Alexander Kent - Signal-Close Action!

"Thank you, Mr. Breen." He held his shoulder tightly until he could feel some of the terror ebbing away. "My compliments to the boatswain." As the midshipman started to run for the ladder he said, "Take your time, Mr. Breen!" He saw his words holding him, steadying him. "Our people are looking to their" "young gentlemen" today!" He saw the boy grin.

Herrick called, "I can see Nicator, sir! She's still disengaged!"

Bolitho looked at him. Probyn was well clear. He could apply his strength to the rearmost French seventy-fours which were now exchanging shots with Immortalite. Or he could set more sail and come after Lysander.

He said, "General signal. Close action."

He turned as Herrick hurried away and stared across the nettings. He saw Nicator's topsails, her hoisted. acknowledgement very bright against the smoke.

Bolitho coughed and retched as more smoke funnelled through the ports.

"Mr. Glasson! Tell your men to keep that signal flying, no matter what!"

Herrick shouted, "Glasson's dead, sir."

He stepped" aside as some marines lifted the acting-lieutenant clear of the guns. His face was screwed into a petulant frown, his mouth open as if about to reprimand the marines who carried him.

"I’ll attend to it, sir!"

Bolitho turned and saw Saxby staring up at him. He had forgotten all about him.

"Thank you." He tried to smile, but his face felt stiff and unmoving. "I want the signal, and our Colours to be seen. If you have to tie them to the bowsprit!"

He heard a chorus of groans, and then Major Leroux shouted from the poop, "Captain Javal's having a hard fight, sir! His mizzen is gone, and he seems to be trying to grapple!" Bolitho nodded. The French would have recognised Javal's ship as one of their own. They would try to recapture her first. It was a natural instinct.

He said, "More sail, Thomas! Set the t"gallants! I want to get amongst the supply ships!"

A seaman fell from an upper yard and lay with an arm thrust through the net. The dead reaching for the living.

But others were responding to the orders, and under more sails Lysander forged ahead of the French two-decker.

Herrick wiped his grimy face with his sleeve and grinned. "Always was a fast sailer, sir!" He waved his hat, the desperation of battle in his eyes. "Huzza, lads! Hit "em, lads!"

Another line of long flashes burst from Lysander s hull, and with full traverse on the lower battery Lieutenant Steere's gun captains got several more hits on the enemy. The other ship had lost all her topgallant masts, and her forecastle was a shambles of broken spars and cordage. Several of her ports were black and empty, like blind eyes, where guns had been overturned, their crews killed or wounded.

But she was still following, her jib boom overlapping Lysander's larboard quarter like a tusk, and less than eighty yards clear.

Leroux's marksmen were firing without pause, their faces grim with concentration as their tall sergeant picked out what he considered the most important targets.

But the French were also busy, and the air above the poop was alive with musket balls. Splinters flew from planking and gangways, or thudded viciously into the packed hammock nettings. Here and there a man fell from a gun or the shrouds, and the roar of gunfire was becoming unbearable. For across – Lysander's path lay several supply ships, two locked together after colliding in their haste to get away. Kipling was up in the midst of his forward guns, yelling to the carronade crews and encouraging everyone around him. The most forward guns on both decks were already adding their weight to the din, and the entangled supply ships were raked and ablaze with the swiftness of a torch in dry grass.

Veitch yelled wildly through his trumpet, "Mr. Kipling!

Point your guns to starboard!"

He gestured with the trumpet as a seaman touched Kipling's arm to catch his attention. Through the dense smoke, displaying her distinctive red wales, was the heavy supply ship from Corfu, yards hard-braced and her foresail filling strongly as she tacked to avoid her burning con- sorts.

"As you bear! Fire!"

. Bolitho walked as if in a trance. Calling out and encouraging, not knowing if they recognized him, let alone heard his words. All around men were working their guns, firing, and dying. Others lay moaning and holding their wounds. Some merely sat staring at nothing, their minds shattered perhaps forever.

All daylight seemed to have gone, although in his reeling mind Bolitho knew it was no later than eight or nine in the forenoon. It was painful to breathe, and what air there was seemed to be spewed from the guns, as if heated by each blistered muzzle before it reached his lungs.

A blast of canister scythed over the nettings, and he saw Veitch spin round, seizing his arm at the elbow and grimacing in agony as blood poured down his wrist and on to his leg.

A seaman tried to help him to the ladder, but Veitch snarled, "Bind it, man! I’ll not quit the deck for it!"

Lysander's guns were firing from both sides at once, seeking out the blurred shapes which loomed and faded in the dense smoke, and with the din of their broadsides Bolitho could hear the crash of the shots hitting the targets and cutting down masts, sails and men in a devastating onslaught.

Herrick shouted, "There she goes!" He pointed abeam. The red-striped supply ship was listing steeply, her hull punctured by several heavy balls. The weight of her cargo did the rest. The great siege guns began to tear adrift in her holds, and although there was no sound to rise above the thunder of cannon fire, Bolitho imagined he could hear the sea surging into her, while her crew fought to reach the upper deck before she dived to the bottom.

Hopelessly outgunned, the French frigate which had been trying to herd the supply ships away from the fighting, came out of the smoke, her guns blazing, her deck tilting to the thrust of her canvas. She swept across Lysander's bows, her iron slamming through the beakhead and foresail, knocking a carronade off its slide and killing Lieutenant Kipling where he stood.

As she forged across the starboard bow, Lysander's forward gun crews crouched at their ports, eyes reddened and smarting, bodies shining and streaked in sweat and powder smoke, watching the frigate's progress and awaiting Kipling's whistle.

The boatswain, Harry Yeo, cupped his hands and bellowed, "Fire!"

Then he, too, fell bleeding and dying, and like Kipling did not see the proud frigate changed into a dismasted shambles by the great guns.

A violent explosion stirred the sails like a hot wind, the smoke rising momentarily above the embattled ships and allowing sunlight to probe down like a misty lantern.

The first French ship was still drifting downwind, and the water around her was littered with flotsam and dead men. The second one was dropping astern of Lysander with only one- bow chaser which would bear. But Bolitho saw Immortalite and knew it must have been a magazine which had exploded.

Javal had managed to grapple one of the Frenchmen, and while the other had tried to cross his stem and rake him from end to end, a fire had started. A lamp blown from its hook, a man running in panic and igniting some powder by accident, nobody would ever know. Of the captured prize there was little to be seen. Her masts had gone, and she was a mass of flame which grew and spread with every second. It had blown to the ship alongside, and with her sails blasted away, her rigging and gang way well alight, she, too, was doomed.

Bolitho wiped his eyes, feeling the pain for Javal and his men.

Then as the smoke swirled down again he heard Grubb yell, "Rudder, sir!"

He crossed the deck, "ignoring the occasional thud of a ball by his feet as he stared at the helmsmen who were swinging the big wheel from side to side.