Passage to Mutiny

17. A Stubborn Man

HERRICK hesitated by the screen door and watched Bolitho for several seconds. He must have fallen asleep at the desk, and as he lay with his face pillowed on his arms the lantern which swung from the deckhead threw his shadow from side to side, as if he and not the ship were moving.

“It’s time, sir.”

Herrick laid his hand on Bolitho’s shoulder. Through the shirt his skin felt hot. Burning. He hated disturbing him, but even Herrick would not risk his displeasure on this morning.

Bolitho looked up slowly and then massaged his eyes. “Thank you.” He stared around the dark cabin and then at the windows. They too were black and held only the cabin’s reflections.

“It will be dawn in half an hour, sir. I’ve sent the hands to breakfast, like you said. A hot meal, and a tot to wash it down. The cook will douse the galley fires when I pass the word.”

He paused, annoyed at the interruption as Allday entered the cabin with a jug of steaming coffee.

Bolitho stretched and waited for the coffee to burn through his stomach. Strong and bitter. He imagined his men eating their extra ration of salt pork or beef, jesting with each other about the unexpected issue of rum. Yet he had slept like the dead, and had heard nothing when his ship had awakened to a new day. For some, if not all of them, it might well be the last.

“Will I fetch Hugoe, Captain?”

Allday poured some more coffee. He had been out of his hammock and down to the galley for Bolitho’s shaving water much earlier, but showed little sign of fatigue.

“No.” Bolitho rubbed his hands vigorously up and down his arms. He felt cold, and yet his mind was crystal-clear, as if he had enjoyed a full night’s sleep in his bed at Falmouth. “He’ll be sorely needed in the wardroom.”

Allday showed his teeth, knowing that was not the reason at all. “Very well then. I’ll get some breakfast for you.”

Bolitho stood up and walked to the windows. “I couldn’t eat. Not today.”

“You must, sir.” Herrick gestured to Allday and he left the cabin. “It may be a while before we get another chance.”

“True.”

Bolitho peered down at the water below the counter. But there was only the merest glint to show the pull of the current. It still surprised him at the speed with which the dawn broke. Many throughout the ship would be wishing it might never come.

He said quietly, “If we fail today, Thomas.” He stopped, uncertain how to continue. He did not wish Herrick to accept a possibility of defeat, but he needed him to know how much his friendship meant, how it sustained him.

Herrick protested, “Bless you, sir, you mustn’t talk like that!”

Bolitho turned and faced him. “There is a letter in the strongbox. For you.” He held up his hand. “If I fall, I want you to know that I have arranged some benefits for you.”

Herrick strode to him and exclaimed, “I’ll hear no more, sir! I-I’ll not have it!”

Bolitho smiled. “So be it.” He walked up and down the cabin. “I would it were as cold as this for a whole day. A sea-fight is blistering enough without the sun’s distractions!”

Herrick dropped his gaze. Bolitho was shivering badly. Lack of sleep, total exhaustion from the open boat, it was all starting to show.

He said, “I’ll be off, sir.”

“Yes. We will go to quarters as soon as they have eaten.”

He saw Herrick’s apparent satisfaction and waited for him to leave. Then he sat down and started to go over his plans again, searching for flaws, or improvements.

He poured another mug of coffee, picturing his ship as she lay in darkness. Two guard boats pulled around her at all times, while on shore Prideaux had mounted pickets to patrol the beach and headland. They would have to be withdrawn when it was light. Tempest was so shorthanded, whereas the enemy… he shivered and drained the last of the coffee. Enemy. How easily the word came. He recalled the French he had seen when he had visited Narval. With such cruel treatment they would probably have mutinied anyway, revolted against de Barras and his sadism. The uprising in France gave them even wider scope for vengeance. A battle would seem a small price to pay for their release.

Bolitho tried to form an image of Tuke, but the memory of the livid brand on Viola’s shoulder made him close his mind to him. Instead he thought of her, hanging on to each detail, afraid something might be lost in his memory.

Allday brought his breakfast, but said nothing as Bolitho pushed it aside. In silence he shaved him, and brought a clean shirt from the chest as he had seen Noddall do so many times.

The ship felt very quiet, with just the sluggish motion and the creak of timbers to break the stillness.

Light filtered through the windows and across the chequered canvas of the deck.

Bolitho slipped into his coat and grimaced at himself in the bulkhead mirror. In the weak light he looked pale, so that his coat and breeches and the gold lace stood out in sharp contrast.

Allday said quietly, “We’ve stood like this a few times,

Captain.” He glanced up at the skylight as feet moved restlessly overhead. “I never get used to it.”

Bolitho felt his coat, glad of it for once to hold the chill at bay until the sun rose above the islands once again.

“Nor I.”

The door opened slightly and Midshipman Fitzmaurice poked his pug-face around it.

“The first lieutenant’s respects, sir, and he wishes to clear for action if it is convenient?”

Bolitho nodded, conscious of the youth’s formality. “My compliments to Mr Herrick. Tell him I am ready.”

Moments later the stillness was broken by the twitter of calls, the stamp of running feet and all the preparation for battle which to a landsman would appear no better than chaos.

The staccato beat of the two drums on the quarterdeck echoed around the bay, reaching the settlement and further still to the village. To the tired sentries on the headland, and to the wounded marine called Billy-boy who had been given his own special task ashore.

And also to a wild-eyed girl who lay alone in her hut, her mind destroyed, but her memory hanging on to the one person who had helped and protected her.

As the sun found the Tempest’s main topgallant masthead, and made the whipping pendant change from white to copper, Herrick touched his hat and reported, “Cleared for action, sir.” He said it proudly, for despite his shortages, the operation had been completed in less than fifteen minutes.

Bolitho walked to the quarterdeck rail and looked down at the silent figures. He recalled Allday’s remark. We’ve stood like this a few times. And his own response.

The shadowy figures below him, and crouched around the quarterdeck, would they understand when the call came? He wondered if de Barras was still alive, how it must have been for him when the latent hatred had exploded into mutiny.

“Deck there! Ship to the east’rd! At anchor, sir!”

Bolitho walked to the nettings, his hands behind his back. Still just the one. Bait perhaps to draw him into another trap. A watchdog, while others prepared a different form of attack. It was too early even to guess.

He saw Fitzmaurice speaking to the signals party, and considered the change which had affected all of them. Swift now walked the gundeck with Borlase, and Keen stood aft, watching over the quarterdeck six-pounders. He saw Pyper too, doubled up with pain from his burns and salt sores, standing with the carronade crews on the forecastle.

He heard the American, Jenner, say something to another seaman, and half expected to see Orlando with him. He shivered. Boys into men. Men into oblivion.

The masthead again. “’Tis a schooner, sir!” He would have a perfect view. The strengthening glow directly behind the other vessel, while Tempest still lay in deep shadow.

Bolitho said, “We will know soon what to expect.”

“Aye, sir.” Herrick was on the opposite side of the deck, and raised his voice so that it would carry more easily. “Not really worth our while, is she, sir?”

It brought a few laughs, as both of them knew it would.

Bolitho turned and saw Ross watching him closely. “Get aloft with a glass, Mr Ross. I want you to take your time. Examine the schooner as you have never done before.”

He watched him thrust through the boarding nets and climb nimbly up the main shrouds, the telescope bobbing on his shoulder like a poacher’s gun.

Then he looked at the masthead pendant. The wind had backed during the night, but was steady enough from the northwest. It was well sheltered in the bay, but the schooner would not venture inside the reef and risk being grounded, for she would be anchored right in the wind’s path.

Everything must happen here. Hardacre had added his knowledge to Lakey’s, and it was quite impossible for an attack to be launched overland from the other side of the island. There was no safe landing place, and the threat of attack from hostile natives, no matter what Tinah had promised, would need treble the force which Tuke and his men possessed.

Sunlight slipped gently across the upper yards and sails, and the hill above the settlement stood out from shadow as if detached from all else.

Ross, one-time master’s mate, now acting-lieutenant, called sharply from his high perch, “They’re lowering a boat, sir.”

More dragging minutes and then, “The boat’s standing in towards the reef!” His Scottish voice was indignant as he added, “A flag o’ truce, b’God!”

Bolitho looked at Herrick. The first move was about to begin.

The boat hoisted a small scrap of sail as soon as it was clear of the schooner’s side, and as it gathered way Bolitho recognized their intention to pass through the reef and enter the bay.

“Gig, Allday!” Bolitho looked at Herrick as the gig’s crew scampered from their various stations. “I don’t want them to see how thin we are on the ground. Signal the shore party. They must act quicker than I had planned.”

He knew Herrick was forming a protest, but brushed him aside and almost tumbled into the gig in his haste to get away.

“Quick as you can!” He gripped the gunwale as the oars dug into the water and sent the boat over a trough like an excited dolphin.

Allday said, “God, look at them!” He chuckled. “They’ve just seen Tempest!”

The boat had certainly slowed its approach, but after a momentary pause started to move again towards the surging water between the reefs.

As it drew closer Bolitho saw it was crewed by a motley collection of men, mostly bearded and as dirty as their boat. But they were well armed, and the tattered white flag which flew from the mast made the contrast more evident.

Bolitho snapped, “Tell them to heave to. They’re near enough.”

Allday’s hail, and the fact the gig’s crew were resting on their oars, made the other boat rock dangerously in the steep swell as she idled beam on to the nearest spur of reef.

A powerful, bearded figure with two crossbelts of pistols and pouches stood and cupped his hands. He sounded English, but was certainly not Tuke.

Bolitho wished he had brought a telescope, but knew it was doubtful if he would have been able to use it. The violent pitching of the gig and the rising nausea in his stomach would have seen to that.

The voice shouted harshly, “So you got here, Cap’n?”

Almost what Raymond had said. Bolitho raised one hand, his eyes watering in the pale sunlight.

The man continued, “The message stands as before. You carry your people away, an’ be damned to ye! We are taking the island, an’ you too, if you stay an’ fight!”

His words brought growls of anger from the gig’s crew.

Bolitho stood up carefully, his hand gripping Allday’s shoulder.

Then he shouted, “Under what flag? Will you hoist your own cowardly rag, or shall you hide under French colours?”

Despite the boom of surf on the reef he heard the confusion of voices from the other boat.

Then the man called, “We have the Narval! You’ll live to regret your bloody arrogance, Cap’n!” He waved his fist and another figure was hauled upright from the bottom of the boat.

For an instant Bolitho thought it might be de Barras, and then saw it was a young lieutenant, his arms pinioned, his face almost black with bruises.

Another visual proof of victory. Bolitho glanced at his oarsmen, seeing their mixed expressions of disbelief and horror.

Bolitho shouted, “Release him! None of this is his doing, and you know it!”

The man laughed, the sound distorted on the offshore wind. “D’you not know of the Revolution, Cap’n?” He waved his hand over the boat. “These lads do, an’ with bloody good cause, eh?”

So Tuke had put some of the French sailors in each of his vessels. It would be safer that way. With the French officers killed or in irons, Tuke would have had to take command of Narval himself. Not that he would need much encouragement, and his experience as master of a privateer would have provided him with as many skills as any sea-officer in the King’s service.

Allday said quietly, “They’re going to kill him, Captain.”

As he spoke one of the men in the other boat seized the lieutenant’s hair and pulled his head backwards, so that they could see his eyes glittering in the light, his face distorted with pain and terror. A knife rose and flitted across the Frenchman’s throat with such speed that there was neither a cry nor a struggle. Then the corpse was flung overboard, leaving a scarlet smear on the boat’s planking.

Bolitho snapped, “A pistol! That’s no damned truce flag!”

But the shot went wide, and by the time he had reloaded the schooner’s boat was already moving swiftly away from the reef.

From seaward came a sudden bang, and seconds later a tall waterspout lifted between reef and headland, the spray from the heavy ball spreading out in a great white circle.

“Return to the ship.”

Bolitho seized the gunwale and tried to control his sick hatred. That might be their intention. To lure him from the bay before he knew the enemy’s exact strength.

While the gig pulled swiftly towards the Tempest, Bolitho looked across at the settlement, picturing the defences which now seemed so puny when set against what he had just witnessed.

Fires had been lit to give an impression that the settlement was occupied by far more men than the small force there actually was. Some red tunics had been placed on the palisades, and from a distance would be seen as vigilant sentries at their posts.

A deception, and that was all it was.

He winced as another ball whimpered overhead and cracked into some rocks below the headland.

When he reached the Tempest’s quarterdeck he found Herrick, armed with a telescope, watching the other vessel. Out of range of Tempest’s twelve-pounders, yet she was slamming shots into the land without effort. When the shadows eventually departed from the beach and settlement they would start to shoot in earnest.

Herrick observed, “Twenty-four pounder, sir. At least. Must have got it off the Eurotas, I reckon.” He looked at Bolitho worriedly. “I was bothered by those devils in the boat. They might have opened fire on you! ”

Crash! Bolitho heard the ball ploughing through the trees on the far side of the bay, and saw enraged birds spreading out above them like splinters.

Herrick persisted, “We will have to up-anchor. If they shift their aim to us they could dismast the ship and leave us crippled, no more’n a floating battery!”

Bolitho removed his hat and wiped his forehead. It was what the enemy intended. Draw him out, leave the bay undefended. The schooner might not be able to outsail Tempest, but she could lose her amongst the litter of islets and reefs without difficulty.

He looked up at the masthead pendant. Steady as before from the north-west. He took a telescope and walked to the nettings, his mind grappling with the danger, with what he was asking of his men.

He said over his shoulder, “Send word ashore. When we make the signal, they must start the fire.” He heard Herrick sigh. “I know. It was for a last hope. We just have to reverse things.”

Bolitho steadied his glass against the hammock nettings and trained it on the anchored schooner. He was in time to see a puff of smoke from her forecastle as she loosed off another ball.

The schooner was in direct line with the headland. And the wind.

He heard a boat pulling towards the shore and then a violent splintering noise as another ball landed on the little pier and brought down the outer end in a welter of broken woodwork and lashings. It was luck, for no gun captain could see through shadows. But it told very clearly of what would happen soon if they did nothing to stop it.

He said, “Boarding party, Mr Herrick. Launch and cutter. If the wind holds we will fire the headland as planned. The smoke will drift down on the schooner. That is when the attack must begin.”

Bolitho thought of the long pull, and pictured the wounded marine on the hillside with his collected heaps of dried grass and underbrush, liberally dosed with coconut husks and grease. With luck the enemy gunner would think that one of his shots has started a fire ashore. If it failed, both boats’ crews would be slaughtered before they could lay a finger on the schooner’s hull.

A moment later Fitzmaurice called, “Quarter boat’s reached the shore, sir!”

Bolitho nodded. “Man your boats, Mr Herrick. Keep them on the concealed side until the fire begins.”

He made himself take a few paces back and forth, his feet stepping over gun tackles and rammers without conscious effort. It would take ten minutes for the word to be passed to the makeshift beacon.

He heard men clattering into the boats, the clink of weapons.

“Bend on the signal, Mr Fitzmaurice.”

Bolitho wiped his face. He was sweating badly, but without warmth.

“Quarter boat’s shoved off again, sir.”

The message had been passed.

Bolitho snapped, “Hoist the signal now.”

The flag broke from the mainyard, its appearance timed by coincidence with the next bang from the schooner’s heavy cannon.

Bolitho trained a glass on the headland and the hillside beyond. Faintly at first, rising from some lingering shadows like dirty stains against the sky, the smoke began to roll downwind. The filthy concoction of grease, oakum and waste which they had mixed with the tinder-dry grass and rushes held the smoke down towards the water in a thickening, evil-looking pall.

The marine called Billy-boy was exceeding even the bravest hope, and a short explosion echoed from the hillside to add to the deception. They would hear it in the schooner, and might think it was a magazine exploding.

Herrick asked quietly, “Permission to leave, sir?”

Bolitho looked past him at the two boats alongside, their crews peering up at the ship like strangers. Hand-picked every one, and some of the best men in the ship. If the worst happened it would strip Tempest of hands so sorely that her defences would be halved.

He held Herrick’s gaze.And he was the best of all. But he could not let anyone else command the attack. Now they needed every ounce of confidence, every bit of experience, and to the ship’s company Herrick had all of it and more to spare.

Was this the time which he had dreaded for so long? It must come one day. But surely not here, in this godforsaken corner of the world where so much pain had already been suffered.

Even as he thought about it he knew it could happen anywhere.

He said, “Take care, Thomas. Have the swivels ready to shoot.

Retire if you are sighted before you can grapple.”

Herrick took off his coat and hat and handed them to a marine. In the boats there was no mark of rank or station either. They had planned it this way in the short reprieve they had been given by Bolitho’s five hundred mile passage in the boat.

Herrick turned to watch the spreading fog of smoke. It had already reached the reef, and the schooner’s outline faded suddenly in the man-made haze.

Maybe he was thinking the same. What they had done in so short a time. Like the fire. Oakum and tar from the ship, pig’s fat and grease from the village, coconut husks and fibres, even molasses which the purser had been hoarding for an emergency. Plus all the other combustible material, it was making an impressive screen.

It should have been for later. If and when Narval tried to force the entrance to the bay, the smoke was to have confused her gun crews so that Tempest could draw her to close action while she was near the reef. But that was before this had happened. Anyway, the wind might have changed and reversed the advantage.

Herrick said, “Lady Luck is with us, sir.”

Then with a wave to the quarterdeck he lowered himself into the big launch. The two boats began to pull away immediately, the oars’ speed indicating the measure of time and survival.

In the cutter, Jack Miller, boatswain’s mate, crouched intently by the tiller, a boarding axe protruding from his belt.

Allday said softly, “God help those buggers if he gets amongst ’em!”

It would take over half an hour for the boats to get anywhere near the anchored vessel. The smoke had to stay as thick as ever until then. Also, the schooner’s crew must not suspect that anything untoward was happening.

Bolitho said, “Mr Borlase, we will commence firing with the starboard battery. Load and run out, if you please.”

Borlase stared at him anxiously, a nerve jumping in his neck. “At what target, sir?”

“To the right of the schooner. I want them to see our shots dropping short. It will make them believe in their safety, also that we are not attempting to weigh anchor and use the smoke ourselves.”

Minutes later the starboard twelve-pounders crashed out one by one in a slow broadside, the smoke rolling downwind to join the rest. The schooner had all but vanished beyond it now, and when Bolitho looked for the two boats he saw only the wake of the rearmost one, the hulls, like the headland, completely hidden.

He pulled out his watch. The sun was well up, and no longer could they rely on shadows to protect the settlement. He wondered briefly what Raymond was doing. If he was thinking of Viola.

“Signal from the hilltop lookout, sir!” Fitzmaurice had his telescope to his eye.

Bolitho walked beneath the mizzen shrouds and shaded his face against the growing glare. The stench from the burning hillside was bad enough here, what it was like in the boats was hard to imagine. He felt sick and suddenly dizzy, and wished he had taken Allday’s offer of breakfast.

He felt angry with himself. Well, it was too late now.

He saw the flash of light from near the hilltop, the reflected sun caught in a mirror, as he had seen the foot soldiers do it in America. It was limited but very quick, provided you had invented enough simple signals well in advance.

Fitzmaurice said in his haughty voice, “Sail to the north, sir.”

Bolitho nodded. It was like the start of a great drama in which no one was certain of his role. The sail must be the Narval, sweeping down from some hiding place in the north, expecting to find the schooner in sole possession of the bay or its approaches.

He tried to remember the time on his watch. Where the two boats would be. How long before the other ship hove in sight around the headland.

He moved to the rail above the gundeck and watched the twelve-pounders being hauled up to their ports again.

Swift was looking aft towards him. “Again, sir?”

Bolitho heard Lakey say, “Can’t see nothing of the schooner or the reef now. God, what a fog!”

Allday was standing by the companion, his arms folded as he watched the idle crews around the quarterdeck guns. He turned to watch the captain and saw him stagger and almost fall. Everyone else was watching the smoke or the men at the twelve-pounders.

He reached Bolitho’s side in three strides. “I’m here, Captain. Easy now.” He looked at Bolitho’s face. It was shining with sweat, and his eyes were half-closed as if in terrible pain.

Bolitho gasped, “Don’t let them see me like this!” He swallowed hard, his arms and legs shivering violently in gusts of icy cold. As if he were on the deck of a North Atlantic patrol.

Allday murmured desperately, “The fever. It must be. I’ll fetch the surgeon.” He saw one of the seamen staring and barked, “Watch your front, damn you!”

Bolitho gripped his arm and steadied himself. “No. Must hold on. This is the worst time. You must see that!”

“But, Captain!” Allday was pleading. “It’ll kill you! I’ll not stand by and let it happen!”

Bolitho took a breath and thrust himself away from Allday’s support. Between his teeth he said deliberately, “You… will… do… as… I… tell… you!”

He made himself walk slowly to the nettings, and curled his fingers into them as he tried to control his shaking body.

He said, “Tell them to continue firing.” The din might help, if only to keep their minds off him.

The crash of the broadside thundered across the water, the balls going downwind into the smoke.

He heard himself say, “Please God let Thomas succeed. We cannot move with so few hands.” The words spilled out of him and he could not prevent it. “No way to die.” He let go of the hammock nettings and walked carefully to the compass. “We’ll have to lie here and fight!”

A blurred shape hurried past, carrying a shot-cradle. It paused and then turned towards him. It was Jenner, the American.

“Couldn’t help but hear what you said, Cap’n.”

He seemed to swim in Bolitho’s vision as if under water.

“I heard tell of somethin’ durin’ th’ war. Of an English captain who was so short-handed his sloop was almost run ashore and taken by the Frenchies. I also heard tell that the captain was you, sir.” He ignored Allday’s threatening look and added, “You used wounded soldiers instead, right, sir?”

Bolitho tried to see him properly. “I remember. In the Sparrow.” He was going mad. It had to be that. Speaking like this about the past.

“Well, I got to thinkin’, why not use them convicts?”

“What?” Bolitho stepped forward and would have fallen but for Allday.

“I just thought…”

Bolitho seized his wrist. “Fetch Mr Keen!”

Keen’s voice came from his side. “I’m here, sir.” He sounded worried.

“Send the other boats ashore immediately and go with them. You worked at the settlement, they know you better than the rest of us.” He leaned closer and added fervently, “I must have men,

Val.” He saw Keen’s expression and knew he had used Viola’s name for him without realizing it. “Do what you can.”

Keen said despairingly, “You’re ill, sir!” He glanced at Allday’s grim features. “You must have caught…”

“You’re delaying!” He pushed him away. “Get them here. Tell them I’ll try and obtain their passage back to England. But don’t lie to them.”

The guns crashed out again, the trucks hurling themselves inboard on their tackles.

“Enough.” Bolitho tugged at his neckcloth. “Cease firing. Sponge out and reload.”

He saw the surgeon standing directly in his path, his face grave as he snapped, “You will go below, sir. As the surgeon it is my duty…”

“Your duty is on the orlop!” He dropped his voice. “Just fetch some drops, anything to keep my mind alive. A few more hours.”

“It will certainly kill you.” Gwyther shrugged. “You are a stubborn man.”

Bolitho walked unaided to the weather side and stared at the nearest land.

“I’m so cold, Allday. Some brandy. Then I will be myself again.”

“Aye, Captain.” Allday watched him helplessly. “At once.”

Lakey had been near the wheel with his quartermaster and had seen Keen’s anxiety and the hasty arrival of the surgeon. As Allday hurried to the companion he opened his mouth to ask what was happening. Allday always knew. Instead, he turned away, unable to believe what he had seen.

Mackay, his quartermaster, spoke his own thoughts aloud. “In God’s name, Mr Lakey, there were tears in his eyes!”

“Avast, Mr Herrick! I can hear the buggers!”

Herrick lifted his arm and the muffled oars rose dripping on either side of the launch. He hoped that Miller, following closely astern, would have his eyes open and not collide with them.

He heard the distant murmur of voices, then the clang of metal. He swallowed hard and made a circular motion above his head with his sword. They must be almost up to the schooner, but because of the smoke could see nothing. Earlier they had seen her masts poking through the drifting fog, and Herrick had been thankful that nobody had had the sense to send up a lookout.

The men in the boat shifted uneasily, watching his face. Their eyes were red-rimmed from the smoke, and their bodies stank from its filth and greasy persistence.

Herrick looked at those nearest him. Grant, a senior gunner’s mate, who came from Canterbury, not that far from his own home. Nielsen, a fair-haired Dane, who shared an oar with Gwynne, the young recruit he had got from the Eurotas. He knew them all, as he did those in the other boat.

Something tall and dark loomed above them, and as they drifted beneath the schooner’s long jib boom they almost became entangled in her anchor cable.

Not a second left for hesitation. Herrick snapped, “Grapnel! Boarders away! ”

Then, pushed and jostled by his men, Herrick fought his way up and over the bulwark, seeing faces above him, and hearing the muffled voices change just as quickly into violent yells and oaths. Pistols banged, and a seaman fell back into the launch, knocking another down with him.

Herrick sat astride the bulwark, seeing it all through the drifting smoke. The massive gun, the additional tackle it had needed to restrain it on the narrow deck. A man ran at him with a cutlass, but Herrick twisted it with his hilt and flicked it clattering into the scuppers. Now he had both feet inboard, and slashed the man across the face and neck before he could pull out of his charge.

They were outnumbered, but with trained determination the

Tempest’s men made a tight little wedge, backs to the bulwark, their feet already slipping in blood as they clashed together with their enemy.

The clang of steel, the fierce, wild cries of the men, were matched by the screams of the wounded and dying.

But from right aft came the thud of another grapnel, and Miller’s men swarmed over the taffrail yelling and cursing like fiends. Steel on steel, the pent-up fear and hatred bursting in a tide of unrestrained killing. Men rolled upon one another, fighting with dirks, cutlasses, axes, or anything which would beat a man into submission.

Herrick parried a sword aside and realized it was the bearded man who had met Bolitho under a flag of truce. He was even bigger near to, but Herrick had endured enough.

He had never had much time for the fancy swordsmanship of men like Prideaux, or from what he had heard, Bolitho’s dead brother, Hugh. He was a fighter, and relied on his strength and staying-power to carry him through.

He took the man’s heavy sword just six inches above his hilt, forcing him round, but keeping both blades crossed.

The bearded giant shouted, “You bloody bastard! This time you die!”

Herrick’s eye flickered to a patch of blood on the deck, and thrust his hilt away from him with all his strength. He saw the cruel grin of triumph on the man’s face as he was allowed to draw back the full length of his blade. Then it altered to sudden alarm as his heel slipped on the fresh blood, and for a mere second he was off balance.

Herrick thought suddenly of the tiny scene he had watched through his telescope. The terrified French officer, his throat cut in the twinkling of an eye. Like a slaughtered pig.

“No, you die!”

His short fighting-sword seared diagonally across the man’s stomach, just above the belt, and as he dropped his weapon and clutched the torn wound with both hands, Herrick hacked him once and hard on the neck.

There was a wild cheer, and Miller, his axe red in his filthy fist, yelled, “She’s ours, lads!” It was done.

The cheers altered to cries of alarm as the deck gave a violent shiver and threw several men kicking amongst the dead and wounded.

Herrick yelled, “The reef! They cut the cable!”

There was another great lurch, and part of the mainmast thundered across the deck and crushed Gwynne dead, his mouth still open from calling.

Herrick waved his sword. “Fall back! Man the boats!”

He heard the water swilling through a nearby hold, the sounds of loose cargo and stores being hurled against the bulkhead. The reef would make short work of her, and anyone stupid enough to remain aboard.

Carrying the wounded, and kicking the pirates’ weapons into the water, the seamen retreated to their boats.

Half-mad at the swift change of events, some of the pirates, and several whom Herrick guessed to be Frenchmen from the Narval, turned on each other, while with each violent lurch the schooner lifted and ground still further on to the reef.

Miller’s cutter discharged its swivel gun for good measure as they pulled away.

Herrick shouted, “To the ship! Give way all!”

He held his breath as a great shoulder of shell-encrusted reef rose out of the sea almost under the bows. He waited for the crash, the inrush of water, and then as the boat pulled clear he turned his thoughts to his men. Poor Gwynne. A volunteer for so short a time. He looked at Nielsen, the young Dane, rocking from side to side, his face ashen with agony. He had dropped his cutlass, and one of the pirates had lunged at him with a sword. Nielsen had seized the swinging blade with both hands, and had hung on even as his attacker had pulled the razor-edged weapon through his palms and fingers.

Grant, the old gunner’s mate, showed his tobacco-stained teeth in a tired grin. “We done it, sir. One down.” He turned as the schooner rolled over in a welter of spray. “’Nother to go.”

“Aye.” Herrick looked along the boat, sharing their pain and their pride. “Well done.” He thought of Bolitho and what he would say.

It was only a beginning, but they had shown what they could achieve.