Alexander Kent - COLOURS ALOFT!

The air was filled with noise, gun captains yelling and gesturing to their crews who wielded their handspikes to heave the smoking barrels round towards the enemy. Overhead, seamen called to one another while severed standing and running rigging flapped out in the wind and defied their grasping fingers. Occasionally the spread nets would jerk as something broke free and plummeted down from aloft, and Bolitho knew it was a miracle that more damage had not been done.

He heard two bangs, loud and resonant, and knew Rapid was using her borrowed thirty-two-pounders. They would give the French ships something to worry about. They might even draw one of them away from Herrick who was being raked from two sides at once.

He saw a frigate falling downwind, her foremast trailing over the side, antlike figures swarming amongst the wreckage to hack it away. A cheer from some of the gun crews stopped abruptly, as if to a word of command.

Bolitho gripped his sword and saw Barracouta reel over as another burst of crossfire tore into her and brought down more spars and flailing rigging.

Keen murmured, "Bad luck. But he's knocked one of them out of the fight!" He ran to the side as Jobert's ship fired again, some of the balls ripping overhead with just a few feet to spare.

Stayt said abruptly, "We can't mark him down!" The words were wrung from his lips as if he were feeling every shot. "Must get closer!"

Bolitho shouted, "Captain Keen! Head for the convoy!" It was suddenly more than clear that Jobert intended to take the merchantmen as he had planned, and abandon his captains to stop or delay Bolitho's ships from interfering.

A great shower of sparks burst from Despatch's main deck and timber splashed down alongside. For an instant Bolitho imagined that a magazine had exploded, but it must have been a powder charge which had burst before it could be rammed home. As the French ship drifted away from her Bolitho saw that she too was badly mauled, and Despatch was already nudging round, her lower battery firing again and again, although many of her upper gun crews had been cut down by the explosion. Icarus too was obeying the signal, and appeared to be overlapping her enemy, her sails filled with holes and some of her guns unmanned or smashed.

With her helm over, Argonautes bowsprit followed Jobert's ship as if to impale her. The arrowhead of sea between them was torn again and again by leaping fins of spray, many followed by the terrible thud of iron striking deep into the hull.

Stayt remarked, "We're alone!"

Bolitho looked at him. Stayt sounded so calm, almost matter of fact. A man without nerves, or one resigned to the inevitable.

"Larboard battery!" Keen's sword caught the sunlight. "Fire!"

There were some wild cheers as the Frenchman's sails bucked and split, and tell-tale puffs of smoke along her tall hull told of their success. Keen's regular drills were paying off even now.

Stayt ducked as musket balls scythed over the hammock nettings, and two seamen were hurled to the deck, one screaming as he clawed at his stomach. The dead man was thrown over the side, the other dragged to the nearest hatch and eventually down to Tuson.

Bolitho shuddered. It was happening there now. The knife and saw, the dreadful agony while some poor wretch was held on the table.

Stayt coughed.

Bolitho looked at him and saw him falling very slowly to his knees, a look of intent concentration on his dark features.

Midshipman Sheaffe ran to his aid and put an arm round his shoulders.

Bolitho said, "Get him below!"

Stayt looked up at him, but seemed to have difficulty in focusing his eyes. He had one hand to his waist, and already his fingers were wet with blood.

Stayt tried to shake his head but the pain made him cry out.

"No!" He stared at Bolitho, his eyes desperate. "Hear me!"

Bolitho knelt beside him, his ears cringing to the crash and roar of cannon fire. Leopard's masts were no longer at a distance; they were rising up alongside, huge and formidable, as the two ships continued to drive together.

"What is it?" He knew Stayt was dying. Men were falling everywhere; one of the helmsmen was dragging himself into the gloom of the poop, his efforts mocked by the great pattern of blood he left behind him.

"It was my father…I wanted to tell…" He coughed violently and blood ran from his mouth. "I wrote to him about the girl, never thought what he might…" He rolled up his eyes and gasped, "Oh dear God, help me!"

Sheaffe said, "I'll carry him, sir!"

Sheaffe's voice seemed to give Stayt some impossible strength. His eyes turned towards the midshipman and he started to grin. It made him look terrible. "Admiral Sheaffe, it was. A friend of my father, y'see."

He turned back to Bolitho and shut his eyes tightly as shots scored across the deck, killing a seaman who was thrusting his rammer into a gun and taking off the arm of his companion like a dead twig.

"Always hated you. Thought you knew, sir. All fathers together." He tried to speak clearly but there was too much blood. He was drowning in it. "Yours, mine and this young mid-" He coughed again and this time the blood did not stop.

Sheaffe lowered him to the deck, and when he looked up his face was like stone. Then he picked up the silver-mounted pistol and thrust it into his belt.

Keen hurried across the deck and shouted, "We're all but into her!" The deck bucked and splinters flew like hornets, hurling men aside or leaving them too badly injured to help themselves. He saw Stayt's body and said, "Damn them!"

Bolitho walked to the nettings again and, using a marine's shoulder for support, climbed up to look at the other vessel. On every hand the battle raged, flotsam and broken spars drifted abeam, while here and there a lonely corpse floated beneath the thunder of cannon fire, like an uncaring swimmer.

He saw Jobert's command flag above the smoke, the sparkle of musket fire as the sharpshooters sought out targets. The shot which had killed Stayt had probably been aimed at him.

He turned his back on the black and white ship and glanced down at the bronzed marine. It was sheer madness, and he expected to feel the crushing agony between his shoulderblades at any second. His epaulettes would make a fine marker.

But he could feel the same recklessness, the need to make these men trust him, even though he had led them to disaster.

He said, "Aim well, my lad! But save the admiral for me, eh?" He clapped the marine on his rigid shoulder and saw his wild-ness change to astonishment, his face split into a huge grin.

The marine exclaimed, "God's teeth, sir, I got two o' the buggers already!"

He was levelling and firing again as Bolitho jumped down to the deck.

The hull shook violently as more shots hammered into it, and an eighteen-pounder was lifted by an invisible hand and toppled onto some of its crew. The barrel must have been as hot as a furnace, but the men soon died, their screams lost in the bombardment. The fore-topsail blew in ribbons, and without warning the main-topgallant mast staggered and then plunged to the deck like a forest giant.

Bolitho stared through the smoke, his eyes stinging and streaming. They had to get alongside. A sudden gap in the smoke made him realize how close they were to the convoy. He saw Benbow, her flags still flying, but her mizzen gone, firing without a pause into the ship nearest to her. The other one was almost dismasted, and he saw the two little brigs firing at her before the smoke swirled down again.

His foot touched Stayt's outflung arm and he looked down at him. In those few minutes he had learned more about the man than ever before. How petty and empty all the jealousy and hate seemed now.

He looked at Keen. "We have the wind. Use it." His voice hardened. "Ram her!" Then he drew his sword and heard Allday pull out his cutlass.