Alexander Kent - Stand into Danger

Bolitho gave another shiver as he recalled his first meeting with the captain. To me, to this ship, and to His Brittanic Majesty, in that order!

Destiny raised her quivering jib-boom like a lance and seemed to hang motionless on the edge of another trough before she plunged forward and down, her bows smashing through solid water and flinging spray high above the forecastle.

From one corner of his eye Bolitho saw something fall from overhead. It hit the deck and exploded with a loud bang.

Rhodes ducked as a ball whined dangerously past his face and gasped, “A damned bullock has dropped his musket!”

Startled voices and harsh accusations erupted from the gun-deck, and Lieutenant Colpoys ran to the quarterdeck ladder in his haste to deal with the culprit.

It all happened in a swift sequence of events. The sudden explosion as Destiny ploughed her way towards the next array of crests, the attention of officers and seamen distracted for just a few moments.

Palliser said angrily, “Stop that noise, damn your eyes!”

Bolitho turned and then froze as out of the darkness, running with the wind, came the other vessel. Not safely downwind to starboard, but right here, rising above the larboard side like a phantom.

“Put up your helm!” Dumaresq’s powerful voice stopped some of the startled men in their tracks. “Man the braces there, stand by on the quarterdeck!”

Rearing and plunging, her sails booming and thundering in wild confusion, Destiny began to swing away from the oncoming vessel. Gun crews who minutes earlier had been nursing their weapons in readiness for a fight were caught totally unawares, and even now were tumbling across to help the men on the opposite side where the twelve-pounders still pointed at their sealed ports.

More spray burst over the quarterdeck as another sea surged jubilantly across the nettings and drenched the men nearby. Order was being restored, and Bolitho saw seamen straining back on the braces until they seemed to be touching the deck itself.

He shouted, “Stand to, men!” He was groping for his hanger even as he realized that Rhodes and his midshipman had already gone running to the bows. “She’ll be into us directly!”

A shot echoed above the din of sea and wind, but whether fired by accident or by whom, Bolitho did not know or care.

He felt Jury by his side.

“What’ll we do, sir?”

He sounded frightened. As well he might, Bolitho thought. Merrett was clinging to the nettings as if nothing would ever shift him.

Bolitho used something like physical strength to control his stampeding thoughts. He was in charge. Nobody else was here to lead, to advise. Everyone on the upper deck was too occupied with his own role.

He managed to shout, “Stay with me.” He pointed at a running figure. “You, clear the starboard battery and prepare to repel boarders!”

As men floundered cursing and shouting in all directions, Bolitho heard Dumaresq’s voice. He was on the opposite side of the deck, yet seemed to be speaking into Bolitho’s ear.

“Board, Mr Bolitho!” He swung round as Palliser sent more men to shorten sail in a last attempt to delay the impact of collision. “She must not escape!”

Bolitho stared at him, his eyes wild. “Aye, sir!”

He was about to draw his hanger when with a thundering crash the other vessel drove hard alongside. But for Dumaresq’s quick action she would have rammed into the Destiny’s broadside like a giant axe.

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Yells changed to screams as a rumbling mass of cordage and broken spars crashed on and between the two hulls. Men were knocked from their feet as the sea lifted the vessels together yet again, bringing down another tangle of rigging and blocks. Some men had fallen, too, and Bolitho had to drag Jury by the arm as he shouted, “Follow me!” He waved his hanger, keeping his eyes away from the sea which appeared to be boiling between the two snared hulls. One slip and it would all be over.

He saw Little brandishing a boarding axe, and of course Stockdale holding his cutlass like a dirk against his massive frame.

Bolitho gritted his teeth and leapt for the other vessel’s shrouds, his legs kicking in space as he struck out seeking a foothold. His hanger had gone from his hand and swung dangerously from his wrist as he gasped and struggled to hold on. More men were on either side of him, and he retched as someone fell between the two vessels, the man’s scream cut off abruptly like a great door being slammed shut.

As he dropped to the unfamiliar deck he heard other voices and saw vague shapes rushing across the fallen wreckage, some with blades in their fists, while from aft came the sharp crack of a pistol.

He groped for his hanger and shouted, “Drop your weapons in the King’s name!”

The roar of voices which greeted his puny demand was almost worse than the danger. Perhaps he had been expecting Frenchmen or Spaniards, but the voices which yelled derision at his upraised hanger were as English as his own.

A spar plunged straight down into the deck, momentarily separating the two opposing groups and smashing one of the figures to pulp. With a final quiver the two vessels wrenched themselves apart, and even as a sword-blade darted from the shadows towards him, Bolitho realized that Destiny had left him to fend for himself.

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CALLING to each other by name, and matching curses with their unknown adversaries, the Destiny’s small boarding party struggled to hold together. All the while the deck was flung about by the sea, the motion made worse by fallen spars and great creepers of rigging which trailed over the bulwarks and pulled the hull into each trough like a sea-anchor.

Bolitho slashed out at someone opposite him, his blade jarring against steel as he parried away another thrust. Bolitho was a good swordsman, but a hanger was a poor match for a straight blade. Around him men were yelling and gasping, bodies interlocked while they fought with cutlass and dirk, boarding axe and anything which they could lay hands on.

Little bellowed, “Aft, lads! Come on!” He charged along the littered deck, hacking down a crouching shadow with his axe as he ran, and followed by half of the party.

Near Bolitho a man slipped and fell, and then rolled over, protecting his face from the one who stood astride him with a raised cutlass. Bolitho heard the swish of steel, the sickening thud of the blade driving into bone. But when he turned he saw Stockdale wrenching his own blade free before tossing the dead man unceremoniously over the side.

It was a wild, jumbled nightmare. Nothing seemed real, and Bolitho could feel the numbness thrusting through his limbs as he fought off another attacker who had slithered down the shrouds like an agile ape.

He ducked, and felt the man slice above his head, the breath rasping out of him from the force of his swing. Bolitho punched him in the stomach with the knuckle-bow of his hanger, and as he reeled away hacked him hard across the neck, the pain lancing up his arm as if he had been the one to be cut down. Despite the horror and the danger, Bolitho’s mind continued to respond, but like that of an onlooker, somebody uninvolved with the bloody hand-to-hand fighting around him. The vessel was a brigantine, her yards in disarray as she continued to fall downwind. There was a smell of newness about her, a freshly built craft. Her crew must have been dumbfounded when Destiny’s canvas had loomed across their bows, and that shock was the only thing which had so far saved the depleted boarding party.