Alexander Kent - ENEMY IN SIGHT

There was no time to run for it. To expose his unprotected stem to those twenty-four pounders would be the end without firing a shot in reply.

Almost dejectedly the frigate's yards swung round, her larboard guns already running out as she prepared to accept the challenge.

Bolitho snapped, "Now!"

Gosett bellowed, "Helm a-lee!"

When the double wheel went over, the yards were already creaking round, and as he steadied himself against the rail Bolitho saw the bowsprit swinging further and further, the impetus of wind and rudder turning the old ship to run all but level with the enemy.

"Fire as you bear!"

He watched Stepkyne run to the forward twelvepounder and crouch beside the gun captain, staring through the open port as the ship wheeled ponderously beneath him and the French frigate glided across the muzzle.

"Fire!" He sliced the air with his sword, and down the length of the main deck gun captain after gun captain jerked his trigger line, and the sea faded in a great wall of billowing brown smoke, the air torn apart by the detonations.

Bolitho yelled, "Again, lads!" He wiped his streaming eyes and felt the deck quiver to the squeal and rumble of trucks as the first guns were sponged, loaded and run out once more.

"Fire!" The smashing explosions shook the hull like earth tremors, and when the quarterdeck nine-pounders hurled themselves inboard on their tackles Bolitho saw the frigate's foretopmast quiver and then stagger drunkenly into the smoke.

He shouted, "Reload, damn you!" Some of the men had left their -stations and were capering and cheering through the choking smoke as they tried to see the extent of their bombardment.

"Larboard your helm!" He saw the smoke gush and writhe in long yellow tongues as the Frenchman fired for the first time.

The balls were puny by comparison, but Bolitho felt them strike hard into his ship's hull and shouted, "Close the range, Mr. Gossettl"

The main deck gunners had stopped cheering, and as Stepkyne dropped his sword and the guns hurled themselves inboard again, many must have been surprised that a mere frigate could hit back and survive such punishment.

A ball crashed into the starboard gangway and a man fell shrieking, a jagged wood splinter driven into his back like an arrow. Some of his companions left their gun to help the writhing figure towards the hatch but Bolitho yelled, "Get back to your station!" Another ball ploughed through an open port and smashed into the hesitant seamen like an axe. One second a group of dazed confused men. The next there was a tangle of limbs and blood which seemed to be everywhere amongst the thrashing remains.

Bolitho tore his eyes away and noticed that the frigate's maintopmast had vanished also, and when a freak wind drove away the smoke he saw what his broadsides had done.

Her sails were in ribbons, and the low lying hull was battered almost beyond recognition. Here and there a gun still fired, but as Hyperion's lower battery roared out across the narrow strip of water Bolitho saw the blood seeping from the frigate's scuppers, watched ice-cold as corpses fell from the splintered tops and yards to join the flotsam and wreckage which floated unheeded between the two ships.

Great pieces of the Frenchman's bulwark and gangway 68

were flying skyward, and even without a glass Bolitho could see the carnage strewn around the littered deck, like the interior of a slaughterhouse.

He snapped, "Cease firing!" As silence fell over the dreadful scene Bolitho stared at the frigate with something like dismay. Then he cupped his hands and yelled, "Strike your colours! Strike!"

The frigate might still be repaired and used to replace Ithuriel. A prize crew could take her to Plymouth or Cadiz, where her papers and documents would yield further information about her.

Below his feet he felt the deck murmuring to the rumble of guntrucks as the men completed reloading before running out once more to face the enemy across less than seventy yards of water.

No guns fired from the frigate, but there was a sudden rattle of musketry from her poop, and a marine beside Inch threw his hands to his face and screamed like an animal as the blood gushed between his fingers. He was still screaming when he was seized and dragged below to the surgeon.

Gossett took off his hat and stared at a gobbet of blood which had splashed it like a cockade. He said, "The Frog cap'n still 'opes 'e can slip past us, sir."

Bolitho peered forward above the crouching gun captains. It was true. Following the frigate in a wide arc, the Hyperion was now pointing straight at the opposite headland. He would have to go about soon, and that would enable the Frenchman to slip past.

The Tricolour still flapped from the gaff, and the musketry was a clear answer to his plea to end the onesided fight.

Yet he could not give the order to fire. Without leaning out over the nettings he could picture that double line of guns, with each port filled with watching eyes and a gaping muzzle. Every gun aboard the frigate's engaged side was either upended or smashed, and she was already so low in the water that she could not last much longer without more men to assist her. He could not let her escape, nor could he risk his own men's lives in an attempt

at boarding. The French captain must be a fanatic. He smiled half to himself, and the naked-backed seaman at his side seeing the curve of his lips shook his pigtailed head in wonderment. But Bolitho's smile was one of pity and sadness. He was remembering himself as a young frigate captain matched against a ship of the line. The "ifs" and "whys" had been on his side that day, or maybe he had just been lucky, he thought dully.

Two feet hit the deck with a loud crash, and for a moment he imagined a wounded man had fallen from the yards. But it was Gaseoign. Bolitho had forgotten all about the young midshipman until this moment.

"Well, boy, why have you left the masthead7" It was a stupid question, but it was giving him a few more seconds to think and decide what to do.

Gascoigne rubbed his sore hands. "Couldn't make myself heard, sir." He swung his arms towards the estuary. Beyond the sandbars and the remnants of offshore mist Bolitho saw the dark outline of land and the once busy waterway to Bordeaux.

He blurted, "Masts, sir! The mist is so thick up there I couldn't see too much, but masts there are and plenty!" He recovered himself and blushed. "Three or four ships, sir, and coming our way!"

Bolitho saw Inch's face across the boy's shoulder. "Now we know, Mr. Inch!" He walked to the rail and pointed at Lieutenant Stepkyne. "Go along each gun in turn. I want every ball to hit!" He looked impassively at the slow moving frigate. There were sandbars beyond her, and Hyperion was near the centre of the main channel. "I want her sunk where she is now, Mr. Stepkyne." He removed his hat and did not even flinch as a musket ball struck a nine-pounder and whined away over the poop.

Stepkyne walked to the first gun. A midshipman stood at the main hatch ready to pass the word to the lower battery, so that each weapon would have a twin for the final act.

"Fire!" Bolitho looked away as the frigate's mizzen fell in a great welter of fractured spars and tangled rigging.

"Fire!" A whole section of the main deck erupted in splinters, amidst which corpses and, dying men were thrown about like bloodied rag dolls.

In between each remorseless pair of explosions he could hear men screaming and sobbing, as if the ship herself was pleading for mercy. He gripped the rail, willing the frigate to sink and end the slaughter.

"Fire!"

Bubbles were already churning the bloodstained water around the ship into a miniature whirlpool, and here and there a despairing survivor was leaping overboard, only to be carried away on the swift current.