A Tradition of Victory

5. Single-Handed

“BY TH’ MARK SEVEN!” The leadsman’s voice seemed unnaturally loud to the intent figures on Styx ’s quarterdeck.

Bolitho looked up quickly as the big mainsail and forecourse filled and hardened to the breeze. You could hardly call it a wind, but with her canvas drawing well Styx was making a favourable eight or nine knots through the water.

He watched the island as it grew larger above the starboard bow. The sun had moved across it in the last few minutes, or so it appeared, and the nearest rise of headland was already in shadow.

The bow-chasers continued to fire at regular intervals, while far ahead of the Styx ’s beakhead the French yawl was wavering from side to side, her master apparently still convinced he was the prime target.

Neale lowered his telescope and said, “Dusk early tonight, sir.” He added bitterly, “It damn well would be!”

Bolitho said nothing but concentrated on the small island. As the ship stood deeper into the channel between it and the mainland, he was conscious of the tension around him, and wondered what the French were doing across that narrowing strip of water. There had been no more shots, and he felt the returning bite of anxiety, the feeling he might have miscalculated, that there was nothing important here after all.

Allday shifted his feet and muttered, “Must be asleep, the lot o’ ’em!”

Browne remarked, “I can see smoke. There, low down, man!”

Neale hurried across the deck, thrusting a midshipman aside like an empty sack.

“Where?” He trained his glass again. “God dammit, it’s not smoke, it’s dust!”

Bolitho picked up a telescope and followed the bearing carefully. Dust it was, and the reason became clear as a team of horses charged from behind some low scrub, a limber and cannon bouncing behind them as they headed for the other end of the island. Within minutes another limber and fieldpiece followed it along the track, the dying sunlight glinting briefly on the outriders’ uniforms and equipment.

Bolitho closed his glass and tried to control his excitement. He had not been mistaken. The French had been so sure of their safe anchorage that they had relied on field artillery rather than a fixed shore battery. They probably intended to remove the guns altogether once the last of the new invasion craft had been delivered to their final destination.

No wonder Styx had not been fired on after the first warning shots. The fall of shot had been too precise, fired by soldiers used to the ways of a land battle. A naval gunner would have laid and fired each of his battery by hand. Just to be certain and to avoid wasting shot. The latter was always paramount in a sailor’s mind when he was aboard ship and a long way from ready supplies, so why should he change his ways ashore?

“Deck there!”

Neale wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and growled, “Well, come on, man, spit it out!”

But the masthead lookout was too well trained to be bothered by the impatient group far beneath his dangling legs.

Then he called, “Ships at anchor round the point, sir!”

One of the leadsmen shouted from forward, “By th’ mark five!” But apart from Bundy, the master, nobody seemed to care. Some peered beyond the bows, others stared up at the masthead, eager for more news.

“A dozen or more at anchor, sir!” Even the distance from deck to topmast could not hide the man’s disbelief as he added hoarsely, “No, sir, far more’n that!”

Neale clapped his hands together. “Got ’em, by God!”

Bundy said quickly, “We’re enterin’ the shallows, sir.” He flinched under Neale’s stare. “Sorry, sir, but you had to know.”

“Deepfour! ” The leadsman’s voice was like a sad chant.

The first lieutenant joined Bundy by his chart. “Tide’s still on the ebb.” He glanced meaningly at his captain and then at the upper yards.

Neale said, “Get the royals on her. We’ll run with the tide.” He looked at Bolitho and added, “With your consent, sir?”

“I agree. We need haste above all.”

He forgot the cries of the seamen as they freed the sails from the upper yards, the bark of orders and squeal of halliards, for as the ship forged on a converging track towards the next headland he saw the first of the anchored vessels. No wonder the lookout was amazed. There were dozens of them, some moored in pairs, others, possibly gun brigs or bombs, anchored separately, a veritable armada of small ships. It was not difficult to imagine them disgorging French dragoons and infantry on to the beaches of southern England.

“Deep four!” The leadsman hauled up his line so rapidly that his muscular arm appeared blurred in the red sunlight.

Neale shouted, “Stand by, starboard battery!” He watched as every gun-captain raised his hand along the side, while behind them their lieutenants continued to prowl up and down like strangers to each other.

The island was much deeper in shadow, and against it the crowded hulls of the newly-built vessels looked like one vast, ungainly raft.

Bolitho stared at the glowing red ball of sunlight. Not long now. If only Sparrowhawk, even Rapid, were here. As it was, it would soon be too shallow to man?uvre without running aground, and they could never sink or damage more than two or three.

He snapped, “Where’s the yawl?”

Neale called, “Fine on the starboard bow, sir. I think she intends to anchor amongst that lot, if she can.”

Bolitho made up his mind. “Tell your gun-captains to hit the yawl. A guinea for the first crew to cripple her!”

There were a few gasps of surprise at the choice of target, but after some quick adjustments with handspikes and tackles, the gun-captains shouted their readiness.

“As you bear!” Neale raised his curved hanger above his head. “On the uproll!” Seconds became hours. “Fire!”

Down the frigate’s side each gun muzzle belched fire and smoke and hurled itself inboard on its tackles. The forward guns were being sponged out and reloaded even as the aftermost division added to the din.

The yawl, caught at the very moment she was trying to change tack towards the other vessels, seemed to collapse under the weight of iron as each double-shotted gun blasted across a range of less than two cables.

Around the stricken yawl the sea was patterned with splashes as falling shot, wreckage and splintered spars cascaded down on every side.

A tiny pin-prick of light winked from the battered hull and almost immediately blossomed into a great gout of fire. A powder cask touched by a spark, a dazed seaman caught off balance with a lantern between decks, it could have been anything.

Bundy exclaimed thickly, “God, she’s ablaze!”

Bolitho tried to contain the sick pity he felt for the men on that blazing vessel. One heavy ball would have been enough to sink her, a broadside had changed her into an inferno. A fireship.

He kept his voice level as he said, “That should make the others up-anchor!”

Something punched through the maincourse and left a hole big enough for a man to climb through. One of those horse artillery gunners had reached his site.

The first lieutenant yelled, “They’s cutting their cables!”

Caught by wind and tide, the wide cluster of moored craft was already opening up as each master endeavoured to fight his way clear, to make sail and to hell with his consorts. Anything but stay and be destroyed by fire or the enemy frigate which was rushing headlong towards them with only a few feet beneath her keel.

“As you bear! Continue firing!”

Neale hurried to the quarterdeck rail as the nearest vessels loomed out of the deepening shadows, his cheeks glowing in the reflected flames.

“Larboard battery, stand by! ”

The crews started to cheer as another vessel appeared on the opposite bow, some sails already set and her stem pointing towards France.

As the larboard battery joined in the fight, the escaping craft was deluged in falling waterspouts, while above her deck masts and canvas were flung about as if lashed by a great gale.

Neale said, “She’s done for.” He flinched as metal shrieked low above the hammock nettings and smashed down in the sea abeam.

Bolitho stared at the chaos which seemed in danger of colliding with and snaring the attacking frigate. Vessels which had cut their cables too soon were drifting down entangled with some of their consorts, and others were risking everything to escape into open water. They were as much in danger from their own artillery ashore as they were from Neale’s guns. For it was almost dark now, apart from the flashing tongues of cannon fire, the flames of burning vessels having been quenched by the sea.

“Cease firing, Captain Neale.”

Bolitho tried to free his mind of the elation the taste of battle had created around him. Not one ball had hit Styx, and not a man had even been injured. The kind of sea-fight every sailor dreamed about.

“Sir?” Neale watched him eagerly.

“If you were the French commander here, what would you do? Recall the vessels and anchor them again while you set up a new battery to protect them, or send them packing to the north where they were intended?”

Neale grinned at two of his smoke-blackened seamen who were cheering and capering in a wild dance.

Then he became serious. “I’d not send them back to their original harbours. It would seem like incompetence, cowardice even, with such urgency demanded for their delivery.” He nodded slowly. “I’d send them on, sir, before we can summon heavier reinforcements.”

Bolitho smiled gravely. “I agree with you. So tell the master to lay a course to clear this channel and then beat back to the rendezvous. As soon as we sight Rapid I’ll send her to find the others. I’ll wager Rapid is still close at hand and wondering what the devil we have been doing. Apart from stealing her prize, that is!” He gripped Neale’s arm, unable to keep the excitement to himself. “We shall have the wind in our favour, think of it, man! We know that no support is coming from Lorient or Brest for these craft, otherwise Sparrowhawk or Phalarope would have sighted it. We have just created panic, but panic will not last. We must act at once. Phalarope, with her armament of carronades, can reap a rich harvest amongst these flimsy vessels.”

He looked up sharply as the sails flapped noisily above the deck. They were drawing under the lee of the island, but once in deeper water they could soon fight their way back to their friends.

Neale said doubtfully, “We shall be close inshore, sir.” He grinned. “But you are right, we can do it.” He shouted, “Mr Pickthorn! Hands to the braces! Stand by to come about!”

Bolitho made to leave and then said, “I shall not forget your support, Captain Neale. You could have lost your keel back there.”

Neale watched him go and remarked, “After that, I could sail this ship on a heavy dew!”

Bundy looked at his mates and grimaced. “Not with me, ’e bloody won’t!”

Bolitho opened his eyes and groaned. His body felt as if it had been kicked in several different places, and he realized he had fallen asleep in Neale’s chair.

His senses returned instantly as he saw Allday bending over him.

“What is it?”

Allday placed a mug of coffee carefully on the table.

“Wind’s freshening, sir, and it’ll be first light in half an hour.” He stood back, his head bowed between the deckhead beams, and eyed Bolitho critically. “Thought you’d want a shave before dawn.”

Bolitho stretched his legs and sipped the coffee. Allday never forgot anything.

Now, as the deck lifted and quivered beneath the chair, he found it hard to believe that in the hours since they had burst upon the anchorage they had made contact with the brig Rapid, which in turn had hurried away to complete the link in the chain of command with Phalarope.

The rest had been much easier than expected. Turning once more to take full advantage of the wind, the two frigates had steered south-east, while Rapid had continued her search for Duncan ’s Sparrowhawk.

It was not much of a flotilla, Bolitho conceded, but what it lacked in numbers it certainly made up for in agility and fire power. He had seen it in Styx, the wildness which was akin to some kind of insanity when the guns had roared out their challenge. If they could find and get amongst the enemy invasion craft just once again, the panic they had already created would spread like a forest fire.

Then he could make his report to the Admiralty: Beauchamp’s wishes had been carried out.

There was a tap at the door, but this time it was Neale, his round face flushed from the wind and spray.

“Phalarope’s in sight astern, sir. Sky’s brightening, but the wind’s backed to north by west. I’ve sent the people to breakfast early. I have a feeling we shall be busy today. If the Frogs have sailed, that is.”

Bolitho nodded. “If they have not, we shall repeat yesterday’s tactics, only this time we shall have Phalarope’s carronades.”

He sensed Allday’s sudden stiffness, the way the razor had stilled in mid-air.

Neale cocked his head as voices echoed along the upper deck. He did not see Allday’s apprehension as he hurried away to his duties.

Bolitho lay back in the chair and said quietly, “The sea is empty, Allday. We shall destroy those craft today, come what may. After that…”

Allday continued to shave him without comment.

It was strange to realize that Phalarope was sailing somewhere astern, in sight as yet only to the keen-eyed masthead lookouts. The ship which had changed everything for him, for Allday, and others who were so near to him. It was also unnerving to accept he was probably more excited about seeing Phalarope under full sail and awaiting his wishes than he was at the prospect of destroying helpless craft which could not hit back. But their menace was real enough, as Beauchamp had seen for many months. He sighed and thought instead of Belinda. What would she be doing at this moment? Lying in her bed, listening to the first birds, the early farm carts on the move down the lanes? Thinking of him perhaps, or the future? After today things might be different. Again, he could find himself ordered to the other side of the world. Belinda’s late husband had hated being a soldier and had resigned his commission to serve with the Honourable East India Company. Would she equally hate being married to a sailor?

Another tap at the door broke his thoughts and he was almost grateful. Almost.

It was Browne, all sickness gone, and as impeccable as if he was about to carry a despatch to Parliament itself.

“Is it time?”

Browne nodded. “Dawn’s coming up, sir.”

He glanced at Allday and saw him shrug. It was not like him to look so disconsolate.

Bolitho stood and felt the ship’s eager thrusting movement. The wind had backed again, Neale had said. They would have to watch out they did not run on a lee shore. He smiled grimly. So would the French.

He slipped into his coat. “I am ready.” He looked at Allday again. “Another dawn.”

Allday made a great effort. “Aye, sir. I hope when we greet the next one the taffrail will be pointing at France. I hate this bay, and all it means to a seaman.”

Bolitho let it lie there. When Allday was having a rare mood, it was best left well alone. There were other things at stake today.

After the sealed warmth of the cabin the quarterdeck felt almost icy. Bolitho returned Neale’s greeting and nodded to the other officers on watch. The ship was cleared for action, or would be once the last screen between Neale’s quarters and the gun-deck had been removed, but there was little hint of it yet.

The gun crews lounged in the shadows beneath the gangways, and the men in the tops were hidden by the black rigging and lively canvas.

Bolitho walked aft to the taffrail, aware of the marines resting by the nettings on either side, their muskets propped against the packed hammocks. How pale their crossbelts looked in the weird light, while their uniforms appeared to be black.

He tensed as for the first time he saw the old frigate following astern.

Her topgallant yards and masthead pendant held the first light on them, while the rest of the sails and the hull itself were lost in darkness. A ghost ship indeed.

He shook himself out of his doldrums and thought instead about the rest of his command. Rapid may have found Duncan by now. Other ships might be on their way to assist as Beauchamp had originally directed. Like Browne, he doubted it.

Neale joined him by the rail and together they watched the dawn spreading and spilling over from the land. A fiery red dawn. Bolitho smiled and remembered his mother. Red sky at morning, shepherds warning. He felt a sudden chill at his spine and turned to look for Allday. Allday had been a shepherd when the pressgang had seized him. Bolitho swung round again, furious with himself and with his fantasy.

He said, “As soon as you can, make contact with Phalarope. Signal her to maintain station to windward.”

As Browne hurried away to prepare his signal, Bolitho said to Neale, “When Phalarope has acknowledged, we shall stand closer inshore.”

Neale hesitated. “We shall be seen at once, sir.”

Bolitho shrugged. “By then it will be too late.”

He wished suddenly that Herrick was here with him. Like a rock. Part of himself. And ready to argue in his stubborn way. Neale would follow him to and through the gates of hell without a murmur, but not Herrick. If there was a flaw in the plan he would see it.

Bolitho looked up at the masthead pendant and then at his own flag. Stiff, like banners. The wind was still rising.

Unconsciously his fingers played with the worn pommel of his sword. He was being unfair. To Neale and to Allday, to Herrick, who was not even present.

It was his flag at the mizzen masthead, and the responsibility was his alone.

Surprisingly, he felt more at ease after that, and when he took his regular walk along the side of the quarterdeck there was nothing to betray the fear that he had almost lost his confidence.

Bolitho saw Styx ’s first lieutenant cross to the compass and glance at it before studying each sail in turn.

Nothing was said, nor was there need. The professionals in the frigate’s company knew their ship like they knew each other. Any comment from Pickthorn that the wind had backed another point would have been resented by the master, and judged by Neale to be a display of nerves.

Bolitho had seen it all before, and had endured it too. He walked aft again, watching the colour spreading across the sea and its endless parade of white-horses. Salt stung his mouth and cheeks but he barely noticed it. He stared towards Phalarope as she plunged obediently to windward, squarely on Styx ’s starboard quarter. She looked splendid, with her closed gunports making a chequered line along her side. The gilded figurehead was bright in the early sunlight, and he could just make out a knot of blue figures on her quarterdeck. One of them would be Adam, he thought. Like Pickthorn, watching over his sails, ready to order men here or there to keep each piece of canvas filled and hard to the wind. Phalarope was heeling heavily towards him, pushed over by the press of sails and the occasional steep crest under her keel.

How this ship must look.

Bolitho turned and walked down to the quarterdeck rail again. The gun crews were still at their stations, the tension gone as daylight laid bare an empty sea. The second and third lieutenants were chatting together, swords sheathed, their attitudes of men at ease in a park.

Neale was moving his telescope across the larboard nettings, studying the undulating, slate-coloured slopes of the mainland.

They were standing some five miles out, but many eyes would have seen them.

Neale tossed his glass to a midshipman and commented glumly, “Not a damn thing.”

Browne joined Bolitho by the rail. “She’s really flying, sir.”

Bolitho looked at him and smiled. Browne was more stirred by the lively ship beneath him as she lifted and plunged through the white-horses than he was troubled by the inaction.

“Yes. My nephew will have his hands full but will enjoy every second, no doubt.”

“I don’t envy him that, sir!” Browne was careful never to mention Phalarope’s captain. “A raw company, lieutenants no more than boys, I’ll be content with my duties here!”

Bundy called, “Mist ahead, sir!”

Neale grunted. He had seen it already, seeping low down like pale smoke. The fact the master had mentioned it implied he was troubled. In a moment or so the lookouts would see the southern headland of the Loire Estuary. After that, the next report would be sighting the Ile d’Yeu. Right back where they had started, except that they were much closer inshore.

He looked over at Bolitho, who stood with his hands behind his back, his legs apart to take the deck’s uneven roll. He will never turn back. Not in a thousand years.

Neale felt strangely sorry for Bolitho at this moment. Disturbed that what had started as a daring piece of strategy had seemingly gone wrong.

“Deck there! Sails on the larboard bow!”

Neale climbed into the shrouds and beckoned urgently for his telescope.

Bolitho folded his arms across his chest, certain that if he did not everyone around him would see them shaking with anxiety.

The mist dipped and swirled as the wind found it and drove it inshore. And there they were, like a phalanx of Roman soldiers on the march, six lines of small vessels under sail. In the bright glare even the pendants and ensigns looked stiff, like lances.

Browne breathed out slowly. “In daylight there look even more of them.”

Bolitho nodded, his lips suddenly like dust. The fleet of small vessels was making hard going of it, tacking back and forth in an effort to retain formation and to gain some progress against the wind.

Neale exclaimed, “What will they do now? Scatter and run?”

Bolitho said, “Make more sail, Captain Neale, every stitch you can carry, and let us not give the enemy a chance to decide!”

He turned and saw Browne smiling broadly while men dashed past him to obey the shrill pipe to loose more canvas. The great studding-sails would be run out on either beam like huge ears to carry them faster and still faster towards the mass of slowmoving hulls.

Across the starboard quarter Bolitho saw Phalarope’s pyramid of pale canvas tilt more steeply as she followed suit, and he thought he could hear the scrape of a fiddle as her seamen were urged to greater efforts to keep station on the rear-admiral’s flag.

Midshipman Kilburne, who had managed to keep his glass trained on the other frigate in spite of the bustle around him, called, “From Phalarope, sir! Sail to the nor’-west!”

Neale barely turned. “That’ll be Rapid, most likely.”

Bolitho gripped the rail as the ship slid deeply beneath him. The decks were running with spray, as if it was pouring rain, and some of the bare-backed gun crews looked drenched as Styx plunged towards the widening array of vessels.

The bearing would be right for Rapid. She must have found Sparrowhawk and was coming to join the fight. He bit his lip. Slaughter, more likely.

“Load and run out, if you please. We will engage on either beam.”

Bolitho tugged out his watch and opened the guard. Exactly eight in the morning. Even as the thought touched him the bells chimed out from the forecastle. Even there, a ship’s boy had managed to remember his part of the pattern which made a ship work.

“The enemy is dividing into two flotillas, sir.” Pickthorn shook his head. “They’ll not outrun us now, and there are only rocks or the beach beyond them!” Even he sounded dismayed at the enemy’s helplessness.

Kilburne jammed the big signals telescope against his eye until the pain made it water. Bolitho was barely two feet from him and he did not want to disturb his thoughts by making a stupid mistake. He blinked hard and tried again, seeing Phalarope’s iron-hard canvas swoop across the lens, the bright hoist of flags at her yard.

He was not mistaken. Shakily he called, “From Phalarope, sir. She’s made Rapid ’s number.”

Bolitho turned. It was common practice for one ship to repeat another’s signal, but something in the midshipman’s tone warned him of sudden danger.

“From Rapid, sir. Enemy in sight to the nor’-west! ”

Browne murmured softly, “Hell’s teeth!”

“Any orders, sir?” Neale looked at Bolitho, his face and eyes calm. As if he already knew, and accepted it.

Bolitho shook his head. “We will attack. Alter course to larboard and head off any of the leaders who try to break past us.”

He turned on his heel as once again the men dashed to the braces and halliards, most of them oblivious to the menace hidden below the horizon.

Allday pushed himself away from the nettings and strode deliberately to Bolitho’s side.

Bolitho eyed him thoughtfully. “Well, perhaps you were right after all, old friend. But there’s no getting round it.”

Allday stared past him towards the converging array of sails and low hulls, hating what he saw, what it might cost.

But he said simply, “We’ll dish ’em up, sir. One way or the other.”

Some muskets and a few swivels crackled from the leading vessels, their puny challenge blanketed by the roar of Styx ’s first broadside.

Neale cupped his hands. “Mr Pickthorn! Shorten sail! Get the royals and t’gan’s’ls off her!” He watched as the studding-sail booms were hauled bodily inboard to their yards, men calling to one another as guns crashed out and recoiled below them, and a few musket balls and enemy canister scythed wickedly between the shrouds.

Bolitho said, “Mr Browne. Make to Phalarope. Engage the enemy.”

There was still time. With Styx riding astride the channel to part and scatter the enemy’s neat columns, Phalarope’s massive armament of carronades would demolish the van and centre and give them room to beat clear and join Rapid to seaward. But Phalarope was already making another signal.

Midshipman Kilburne shouted in between the explosions from each battery, “Repeated from Rapid, sir! Estimate three enemy sail to the nor’-west.” His lips moved painfully as the gun below the quarterdeck rail crashed inboard on its tackles, its crew already darting around it with fresh powder and shot. He continued, “Estimate one ship of the line.”

Allday’s palm rasped over his jaw. “Is that all?”

As if to add to the torment, the masthead lookout yelled, “Deck there! Land on th’ starboard bow!”

Bundy nodded, his eyes like stones. The Ile d’Yeu. Like the lower jaw of a great trap.

Pickthorn dropped his speaking trumpet as his topmen came swarming down the ratlines again. “Phalarope’s shortening sail, sir.”

Bolitho glanced up at Styx’s last hoist of flags. His order to Captain Emes to close with the enemy formation and engage them.

He heard Browne snap angrily, “Has she not seen the signal, Mr Kilburne?”

Kilburne lowered his glass only to reply. “She has acknowledged it, sir.”

Browne looked at Bolitho, his face white with disbelief. “Acknowledged!”

Canister screamed over the quarterdeck and punched the hammock nettings like invisible fists.

A marine dropped to his knees, blood pouring from his face, as two of his comrades dragged him to safety. Their first casualty.

A blazing lugger, ungainly and out of command, with flames darting from weapon ports like red tongues, passed dangerously down the larboard side, where the boatswain and his men waited with water buckets and axes to quench any outbreak of fire in the tarred rigging and vulnerable canvas.

Neale said flatly, “Phalarope is not responding, sir.”

“Signal Phalarope to make more sail.” Bolitho felt some of the men watching him, still unwilling or unable to believe what was happening.

“She’s acknowledged, sir.”

It was almost impossible to think with guns firing and the decks filled with choking smoke.

Bolitho looked at Neale. If he broke off the action now and abandoned the enemy, they could come about and with luck fight clear. If not, Styx could not hope to destroy more than a handful of vessels, and only then at the cost of her own people.

He stared at the other frigate as she fell further and further astern, until his eyes and mind throbbed with pain and anger.

Browne had been right from the beginning. Now there was no chance left, and it was certainly not worth losing a whole ship and her company.

He cleared his throat and said, “Discontinue the action, Captain Neale. Bring her about. It is finished.”

Neale stared at him, his face filled with dismay.

“But, sir, we can still hit them! Single-handed if we must!”

The masthead lookout’s voice shattered the sudden silence even as the guns ceased firing.

“Deck there! Three sail in sight to the nor’-west.”

Bolitho felt as if the whole ship had been stricken. No one moved, and some hands on the forecastle who had cheered the last order, believing it to be the signal of their victory, now peered aft like old men.

Perhaps the lookouts, good though they were, had been distracted by the oncoming mass of small vessels, and then the menace of larger ships hull-up on the horizon, but whatever the reason, they did not see the real danger until it was already upon them.

It fell to one of Neale’s leadsmen as he took up his station in the chains as Styx had headed towards the same shallow channel to scream, “Wreck! Dead ahead!”

Bolitho gripped the rail and watched as the men near him broke from their trance and stampeded to obey the cry to shorten sail still further, while others strained at the braces to haul round the yards and change tack.

It was possibly one of the very craft they had sunk the previous day, drifting waterlogged with wind and tide until it found its destroyer. Or it might have been an older wreck, some stubborn survivor from the chain of reefs and sandbars which guarded the Loire ’s approaches like sentinels.

The shock when it came was not sudden. It seemed unending as the frigate drove on and over the hulk, her frames shaking, until with the crashing roar of an avalanche the main and fore masts thundered down across the forecastle and into the sea. Great coils of trailing shrouds and splintered spars followed, while men shrieked and cursed as they were smashed underneath or dragged bodily over the side by the tendrils of runaway rigging.

Only the mizzen remained standing, Bolitho’s flag still flapping above the destruction and death as if to mark the place for all time. Then as the wreck tore free from Styx ’s keel and giant air bubbles exploded obscenely on either beam, it too swayed and then plunged headlong to the gun-deck.

Neale yelled, “Mr Pickthorn!” Then he faltered, aware of the blood on his hand which had run down from his scalp, and of his loyal first lieutenant who had been cut in half by one of the broken shrouds as it had ripped over him with the whole weight of the topmast stretching it like a wire.

He saw Bolitho as Allday aided him to his feet and gasped, “She’s done for!”

Then he swayed and would have fallen but for Bundy and one of the midshipmen.

Bolitho said harshly, “Clear the lower decks. Get as many wounded from the wreckage as you can.” He heard the growl of water surging through the hull, the squeal of trucks as a gun broke free and careered across the deck. “Mr Kilburne, muster all available hands and launch what boats have survived. Mr Browne, stay with the captain.”

Men were lurching out of the piles of fallen debris, confused, frightened, and some half mad as they ran blindly to the gangways.

A few marines tried to restore order, and Bolitho saw the third lieutenant, probably the only surviving one, pushed aside, his arm broken and useless, as he attempted to restrain them.

The deck gave another shudder, and Bolitho saw water seeping through some gunports as the hull tilted still further, dragged down by the great burden of wreckage alongside.

Allday shouted, “The quarter-boat is being warped round, sir.” He looked dangerously calm, and his cutlass was in his fist.

Bundy seized his chronometer and sextant, but found time to report, “I’ve got some ’ands lashing a raft together, sir.”

Bolitho barely heard him. He was staring over the broad stretch of water with its freedom somehow symbolized by the white-capped waves which stretched towards the horizon and the oncoming pyramid of sails.

Then he saw Phalarope, stern on as she braced her yards hard round, her shadow leaning over the creaming water while she went about, her gilded bird pointing away from him, away from the enemy.

Allday said brokenly, “God damn him! God damn his cowardly soul!”

A boat appeared at the tilting gangway, and another was being pulled down the side, the boatswain and a burly gunner’s mate hauling wounded and drowning men from the water and dropping them on the bottom boards like sodden bales.

Neale opened his eyes and asked huskily, “Are they safe?” He seemed to see Bolitho through the blood on his face. “The people?”

Bolitho nodded. “As many as possible, so rest easy.”

He looked at the widening array of makeshift rafts, floating spars and casks to which the survivors clung and waited for a miracle. Many more floundered in the sea itself, but few sailors could swim, and soon many of them gave up the fight and drifted on the tide with the rest of the flotsam.

Bolitho waited for a few more dazed and bleeding men to be dragged into the quarter-boat, then he climbed in and stood beside Allday, with Neale slumped unconscious between them.

Midshipman Kilburne, who had changed from youth to manhood in the last few moments, called, “Stand quietly, lads! Easy, all!”

Like the other boat, this one was so crammed with men it had barely ten inches of freeboard. Each had run out just two oars to keep them stem on to the waves, which such a short while before had been their allies, and now seemed determined to capsize and kill them.

“She’s going!”

Several men cried out, shocked and horrified, as Styx rolled over and began to slide into the water. Some of the older hands watched her in silence, moved and too stunned to share their sense of loss. Like all ships, she meant much more to the seasoned hands. A home, old faces, familiar ways. Those too were gone for ever.

Browne whispered, “I’ll not forget this. Not ever.”

Styx dived, but the sea was so shallow that she struck the bottom and reappeared as if still fighting for life. Water streamed from her gunports and scuppers, and a few corpses, caught in the broken shrouds, swayed about as if waving to their old shipmates.

Then with a final lurch she dived and stayed hidden.

Allday said dully, “Boats shoving from the shore, sir.”

He sensed Bolitho’s complete despair and added firmly, “We’ve bin prisoners afore, sir. We’ll get through this time, an’ that’s no error.”

Bolitho was looking for the Phalarope. But, like Neale’s ship, she had disappeared. It was over.