings, caused terrible havoc. Three guns were upended, their crews either crushed or hurled aside like rubbish, and Bolitho heard the splintering bang of more balls ripping through the boat tier and sending a wave of splinters across the opposite side like tiny arrows. Men were falling and stumbling everywhere, and when Bolitho glanced at his legs he saw they were bloody from the carnage at the nearest gun.

A great chorus of voices made him turn in time to see the fore-topgallant mast fall across the bows and plunge over the side, taking with it a writhing trail of rigging like maddened
snakes, spar and canvas, and two screaming seamen.

Momentarily out of control,
Trojan
swung drunkenly away from her enemy, while all the time, as her jubilant crews reloaded,
Argonaute
continued to go about until she had completed one great circle. Then as she settled down on a parallel course, but slightly ahead of the
Trojan
, she opened fire with her sternmost guns.

Blinded by smoke, and fighting to free themselves from the mass of tangled rigging, the forward gun crews aboard the
Trojan
were able to return only half their shots.

Bolitho found himself striding up and down yelling meaningless words until he was hoarse, raw with the stench of battle.

Around him men were fighting back, dying, or sprawled in the bloody attitudes of death.

Others hurried past, following the boatswain and his mates, axes shining in the smoky glare, to hack the wreckage away before it swung the ship stern on towards those merciless guns.

And aft, his face like stone, Pears watched all of it, giving his orders, not even flinching as splinters whipped past him to bring down more of the crouching gun crews.

Midshipman Huss appeared on deck, his eyes white with fear. He saw Bolitho and shouted frantically, ‘Mr Dalyell's fallen, sir! I – I can't find . . .' He spun round, his face gaping with astonishment and freezing there as he pitched forward at Bolitho's feet.

Bolitho shouted, ‘Get below, James! Take command of the lower gundeck!'

But Quinn was staring transfixed at the midshipman. Blood was pouring from a great hole in his back, but one hand still moved, as if it and nothing else was holding on to life.

A seaman turned the boy over and rasped, ‘Done for, sir.'

‘Did you hear?' Bolitho gripped Quinn's arm, Huss and all else forgotten. ‘
Get below!
'

Quinn half turned, his eyes widening as more cries and screams came up from the other gundeck.

He stammered, ‘Can't. Can't . . . do . . . it.'

His head fell forward, and Bolitho saw tears running down his face, cutting pale furrows through the grime of gunsmoke.

An unfamiliar voice snapped, ‘I'll go.' It was Ackerman, the
immaculate flag lieutenant. ‘I can manage.' He stared at Quinn as if he could not believe what he saw. ‘The admiral sent me.'

Bolitho peered aft, shocked by Quinn's collapse, stunned by the horror and bloody shambles all around him.

Through the drifting smoke and dangling creeper of severed rigging their eyes met. Then Coutts gave a slight wave and what could have been a shrug.

The deck shivered, and Bolitho knew that the broken mast had been hacked free.

Trojan
was turning to windward, laying her enemy in the sights again, seemingly unreachable and beyond hurt.

‘Fire!'

The men sprang back, groping for their rammers and spikes, cursing and cheering like mad things from bedlam.

Quinn stood as before, oblivious to the hiss of iron overhead, to the crawling wounded, to the danger of his position as the enemy's mizzen and then mainmast towered high above the nettings.

Fifty yards, certainly no more, Bolitho thought wildly. Both ships were firing blindly through the churning smoke which was trapped between them as if to cushion the hammer blows.

A seaman ran from his gun, crazed by the din and slaughter, trying to reach a hatchway. To go deeper and deeper until he found the keel, like a terrified animal going to ground. A marine sentry raised his musket as if to club him down, but let it fall, as if he too was past reason and hope.

Couzens was tugging Bolitho's sleeve, his round face screwed up as if to shut out the awful sights.

‘Yes?' Bolitho had no idea how long he had been there. ‘What is it?'

The midshipman tore his eyes from Huss's corpse. ‘The captain says that the enemy intends to board us!' He stared at Quinn. ‘You are to take charge forrard.' He showed his old stubbornness. ‘I will assist.'

Bolitho gripped his shoulder. Through the thin blue coat the boy's body was hot, as if burning with fever.

‘Go and get some men from below.' As the boy made to run he called, ‘
Walk
, Mr Couzens. Show the people how calm you
are.' He forced a grin. ‘No matter how you may feel.'

He turned back to the guns, astounded he could speak like that when at any second he would be dead. Worse, he might be lying pinned on the surgeon's table, waiting for the first touch of his knife.

He watched the set of the enemy's yards, the way the angle was more acute as both ships idled closer together. The guns showed no sign of lessening, even though they were firing at point-blank range, some hurling blazing wads through the smoke which were almost as much danger as the balls.

There were new sounds now. The distant crack of muskets, the thuds of shots hitting deck and gangway, or ripping harmlessly into the packed hammock nettings.

From the maintop he heard the bark of a swivel and saw a cluster of marksmen drop from the enemy's mizzen-top, swept aside like dead fruit by a hail of canister.

Individual faces stood out on the
Argonaute
's decks, and he saw a petty officer pointing him out to another sharpshooter on the gangway. But he was felled by one of D'Esterre's marines even as he raised his musket to shoot.

He heard men scrambling up from the lower gundeck, the rasp of steel as they seized their cutlasses. Balleine, the boatswain's mate, stood by the mainmast rack, issuing the boarding pikes to anyone who came near him.

‘We will touch bow to bow.' Bolitho had spoken aloud without knowing it. ‘Not much time.' He drew his curved hanger and waved it over his head. ‘Clear the larboard battery! Come with me!'

A single ball crashed through an open port and beheaded a seaman even as he ran to obey. For a few moments the headless corpse stood stock-still, as if undecided what to do. Then it fell, and was forgotten as swearing and cheering the seamen dashed towards the forecastle, nothing in their minds but the towering bank of pockmarked sails alongside, the crimson stab of musket-fire.

Bolitho stared, watching the other ship's great bowsprit and jib boom poking through the smoke, thrusting above the forecastle and beakhead as if nothing could stop it. There were men already there, firing down at
Trojan
's deck, brandishing
their weapons, while beneath them their fierce-eyed figurehead watched the scene with incredible menace.

Then with a violent shudder both hulls ground together. Hacking and stabbing,
Trojan
's men swarmed to repel boarders, and from aft D'Esterre's men kept up a withering fire on the enemy's quarterdeck and poop.

Bolitho jumped over a fallen seaman and yelled, ‘Here they come!'

A French seaman tried to scramble on to the cathead, but a blow with a belaying pin knocked him aside, and a lunge from a pike sent him down between the hulls.

Bolitho found himself face to face with a young lieutenant. His sword-arm came up, the two blades circled warily and with care, despite the surging press of fighting figures all around.

The French officer lunged, his eyes widening with fear as Bolitho side-stepped and knocked his arm aside with his hanger, seeing the sleeve open up, the blood spurting out like paint.

Bolitho hesitated and then hacked him across the collar-bone, seeing him die before he hit the water alongside.

More men were hurrying to his aid, but when he twisted his head he saw Quinn standing by his guns as before, as if he would never move again.