Alexander Kent - COLOURS ALOFT!

Paget gasped, "Let me take him, Sir Richard!"

Bolitho gave him a quick glance. Paget, the man who had faced the odds of Camperdown, was no longer the calmly efficient first lieutenant. He wanted to kill Jobert.

Bolitho snapped, "Stand back." He raised his sword and felt the raw tension in his wrist and forearm.

So it was a personal duel after all.

There was silence now, and only the groans and cries of the wounded seemed to intrude. Even the wind had dropped without anyone noticing it. Jobert's command flag flapped only slightly and in time with the bright Union Flag on the ship whose jib-boom still impaled the shrouds.

The blades circled one another like wary serpents.

Bolitho watched Jobert's face, as dark as Stayt's. It was all there. He had been a prisoner before, and his flagship had been taken from him only to rise again and repeat the disgrace. The impossible had happened. Jobert was a professional officer, and did not have to look farther than the man who now faced him for the reason. A last chance to even the score, to give him the seeds of a victory even if he never lived to see it for more than minutes after Bolitho had fallen.

Jobert moved around the deck and even the English sailors fell back to give him room.

Paget pleaded desperately, "Can I take him?" He saw Bolitho's foot catch on some broken rigging, the way he staggered. Paget whispered, "Fetch Captain Keen, for God's sake!" The messenger scuttled away, but Paget knew he would be too late.

Then Jobert struck, lunged forward again and again, his foot stamping hard down as he advanced. He turned still farther and made Bolitho twist his head as the sunlight lanced down through the ragged sails and blinded him.

Was it imagination or did he see a quick flash of triumph in the French admiral's eyes? Did he know his weakness? The blades glanced together and the steel hissed as each fought to retain balance and the strength to hold the other at arm's length.

Clash-clash-clash, the blades struck, parried and parted.

Midshipman Sheaffe stared wildly at Allday. "Stop him, can't you, man?"

Allday clutched his shirt against his burning wound and replied, "Get a marksman, lively now!"

Bolitho stepped carefully over some more rope. His arm throbbed with pain and he could barely see Jobert's intent face. Why prove anything? He is beaten, finished. It is enough.

Jobert's blade moved like lightning, and when Bolitho swung his own to beat it aside he felt it pass through his coat below his armpit, the searing pain as the edge cut across his skin. Bolitho smashed his hilt down on Jobert's wrist so that they lurched together, chest to chest.

Bolitho could feel the strength going from his arm, the biting pain of the cut on his side like a branding iron. He could feel the man's breath on his face, see the strange darkness in his eyes. Everything else was lost in mist, and even when he heard Herrick's voice coming through the packed figures around him, it was like an intrusion.

He raised his arm and thrust at Jobert's chest with all of his remaining strength. Jobert staggered back against a quarterdeck cannon and then stared with horrified disbelief as the old sword flashed forward and struck him in the heart.

Bolitho almost fell as the sailors surged around him, cheering and sobbing like madmen.

He handed his sword to Allday and tried to smile at him, to reassure him, like those other times.

Herrick pushed his men aside and seized his arm.

"My God, Richard, he might have killed you!" He studied him anxiously. "If I'd been here I'd have shot him down!"

Bolitho touched the hole in his coat and felt the blood wet on his fingers.

The cheering dazed him, but they had every right to give vent to their feelings. What did they know or understand of strategy, or the need to defend two unknown merchantmen? Why should they obey, when the harvest was so savage, so cruel?

He looked down at Jobert and saw a seaman prise the sword from his outflung hand. Jobert's dark eyes were half open, as if he were still alive, listening, and watching his enemies.

"He wanted to die, Thomas. Don't you see that?" He turned and peered across to his own ship and saw Keen shading his eyes to look at him. Bolitho raised his arm in a tired salute. He was safe. It would have been the final blow had he fallen.

He felt Herrick's hand holding his arm as someone brought a dressing to staunch the blood.

"He lost the fight. He would not surrender his pride too."

Bolitho made his way through his blackened and bleeding men. It did not seem real or possible. He looked up at the sky above the masts and lifeless sails.

He turned and looked at his friend and added quietly, "In his way, Jobert was a victor after all."

Allday heard him and then put his arm around his son's shoulders. He had not the words, not now anyway.

Bankart glanced at his father's face and smiled.

Pride of friend or enemy did not need any words.

IT WAS six months before Richard Bolitho returned to England. The stark memories of that last desperate battle were still clear in his mind, although at home they had been overtaken if not completely forgotten amidst other events.

For Bolitho and his little squadron it had been a costly victory in life and in other suffering. His ships too had taken great punishment and had been forced into the dockyards at Malta and Gibraltar.

The results of their triumph over Jobert's squadron had been as astonishing as they had been destructive. So badly crippled were most of the ships involved in the line of battle that two of the French seventy-fours had been able to steal away and avoid capture. None of Bolitho's vessels had been heavy enough or in such good repair that they could capture them. An undamaged frigate had also escaped. Jobert's big flagship, although seized, would be spared the shame of fighting again under her enemy's colours. A fire had broken out between decks which had killed many of her wounded, and it had taken every able hand, English and French to save her from complete destruction. She would probably end her days as a hulk or stores vessel.

They had succeeded in capturing all the rest although at one time Bolitho had feared that two at least would founder on passage to shelter.

He often thought of the familiar faces he would never see again. Most of all, Captain Inch, dying on his feet, inspired by some last thought that he had had to be with his friends. Captain Montresor who had fallen at the last moment even as the French flagship's colours had dipped into the gunsmoke. So many more. Needless to say, Houston of the Icarus had survived unscathed and complaining although his ship had been in the thick of the fighting from the first broadside. The two smallest vessels, Rapid and Firefly, had come through the onslaught with few casualties, although any one of those great French broadsides could have sunk them.

With the two brigs as her only companions, Argonaute, repaired if not recovered from the battle, sailed for England and arrived at Plymouth in June 1804.

Again, vivid pictures stood out in Bolitho's thoughts as he relived the moments which followed their arrival. The wild excitement, the flags and the gun salutes as Argonaute finally dropped anchor. There had been little wind and their progress up-Channel had been slow. Enough it seemed for the entire population to know of their return.

He remembered it so well. The exhilaration of the cheering people on the waterfront, much of which was soon to dissolve into empty sadness when they discovered that their loved ones would never return.

Admiral Sheaffe had been there in person. Bolitho had imagined he would have challenged the man, that he in turn might have revealed the jealousy which had made him use Keen as an instrument to hurt him. Instead the admiral had made a great display of greeting his son. That was a moment Bolitho knew he would never forget.