Alexander Kent - A Tradition of Victory

“Marines! Face your front!” Odin’s marine captain walked stiffly behind his men, his eyes everywhere but on the enemy.

Allday brushed against the midshipman and felt him flinch. And no wonder.

Allday watched the towering criss-cross of shrouds and rigging, braced yards and canvas as it rose higher and higher above Odin’s starboard bow until there was no sky left. He tugged at his neckerchief to loosen it. No air either.

Stirling pulled out his midshipman’s dirk and then thrust it back again.

Against that awesome panorama of sails and flags it was like taking a belaying pin to fight an army.

He heard Allday say between his teeth, “Keep with me.” The cutlass hovered in the air. “It’ll be hot work, I shouldn’t wonder.”

“Alter course two points to wind’rd!”

Odin steered slowly away from the enemy, so that La Sultane seemed to loom even larger than before.

“As you bear!”

Inch peered across the narrowing arrowhead of water between his ship and the big two-decker. Just for a moment they had moved away to present their guns.

“Fire!”

Even as the ship jerked to the irregular crash of cannon fire Inch yelled, “Bring her back on course, Mr M’Ewan!”

Bolitho saw the seamen on the forecastle crouching down as the French flagship’s tapering jib-boom, with some dangling rigging trailing from their brief encounter, probed past and above them.

Musket balls whined through the air, and several slapped into the packed hammocks or clanged against the guns.

Inch said fiercely, “Here we go!” He straightened his hat and yelled, “At ’em, my Odins!”

Then the whole world seemed to explode in one great shuddering upheaval.

It was impossible to determine the number of times Odin had fired her broadside into the enemy or to measure the damage wrought by the French guns in return. The world was lost in choking smoke, lit from within by terrible orange tongues as the gun crews fired and reloaded like men driven from their reason.

Bolitho thought he heard the sharper notes of smaller cannon in the far distance whenever there was a brief pause in the bombardment, and guessed that Ganymede and Rapid were waging their own war against Remond’s frigate.

The smoke was dense and rose so high between the two ships that all else was hidden. The other French ships, Herrick and the squadron could have been alongside or a mile away, shut from the tumult by the roar of gunfire.

Overhead the nets bounced to falling rigging and blocks, and then together, as if holding hands, three marines were hurled from the maintop by a blast of canister, their screams lost in the din.

A ball smashed through the quarterdeck rail and ploughed across to the opposite side. Bolitho saw the deck, and even the foot of the driver boom, splashed in blood as the ball cut amongst some marines like a giant’s cleaver.

Inch was yelling, “Bring her up a point, Mr M’Ewan!”

But the master lay dead with two of his men, the planking around them dappled scarlet where they had fallen.

A master’s mate, his face as white as death, took charge of the wheel, and slowly the ship responded.

More marines were climbing the ratlines to the fighting-tops, and soon their muskets were joining in the battle as they tried to mark down the enemy’s officers.

Bolitho gritted his teeth as two seamen were flung from their gun below the quarterdeck, one headless, the other shrieking in terror as he tried to drag wood splinters from his face and neck.

“Fire!”

Small pictures of courage and suffering stood out through gaps in the swirling smoke. Powder-monkeys, mere boys, running with backs bent under the weight of their charges while they hurried from gun to gun. A seaman working with a handspike to move his eighteen-pounder while his captain yelled instructions at him over the smoke-hazed breech. A midshipman, younger than Stirling, knuckling his eyes to hold back the tears in front of his division as his friend, another midshipman, was dragged away, his body shot through by canister.

“And again, lads! Fire! ”

Allday crowded against Bolitho as musket fire hissed and whined past. Men were falling and dying, others were screaming their hatred into the smoke as they fired, reloaded and fired again.

“Look up, sir!”

Bolitho raised his eyes and saw something coming through the smoke high overhead, like some strange battering-ram.

La Sultane may have intended to sail past on the opposite tack and smash Odin into surrender by sheer weight of artillery. Maybe her captain had changed his mind or, like M’Ewan who lay dead with his men, had been shot down before he could execute a man?uvre.

But the oncoming tusk was La Sultane ’s jib-boom, and as more trapped smoke lifted and surged beneath the hulls, Bolitho saw the hazy outline of the Frenchman’s figurehead, like some terrible phantom with staring eyes and a bright crimson mouth.

The jib-boom crashed through Odin’s mizzen shrouds, and there was a loud, lingering clatter as the other ship’s dolphinstriker tore adrift and trailing rigging flew in the wind like creeper.

“Repel boarders!”

Bolitho felt the hull jerk and knew it had been badly hit by the last broadside. He could not see through the burning smoke but heard warning shouts and then cries as the foremast thundered down. The sound seemed to deaden even the guns, and Bolitho almost fell as the ship rocked to the great weight of mast and rigging.

The master’s mate yelled, “She don’t answer th’ helm, sir!”

Bright stabbing flashes spat through the smoke from overhead, and Bolitho saw scrambling figures climbing along the enemy’s bowsprit and spritsail yard as they tried to reach Odin’s deck.

But they were delayed by the spread nets, and, as a wild-eyed marine corporal threw himself to one of the poop swivels and jerked its lanyard, the determined group of boarders were flung aside like butchers’ rags.

Inch strode through the smoke, his hat gone, one arm hanging at his side.

He said through clenched teeth, “Must free ourselves, sir!”

Bolitho saw the first lieutenant waving his sword and urging more men aft to fight off the next wave of boarders. How the gun crews could keep firing with half of their number already smashed into silence was a miracle. On the deck below it would be far worse.

Bolitho stared round at the scene of destruction and carnage. The two ships were killing each other, all thought of victory lost in the madness and hatred of battle.

He saw Allday watching him, Stirling close at his side, his face pinched against the sights and sounds around him.

He saw the smoke quiver as new cannon fire rumbled across the water like a volcano. Herrick was here and at grips with the rest of the French squadron.

It was then that it hit Bolitho like a fist or a sharp cry in his ear. It was no longer a matter of pride or the need to destroy Odin’s flag.

“Remond wants me.” He realized he had spoken aloud, saw the understanding on Inch’s face, the sudden tightening of Allday’s jaw.

They would never fight free of La Sultane in time. Either Odin would be totally swamped by her heavier artillery or both ships would be fought to a senseless slaughter.

Bolitho tried to contain the sudden madness, but could do nothing.

He leapt on to the starboard gangway and shouted above the crash and thunder of firing, “Boarders away, lads! To me, Odins!” He blinked as muskets flashed from unseen marksmen. It is what Neale would have said.

Seamen cut away the boarding nets, and as others snatched up axes and cutlasses Bolitho’s wildness seemed to inflame the upper deck like a terrible weapon.

Graham, the first lieutenant, jumped out and down, his sword shining dully in the smoke. From somewhere a boarding pike stabbed outboard like a cruel tongue, and without even a cry Graham fell between the two hulls. Bolitho glanced down at him only briefly, saw his eyes staring up before the two great hulls were thrust together yet again and he was ground between them.