“Open the ports! Run out!”
All order had gone. Men yelled and cursed with each heave on the tackles until every port was filled, and there was no longer an empty sea for a target.
Massie strode past the empty boat tier. “Fire!” A slap on a man’s tense shoulder. “As you bear, fire! ”
As each trigger-line was jerked an eighteen-pounder thundered inboard to be seized and sponged out, charge and ball tamped home.
Adam shouted, “Hold her now! Steer north-west!”
There were more yells, and he imagined that he heard the splintering crack of a falling spar, although it was unlikely above the din of canvas and straining rigging, and the last echoes of a full broadside.
The other frigate was falling downwind, her bowsprit and jib boom shot away, the tangle of severed cordage and wildly flapping sails dragging her round.
Adam cupped his hands. “On the uproll! Fire! ”
It was a ragged broadside, some of the guns had not yet run out, but he saw the iron smash home, and bulwarks and planking, broken rigging and men being flung like flotsam in a high wind.
It might have been us.
Galbraith was shouting, “The other one’s coming for us, sir!”
The second frigate seemed so near, towering above the larboard quarter, stark in the hard sunlight. He could even see the patches on her forecourse, and the pointing sword of a once proud figurehead.
He winced as more iron smashed into the hull, feeling the deck lurch beneath his feet, and hearing the heavy crash of a ball ripping into the poop. The enemy’s jib-boom was already overreaching the larboard quarter.
He dashed the smoke from his eyes and saw a man fall on the opposite side, his scream lost in the report of a solitary gun.
He waved to Cristie. “Now!”
The wheel was moving again, but one of the helmsmen was sprawled in blood. Unrivalled turned only a point, so that it appeared as if the other ship must ride up and over her poop. The jib-boom was above the nettings now, men were firing, and through the swirling smoke Adam saw vague figures swarming out on the other frigate’s beak-head and bowsprit, cutlasses glinting dully in the haze of gunfire.
Going to board us. It was like another voice.
“Clear lower deck, Mr Galbraith!” Suppose it failed? He thrust the thought away and dragged out his sword, conscious of Avery beside him, and Jago striding just ahead, a short-bladed weapon in his fist.
Adam raised the sword. “To me, Unrivalleds!”
She was a well-armed ship. He could remember the admiration, the envy. Apart from her two batteries of eighteen-pounders, she also mounted eight 32-pound carronades, two of which were almost directly below his feet.
It happened within seconds, and yet each moment remained separate, stamped forever in his memory.
Midshipman Homey slipping and falling to his knees, then being hit in the skull by a heavy ball even as he struggled to his feet. Flesh, blood and fragments of bone splashed across Adam’s breeches. The carronades roared out together, crashing inboard on their slides and hurling their massive balls, packed with grape and jagged metal, directly into the enemy forecastle.
Avery turned and stared at him, shook his sword, shouted something. But the stare did not waver, and he fell face down, and the packed mass of boarders surged across his body and on to the other ship’s deck.
It was useless to hesitate. Too many who depended upon… But for only a second Adam halted, looking for the man who had been his uncle’s friend.
Jago was dragging at his arm.
“Come on, sir! We’ve got the bastards on the run!”
A dream, a nightmare; scenes of desperate brutality, all mercy forgotten. Men falling and dying. Others dropping between the two hulls, the only escape. A face loomed out of the yelling, hacking mob: it was Campbell, the hard man, waving a flag and screaming, “The flag! They’ve struck!”
Now there were different faces, and he realised that, like Avery, he had fallen and was lying on the deck. He felt for the sword, and saw Midshipman Bellairs holding it; it must have been knocked out of his hand.
And then the pain reached him, a searing agony, which punched the breath from his lungs. He groped for his thigh, his groin; it was everywhere. A hand was gripping his wrist and he saw it was O’Beirne, and understood that he was on Unrivalled’s gun deck; he must have lost consciousness, and he felt something akin to panic.
He said, “The orlop! You belong with the wounded, not here, man!”
O’Beirne nodded grimly, his face sliding out of focus like melting wax. Then it was Jago’s turn. He had torn down the front of Adam’s breeches and was holding something in the hazy sunlight. No blood. No gaping wound. It was the watch, which he always carried in the pocket above his groin. A shot had smashed it almost in two pieces.
He was losing control again. The shop in Halifax. The chiming chorus of clocks. The little mermaid…
Jago was saying, “Christ, you were lucky, sir!” He wanted to lessen it, in his usual way. But the levity would not come. Then he said, “Just hold on.”
Men were cheering, hugging one another, the marines were rounding up prisoners… so much to do, the prizes to be secured, the wounded to be tended. He gasped as someone tried to lift him. And Avery. Avery… I shall have to tell Catherine. A letter. And the locket.
Somehow he was on his feet, staring up at the flag as if to reassure himself. But all he could think of was the little mermaid. Perhaps it was her way; the last farewell.
Then he fainted.
12. Aftermath
LIKE AN unhurried but purposeful beetle, Unrivalled’s gig pulled steadily around and among the many vessels which lay at anchor in Gibraltar ’s shadow.
It was a time of pride, and of triumph, climaxing when they had entered the bay with one prize in tow and the other in the hands of a prize crew. To the men of the fleet, hardened by so many years of setbacks and pain, it had been something to share, to celebrate. Ships had manned their yards to cheer, boats from the shore had formed an unofficial procession until the anchors had splashed down, and order and discipline was resumed.
And the war was over. Finally over. That was the hardest thing to confront. Napoleon, once believed invincible, had surrendered, and had placed himself under the authority of Captain Frederick Maitland of the old Bellerophon in Basque Roads, to be conveyed to Plymouth.
The officer of the guard who had boarded Unrivalled within minutes of her dropping anchor had exclaimed, “When you fought and took the two frigates, we were at peace!”
Adam had heard himself answer shortly, “It made no difference.”
He thought of the men who had fallen in that brief, savage action. Of the letters he had written. To the parents of Midshipman Thomas Homey, who had been killed even as the second frigate had surged into their quarter. Fourteen years old. A life not even begun.
And to Catherine, a long and difficult letter. Seeing Avery’s shocked and unwavering gaze, like an unanswered question.
Midshipman Bellairs was sitting behind him, beside Jago at the tiller.
“Flagship, sir!”
Adam nodded. He had taken a calculated risk, and had won. It was pointless to consider the alternatives. Unrivalled might have been caught in stays, taken aback as she tried to swing through the wind. The two frigates would have used the confusion to cross her stern and rake her, each broadside ripping through the hull. A slaughterhouse.
He stared at the big two-decker which lay directly across their approach, His Britannic Majesty’s Ship Prince Rupert of eighty guns, a rear-admiral’s flag rising and drooping at her mizzen truck.
He made to touch his thigh and saw the stroke oar’s eyes on him, and controlled the impulse. He had examined his body in the looking-glass in his cabin, and found a great, livid bruise, showing the force of the impact. A stray shot perhaps, fired at random as his men had hacked their way on board the enemy.
Even now, four days after the engagement, the pain was almost constant, and caught him unaware, like a reminder.