Now only the gun captains were at the guns: the rest of the men had rushed to the ship's side to grab a cutlass, pistol, or boarding pike. The men who had been waving from the nettings had dropped down to the deck and armed themselves.
The Juno's stern was now level with the Surcouf’s transom but she still had a little way on. Slowly, slowly, she crept on; now the stem was abreast the French frigate's mainmast, now the foremast, and the Frenchmen who had been lining the bulwarks were scattering across the deck. Several officers were shouting and gesticulating; one had drawn his sword and was waving it: not at the Juno but at his own men. The Juno's yards were braced sharp up at Southwick's command.
Five guns forward fired in quick succession along the Juno's fo'c'sle and maindeck and the rest followed one after the other. Ramage looked over the quarter again for a sight of La Créole: Aitken had timed it perfectly. She would be ranging alongside the Surcouf’s other side in two minutes' time, when there was no risk of any of the Juno's case shot sweeping clear across the Surcouf’s deck and damaging her.
Now the Junos were swarming up into the hammock nettings or waiting at the gun ports poised with pistols, cutlasses and pikes. The Juno had stopped; now the backed foretopsail was drifting her slowly alongside the Surcouf and Ramage watched the gap narrowing: fifteen feet, ten, five, then the men, led by Wagstaffe, were leaping on board, and the gun captains were heaving grapnels at the Surcouf to hold the ships together. Southwick bellowed the order to clew up the foretopsail; in a few moments the Juno was lying head to the wind, alongside the Surcouf.
Ramage ran down the maindeck, snatching out his pistols as he reached the entry port at the gangway. Southwick was shouting after him but he neither heard nor cared what the Master said. He paused for a moment at the gangway, saw the water swirling between the two ships, and leapt on board the Surcouf.
Thirty or more Frenchmen had snatched up pikes and cutlasses and were aft, fighting desperately as Junos tried to drive them back. Suddenly a group of Frenchmen poured up the main companionway, pistols in their right hands, cutlasses in their left. A burst of fire cut down several Junos and the Frenchmen ran through the gap, making for the fo'c'sle.
Ramage aimed at the leading man and fired, saw him fall and aimed left-handed at the next. He fired and missed, and suddenly the whole group turned and ran towards him and Ramage was alone: most of the Junos had their backs to him, busy driving the rest of the Frenchmen aft. Ramage wrenched at his sword and backed a few feet to the mainmast. The first Frenchman, four or five yards ahead of the rest, and the man he had missed with his second pistol, slashed at him with his cutlass; a downward slice which Ramage parried, deflecting the man's blade so that the impetus behind the blow made the man trip. A quick flick of the wrist and Ramage caught him across the throat with the tip of his blade and turned immediately to face another man who was lunging at him with a pike. Ramage jumped to one side and the man, his face half-crazed with fear, drove on, his pike sticking into the mast. A swift blow disposed of him and Ramage turned to face the third man, but suddenly there was a roaring and a bellowing which made the man turn and bolt. Jackson and a half a dozen former Tritons were running to his rescue, and at that moment the Surcouf lurched as La Créole crashed alongside, her boarding party swarming up her side, yelling and shouting.
Ramage was thankful the fighting was now centred round the quarterdeck: that was what he had intended, so that the fo'c'sle would be left clear for the men boarding from La Créole. Several of them carried heavy axes and they ran forward, followed by others armed with cutlasses. While the axemen went to one side of the fo'c'sle, the cutlass men went to the other and began shouting over to the group of men waiting on the Juno's fo'c'sle.
A heaving line snaked across from the Juno and landed on the Surcouf's fo'c'sle. The men began hauling on it and when a heavier line followed they ran to the bow with it, passing it through the large fairlead. Then they began hauling, but it was hard work and finally they began marching across the deck as though dragging a cart. Finally the end of the Juno's anchor cable appeared through the fairlead and the men kept hauling.
By now the axemen were chopping at the Surcouf's own anchor cable, and Ramage hoped they remembered his strict instructions to leave one strand of the rope until they could see that the cable from the Juno had been secured to the bitts.
More men arrived on the fo'c'sle from La Créole and seized the heavy cable and dragged it to the bitts. One turn round the bitts and then another; a third and then a fourth. The cable was stiff and heavy; it took two or three men to bend each turn.
The fighting aft was dying down now, and Aitken and Wagstaffe were securing the prisoners. Ramage ran to the fo'c'sle, checked that the cable was made fast and gestured to the men with cutlasses to return on board La Créole. After shouting to the men on the Juno's fo'c'sle to cut the lashings holding the cable along the ship's side, he ran back to find Southwick standing at the Juno's gangway, anxiously looking across at the Surcouf.
'All secure here,' Ramage shouted. ‘Onlyone strand of their cable left to cut.'
‘For Heaven's sake come on board, sir,' Southwick bawled. The ships will drift apart at any moment. We're just about to cut the grapnels!'
Ramage paused long enough to shout at Wagstaffe, who signalled that the prisoners were under control, and then bellowed at the axemen on the Surcouf’s fo'c'sle to cut the last strand of the French frigate's anchor cable. With that he leapt on board the Juno.
One danger remained, that the Surcouf 's yards would lock with the Juno's rigging, but already Aitken was obeying his orders and hardening in the sheets of La Créole's mainsail and foresail and backing his headsails. This would haul the Surcouf to starboard, to leeward and away from the Juno.
'Our grapnels, Southwick?' Ramage asked hurriedly,
'Already cut adrift, sir.'
Ramage glanced up and saw that the Surcouf’s yards, bare of sail, were gradually drawing clear as La Créole pulled her away. He jumped up into the hammock nettings and looked along the Juno's side. The cable was now hanging from the Surcouf’s bow in a big bight that went down into the water and reappeared by the Juno's stern, snaking round and up through the sternchase port.
Everything was going as planned. Southwick looked questioningly and when Ramage nodded the Master lifted the speaking trumpet to his lips, bellowed a string of orders, and the Juno's foretopsail yard began to swing round, the sail falling and then flapping wildly before the wind filled it. Slowly the Juno began to move, her bow paying off to begin with, until she gathered enough way for the rudder to get a bite on the water.
The Surcouf was dropping away to starboard as La Créole hauled her bow round and drawing astern as the Juno began to forge ahead. Ramage looked across at the French frigate's quarterdeck and saw Wagstaffe standing by the binnacle while Jackson acted as quartermaster. Two Junos were at the wheel and the French seamen, their hands above their heads, were being marched below.
Southwick was now facing aft on the quarterdeck, his eyes glued to the heavy cable. The Juno's transom was abreast the Surcouf's jibboom end and already the cable was beginning to move where it led out through the Juno's sternchase port: several feet slid out, like an enormous snake leaving a hole, and as the frigate's speed increased more followed.
Ramage was torn between watching ahead to make sure the Juno cleared the shoal running south-west from the Fort and looking aft over the quarterdeck in case the cable twisted into a large kink that might jam in the port.
The cable was running freely so far, the friction causing a faint blue haze of smoke round the gun port: perhaps a hundred feet had gone but there were still two hundred to go. And the Juno must not be moving too fast when the entire weight of the Surcouf really came on the cable. That could be enough to pull the Juno's stern round and throw the sails a'back, and with so few men left in the Juno he knew that if that happened the frigate could be out of control for long enough for them to be blown ashore or dragged astern by the weight of the cable so that she hit the Surcouf.