Inch clapped his hand to his head and then beamed foolishly as his hat was plucked over the rail.
Bolitho grinned. "Walk about, Mr. Inch! You make a promising target it seems!"
"Blast!" Allday pounced forward, his cutlass raised as some handful of figures started along the gangway towards the poop. They were French seamen, a young lieutenant running ahead with drawn sword and a pistol pointing at the quarterdeck.
The sharp crack of the maintop's swivel gun made some of the men falter, but as the canister swept away many of the others who were pressing forward in readiness to board, the lieutenant waved his sword and charged headlong for the poop. He saw Bolitho and slithered to a halt, his pistol surprisingly steady as he aimed it directly at him.
Allday started towards the gangway but fell back as Tomlin muttered an oath and hurled his axe withh all the strength of his hairy arm. The keen blade struck the lieutenant, in the chest, and as he toppled amongst his men his yes were popping with astonishment as they stared at the axe, firmly embedded as if in a tree.
The others broke and ran back towards their comrades, only to be met by some crazed and jubilant marines.
Bolitho tore his eyes from the flashing bayonets and the blood which splashed down on the gunners below the gangway like scarlet rain.
"Another ensign, Mr. Carlyon!" He nodded as the boy ran past "Walk, Mr. Carlyon!" He saw the midshipman staring at him, his features like chllk. He added gently, "As befits a King's officer.''
More cries came from forward, and as axes flashed he saw the battered two-decker begin to nudge slowly along the Hyperion's side, her hull hammered every yard of the way by the lower battery.
Bolitho ran on to the gangway and waved his sword at the main deck gunners. "Come on, lads! Speed his passing!"
The seamen scrambled back to their guns, pausing only to drag the corpses and moaning wounded aside before hurling themselves on the tackles with renewed effort.
Bolitho stood quite still as captain after captain raised his hand in the air. More than half the larboard battery had been knocked useless, or so denuded of men as to be silent. So it had to be a careful broadside. He saw the stricken ship drifting past while the Hyperion's pockmarked sails carried her slowly and painfully towards the remaining French two-decker which had been sent to protect Perez's San Leandro. On her quarterdeck he could see the dead and wounded heaped around the guns, the great rents in her poop and engaged side. By the carved quarterdeck ladder an officer clung to the rail for support, one leg twisted like that of a broken doll. It must be her captain, he thought absently. He dropped his sword.
"Fire!"
By coincidence both decks fired together, and as the smoke came billowing inboard through the ports and the men groped choking and cursing for the water and sponges, Bolitho saw the enemy's main and foremasts come down as one into the sea between them.
Inch yelled, "Two crippled at least, sir! And that bugger'll never see another dawn if the sea gets up!"
Bolitho wiped his smarting eyes with his sleeve and watched the last guardship's outline hardening through the smoke, her guns already firing while she tacked awkwardly across the Hyperion's bows. He swore savagely. There was not a gun which would bear yet, and if the enemy's broadside was ill aimed, it was still lethal. He jerked round as a great ball smashed through the bulwark and ploughed into the men at the larboard nine-pounders.
The crouching figures, naked to the waist, pigtailed and determined, were like a little group of statuary or part of a great painting of some forgotten battle. As the smoke whipped away Bolitho had to bite on his nausea, to look away from the bloody tangle of limbs and flesh, the bones shining like pale teeth through the carnage.
Trudgeon's men were busy dragging and cursing the screaming wounded into silence, and he saw Carlyon stooped double and vomiting into the scuppers.
Allday said calmly, "That was a poor bit o' shooting, Captain."
But at that instant the French ship fired a second time. Her captain had no intention of grappling with a ship which had already crippled two of his consorts with little outward damage to herself but the loss of a topmast. He was intending to sail downwind, to fire one more broadside into the English seventy-four's bows and then get clear.
The air seemed thick with screaming metal, the deck alive with flying splinters, and men torn and ripped as if from a beast gone mad. Bolitho watched tight-lipped as the foretopmast quivered, like a sapling feeling the first blow of an axe, and then almost wearily pitched down with smashing impact across the crowded forecastle. The ship yawed heavily as the wind groped blindly through the remaining canvas, and from forward he heard the shrill cries of men trapped beneath the great weight of spars and rigging. Seamen and marines, who seconds earlier had been training the carronades towards the enemy, were pulped into the splintered deck planking or swept bodily over the rail and into the sea.
Tomlin and his men were clambering towards the wreckage and confusion, but they were moving more slowly now, and their numbers were fewer.
Inch called, "Here comes the Hermes!"
Bolitho walked to the starboard side, feeling his shoes slipping in blood and flesh as he clambered up to peer above the hammock nettings. The Hermes was without her mizzen, too, but her guns were still firing at a French two-decker, and he could see the balls slamming into the enemy's side and along her waterline.
Further astern the smoke was so tall and dense it was impossible to tell friend from foe, but there was plenty of gunfire, and he knew that Herrick was still there. Still fighting.
He felt Inch dragging at his coat, and as he jumped back to the deck he saw him pointing wildly, his eyes bright with anxiety.
"Sir! The Tornade's gone about!" He followed Bolitho to the side. "She's outsailed Hermes and is coming for us!"
Bolitho watched while the smoke darkened and parted to reveal the outthrust bowsprit and then the figurehead of the great hundred-gun flagship. In spite of the noise and confusion on every side he could still feel a cold admiration for the French captain's superb seamanship as he edged almost into the eye of the wind, his massive armament bursting into life as with methodical savagery he poured a slow broadside into the Hermes' unprotected stern.
Even at the distance of two cables Bolitho could hear the great bombardment raking the ship from stern to bow, the balls smashing the full length of her hull and turning it into a slaughterhouse.
The great thirty-two-pound balls must have sliced away the mainmast at its foot, for it was falling complete with top and yards, with struggling men, and the masthead pendant still whipping defiantly to the wind.
Black smoke belched from her main deck, as if forced upwards by some great bellows, and as the men at the Hyperion's guns stared astern in shocked horror, the air was rent by one deafening explosion. the Tornade had sailed, clear and was already clawing round towards the Hyperion's larboard quarter, but for her it was a close thing
The explosion,.probably her magazine, had blasted the Hermes almost into two halves, in the centre of which a giant fire reached towards the sky, consuming the foremast and remaining sails in one lick, like an obscene dragon plucking down a lance.
Another explosion and another rocked the shattered hull, and within minutes of the broadside she started to roll over. As she tilted steeply into, the waves Bolitho saw the sea pouring through her lower ports, while on her blazing decks the few remaining survivors ran haphazardly in all directions, some ablaze Like human torches, others already driven beyond reason. Her ports glowed like lines of red eyes, until finally as the sea surged into her hull and she began to slide under the littered water, she was completely hidden in a seething wall of steam.
One of the helmsmen had run from the wheel to watch. He dropped on his knees, crossing himself and whimpering, "Jesus! Oh, sweet Lord Jesus!"