Patrick O'Brian - The Letter of Marque

The crash and rumbling echo of the gunfire grew almost continuous as the two came more nearly alongside; and the smoke rolled away in a solid cloud just aft of the Azul. For Azul she was. In the blaze of the Spartan's full broadside, a long and rippling broadside, Jack caught her pale sides full in his glass. The Spartan was half a mile to windward and edging closer when all at once the Azul seemed to put her helm hard over, turning with extraordinary speed as though to run before the wind and then coming up part of the way on the other tack. The Spartan at once raked her exposed stern, but it seemed to Jack that the range was too great for the carronades to do much execution; nor was the Spartan handled nearly as well as he had expected from their last encounter. She ran on an unconscionable time before her sails were trimmed to carry her after the Azul.

'Perhaps the barque will run clear,' said Jack, half aloud. 'Perhaps the Spartan has lost a spar.'

But something was wrong. The Azul did not seem to be running at all. He fixed her with his come-up glass: the image was steady: she was motionless. What is more lights were running about her deck, and although the Spartan was at last bearing down, the Azul was lowering a boat. Two boats.

'By God,' cried Jack, 'she has struck on the Formigas.'

All this time the chase had been drawing southward, and he had altered sail accordingly; now he reduced it to fore and main courses alone, the most inconspicuous the frigate could wear, and altered course half a point.

Standing there, with his hands hard-clenched on the top rim, he watched the continuing battle, closer now by far. The moon rose, lighting the great swathes of white smoke, and to his astonishment he saw the Spartan move right in to grapple and board on the far side of the Azul, the starboard side, away from the Surprise.

He raced down on deck, ordered the arms-chests to be brought up and the few remaining lights to be dowsed; then he ran forward into the bows. Far over the water the gunfire reached its height: three full thundering broadsides from either ship, the last two almost simultaneous, then one or two guns, some musket and pistol shots; then silence, and Jack could see men jumping from the Azul's lit gun-ports into the boats on her larboard side. He saw them pull clear, apparently hidden from the Spartan's view.

Back on the quarterdeck he raised his voice and called 'All hands aft.' When the men had gathered he said 'Shipmates, the Azul has struck on the Formigas. The Spartan is grappled fast alongside. We are going to take her and her prize in the boats. Mr West, the armourer will serve out pistols, cutlasses or boarding-axes according to choice. I shall lead the way in the launch, followed by Mr Smith in the blue cutter and Mr Bulkeley in the red, and we board the Azul - the Azul, mind - at the forechains; Mr Davidge takes the pinnace, Mr Bentley the gig and Mr Kane the jolly-boat, and they board the Azul at the mizenchains. The boats keep together with a line stem to stern. We board the Azul, we cross her deck - remember Nelson's bridge! - and we tackle the Spartans, taking them from the front and the rear. Not a sound, not a sound as we approach, but sing out as you go aboard: and once aboard the watchword is Surprise. Now,' - raising his voice at the first murmur - 'not a cheer, not a sound until we are there. Mr West, I am grieved to say you must stay in the ship with ten men, and move in when I signal with three lanterns; but no nearer than half a mile. We proceed in five minutes' time.'

He stepped below for his sword and pistols, wrote orders for West in case he should be knocked on the head or the expedition should end in disaster, and so made his way down into the launch. The darkness was filled with whispering and this accentuated the extraordinary feeling of eagerness that he felt all around him; he had known many a cutting-out expedition, but never one with quite such a degree of fierce anticipation. Though fierce was not quite the word. 'Ready?' he called softly to each boat in turn, and each replied 'Ready, aye ready, sir.' 'Give way,' he said.

There was an easy southern swell; the breeze was with them; and the boats pulled fast across the water, with never a sound but the creak of thwarts and thole-pins and the gurgle of oars. Nearer, nearer, and nearer still, the boats keeping close together: in the last hundred yards Jack was almost certain that a blast of grape was going to come from the Azul's well-lit gundeck, where men could be seen walking about. He leaned forward and said in a low voice 'Stretch out, now. Stretch out for Doggett's coat and badge.'

He loosened his sword, and as Bonden brought the launch smoothly under the Azul's forechains he sprang into them, up over the rail, leaping with a tremendous shout on to the forecastle, empty but for three bodies. Instantly he was urged on by the jostling crowd of men pushing after him and at the same time he heard the bellowing cheer of the other division coming aboard and the roar of Surprise! Surprise!

Some horrified faces stared up from the three bright hatchways and instantly bobbed down out of sight.

'Come on, come on, bear a hand there,' cried Jack, racing along the gangway and over the grapplings into the Spartan. The attack was wholly, utterly unexpected, but twenty-five or thirty Spartans opposed them on the quarterdeck, a close-packed resolute body with what arms they had had time to snatch up. A musket-shot dashed Jack's sword from his hand: a pike-thrust furrowed the side of his neck and a short thick heavy man butted him under the chin, knocking him back on to a corpse. He writhed sideways, pistolled the thick man, caught up a heavy piece of the shattered rail, six feet long, and flung himself at the group, beating with frightful strength. They fell back, hampering one another, and instantly he struck a great scything blow that brought three of them down. He was about to strike again backhanded when Davidge caught his arm, shouting 'Sir, sir, they have surrendered, sir.'

'Have they?" said Jack, breathing heavily, his face losing its pale almost maniac fury. 'So much the better. Belay. Vast fighting, there,' - this directed to a scuffle on the forecastle. He threw down his weapon - it was like a great oak door-jamb - and said, 'Where is their captain?'

'Dead, sir,' said Davidge. 'Killed by the Azul. Here is the only officer left.'

'Do you answer for your men, sir?' said Jack to the white-faced young man before him.

'Yes, sir.'

'Then they must go down into the hold directly, except for the wounded. Where are the Azul's people?'

'They went off in their boats, sir, before we boarded her. There were not many left.'

'Mr Davidge, three lanterns from the gundeck, if you please, to be slung in the shrouds.' The lanterns lit up a scene of great destruction. The Azul's gunnery must have been strikingly accurate, and the Spartan's heavy metal at close range could not but smash whatever it touched. The death-toll must necessarily be very high, above all between decks; but from what he could see as he strode among the bodies, none of his men had been killed, though Webster was bent gasping over a wound in his belly, and his mates were putting the gunner's bloody arm in a sling.

'Sir,' said the young man, 'may I beg you to cast off the barque? She cannot float another five minutes. We were only waiting until we had the last of the quicksilver out of her."

'I am so sorry you missed it, Tom,' said Jack Aubrey, breakfasting in his cabin with Pullings who, true to his rendezvous, had appeared shortly after the rise of the sun. 'It was the prettiest little surprise you can imagine. And there was no other way of doing it, for I was certainly not going to take the ship in among those shoals at night. Most horrible rocks: the Azul went down in ten fathom water very shortly after we had taken her wounded out. How that young fool ever came alongside her unhurt I shall never comprehend.'