Alexander Kent - Second to None

Midshipman Deighton called, “What are we doing?”

Jago watched the tapering bowsprit and jib-boom, the enemy frigate clearly visible for the first time, as if sliding downwind to larboard. Captain Bolitho was going to try and overreach the enemy, to claw into the wind and then run down on them, much as he had heard the dour sailing-master describe.

But all he said was, “We’re going to fight. So be ready!” Then, together, they climbed the ladder to the quarterdeck.

Adam Bolitho looked only briefly at the scene on the quarterdeck. The marines, their boots skidding on the wet planking while they secured the braces again before snatching up their muskets and running back to their stations. Four men on the wheel now, one of Cristie’s mates adding his weight to the fight against wind and rudder.

He glanced up at the masthead pendant, almost hidden by the wildly cracking canvas. The wind was still steady, from the northeast, but from aft he could believe it was almost directly abeam. The ship lay hard over, and his eyes stung as a shaft of sunlight found them for the first time.

And the enemy was still firing at Halcyon. There was no smoke to betray the shots, the wind was too strong, but he could see the other frigate’s sails pockmarked with holes, and great, raw gashes along her engaged side; the enemy was trying to rid himself of one foe before dealing with the real threat from Unrivalled. He fought back the anger. Rhodes was so intent on humiliating him that he had been blind to the true danger. Dutch-built frigates were heavier, and could take a lot of punishment. Halcyon could not even close the range and hit back. He saw her main-topmast reel drunkenly now in a tangle of black cordage, like something trapped in a net, before crashing down across her gangway.

He took a telescope from its rack and trained it on the other frigate. Magnified in the powerful glass, he could see terrible damage, could feel her pain, and knew he was thinking of his beloved Anemone in her last fight against odds. When he had been badly wounded, and unable to prevent her colours being struck to the American.

He heard Cristie yell, “As close as she’ll come, sir! Nor’-west-by-west!”

He realised that Midshipman Deighton was beside him at the rail, and said, “Take a good look, Mr Deighton. That is a ship to be proud of.” He lowered the glass, but not before he had seen the tiny threads of scarlet running down Halcyon’s tumblehome from the forward scuppers, as if the ship and not her people was bleeding to death. But an ensign was still flying, and from what he had heard of her captain another would be in readiness to bend on if it was shot away.

What sort of men were they about to fight?

He had heard one of the master’s mates ask Cristie the same question.

He had answered harshly, “The scum of a dozen waterfronts, gallows-bait the lot of ’em! But they’ll fight right enough. Pirates, deserters, mutineers, they’ve no choice left any more!”

More shots found their mark in Halcyon. Her steering had been carried away, or perhaps there were only dead men at her wheel now. She was drifting, but occasionally a single gun would fire at her attacker, despite the range.

Adam said, “You may load and run out now.” The gun captains would know. Single shots this time; an overloaded eighteen-pounder would be useless. He watched the sea boiling away from the lee side, the one thing he had dreaded about holding the wind-gage. Maximum elevation for the first broadside. And after that…

He found that he was holding the locket through his spray soaked shirt. At least she was free of the worry and the strain at every separation.

And I have nobody to grieve for me.

“Sir!” It was Galbraith, reaching out as if to drag him from his sudden despair.

“What is it?”

Galbraith could not seem to find the words immediately. “Halcyon, sir! They’re cheering!” He fell silent, as if shocked at his own emotion. “Cheering us!”

Adam stared across the wind-torn water at the battered, defiant ship, and faintly, above the shipboard sounds and the squeal of gun trucks, he heard it. The hand reaching out again. The lifeline.

He shouted, “As you bear, Mr Massie! On the uproll!”

It was too far, but the other frigate was changing tack. Preparing to fight, and, if possible, to board on their own terms.

“Fire!”

Adam gripped young Deighton’s arm and felt him jump as if he had been shot.

“Go forrard to the carronades. Remind them not to fire until ordered!” He shook him gently. “Can you do that?”

Surprisingly, the youth smiled, for the first time.

“Aye, ready, sir!”

He hurried down the ladder and walked purposefully forward, not even faltering when, gun by gun, the larboard battery recoiled from their open ports. Adam heard muffled shouts and felt the impact of a heavy ball smashing into the side, and thought of O’Beirne below in his domain, his glittering instruments laid out with the same care as these gun captains took with theirs.

“Sponge out! Reload! Move yerself, that man!”

“Take in the courses, Mr Galbraith.” Adam leaned over the rail and saw the spare hands running to obey the call. With the big courses brailed up and loosely furled it was like being stripped naked, with the ship open from forecastle to taffrail.

And there was the enemy. In mid-tack, sails all in disarray, some ports empty, others with their guns already run out for the next encounter.

“Ready, sir!”

Every gun captain was staring aft with raised fist, the gun crews barely flinching as another mass of iron slammed into the lower hull. They were on a converging tack, like a great arrowhead painted on the sea. Two ships, all else unimportant, and even Halcyon’s brave defiance forgotten. The other ship was beginning to lean to the wind on the opposite tack, but just for a minute she would be bows-on, unable to lay a single gun on Unrivalled. A minute, maybe less.

Adam found that his sword was in his hand, and that he was standing away from the rail, and yet he remembered neither.

“As you bear, lads!” How could a minute last so long?

He thought he heard the far-off rumble of heavy guns. Rhodes was still bombarding the fortifications, as timeless as those ancient ramparts in Malta where the invisible orchestra had played for them and they had taken, one from the other. Without question.

The sword sliced down, like glass in the sunlight.

“Fire!”

Gun by gun, each hurling itself inboard to be manhandled and reloaded without a second to fumble or consider.

He saw holes appear in the other ship’s foresail and jib, and long fragments of gilded woodwork blasted from the ornate beakhead. But she was swinging through the wind; they would be alongside and mad for revenge. The boarding nets would merely delay the inevitable.

He heard Napier shout; it was more like a scream. “Foremast, sir!”

Adam had seen some of Unrivalled’s shots cutting through the water beyond the target. It was too difficult for them to lay their guns with any hope of accuracy.

It was impossible, but the enemy’s whole foremast was going over the side, as if severed by some great, invisible axe.

Shots hammered into the deck and he saw two marines fall from the hammock nettings. He heard the bang of swivels from the tops and knew that Bosanquet’s men were following their orders, their marksmen already firing down into the mass of figures scrambling through and over the fallen mast to reach the point of collision. But Bosanquet would never know. He lay with one immaculate leg bent under him, his face destroyed by a splintered ball which had come through one of the gunports.

Luxmore, his second-in-command, was already down there with his own party, bayonets gleaming in the smoky light, all mercy gone as the first boarders leaped wildly across the narrow gap of water only to be hacked down or impaled. Closer and closer, until Unrivalled’s long jib-boom, its canvas in rags, was pointing directly at the enemy’s forecastle.