Alexander Kent - With All Despatch

Queely shouted, "Reload!" He stared wildly at his men. Not one had been hit, although a splintered piece of wood had been hurled into the hammocks around the helmsmen with the accuracy of a spear.

And there was Telemachus. As Wakeful charged past the enemy's poop, they all saw the other cutter tacking around to follow the corvette on the same course.

It took longer to bring Wakeful about and under control again. With so much sail, it was like trying to slow a runaway team of horses. The corvette lay directly ahead of them, with the cutters using wind and rudder to hold station on either quarter as if they were escorting her rather than forcing another engagement.

The corvette's captain seemed unwilling to wear ship and confront them. But the cutters were unable to damage the enemy vessel without overhauling her. And the next time the French captain would be ready.

Bolitho watched Paice manoeuvring his cutter closer and closer, the occasional stab of musket fire exchanged between the ill-matched vessels. Telemachus had been badly mauled, and Bolitho had seen there was a hole punched through her hull, just a few feet above the waterline, before she had changed tack to continue her attack.

Sunlight flashed across the corvette's stern-windows and Bolitho raised his glass to read the name painted on her counter.

La Foi. So the girl's figurehead must be Faith. In the stained lens he saw heads moving on the corvette's poop, the flash of muskets, an officer pointing with his speaking trumpet. He also saw the massive scars on her lower hull where one of Paice's carronades had found its mark. A foot or so higher and-he stiffened as two of the stern-windows shattered and pitched into the vessel's frothing wake.

For one more moment he thought a lucky shot had hit the stern, although reason told him that none of Paice's guns would yet bear.

Then he stared with sick realisation as another window was smashed out, and the black muzzle of a nine-pounder thrust into view.

"Signal Telemachus to stand away!" Bolitho had to seize Queely's arm to make him realise what was happening. "They'll blow him out of the water!"

But Wakeful was a good cable's length astern of Paice's cutter, and nobody aboard was bothering to look and see what she was doing. Paice had at last realised what was happening. Bolitho saw the yards coming round, the mainsail suddenly free and flapping wildly as Paice let her sway over while she took the wind across her beam.

Bolitho watched anxiously. Paice was doing what he thought was best. Lose the wind, but stand away from the onrushing Wakeful and so avoid a collision.

Bolitho snapped, "We'll engage to larboard!" He did not want to take his eyes from the two vessels ahead, but needed to watch the mast and bulging topsail. Wakeful was tearing through the waves; the mast must be curving forward under such a pressure and weight of canvas and spars.

He turned his head, and at that very moment La Foi fired her hastily-rigged stern-chaser.

Queely shouted, "More grape!" He wiped his eyes wildly. "She's still answering, sir!"

Telemachus was certainly under command, but her sails were pockmarked with holes, and, as he lifted his glass again, Bolitho saw bodies on her deck, a man on his knees as if he was praying, before he too fell lifeless.

He wanted to look away but watched as two thin threads of scarlet ran from the washports to merge with the creaming sea alongside. Like seeing a ship bleeding to death, as if there was no human hand aboard.

Wakeful' s men were staring over the bulwark, the gun crews from the opposite side hurrying to join their comrades for the next embrace.

Bolitho said, "It'll take time to load and train that gun with makeshift tackles." He looked at Queely, his gaze calm. "We must be up to her before she can use it on us."

They bore down on Telemachus and Bolitho saw men working like demons at halliards and braces, others clawing their way up broken ratlines to discard or repair damaged rigging.

He saw a lieutenant amongst some fallen rigging and knew it was Triscott. Then right aft near the tiller, Paice's tall figure, with one hand thrust inside his coat. He might have injured it, Bolitho thought, but it was somehow reassuring to see him there, in his place.As Wakeful swept past Bolitho saw Paice turn and look across the tumbling waves, then very slowly raise his hat. It was strangely moving, and some of Wakeful' s men raised a ragged cheer.

Allday stepped nearer, his cutlass over his shoulder while he watched the other ship's stern rise above the larboard bow. He had been a gun-captain himself aboard the old Resolution before he had met up with Bolitho. But then Allday had turned his hand to most things.

He knew better than most that if they overhauled the French ship they would be destroyed by her main battery. At close quarters like this, Wakeful would be pounded to fragments in minutes. Their only hope of delaying the corvette long enough to be worthwhile was to hit her with a carronade with no chance of a miss. For if they remained on the enemy's quarter the improvised stern-chaser would finish them just as brutally.

He saw a musket fire from the French ship and heard a spent ball slap into the deck nearby. In minutes, each ball could be deadly, and he stood close to Bolitho, just so that he would know he was here when it happened.

Bolitho said, "I would that we were in Tempest, old friend." He spoke quietly, so that Allday could barely hear him above the chorus of wind and sea.

He added in the same unemotional voice, "I shall always remember her."

Allday watched him grimly. Who did he mean? Tempest or his lady, Viola?

He heard Queely shouting to his gun crews, saw a terrified ship's boy dash past with fresh charges for the six-pounders, and one of the seamen of the boatswain's party staring at the deck, his lips moving as though in prayer, or repeating someone's name.

He saw all and none of it. Bolitho had shared something with him, as he always did.

Allday lifted his chin and saw a movement in the corvette's stern-windows. It was almost over. He stared up at the sky. Please God, let it be quick!

Lieutenant Andrew Triscott tore his eyes from Wakeful' s straining sails and made himself turn inboard again. He had thought he was prepared for this, had trained himself to accept the inevitable when it came. Instead he could only stare at the utter chaos on Telemachus' s deck, fallen rigging and scorched pieces of canvas, and worst of all the blood which ran unchecked into the scuppers. He had never believed there could be so much blood.

Faces he had come to know, some dead, others screwed up in agony, like strangers.

He heard Paice's strong voice forcing through the noise and confusion. "Clear those men from the guns!"

Triscott nodded, still unable to speak. He clung to Paice's strength like a drowning man groping for a piece of flotsam in the sea. He saw Chesshyre by the tiller, two helmsmen down, one gasping with pain as his companion tied a rough bandage around his arm to staunch the bleeding. Triscott retched helplessly. The second man was headless, and he saw some of his blood and bone spattered across Paice's breeches.

The boatswain swam into Triscott's blurred vision, his face smeared with powder smoke, his eyes like coals.

"You all right, sir?" He did not wait for an answer. "I'll muster some spare 'ands!"

Triscott stared round, half-expecting to find nobody alive, but Paice's powerful voice and the burly boatswain's angry gestures with a boarding axe brought them from cover, while others dragged themselves from beneath fallen sails and cordage. Obedient even in the face of death, from fear or from habit, or because they did not know how else to act.