Patrick O'Brian - The Ionian mission

But now here, against all expectation, was the Kitabi, coming up fast with the obvious intention of passing between the Surprise and the Torgud and then presumably of hauling her wind to take the Surprise between two fires.

'That will not do, my friend,' said Jack, watching her approach. 'It is very gallant, but it really will not do. Round-shot,' he called, 'and fire steady from forward aft: fire at the word.' Some minutes later, when the relative positions of the three ships were such that the Torgud was directly to leeward of her consort and unable to give her any support, Jack shivered the main and mizen topsails, slanting down towards the Kitabi, making no reply to her high, rapid, nervous, largely ineffectual fire until they were a cable's length apart, no more.

They gave her six deliberate rolling broadsides, beating five of her midships gun-ports into one and silencing her entirely. At the sixth there was a violent explosion aboard her, and the beginning of a fire: the Surprise passed on, leaving her drifting before the wind, her people running with buckets and hose.

The breeze had faded, perhaps stunned by the cannonade, and the Surprise set her topgallantsails to pursue the Torgud: not that the Turk was evidently flying - he had no great speed of canvas - but he was steering steadily on his original course, perhaps in the hope of reaching Ali Pasha; and right ahead the mainland could now be seen, mountain-peaks nicking the horizon, while the low Morali islands must be nearer still. In this wonderfully silent pause, while the bosun and his mates sprang about the rigging, knotting and splicing, Jack stared at the Torgud for a moment, watching them throw their dead over the side - a trail of dead in her wake - and then made a quick tour of the ship. He found less damage than he had feared: one gun dismounted, the side pierced by three thirty-six-pounder balls and some others, but none of the holes dangerously low, while in Stephen's hands there were no more than six badly wounded men and three sewn into their hammocks, remarkably few for such a furious bout.

On deck again he saw that the breeze had recovered, and that the Surprise was overhauling the Torgud fast. They were already within gunshot, but with land in sight it seemed to Jack that so long as he could avoid being boarded close action was called for, and it was not until they were drawing abreast, close enough to see men's faces clearly, that he reduced sail and the hammering began again. This was the Torgud's larboard broadside, hitherto unengaged and undamaged, and the Turks blazed away with as much spirit as before: again a thirty-six-pound ball passed so close to Jack's head that it made him stagger - he actually saw the dark blur of its passing - and he said to Driver of the Marines, 'Let your men amidships concentrate on the loader of that damned heavy gun.' Graham, who was just at hand, said 'May I take a musket, sir? I might do some good, and I feel uneasy, useless and exposed standing here.'

He was indeed exposed. Now that both ships had the wind aft the smoke blew clear away forward; the Torgud was shooting more accurately than before and as her shot hit the Surprise's bulwark or upper hull so showers of splinters flew across her deck, some trifling, some deadly. Graham had already been knocked over twice, and- most of those on deck had been more or less banged about.

The Torgud was still full of fight, and she still had a surprising number of men. After a particularly violent salvo she clapped her helm hard over, meaning to board again, and again her people crowded thick into her bows and along her bowsprit. This time the Surprise had no room to tack, but she had her forecourse in the brails for just such an emergency, and dropping it now she shot ahead: though none too fast, since the Torgud's jibboom caught in her mizen topgallant backstays. She shot ahead nevertheless, her stern-chasers blasting grape into the close-packed Turks, a red slaughter that checked even the gun-crew's cheers; and the moment she had way enough she crossed the Torgud's stern, raking her as she did so. The Surprise let fly her sheets, and the Torgud, ranging up, engaged again with her starboard broadside, shockingly ravaged from that first bout, with at least seven guns dismounted, ports blackened and battered in, the scuppers and even the bare sides thick with blood.

Ravaged, but still dangerous: now, when some opponents might have struck, she let fly with a dozen or thirteen guns and two of these did more damage than all she had fired hitherto. One struck the uppermost pintle and wedged the rudder, and another, the last of her huge round-shot, caught the Surprise just as she was on the lift, showing her copper, and made a shocking great hole under her waterline. And a third, fired as Jack was giving Williamson orders to carry forward, took the boy's arm off at the elbow. Jack saw his amazed face go paper-white - not pain but amazement and concern and disbelief - whipped a handkerchief round the stump, twisted it tight, staunched the jetting blood and passed him to a quartermaster to carry below.

By the time the Surprise had dealt with the steering and the leak the Torgud was much nearer the land. Apart from a few shots from her stern-chasers as she drew ahead she had not tried to profit by her advantage, still less to board. It was possible that she was unaware of the damage she had inflicted: it was certain that the last encounter, the last raking, had killed a great number of her men. She sailed away, therefore, and in her wake there now sailed the Kitabi, she having pursued a course with no turnings since the Surprise left her; and both Turks were clearly steering for the same port.

'All sail she will bear, Mr Pullings,' said Jack, going forward to study the Torgud through a borrowed telescope - a musket-shot had broken his own as he held it: the tube shattered, his hand untouched. The Torgud had suffered terribly, there was no doubt of that; she was sailing low and heavy and although the Surprise was now gathering way fast as Pullings spread topgallantsails and even weather studdingsails in his passionate eagerness, the Torgud seemed unwilling and unable to make any increase. And even now the bodies were still splashing over the side.

'No,' said Jack to Bonden at the starboard bow-chaser as they came within easy range of the Turk's stern, moving faster every moment. 'Do not fire. We must not check her way. Boarding is the only thing for it, and the sooner the better.'

'Anyhow, sir,' said Bonden, 'that damned fool is in the way.' This was the Kitabi. Convinced that the Surprise was in pursuit of her, she had cracked on the most extraordinary amount of canvas to rejoin the Torgud and now she lay directly between the two.

Jack walked aft, and as he passed the boarders in each gun-crew smiled at him, or nodded, or said 'Coming up now, sir," or cheerful words of that kind; and again he felt the rising of that enormous excitement of immediate battle, greater than any other he had ever known in the world.

He spoke to the Marines, who were now to come into their own, and after a few more turns he ran down the ladders to the lantern-lit orlop. 'Stephen,' he said privately, 'How is the boy?'

'He will do, I believe.'

'I hope so, indeed. As soon as we come up, we mean to board.'

They shook hands and he ran on deck again. Pullings was already taking in the studdingsails, not to overrun the Torgud: and there, still absurdly ahead, fled the Kitabi, between the two frigates. She fired not a gun: she seemed to have lost her head entirely. 'Forward, there,' called Jack to the bow-chaser guns, 'Send a ball over her deck.'

'By God,' cried the master, as the Kitabi jigged at the shot, 'She'll run the Torgud aboard if she don't take care - by God, she can't avoid her - by God, she's doing it.'

With a rending, crashing sound that came clear to their ears at four hundred yards the Kitabi ground slanting into the Torgud's starboard side, her foremast falling over the frigate's waist.