H.M.S. COCKEREL

BUH-WHOOM!

They felt that one in their bones; Radical shuddered seconds after to a shock wave so stupendous, as a massive fireball, a swelling and expanding miniature sun flashed into life inside the basin. The arsenal and all its powder, the powder removed from the forts, went off, sending debris and flaming embers soaring as high as the Heights of Pharon! And stupefying people close to it, friends or foes, into awed silence.

Guns fell silent, musketry winked out. All that could be heard for a time was the whooshing, crackling distant roar of a monumental fire that threatened to devour the entire city of Toulon, the rush of wind as it was drawn in to feed the flames. The fireship Vulcan was a torch put to the closely packed French ships of the line, laid across their sterns to set them alight. From the aftermost corner of the starboard quarterdeck, they could see rigging and yards aflame.

They should have been preparing to get underway, but the sight of an entire navy being burned was too besotting. Gradually, the blazing fireball subsided, and smoke occulted their view, lit only with sullen smoulderings at the base of the smoke clouds. Yet as the light faded, the French guns opened fire once more.

"Well, then," Lewrie said, uselessly. "Mister Porter? Do you pipe 'All-Hands.' Soldiers to the capstans, topmen prepare to lay aloft, trice up, and lay out to make sail."

"Aye, aye, sir!"

Soldiers and civilians breasted to the bars, began to trudge in circles-pawls began to chunk and clack in the well-greased capstans as the lighter messenger lines wound in, dragging the heavy hawsers to which they'd been nippered.

Another huge explosion, perhaps even larger than the first, hot wind coming from astern suddenly, shock waves rushing across the Great Road! Radical not only shivered this time, she heeled to starboard to the force of the explosion, rocked and dipped her bows!

Lewrie didn't think that'un had been planned, exactly. What in the world, once the arsenals were gone, contained that much powder? A pair of prizes, Iris and Montreal, had been filled with the gunpowder garnered from the French fleet and the Poudriиre, the mills. But they were to have been sunk. Surely, no one in their right minds would fire them… would they? Thousands of barrels-not pounds of powder-barrels of gunpowder! It was the largest blast he could ever imagine.

"Short stays, sir!" Cony howled from the foc's'le, by the bower catheads. "Heave, you lubbers!" Gracey goaded the refugee landsmen.

Up and down, the bower cable bow-taut. A last heavy-heave and the anchor broke free of the holding ground. Pawls clattered like the rapid clopping of a trotting horse.

"Aloft! Let fall! Foc's'le! Haul away the inner jib!"

A land breeze, one of man's devising, the outrush of the fires, found her canvas; fore and main course, fore-tops'l, spanker and inner jib, enough to give her steerageway. Ebony waters scintillating with flame points chattered and gurgled about her cutwater, under her forefoot. Two knots at best she made, ghosting past Batterie la Croix and the headland bluffs, her shadow flickering like an errant moth's on the bare, crumbly land face. Out due east'rd to the Bay of Toulon, aiming at Cape de la Garonne, which could almost be seen as clear as daylight, ruddy-hued as twilight sunshine ahead. And an amber and rose red glow astern, spreading and growing, an illuminated, tinted woodcut from some Germanic artist's medieval Hell. Or a glimpse down a volcano's seething throat.

Round Cape Sepet, sheering close as she dared to the shoals, clear of the ordered files of warships farther out in the channel as they made their southing, turning each in succession, in line-ahead, hulls gleaming with ruddy, Unseeded sheens, buff gunwales bright as ivory, sails umber with the colours of a false sunset.

A sea breeze, then. A puff on the cheek, a luffing aloft, canvas drumming and fluttering. Squeals from blocks and parrels, as yards were braced about, pivoting on the masts, as sails filled on the opposite tack.

'"Vast heaving, and… Belay! Well, the braces, well, the sheets! Do you hear, there! Larboard, tail onto the lift Unes!"

Radical lifted her bows to the first scend of the proper sea, did a slow and regal roU to the first rollers that kissed her hull, a little forward of abeam on her larboard side. Creaking and groaning, timbers in adjustment, masts and stays taking a new strain as a second nightfaU of 18 December 1793 found her. Stars appeared overhead, to windward and the south, thin rags of cloud far off simmered pale and indistinct and blue white. To the north, astern, they were red. Above Cape Sepet and the peninsula, there was red and amber, a paU which cut off stariight. And the Signals Cross stood on the highest hiU, silhouetted on what appeared to be a tropical sunset, as stark as His on Golgotha.

"Well, the lifts, Mister Porter. Belay," Lewrie shouted down to his hands. He walked back from the quarter-deck nettings to the wheel, looking at the malevolence brewing astern like a witch's cauldron, glad to be away in one piece. To where, he had no idea, after getting this temporary command to Gibraltar. Turning his back on their doomed adventure, he faced forrud, leaned over to peer into the compass bowl.

"Quartermaster, steer sou-sou'west. Give nothing to leeward."

"Sou-sou'west it be, sir. Nothin' t'loo'rd."

It was dark before their bows, and a cold sea guttered and danced on the faint starlight. Wind-rush across the decks, a gentle keening in the shrouds and running rigging. A weary, deliberate movement beneath his feet as Radical conformed to winds and sea. The sluicing of ocean along her sides, under her quarter, a peaceful, soporific sighing.

The way things ought to be, Lewrie thought; for a time at least, it was peaceful. After such a dispiriting defeat.