Alexander Kent - The Flag Captain

Bolitho was quite motionless by the rail, the sling white against his coat and the sword hanging in his hand by his side. He saw too the captain’s coxswain at his back, and Pascoe watching him with something like despair.

It was then that he made up his mind. Bolitho had given them, and him, all this, yet now that he was crushed by grief none of them could help.

Almost angrily he strode aft and snapped, “By God, we’ll teach that fellow a lesson, eh, lads?” He felt his tight skin cracking into a grin. “How about it, Mr Keverne? Another three-decker for the fleet!”

Keverne swallowed hard. “As you wish, sir.”

Bolitho lifted his head and looked at him. “Thank you, Sir Lucius.” He sighed and rested his sword on the top of the rail. “Thank you.”

When he looked again at the French flagship she seemed much clearer. And his mind had become empty of everything but the need to destroy her.

Broughton was on the opposite side of the quarterdeck and peering at the French two-decker.

“She’s wearing!” He gestured to Bolitho. “Look!”

Bolitho saw the enemy ship swinging heavily away to expose her full broadside to Euryalus ’s starboard quarter. Either her captain had failed in a first intention to cross their stern, or had changed his mind about drawing too near.

Then the Frenchman fired. Being the first time she had taken part in the desperate battle the broadside was well timed and aimed, and as the thick smoke billowed along her hull Bolitho felt the deck lurch sickeningly, the air suddenly alive with splinters and that terrible screaming sound they had heard earlier.

The deck gave one more tremendous lurch, and as his hearing returned he heard Giffard yelling, “The mizzen! The bastards have got it!”

Before he could follow Giffard’s agonised stare he saw the slicing shadow sweep across the poop, as with rigging and shrouds and screaming men falling on every hand the mizzen, complete with topsail and yards, thundered amongst them.

Trailing lines and braces tore through the crouching gun crews and startled marines like deadly snakes, as with a further savage crash the mast toppled drunkenly over the side. Another blaze of gun flashes made the smoke writhe above the deck, and he felt the chain shot whirling overhead and crashing into the hull with a scream of metal.

Blackened figures pushed past him, and he saw Tebbutt, the boatswain, waving an axe, urging his men to hack away the great weight of wreckage alongside. Mast and spars, mangled corpses and a few trapped seamen from the top who were still trying to struggle free before they were carried astern, all were acting like a sea anchor, dragging the ship round in a nightmare of smoke and deafening explosions.

Where there had been a line of marines seconds earlier was a

grotesque heap of ripped and pulped bodies, broken muskets and a fast-spreading pattern of blood. Giffard was already yelling orders, and other marines were stepping blindly amongst the carnage to fire their muskets into the choking smoke.

In the middle of it all Bolitho saw Broughton dragging a sobbing midshipman to the shelter of the mainmast trunk, his hat gone, but his voice as sharp as ever as he yelled, “Reload and run out, damn you! Hit ’em, lads! Hit ’em! ”

Bolitho climbed over a great pile of fallen blocks and cordage, almost blinded by smoke, and shouted, “Mr Partridge! More men on the wheel! She’s broaching to!”

But the master did not hear. One section of chain shot had cut his rotund body almost in half, so that Bolitho had to fight back the vomit as he saw the horror below the poop.

Part of the double wheel had been carried away, but cursing and gasping more seamen slithered and stumbled towards it, throwing themselves on the spokes.

With a long shudder the mizzen slipped clear of its lashings and plunged into the sea. Bolitho felt the ship responding almost immediately, but as he pushed past some more hurrying figures he saw the French flagship and knew it was too late. With his ears and brain cringing against the thunder of the thirty-two-pounders he tried to think of some last-minute alternative. But the pull of the heavy mizzen, the momentary loss of control by the rudder, had thrown Euryalus off course, so that now her bowsprit was pointing directly at the enemy’s forecastle. Collision was unavoidable, and even had there been greater distance between them, the sails were too pitted, too torn to give anything but small steerage way.

He saw Keverne and yelled, “Up forrard! Repel boarders!”

More crashes rocked the hull, and he watched the French two-decker passing slowly down the starboard side, her guns firing, her masts and sails unharmed.

He pulled himself to the rail and sought out Meheux in the confusion of smoke and yelling gun crews. He saw the shining bodies of half-naked seamen, powder blackened and almost inhuman as they hurled themselves on the tackles and sent the gun trucks rumbling and squealing back to the ports. Up and down the line captains jerked their lanyards and the muzzles spat out tongues of flame, while the smoke came funnelling inboard to blind and torment the desperate crews.

But Meheux needed no telling. He was crouching beside one of the guns, shouting at its captain, his eyes very bright in his grimy face. More balls screamed above the deck, and a seaman who had been running with a message fell in a flounder of arms and legs, his head lopped off by the ball.

Then Meheux raised his sword, and the gun crews stooped and crouched behind their ports like athletes awaiting a signal.

“On the uproll!” Meheux glared along his line of men. “Fire!”

Every one fired at once, and Bolitho saw the Frenchman’s foremast and main topmast vanish into the smoke together. The lower batteries were firing again, and hampered by her trailing spars the French two-decker took the broadsides again and again. When the smoke drifted above the Euryalus there was no more firing from the enemy.

Bolitho almost fell as the bowsprit and jib boom ploughed into the French flagship’s shrouds and with a further grinding convulsion both hulls came together.

The smoke was bright with darting flashes of muskets and swivels, and Bolitho watched Lieutenant Cox of the marines leading his men across the forecastle to close with the enemy.

Below decks the larboard guns recommenced firing, as swinging like parts of a mammoth hinge the two ships angled towards each other. Right forward the gun muzzles were almost touching, and Bolitho felt the enemy’s shots crashing through the hull, upending guns and turning the lower batteries into places of slaughter and stark horror.

Musket balls ricocheted and whined around the exposed quarterdeck, and Meheux peered at the maintop where the swivel gunners were firing towards the enemy’s poop.

He yelled, “Shoot down those marksmen!” But the noise was so great they did not hear. Desperately he climbed on to the gangway and cupped his hands to try again. A marine, wild-eyed and grinning, peered down at him and then swung the swivel towards the other ship’s maintop. Even as he jerked the lanyard Meheux took a ball full in the stomach, and with his eyes already glazing in stunned surprise he rolled over the rail and fell unseen beside one of his beloved twelve-pounders.

Broughton watched the French marksmen as they fell to the vicious cannister. Some hung kicking across the enemy’s main yard and others, more fortunate, fell to the deck below and died instantly.

Then he said calmly, “Our people are not holding them off.”

Bolitho looked along the larboard gangway and saw the enemy boarders already overflowing on to the forecastle, while others swayed back and forth between the two hulls, steel against steel, pike against musket.