He saw a small ship's boy scurrying across the deck bowed down with powder from the magazine. A man was hurled from one of the twelve-pounders to lie writhing and almost disembowelled at the boy's feet. He hesitated, then blindly ran on towards his own gun, too dazed to care for the thing which turned the planking into a scarlet pattern with each agonised convulsion.
Up through the smoke Bolitho saw the French ensign rising at last to the gaff. The white flag with its bright tricolour looked strangely clean and detached from the bedlam beneath, and he found time to wonder who had bothered to take the trouble to hoist it.
Gossett yelled hoarsely, "Er main tops'l 'as carried away, sir!' He was shaking one of the helmsmen in time with his words. 'By God, look at the bugger now!'
Ashby strode across the quarterdeck, his white 'breeches splashed with blood and his sword dangling from his wrist on a gold cord. He touched his hat, ignoring the whining musketballs and the screams and cries which came now from both ships.
'If you give the word, sir, we can board her! One good rush and we can knock the backbones out of 'em!' He was actually grinning.
A marine fell back from the nettings clawing at his face and then dropped motionless to the deck. A musket-ball had smashed his skull almost in two, so that his brains spewed across the planking like porridge.
Bolitho looked away. 'No, Captain. I am afraid that much as-I would like to take her as a prize I must think first of the convoy.' He saw a tall French seaman standing up on the settings a musket trained at him with fierce concentration. He was outlined against the smoke and oblivious of everything but the need to hit and kill the British captain.
It was strange that he could stand and watch, like an onlooker, as the musket flashed brightly, the sound of the shot swallowed by the heavy guns as the Hyperion rocked wildly to another broadside. He felt the ball pluck at his sleeve with no more insistence than a man's fingers. He heard a shrill scream at his back and knew without looking that the ball had claimed one victim. But his gaze was held by that unknown marksman. He must be a brave man, or one so crazed with anger by what had happened to his own ship that he no longer cared for his own safety. He was still standing on his precarious perch when a nine-pound shot from the Hyperion's quarterdeck battery smashed him apart, so that as his trunk and flailing arms pitched down into the churning water alongside, his legs still stayed resolute and firm for another few seconds.
The French ship was in bad shape. Her sails were little more than blackened streamers, with only a jib and mizzen course still fully intact. Thin red ribbons of blood trailed from her scuppers and ran unheeded down her battered side, and Bolitho could only guess at the extent of her casualties. It was significant that the enemy's lower gundeck with its big twenty-four-pounders remained silent and impotent, and it was a marvel that the whole ship had not burst into flames.
But he knew from hard experience that such appearances were deceptive. She could still put up a good fight, and one well-aimed salvo could cripple the Hyperion long enough to pare away their hard-won advantage.
He shouted, 'Mr. Rookel T'gallants and royals, if you please!' He saw the seamen below him gaping as if they could not believe that he was going to give up the stricken twodecker. `Then have the starboard guns run out!'
To Gossett he added firmly, `Lay a course for the convoy! We will beat to windward and see what there is to be done.'
Petty officers were already driving the battle-drained men to the braces, and even as he looked round he saw that the Frenchman was drifting astern in the smoke. Almost jauntily the Hyperion gathered the wind into her pockmarked sails and pushed after the other vessels.
A naked gun-captain, his muscular torso black and shining like a Negro's, leapt on to his carriage and yelled wildly, 'A cheer for th' cap'n, lads!' He was almost beside himself as the men joined in an uncontrolled wave of yelling and cheering. One gunner even left his station on the quarterdeck and danced up and down, his bare feet flapping on the stained deck, his pigtail bobbing crarily in time with his ecstasy.
Ashby grinned. `Can't blame 'em, sir!' He waved down at the cheering men as if to make up for Bolitho's grim features. 'That was a wonderful thing back there! My God, you handled her like a frigate! Never believed it possible…
,Bolitho eyed him gravely. 'At any other time I would be gratified to hear it, Captain Ashby. Now for God's sake get those men to work!' He walked quickly across to the weather side, his shoes slipping in a shining crescent of blood as he lifted his glass to look for the convoy.
As the Hyperion thrust herself clear of the smoke he saw the Justice. She was well astern of the other ships and the tumult of battle which surrounded them in another great bank of writhing smoke. Above the smoke he could see the Harvester's topgallants still standing, although how that could be was hard to understand. Most of her sails were gone, and the masts of a French frigate appeared to be almost alongside, yardarm to yardarm.
Sickened he saw a growing bank of flame beyond the two frigates, and as a short gust parted the smoke like a curtain he saw the little sloop Snipe burning like a torch as she drifted helplessly downwind. She was completely dismasted and already listing badly, but he could see the savage scars along her flush deck, the lolling corpses by her smashed and upended guns, and knew she had after all chosen not to remain an onlooker to the battle.
The transports appeared to be intact and still protected by the embattled Harvester, but as the smoke eddied once more the second French frigate thrust her bows clear and tacked purposefully towards the Vanessa. The frigate had lost her mizzen topmast, but was more than a match for the heavy merchantman. From her forecastle her two bowchasers had already opened fire, and Bolitho watched coldly as pieces of woodwork flew skyward from the Vanessa's ornate stern as if plucked away by the wind.
He said harshly, 'Starboard a point!' He watched the Hyperion's bowsprit edge across the distant ships like a relentless pointer and wondered why her disengagement from the Saphir had passed imnoticed.
It was only when the frigate had drawn almost across the transport's stem that some sort of alarm became visible. Then it was already too late. She could not withdraw because of the helpless Vanessa, and she could not swing around because of the wind. Desperately she spread her courses and with her yards braced almost fore and aft heeled to the fresh breeze, until the watchers on the Hyperion's decks could see the copper on her bottom gleaming like gold in the hazed sunlight.
Straight ahead, with her hard-eyed Titan below the bowsprit staring at the smoke-shrouded transport, the Hyperion drove purposefully past the Vanessa's counter.
Bolitho lifted his sword, his voice stilling an eager guncaptain who even now was tugging at his trigger line.
'On the downroll!' The sword gleamed in the sunlight, and to some aboard the struggling frigate it was probably the last sight on earth. 'Now!' The sword flashed down, and as the Hyperion eased herself heavily into a trough and the double line of miles tilted towards the sea the air split apart in one -savage broadside. It was the first time the starboard battery had fired, and the full fury of the double-shotted charges smashed the frigate's unprotected bilge with the force and devastation of an avalanche.
The enemy ship seemed to lift and then stagger upright, her fore and mainmastss falling as one in a thrashing tangle of rigging and brightly splintered spars.
There were just a few minutes before the Hyperion was hidden from the frigate by the Vanessa, but the gunners needed no more urging. As the bowsprit and flapping headsails passed the transport's mauled stem the whole starboard battery fired again, the hail of balls ripping down the remaining mast and turning the low hull into a floating ruin.