Alexander Kent - FORM LINE OF BATTLE!

The sloop was responding well, and caught in a lazy offshore swell she threw back the spray from her stem in great white streamers.

The Chanticleer's only other officer joined in the confusion. 'Hands to quarters! Have the guns run out!'

Bolitho watched the ports jerking open and the slim muzzles sniffing above. the creaming water alongside. There, lashed like some snub-nosed beast was the Hyperion's second carronade. It was already loaded and had been doubly checked while Bolitho had slept in his cramped chair.

Such a weapon threw a giant sixty-eight-pound shot which burst on impact. It was crammed with grape, and at short range was murderous in its performance. Today it might be the margin between success and failure.

Another twelve-pound ball whimpered overhead and threw a tall waterspout within half a cable of the sloop's bows.

Bolitho turned as Rooke appeared beside him, his slight figure wrapped in a borrowed pea-jacket. Even like that he somehow looked smart and well turned out.

Rooke said tightly, 'That'll be Mr. Pearse, the gunner. He'll fire each shot himself, if I'm not mistaken, sir.' He tightened his jaw as a third ball slammed hard alongside and deluged the sloop's own gunners with spray.

'He certainly has a good eye.' Bellamy sounded anxious.

Bolitho lifted his glass as a distant trumpet call echoed above the moan of rigging and hiss of spray. He saw the flag rising above the fortress, the gleam of sunlight on a telescope or weapon by the battery wall.

He snapped, 'Alter course, Bellamy! Remember what I told you, and cut as close as you dare to the headland!'

He left Bellamy to his work as the Hyperion changed her tack and swung round menacingly to run almost parallel with the sloop. She was a good mile away, but under her great press of canvas and with the wind under her stem she was moving fast and well. Any observer from the shore would certainly assume she was making a desperate effort to overreach the sloop and catch her before she could tack and enter the safety of the harbour.

There was an echoing roar from the cliff, and they all heard the high-pitohed whine as the ball passed high overhead.

Rooke said, 'I didn't see anything!'

Bolitho bit his lip. Through his glass he had seen a hole appear right in the belly of the Hyperion's main course. It was a very good shot indeed.

He said, 'At least they are concentrating on Quarme for the moment!' But the humour was only in his voice. In the growing light Hyperion held a kind of beauty which he found hard to explain. He could see the angry figurehead, the gleam of reflected water in her tall side, and felt something like pain as another gun fired from the battery to throw a waterspout right alongside the old ship's poop.

That one could possibly have ricocheted into the hull timbers, he thought grimly. When he looked up at the fortress again he saw that there was still no furnace smoke above the ramparts. But it would not take them long to fan the overnight embers awake, and then any such shot could turn the Hyperion into an inferno.

Quarme was too close inshore. Maybe he had misjudged it, or perhaps he wanted it to look extra realistic.

He heard Rooke snarl, 'Tell that fool to hide himself!'

A pair of horny bare feet were protruding from beneath the spread tarpaulins, but they vanished with a yelp as a petty officer lashed out with his rattan.

Bellamy was more concerned with his own ship than the Hyperion's danger. He was beside the wheel watching both binnacle and sails as the dark-sided headland crept out as if to meet the Chanticleer's bows head on.

He dropped his hand. 'Braces therel Lively, you idle bastards!'

Groaning and protesting the sloop quivered and then heeled over to the thrust of wind and rudder. One snag-toothed rock seemed almost to graze the hull as she surged around the headland to where the flat water of the harbour greeted her like a placid trap.

Bolitho said quietly, 'Shorten sail now, Mr. Bellamy. And pass the word to the men below.' His hand against the sword hilt felt clammy with sweat.

He turned to watch the Hyperion's shape shorten as she started to tack closer inshore. She too had reduced sail, and he held his breath as two more waterspouts lifted within feet of her side. The French were firing more rapidly now, and it seemed likely that they had acted just as he had anticipated by moving more of the guns to the seaward side of the battery.

He swung round to face forward, unable to watch the Hyperion's dangerous manoeuvres. He saw that some of the sloop's men were clustered by the forecastle, watching the widening approaches of the harbour. He shouted angrily, 'Look astern, you idiots! If you were Frogs you'd be more afraid of the Hyperion than your own anchorage!'

His words steadied them and helped to break the tension of his own thoughts.

Rooke said, 'There's the landing place, sir!'

Bolitho nodded. It was little more than a wooden pier below a rough, narrow road which twisted away between a great cleft in the hillside beyond. There were many figures already there, and he could just make out the muzzle of an old fieldpiece crouching between its two massive iron wheels.

'Steady now, Mr. Bellamy.' He had to lick the dryness from his lips. 'Make for the anchorage beyond the pier. But when we are within a cable of the landing place get the sails off her and steer for the pier! You'll be in the lee of the hill by then, the ship's own way should take her in!'

Bellamy tore his eyes from the bows. 'It won't do my timbers any good, sir!' But he grinned. 'My God, this is better than running the fleet mails!'

Bolitho caught a glimpse of Inch, the Hyperion's horsefaced junior lieutenant, his head framed in an open hatch, and knew that the rest of the landing party were packed behind him like peas in a barrel. It must be worse for them, he thought vaguely. Crammed in the sloop's small hull in complete darkness, with nothing but fear and the sounds of gunfire to keep them company.

He snapped, 'Wave to the soldiers on the pier!' Some of the sailors gaped at him. 'Wave! You've just escaped the bloody English!'

He sounded so wild and angry that several of the men actually yelled with insane laughter and capered like madmen as the figures on the pier began to wave back.

Bolitho wiped his forehead with his shirt sleeve and then said quietly, 'When you are ready, Mr. Bellamy.'

When he glanced briefly astern the harbour mouth was already sealed by the outflung wedge of headland. Above it he could see the Hyperion's upper yards and felt an overwhelming relief as he realised that she was already going about and heading for the safety of the open sea.

Then Bellamy barked, 'Now! Helm alee!'

When he faced forward again, Bolitho saw that the bowsprit was pointing straight towards the cleft in the hillside. Very deliberately he drew his sword from its scabbard and began to walk towards the caironade.

With the sails whisked from her yards the Chanticleer continued to glide steadily towards the rough wooden pier where some thirty or so French soldiers had gathered to watch her approach. Slightly to one side of the chattering soldiers a disdainful, moustached officer sat stiffly on his horse, only his hands and feet moving to, calm his mount as the battery guns continued to fire after the invisible Hyperion.

Then, as the sloop swung drunkenly towards them, the men nearest the water's edge seemed to realise that something was wrong. In the next few seconds everything happened at once.

From right forward in the bows a whistle shrilled, and as the last gunport was raised and the carronade trundled into full view the deck tarpaulin was hauled aside, and from beneath it and from every hatch the sloop became alive with swarming seamen and marines.