Alexander Kent - Success to the Brave

At any moment he expected a face to loom over the gilded rail, to feel the thrust of steel or the blast of a pistol.

He slipped his arm around a life-sized carved figure of a mermaid which adorned the end of the gallery. Her twin on the opposite side had been beheaded by a ball earlier in the battle.

Adam eased himself warily around the mermaid, very conscious of her unmoving stare, the touch of her gold breast under his fingers. All at once he wanted to laugh like Hallowes had done. The complete insanity of it all was beyond his grasp.

He looked again at the mermaid's placid features and thought suddenly of Robina. Just a dream. He ought to have realized it.

Hallowes shouted, 'Move yourself, boy, make way for a King's officer!'

They both laughed like madmen and then Adam was up and over the rail, his feet sliding in broken glass as he kicked open a window and vaulted into the big cabin beyond. As in Achates, the ship had been completely cleared for action. But the place seemed empty except for corpses and moaning wounded, while some other figures were leaning out through the ports to lock blades with the men on Achates' lower gun-deck.

A French petty officer, wounded in one arm, saw the figures burst through the smoke and opened his mouth to yell a warning.

Hallowes hacked him across the face with his hanger and ran on towards the great trunk of the ship's mainmast. It was huge, like a smooth pillar, and when Adam leaned on it to regain his breath he felt it trembling under all its weight of topmast, rigging and spars as if it were alive.

Crocker bent down without hesitation and with a gunner's mate made a quick lashing around the mast with bags of powder arranged at intervals like a necklace.

Figures swayed through the haze and a pistol ball smacked into one of the British seamen like a metal fist. He dropped without making a sound.

Crocker swivelled his good eye. 'Slow-match, matey!'

He pressed it to the short fuse and made to back away.

Hallowes aimed his pistol and fired into the nearest group of shadows. 'We'll hold 'em off! The buggers'Il cut the fuse otherwise!"

Adam bounded forward to touch blades with a French officer. He felt the man's breath on his face as they reeled against one of the guns, the hatred giving way to fear as he pushed him clear with the hanger's stirrup-hilt and then cut him down with a blow across the shoulder.

Hallowes darted past him and hurled his empty pistol into a man's face, and when he staggered hacked him down with two quick slashes across arm and neck.

But more men were clambering down a ladder from the deck above, their legs pale against the trapped smoke and dark paintwork. One of Hallowes' seamen stabbed through the ladder with a pike and sent one of them screaming on top of his companions, but a pistol shot killed him before he could recover his balance.

Adam strained his eyes through the choking smoke. But he could see none of the others. Crocker had probably run aft before his charges exploded, and of Hallowes there was no sign.

Two French seamen loomed around an abandoned gun. One raised a pistol but Adam knocked it upwards so that the ball cracked into a deckhead beam. The second man hurled himself the last few feet and smashed Adam on to his back.

The lanyard around his wrist snapped and he heard his hanger fly clattering across the deck.

The seaman was big and extremely powerful. He held Adam's wrists, his tarred fingers like steel as he forced them out on to the planking, as if he were being crucified.

Adam could feel his knee smashing up between his legs to find his groin and cripple him before he could struggle free.

He tried again but it was hopeless, and knew that despite the battle which raged over both ships this man was enjoying the moment.

Adam heard himself cry out in agony as the man's knee jammed into his groin. He tried not to show his pain and despair, but lights flashed before his eyes as he hit him again.

A small shadow rose above the man's shoulders and then all the pain ceased as the French seaman rolled sideways on to the deck.

Midshipman Evans stared at the man with disbelief. Then, as Adam tried to get to his feet, he lowered the hanger with which he had hit his attacker and said urgently, This way, sir! I've found a place – '

The rest of his words were drowned by one terrible bang.

Adam got to his knees, the pain searing through his loins like a hot iron. He was blinded by smoke and flying dust and his ears had lost all sense of hearing.

He grasped the boy's shoulder and lurched through the choking fog, only partly aware of what was happening.

He felt Evans pull at his torn coat and wanted to protest as he lost his balance and fell headlong between two of the guns. Through his dazed and confused thoughts he knew he could see sunlight where there should be none.

Then as Evans crouched down beside him he saw a great jagged spar which had crashed through the deck above and then the planking within a yard of where he had been standing.

It was made worse by the complete silence. He saw Hallowes staggering through the dust and pausing to stare up at the seemingly endless length of mast and broken shrouds which poked through the hole like a battering-ram.

Hallowes saw him and yelled something, his face set in a crazy grin as he waved his blade at Crocker's handiwork.

Adam dragged himself to his feet and leaned on the midshipman's shoulder. His hearing was returning and he realized that the din, if possible, was worse than before.

Hallowes shouted, 'That'll give them something to ponder about!'

Now that he had completely given up the idea of staying alive he seemed beyond fear.

Evans thrust the fifth lieutenant's hanger into Adam's hand and they stared at each other like confused strangers.

Like his hearing, his memory came back with brutal urgency.

He heard himself say sharply, "Come on then, let's be about it!'

Even that reminded him of his uncle so that he knew instantly what he must do.

Tyrrell yelled, 'Can't hold 'em back any longer!'

He brought his belaying-pin down on the head of a man trying to wriggle over the torn hammock-nettings and struck out at another with his cutlass.

Bolitho did not waste his breath to reply. His lungs were on fire and his sword-arm felt like lead as he drove off another boarder and saw him fall on to the mizzen-chains.

It was hopeless. Had been from the beginning. The whole of the upper gun-deck seemed full of the enemy, while Achates' men rallied again on poop and quarterdeck, their eyes blazing, their chests heaving from their efforts.

He saw Allday raise his cutlass as a French seaman clambered up through the quarterdeck rail, the terror on the man's face giving way to triumph as he realized that for some reason the English coxswain was unable to move.

Bolitho jumped over a wounded marine and drove his blade blindly beneath the rail. He felt the point jar into the man's shoulder-blade and then slide easily into his body before he fell screaming out of sight.

Bolitho thrust his arm around Allday and dragged him away from the rail.

'Easy, man!' He waited for Midshipman Ferrier to run to his aid as he added, 'You've done enough!'

Allday twisted his head to stare at him, his eyes blurred and wretched.

'It's my right to…

A ball ripped through Bolitho's coat and he vaguely saw Langtry, the master-at-arms, cut down the marksman with a boarding axe.

They were all dying. And for what?

A new explosion made both ships roll and groan together, and for an instant Bolitho imagined that a magazine had caught fire, that both ships would be joined in one terrible pyre.

Swords and cutlasses hovered in mid air, marines paused in their desperate efforts to reload their muskets, as like a towering forest giant the Frenchman's mainmast began to topple. It seemed to take an eternity, so that even some of the wounded tried to prop themselves up to watch, or called to their friends to discover what was happening.