More heavy firing came from astern, and Bolitho knew the Hermes was engaging the flagship, but when he peered over the nettings he could see nothing but topmasts, all else hidden in the great pall of smoke.
"Fire!"
Gun by gun the main deck battery engaged the second ship, the men cheering and cursing as they threw themselves on the tackles, their naked bodies shining with sweat and blackened from powder smoke, while they sponged out the muzzles and rammed home the, next charges.
Bolitho felt the hull quake below his feet, and winced as more balls smashed along the ship's side, hurling splinters into the smoke or ripping through ports to plough into the men beyond. He saw a complete gun hurled bodily on to its side, with one of its crew pinned screaming and writhing beneath it. But his cries were lost in the roar and crash of the next broadside, and Bolitho forgot his agony as he turned to watch the two-decker's foremast begin to slide down into the smoke.
He grabbed Inch's arm so that the lieutenant jumped as if receiving a musket ball. "The carronades!" He did not have to add anything and saw Inch waving his speaking trumpet towards the hunched figures on the forecastle. The throaty roar of a carronade fanned the smoke downwards into the main deck, and he saw the massive ball explode just belo* the Frenchman's poop. When the wind laid bare the damage he saw that the wheel and helmsmen had vanished and the poop looked as if it had been struck by a landslide.
Crippled, and momentarily not under command, the ship started to swing downwind, her high stern and flapping Tricolour rising above the smoke like an ornate cliff.
The second carronade lurched back on its slide, and Bolitho heard someone cheering as the ball burst inside the stern cabin above her name, Cato, and the handful of marksmen who were still trying to shoot at the Hyperion's forecastle as she edged past. He could picture the murderous devastation as the ball sent its contents scything through the crowded gundeck to add to the confusion already apparent on her shattered poop.
Vaguely he could see a marine waving and gesturing from the forecastle, and when he ran to the weather side he saw something dark and covered with green weed sliding past the larboard bow like a grotesque sea monster.
Inch cried hoarsely, "Christ Almighty! The Dasher!"
Bolitho pushed past him as the third ship's topmasts and braced yards loomed above the fog of battle. The sloop must have taken a full broadside, or sailed too close to the Spanish treasure ship. Her upturned keel surrounded by bursting air bubbles and flotsam was all that remained.
He snapped, "Ready, lads!" He could feel himself grinning, yet was conscious only of numb, pitiless concentration.
A voice yelled, "Ship. on th' weather bow!"
As the smoke swirled abeam he saw the other twodecker across the larboard bow, her sails almost aback as she drifted towards him. She was one of the ships detached to protect the San Leandro, and as her upper guns blasted their orange tongues from the ports he knew it would be a double engagement.
He felt the salvo ripping overhead and saw the net bouncing with fallen blocks and full lengths of rigging. A man dropped from the mizzen top and fell hard across the breech of a nine-pQunder. Bolitho heard his ribs cracking like a wicker basket trodden underfoot, saw the terrible agony on the man's face as the seamen pulled him clear and rolled his body free of their gun.
"Stand by the larboard battery!" He was hoarse with shouting and his throat felt like raw flesh. "Get ready to show them, my lads!" He waved his sword at the waiting gunners and saw more than one of them grinning up at him, their teeth very white through the grime.
"Fire!"
The larboard guns crashed out for the first time, the double-shouted charges blasting into the newcomer's bow and side with the sound of thunder. Bolitho watched coldly as the enemy's foremast and main topgallant buckled and curtsied into the drifting smoke, and then shouted, "Mr. Stepkyne! All spare hands to the larboard gangway!" He saw Stepkyne, hatless and dazed, staring up at him. "Repel boarders!" He gestured with his sword as the French ship began to sidle slowly towards the larboard bow.
The third ship in the enemy line was abeam now, but had tacked further away than her predecessors. She seemed to lift from the Hyperion's smoke, and then as the grey light touched her figurehead and catted anchor she fired a full broadside, the shockwave of the double line of guns blasting the air apart with the power of a searing wind.
Bolitho fell choking and spitting as the deck bucked and staggered beneath him. Men were crying and yelling all around him, and he stared up as Captain Dawson rolled across the splintered planking, blood gushing from h s
mouth and one eye bouncing grotesquely on his cheek.
When his hearing came back he heard the marines calling to each other, firing and loading, and vying with their comrades in the tops as they tried to pick off the French marksmen with their muskets.
Inch yelled, "The bastards are boarding us!"
Bolitho dragged himself to the rail and felt the ship lurch as the other two-decker came to rest across the forecastle bulwark.
The larboard guns were firing with hardly a break, their balls smashing into the enemy's hull at a few yards range. But across the bows he could see the glint of steel, an occasional flash of a pistol as the boarders and his own men came to grips.
"Get the marines up forrard!" He was almost knocked from his feet as the scarlet coated figures charged past him, their bayonets shining in the gunflashes as the passing ship fired once more through the smoke.
Inch shouted wildly. "The mizzen topmast! It's coming down!"
Bolitho looked up and then pushed Inch against the nettings as with a splintering crack the topmast, complete with topgallant and yards came pitching through the smoke to smash across the larboard side. Men were falling and dying, their blood running in great patterns across the deck, while some were still trapped in the severed rigging, their cries lost in the thunder of Hyperion's guns.
Tomlin was here with his men, faces grim and intent, axes flashing while they cut the dragging wreckage clear, their ears deaf to the pitiful reams and pleas from those still enmeshed in the broken topmast. As it pitched into the water alongside Tomlin gestured with his axe and stood aside while his men began to throw the mangled corpses overboard and others dragged the protesting wounded down the ladder towards the main hatch and the horror of the orlop.
Bolitho stared up, his eyes smarting from the gunfire. It seemed bare and vulnerable without the great mast overhead and all its complex rigging and spars. He shook himself angrily and ran to the lee gangway to try and see the ship which was still locked around the bows.
There were scarlet coats there now, and the arrowhead of choppy r!rater between the two hulls was covered with bodies, dead or wounded, it was impossible to say. Blades hacked and flashed above the nettings, and here and there a man would fall kicking into the melee, or be thrown bodily into the sea by the press behind him.
But Stepkyne was holding the boarders off, although the French captain appeared to have stripped his guns of men to overwhelm his enemy by sheer numbers. He was paying for it now. For as the Hyperion's big twenty-fourpounders smashed ball after ball into the lower hull, the French guns remained silent. But the musket fire was fierce and accurate, and Bolitho saw more than one gun on the main deck with the dead heaped around it like so much meat.
He seized Roth's sleeve. "Get the marksmen, for God's sake!"
Roth nodded grimly and strode along the larboard gangway to yell up at the swivel gunners in the maintop. He had moved only a few paces when he received a charge of canister full in the chest. His body rose like a tattered, bloody rag and then bounced across the nets to lie gaping at the sails above.
Bolitho snapped, "Mr. Gascoigne! Lively there!" He watched the young acting-lieutenant scramble along the nettings and begin to climb up the shrouds. Just a boy, he thought dazedly.