Richard Woodman - A King's Cutter

Unable to escape, she would stand her ground while she had a lead, lie athwart Kestrel 's bow, rake her and run north, delivering a second broadside as she did so.

'Lie down!' Drinkwater commanded, lending his own weight to the tiller and turning Kestrel a quarter point to starboard, heading directly for the yacht.

The cutter staggered under the impact of Draaken 's broadside. The peak halliard was shot through and the mainsail sagged down. Splinters rose in showers from the forward rails and a resonating clang told where at least one ball had ricochetted off a bow chaser. Someone screamed and one of the helmsmen dropped into eternity without a sound, falling against Drinkwater's legs. Then Draaken completed her turn and began to pass the cutter on the opposite tack, no more than twenty yards to windward.

'Now Jessup! Now!' Scrambling up from their prone positions the men gathered round the starboard guns.

Draaken drew abeam. 'Fire!'

Drinkwater saw the bulwarks fly as smoke from the yacht's own fire rolled down over Kestrel . As it cleared he saw her sails flogging uncontrolled. Santhonax had let fly his sheets and Draaken was dropping to leeward. With her shallow draught she would drive down on top of the cutter as Kestrel lost way, her mainsail hanging in impotent folds, the gaffshot through and her jib blowing out of the bolt ropes through shot holes.

'Let fly all sheets! Boarders stand by!'

All along her side Kestrel 's gunners poured shot after shot into the yacht as fast as they were able. It was murder and the cracking sails added to the screams of wounded men and the roar of the cannon. Then, in the smoke and confusion, Draaken was on top of them, her mast level with Kestrel 's tiller.

'Boarders aft here!' Drinkwater roared, lugging a pistol from his belt and drawing his hanger. Through the smoke he saw Tregembo and Short and James Thompson and half a dozen other faces familiar as old friends.

Kestrel shook as Draaken ground into her and the Dutchmen passed lashings over anything prominent. The wind whipped the last shreds of smoke from the now silent guns and as it cleared they saw their enemy.

They were poised to board, round red faces hedged with the deadly spikes of cutlass, axe and pike. Drinkwater sought vainly for Santhonax and then forgot him as the Dutchmen poured over the rail. The Kestrels were flung back, swept from their own deck as far as the gigs in a slithering, sliding mêlée of hacking stabbing and murdering. Drinkwater thrust, twisted and thrust with Tregembo grunting and swearing on his right hand and James Thompson on his left. He felt himself step on a body that still writhed. He dared not look down as he parried a clumsy lunge from a blond boy with the desperate look of reckless terror in his eyes. The boy stabbed again, inaccurately but swiftly in short defensive reflexes. Drinkwater hacked savagely down at the too-extended forearm. The boy fell back, unarmed and whimpering.

Briefly Drinkwater paused. He sensed the Dutch attack falter as the British, buttressed by the solid transoms of the gigs, found their defence was effective.

'Come on the Kestrels!' Drinkwater's scream cracked into a croak but about him there was a hefting of pikes, a re-gripping of cutlasses and then they were surging forward, driving the Dutch before them. Over a larboard gun leapt Short, a maniacal laugh erupting from him as he pitched a man overboard then drove two more before him into the larboard quarter. They were disarmed and with his pike Short tossed them both over the shattered transom like stooks on to a rick.

Drinkwater swung himself left, across to the starboard quarter where the enemy were in retreat. 'Board the bastard, James, board the bastard!' he yelled, and next to him Thompson grinned.

'I'm with 'ee, Mr Drinkwater!' Tregembo's voice was still there and here was Hill, and Bulman with the chasers' crews, having fought their way down the starboard side. Then they were up on the rail and leaping down on to Draaken 's deck, their impetus carrying them forward, men made hard and ruthless by months of blockade carried with them a more vicious motivation than the Dutch, torn from comfortable moorings and doing the bidding of foreign masters.

Opposition fragmented, lost its edge and above it all Drinkwater could hear the furious oaths in a fairer tongue than the guttural grunts of dying Dutchmen.

With careless swathes of the hanger Drinkwater slashed aft. A Dutch officer came on guard in front of him and instinct made him pause and come into the same pose but he was passed by Short, his face a contorted mask of insane delight, his pike levelled at the officer. A pistol ball entered Short's eye and took the back of his skull off. Still the boatswain's mate lunged and the Dutch lieutenant crashed to the deck, pierced by the terrible weapon with Short's twitching corpse on top of him.

Drinkwater stepped aside and faced the man who had fired the pistol.

It was Edouard Santhonax.

The Frenchman dropped the pistol and swiped downwards with his sword in the molinello he had used at Sheerness. Drinkwater put up his hanger in a horizontal parry above his head and the blades crashed together. Then Tregembo was beside him his pike extended at Santhonax's exposed stomach.

'Alive, Tregembo! Take him alive!' and on the last word, with a final effort Drinkwater twisted his wrist, disengaged and drew his blade under Santhonax's uncovered forearm.

Santhonax, attacked by two men, took greater terror from the levelled pike and tried to push it aside even as Tregembo obeyed Drinkwater and brought it up. The vicious point entered the Frenchman's face and ripped his cheek in a bloody, disfiguring wound and he fell back, covered in blood.

Drinkwater turned to see the deck of Draaken like a butcher's shambles. Lolling on the yacht's companionway James Thompson was holding his entrails, staring with disbelief. Drinkwater turned away, appalled. A kind of hush fell on them all, the moaning of the wind rising above the groans of the wounded. Then Hill said, 'Flag's signalling, sir… Acts 27 verse 28…'

'For Christ's sake…'

All along the line of ships the smoke had cleared away. Admiral De Winter had surrendered and those of Onslow's commanders still with men on their quarterdecks able to open bibles obeyed their chief. They sounded and found, not fifteen fathoms, but nine. In great peril the British fleet secured their prizes.

Among them, her decks cluttered with corpses, her gear wounded, her bulwarks riven by shot, plunged the King's cutter Kestrel .

'How is he, Mr Appleby?' In the swaying lamplight Kestrel 's cabin had the appearance of an abattoir and Appleby, grey-faced with exhaustion, was stained by blood, his apron stiff with it. They stared down at the shrunken body of James Thompson, the purser, his waist swathed in bloody bandages.

'Sinking fast, sir,' said the surgeon, his clipped formality proper in such grim circumstances. 'The livid colour of the lips, the contraction of the nostrils and eyebrows an indication of approaching death… besides he has lost much blood.'

'Yes.' Drinkwater felt light-headed, aware of a thousand calls on his time, unable to tear himself away from the groans and stench of the cabin as though by remaining there he could expiate himself for the murder they had been doing a few hours earlier. 'Yes,' he repeated, 'I am told he supported rne most gallantly in boarding.'

Appleby ignored the remark.

'You are giving him an opiate?' Appleby lacked the energy to be indignant. He nodded.