But the odds were mounting. It could not last much longer. It seemed as if the Frenchmen were so maddened by rage and despair that they were more intent on destroying the handful of British sailors than of saving themselves or their own ship.
Fowler dropped his sword and clapped his hands across his face. He cried wildly, 'Oh, Jesus! Oh, my God!'. And in the leaping flames the blood which poured across his neck and chest gleamed like black glass.
He droppped choking on his knees, and a French lieutenant, hatless and with his uniform coat scorched almost from his back, lunged forward to strike his unprotected head. Bolitho stepped forward, but caught his foot on a splintered plank and saw the officer's blade change direction, cutting through the air with all his strength. With one last effort Bolitho held his balance and instinctively threw up his left arm to protect himself. lie felt the blade jar against his forearm and sensed a numbing agony, as if he had been kicked by a maddened horse. The French lieutenant slithered sideways, thrown almost to the deck by the force of his attack,, and in the advancing fires his face shone like a mask, the eyes bright and staring as he watched Bolitho's sword scything above Seton's body, the razor-edged blade holding- the flames until the moment of impact. He did not even scream, but hobbled backward, his fingers digging at his belly, his back bowed as if in some grotesque curtsy.
Allday was shouting, `She's going, Captain!'
Bolitho blinked and tried to wipe the sweat from his eyes. But his arm remained at his side, and with a sense of shocked disbelief he saw the blood pouring down his side, soaking his leg and running across the deck at his feet. Dazedly he shook himself and stared towards the bows. The towering bank of flames had shifted to the Saphir, and he could see the furled sails and tarred rigging whipping out in fiery streamers, and other, smaller fires leaping aft urged on by the wind and burning everything they touched. Through the abandoned gunports the ship's interior glowed red like an open furnace, and as he watched he saw men.leaping blindly over the side, calling to one another or screaming pitifully as they were held and then ground to bloody pulp by the two blazing hulls.
But the sloop's deck was dipping rapidly, and from below he heard the hiss of seawater as it surged in triumph to quench the flames. The foremast had gone completely and he had not even noticed amidst the savagery of destruction and death around hire. Corpses lolled down the tilting deck, and a few wounded crawled whimpering away from the flames or made a last effort to reach the poop.
Allday shouted, `The gig is standing clear! Come, Captain, I'll help you over!'
Bolitho still stared around him, waiting to fight, to beat off another attack. But he was sharing the deck with corpses.
Allday yelled, 'There are no more! You've done for 'em!' Then he saw Bolitho's arm. 'Here, Captain! Take my hand!' They reeled together as the sloop wallowed heavily on to her side, the small deck guns tearing from their lashings to squeak across to the other bulwark or plunge hissing into one of the great fiery craters.
Bolitho spoke between his teeth, his face pouring with sweat as the pain reached up his arm like a pair of white-hot pincers. 'The boy! Get him, Allday!' Jerkily he thrust the sticky blade back into its scabbard and with his good arm pulled himself aft towards the taffrail while Allday picked up the unconscious midshipman and threw him across his shoulder.
He saw ONeil by the rail, naked to the waist as he wrapped his shirt around Fowler's face while the lieutenant rocked from side to side, his words choking on the cloth and in his blood.
The bargeman said, 'Oi done what Oi could, sorrl' He ducked as one of the sloop's guns exploded in the heat as if fired by some invisible hand. `The poor man has lost most of his face!'
Bolitho managed to croak, `There is the gig! We will have to jump for it!'
He hardly remembered falling, but was conscious of the salt rasping in his lungs, the cool air across his face as he broke surface. The gig seemed to tower above him, and there was Piper, his monkey face black with grime as he pointed with his dirk, his voice as shrill as a woman's.
'here's the captain! Hold him, you lads!'
Bolitho caught the gunwale and gasped, 'Help Mr. Fowler and Seton!'
The water was surprisingly cold, he thought vaguely, and when he looked up he saw that above the billowing smoke the sky was pale and devoid of stars, and the gulls which circled angrily high above the harbour were touched with gold. Not from the fires, but from the sun. While men had died and the ships had burned the dawn had crept across the distant horizon. He was even more astonished when he turned his head, for where the church tower should have been was the tall side of a headland and above it, gleaming white below its lantern, stood the beacon.
He bit back the pain as more hands hauled him inboard to lie panting beside Allday and the others. He wanted to close his eyes, to give in to the sweeping curtain of darkness which waited to ease his growing agony. To shut out the sounds of exploding gunpowder and the crash of falling spars as the Saphir started to settle down, her gunports already awash, her maindeck ablaze from stem to stern.
'How many have we lost?' He clutched at Allday's knee while Piper struggled to stem the blood on his arm. 'Tell me man!'
Allday's plain face was shining with frail sunlight and when he looked down at Bolitho he seemed somehow remote and indestructible. He said quietly, 'Never you fear, Captain. Whatever the cost, it was worth it to see this.' Then with Piper's help he lifted Bolitho's shoulders above the smoke blackened gunwale while the oarsmen rested on their looms and watched his face with a kind of awe.
The Saphir was almost gone and there was little left of the once proud ship. With the sloop she had drifted the full length of the harbour, and now gutted and blazing she was hard aground below the captured beacon.
But Bolitho had no eyes for her, nor even for the few pieces of flotsam bobbing on the current to mark the passing of the Fairfax 's final remains. In the centre of the channel, with all but her topsails and jib clewed up, his ship, his old Hyperion was entering harbour. Her ports were open, and as she edged slightly towards the anchorage the dawn sunlight lanced along her double line of guns and painted her, rounded hull with gold.
Bolitho licked his dry lips and tried to smile as he saw Ashby's marines in a tight square across the quarterdeck and heard the faint strains from the ship's small band. It was faint because of the cheering.
Cheering from the men who lined the yards and those who waited to drop the great anchor. From the gunners in their bright head-scarves and the marksmen in the tops.
As the old seventy-four's shadow passed the severed boom he saw Inch standing in his cutter waving his hat, his voice lost in distance, but his pride and relief all the more obvious.
Allday said gently, 'Look yonder, Captain.' He was pointing to the headland where the artillery breastworks of raw earth and stones stood out like scars against the rain-soaked grass.
A flag had risen above the hidden guns, but not the Tricolour. It was pale and fragile and lifted easily in the dying wind, so that the sunlight showed clearly the golden insignia of the fleur-de-lis.
Allday said, 'You gave 'em their gesture, Captain! There is your answer!'
Fowler muttered thickly beneath the bloodied shirt. 'My face! Oh Jesus, my face!'
But Bblitho was looking once more at his ship as she swung sedately into the wind, her sails flapping like banners as the anchor splashed down within yards of the spot where the Saphir had been moored.
Boats were moving cautiously from the land, each with its royalist flag, and every one crowded with waving and cheering townspeople.
Allday said, 'Out oars! Give way together!' And to the boat at large added, 'They are coming to see the captain, lads!' Then he looked down at Bolitho and smiled. 'And so they