Alexander Kent - Success to the Brave

'Fire!' Keen paused only until the guns roared out towards the enemy. 'Mr Trevenen! Take charge there!'

Bolitho saw that Mountsteven was lying near one of his guns. He had lost an arm, and part of his face had been scorched like burned canvas.

The lower gun-deck was firing without respite, and Bolitho could picture it as if he were there. It had once been his station as a midshipman, a thousand years ago. The red-painted sides to hide the blood of battle, the leaping, grotesque shadows of the gun crews as they pranced and struggled around their weapons, and all the while the low confines of the deck filled with smoke, like a scene from Dante's inferno.

A ball came through an open gun-port, and Bolitho could follow its progress as men were hurled aside, some painted in blood as one of their companions was almost cut in halves before it eventually crashed into the opposite side. Men fell and rolled in torment, and Bolitho saw Tyrrell striding among the debris and patterns of blood, his wooden stump adding to his fierce and wild appearance.

Another ball slammed through the quarterdeck nettings and flung hammocks across the deck like torn dolls. Two helmsmen dropped, and one of the master's mates fell screaming, a foot-long wood splinter in his stomach like a barbed arrow.

Bolitho looked round frantically but saw Adam pulling himself to his feet. Through the smoke, his voice lost in noise and deafness of battle, he smiled before turning away to assist the after-guard.

'By God, sir, this is too damn hot for my taste!'

Bolitho looked at Allday. He was obviously in pain, but was gripping his cutlass with both hands like a broadsword.

Bolitho felt his hat plucked from his head and knew that they were close enough for the marksmen to test their skills.

'Walk about, Allday, or go below.' He tried to grin but his face felt stiff, like leather.

A midshipman darted forward and retrieved his hat. There was a neat hole just below the binding.

Bolitho made himself smile. 'Why, thank you, Mr – '

But the youth merely stared at him, the life dying in his eyes, like a candle being snuffed out. Then he fell, blood flooding from his mouth.

Bolitho replaced his hat and stared at the enemy. He had not even remembered the boy's name.

A great shadow swept across the deck, followed by a chorus of shouts and screams. The fore-topmast, complete with topgallant mast and spars, had been shot away as cleanly as a carrot. It thundered over the side, taking rigging, men and pieces of men in its wake.

He heard Allday gasp, 'Th' flag, sir! They've shot your flag away!'

Even in the midst of disaster and death Bolitho could feel his outrage and bewilderment.

Bolitho drew the old sword and carefully laid the scabbard on the deck without really knowing what he had done.

The enemy was almost alongside, the guns still firing, the air filled with flying, whining fragments.

So this was where it was to be. Destiny had always known. Men merely deluded themselves.

He saw some sailors below the quarterdeck cringing as more falling wreckage bounced on the nets or splashed into the sea alongside.

They had given everything. Far more than should be expected of them.

He flung his hat down on the nearest gun and yelled, 'Come on, my lads! One last broadside!'

A gold epaulette was cut from his shoulder by a musket ball and a marine scooped it up and hid it in his tunic.

Dazed, bloody and filthy with powder smoke, the seamen returned to their guns, their rammers moving like extensions of themselves, their eyes blind to everything but the bright tricolour above the smoke.

Bolitho shouted, 'One more broadside, then she'll be into us, Val!'

Then he realized that Keen was clutching his side and there was blood on his fingers and white breeches. He saw Bolitho's concern and shook his head.

Between his teeth he gasped, 'Not yet, the people must not see me fall!'

Quantock saw what had happened and waved his hat. 'Fire!'

The guns roared out at point-blank range, the balls passing through a return of fire from the enemy. Splinters burst from the deck, men reeled about gasping, others yelled orders to those who had already fallen.

Quantock was aware mainly of a feeling of triumph. At the very moment when they were to engage at close quarters, when hard discipline and not softness would win through, he and not Keen had been the one to take command.

But something was wrong. He was slipping and then falling. But it was all right. Someone would help him. By the time he realized that the blood was his own, his eyes, like the midshipman who had retrieved Bolitho's hat, were dead.

How Sleep the Brave?

Here and there along both ships guns continued to fire right until the moment of collision. It was as if the men on the lower deck were out of control, or were so dazed by the continuous thunder of their guns they no longer associated with anything outside their private hell.

On the upper deck the air was filled with death as musket and pistol-fire was directed towards officers and seamen alike.

Bolitho watched the gap narrowing between the hulls, the trapped water leaping over the tumblehome and changing to steam on the blistered gun muzzles.

Shots hammered the deck or smacked into the hammock-nettings, while from the fighting tops a murderous hail of canister ripped above the smoke and painted the decks of friend and foe alike with glittering rivulets of blood.

Keen clung to the quarterdeck rail with one hand while he pressed the other to his side, so that his coat helped to slow the loss of blood from his wound. But his face was deathly pale, and he made no effort to move as musket balls ploughed into the deck by his feet or cracked among the men around him.

Adam drew his curved hanger and yelled, 'Here they come!'

His eyes were very bright as the two hulls crashed together and more broken spars fell from aloft to hold them fast.

Allday thrust his shoulder against Bolitho, the cutlass weaving about as if to reach the enemy as he shouted, 'They'll make for you, sir!'

Indeed, some French boarders had already clambered across from the Argonaute's beak-head as it ground over the forecastle, the rigging and nets becoming further entwined as the sea lifted and rolled both ships together.

But a crackle of musket-fire brought some of them down before they could cut the nets, and several were run through with boarding pikes even as they tried to retreat.

Captain Dewar waved his sword. 'At 'em, Marines!'

They were his last words on earth as a ball took away his jaw and flung him down a poop ladder to the deck below. His lieutenant, Hawtayne, stared aghast at his superior, unable to accept that he was dead.

Then he yelled, 'Follow me!'

Bolitho watched the scarlet coats dashing into the smoke towards the bows, some falling, others firing their last shots before using their bayonets as more boarders dropped seemingly from the sky itself on to the decks.

It was too much and the enemy too many. Bolitho heard them cheering, the sound changing to screams and curses as another swivel cut through their ranks like a bloody scythe.

He saw Midshipman Evans cowering by the companion hatch.

'Get below! Tell them to keep firing! Tell them it's my order!'

It might set both ships ablaze but it was their only chance.

From the corner of his eye he saw more French seamen climbing their mizzen shrouds, the smoky sunlight glinting on steel as they waited for the sea and wind to push the two hulls into a closer embrace. Soon there would be more men to support them from the lower deck.

Bolitho winced as some of the Achates' twenty-four-pounders roared out against the Frenchman's side. Smoke, sparks and splinters flew above the gangway and several of the enemy boarders vanished to be trapped or ground between the ships.