Patrick O'Brian - Post captain

‘This is more like it,’ said Jack, plunging out of the forecastle. The long pause before action was always hard to bear, but now in a few seconds everything would vanish but for the living instant - no sadness, no time for fear. Number seven was in good hands, trained right round aft as far as the port would allow, and its captain glaring along the barrel, poised for the roll. The waist guns went off together, and in their eddying smoke - it filled his lungs, a choking exaltation - Jack and Major Hill flung themselves upon the long crows to heave number five, that dull inanimate weight, while the Lascars tailed on to the forward train-​tackle to help traverse it to point it at the Bellone’s stern, just in view over the dispart-​sight. Number seven went off with a poor slow explosion and a great deal of smoke. ‘If the powder is all like that,’ thought Jack, crouching over number five, his handspike ready to elevate the gun, ‘we might as well try boarding right away. But,’ he added, ‘it is more likely the mumping villain has never drawn it this last week and more.’ He waited for the smoke to clear, for the roll of the ship to bring the gun to bear, slowly up and up, and just as he heaved on the laniard he saw the Bellone vanish in the white cloud of her own broadside. The gun sprang from under his arched body. He could not see the fall of the shot for the smoke, but from the fine round crash it must have been well pitched up. The privateer’s broadside sang and howled overhead - holes in the foretopsail, a bowline hanging loose. The bow-​gun overhead went off, and he darted into the forecastle, leaping over the train-​tackle as number five was sponged and reloaded. He laid three and one, fired them, and ran back along the line to help run out number five again.

The firing was general now: the Lord Nelson’s thirteen larboard guns spoke in ones or twos every half minute or so; the Bellone’s seventeen, having fired three steady broadsides in five minutes - a splendid rate even for a man-​of-​war - had now become irregular, an uninterrupted roll of fire. Her leeward side was veiled in a cloud of smoke that drifted across the intervening sea to join the smoke shot out against the wind by the Indiaman’s guns, and through it all there was the stab-​stab of orange flame. Only twice could Jack be sure of the flight of his division’s shot, once when a flaw in the wind, tearing the curtain aside, showed number seven strike her amidships, just above the main-​chains, and again when he saw his own hull her in the bows: her sails were not as pretty as they had been, either, but she had nevertheless closed the distance and she was now on the Lord Nelson’s beam, hammering her hard. Would she forge ahead and cross?

There was little time for thought as Jack raced from gun to gun, bearing a hand, running out, swabbing and loading, but it was clear that the Bellone had no heavier guns than eight-​pounders, that she meant to tear the Indiaman’s sails, rigging and spars to pieces rather than to damage her valuable hull and cargo. There was little doubt that she did not relish the eighteen-​pound shot that hit her - three or four between wind and water would be very serious, and a single ball might carry away a straining topmast. If they did not hit her hard soon, she would close - abandon her elegant tactics and close. She was an awkward customer, with her formidable gunnery and her repeated attempts at crossing the Lord Nelson’s bows; she would be more awkward still at close quarters. ‘Deal with that when we come to it,’ he thought, tallying on to a rope.

An enormous ringing crash inside his head and filling the outside world. He was down. Blindly struggling away from number five’s recoil, he tried to make out whether he was badly wounded or not - impossible to tell at once. He was not. Number seven had exploded, killing three of its servers, blowing its captain’s head to pieces - it was his jaw that had gouged the wound across Jack’s forearm - and scattering bits of iron in all directions, wounding men as far away as the mainmast - a splinter of iron had grazed his head, knocking him down. The face he was staring at so stupidly was Pullings’s, repeating the words, ‘You must go below, sir. Below. Let me give you a hand below.’

He came fully to life and cried, ‘Secure that gun,’ in a voice that he could hear as if from another throat. By the grace of God what was left of the barrel and the carriage had not burst free from the ring-​bolts; they made it fast, slid the bodies overboard, and hurried what was left of its gear over to number five.

Three more rounds, three more of those hammer-​blow explosions right by his ear, and the bursting gun, the dead men, his own wound, all merged into the one din and the furious activity of battle.

The smoke was thicker, the Bellone’s flashes closer, far closer. She was edging down fast. Faster and faster they worked their guns: with the rest of number seven’s crew and two men sent up from a dismounted six-​pounder on the quarterdeck they plied them without a second’s pause. The metal was hot, so hot the guns kicked clear of the deck, flying back with a terrible note on the breeching. Then the Bellone’s guns fired a round of grape, followed by a furious discharge of musketry. The smoke swept away and there she was, right upon them, backing her main topsail to check her way and come alongside. Small-​arms cracking in her tops to clear the Lord Nelson’s decks, men on her yard-​arms to lash her spars to theirs, grappling-​irons ready in the waist and bows, a dense swarm on her forecastle and in her foreshrouds.

‘All hands to repel boarders,’ from the quarterdeck, the grinding crash as they touched, the Frenchmen’s cheer and here they were cutlasses slashing the boarding-​netting, pole-​axes, the flash of swords. He snapped one pistol at a determined face coming through the wrecked number seven port, snatched up the great heavy crow, and with an extraordinary feeling of strength and invulnerability - complete certainty - he flung himself at the men in the netting who were trying to come over the bows -the main attack was in the bows. He stood there with one foot on the broken rail, holding the massive crow in the middle, banging, thrusting, beating them down. All around him the shrieking Lascars fought with their pikes, axes, pistols. A rush of Company’s men from the waist and the quarterdeck cleared the gangway, where a dozen privateers had come aboard, and carried on to the forecastle, charging with pikes.

The Indiaman’s deck was higher by a good spring than the Bellone’s; she had a pronounced tumblehome -her sides sloped inwards - which left an awkward space.

But the Frenchmen clung there obstinately, hitting back, striving most desperately, crowding to come aboard. Flung back, yet coming again and again, fresh men by the score and score, until a heave of the sea separated the ships, and a whole group clinging to the forechains fell between them, blasted by Mr Johnstone’s blunderbuss fired straight into the mass. The serang ran out on to the yard-​arm and cut the lashing, the grappling-​irons scraped harmlessly over the rail, and the quarterdeck guns fired three rounds of grape, wounding the French captain, unshipping the Bellone’s wheel, and cutting her spanker halliards. She shot up into the wind, and if only the Lord Nelson had had enough men both to repel boarders and fight her guns, she could now have raked the Bellone at ten yards’ range; but not a round could she fire - her head dropped off, and the two ships drifted silently apart.

Jack carried a boy down to the cockpit - both arms slashed to the bone as he flung them up to guard his face - and Stephen said, ‘Keep your thumb pressed here till I can come to him. How do we stand?’

‘We beat ‘em off. Her boats are picking up her men.