He ran up the last steps and saw Davy and Keen with telescopes trained towards the bows.
'What is the matter?'
Davy turned, and then stared at him. He swallowed hard, his eyes still on Bolitho's gold-laced coat.
'Schooner has not acknowledged, sir!'
Bolitho looked from him to the streaming flags, now bright against the dull topsails.
'Are you sure?'
Mudge growled, 'Yer cox'n seems to think she won't neither, sir.'
Bolitho ignored him, his eyes exploring the spread of land across the bows. Still lost in deep shadow, with only an occasional lip of light to betray the dawn. But the schooner was clear enough. Indirect line with Undine's plunging jib-boom, her canvas looked almost white against the cliffs and ragged hills.
Herrick must have seen the recall. He would have been anticipating it as soon as the wind veered. He peered up at the masthead pendant. God, how the wind had gone round. It must be west-south-west.
He shouted, 'Hands aloft, Mr. Davy! Get the t'gallants on her!'
He swung round, seeing them all. in those brief seconds. Mudge's doubts. Carwithen behind him, his lips compressed into a thin line. The helmsmen, the bare-backed gun crews, Keen with his signal party.
The calls shrilled, and shadows darted up the ratlines on either beam as the topmen hurried to set more canvas.
Davy shouted, 'Maybe Mr. Herrick intends to go ahead with the plan, sir!'
Bolitho looked at Allday, saw the way he was watching the schooner.
He said quietly, 'It would seem so, Mr. Davy.'
Under a heavier press of sail Undine thrust her shoulder into the creaming water with added urgency, the spray hurling itself above the forecastle and nettings in long spectres of foam. The hull shook and groaned to the pressure, and when he peered aloft Bolitho saw the upper yards bending forward to the wind. From the peak the ensign was clearly visible, like the marines' tunics as they stood in swaying lines by the hammock nettings, or knelt in the tops by their muskets and swivels. Like blood.
He heard himself say, 'Repeat the signal, Mr. Keen!' He barely recognised his own voice.
Soames stood on the breech of a twelve-pounder, gripping the gangway with both hands as he stared towards the land.
Then he looked aft at Bolitho and gave a brief shrug. In his mind, Herrick was already dead.
Keen said huskily, 'It will not work! The wind'll carry the schooner clear! At best she'll explode in the centre of the channel!'
Penn shrilled from the gun deck. 'I heard a trumpet!'
Bolitho wiped his eyes, feeling the salt, raw and smarting. A trumpet. Some sentry on the fortress had left the protection of the wall to look seaward. He would see the schooner immediately, and Undine within the next few minutes.
The sea noises seemed louder than ever, with every piece of rigging and canvas banging and vibrating in chorus as the ship drove headlong towards the land, and the pale arrowhead which marked the entrance to the channel.
A dull bang echoed across the water, and a man yelled, 'They've opened fire, sirl'
Bolitho reached out for a telescope, seeing the grim faces of the seamen by the nearest guns. Waiting, behind closed ports. Hoping. Dreading.
He trained the glass with difficulty, his legs well braced on the swaying, slippery planking. He saw the schooner's masts swim past the lens, the patch of scarlet which had not been there before. He felt himself smiling, although he wanted to weep, to plead unheard words across those two miles of tossing white-horses. Herrick had hoisted his own ensign. To him, the schooner was not merely a floating bomb, she was a ship, his ship. Or perhaps he was trying, with that one simple gesture, to explain to Bolitho, too. To show he understood.
Another bang, and this time he saw the smoke from the battery before it was whisked away. A feather of spray lifted well out beyond the schooner to mark where the massive ball had fallen.
He kept his glass on the schooner. He saw the way the deck was leaning over, showing the bilges above the leaping spray, and knew Herrick could not lash the tiller for the final, and most dangerous, part of the journey.
Davy yelled, 'That ball was over, sir!'
Bolitho lowered the glass, Davy's words reaching through his anxiety. The fortress lookout must have sighted Undine and not Herrick's little schooner. And by the time Muljadi's men had realised what was happening, Herrick had tacked too close inshore for the gunners to depress their muzzles sufficiently to hit him.
He looked again as a double explosion shuddered across the water. He saw the flashes only briefly, but watched the twin waterspouts burst skyward directly in line with the schooner, but on the seaward side of her.
Captain Bellairs forgot his usual calm and gripped the sergeant's arm and shouted, 'By God, Sar'nt Coaker, he's goin' to sail her aground himself!'
It took a few more seconds before the truth filtered the length and breadth of the frigate's decks.
Then, as the word moved gun by gun towards the bows, men stood and yelled like maniacs, waving their neckerchiefs, or capering on the sanded decks like children. From the tops and the forecastle others joined, and even Midshipman Armitage, who moments earlier had been gripping a belaying pin rack as if to stop himself from falling, waved his hat in the air and yelled, 'Go on! You'll show them!'
Bolitho cleared his throat. 'Ask the masthead. Can he see the frigates?'
He tried not to think of the schooner's crammed holds. The fuse, perhaps already hissing quietly in the peace of the lower hull.
'Aye, sir! He can see the yards of the first one around the point!' Even Davy was wild-eyed, indifferent to the fight still to come, overwhelmed by Herrick's sacrifice.
There was more cannon fire now, and he could see splashes all around the schooner's hull. Probably from the nearest anchored frigate, or some smaller pieces on the spit of land which guarded the entrance. Bolitho found he was gritting his jaw so hard it was hurting badly.
The French were at last aware that something was happening, but they would not have guessed the full extent of the danger.
There was a combined groan from the watching hands. Bolitho raised the glass and saw the schooner's maintopmast buckle and then plunge down in a flailing mass of canvas and rigging.
Half to himself he whispered, 'Fall back, Thomas! In God's name, come about!'
Allday said, 'She's hit again, Captain. Badly this time.'
Bolitho dragged his mind away, knowing he must not think of Herrick. Later. But in minutes those guns would be ranging on Undine as she made that last desperate dash into the channel.
He drew his sword and held it above his head.
'See yonder, lads!' He only vaguely saw their faces turn towards him. It was like looking through a mist. 'Mr. Herrick has shown us the way!'
'She's struck!' Davy was almost beside himself. 'Hard and fast!'
The schooner had hit, lifted and then plunged firmly across the litter of broken rocks and stones. Exactly as they had pictured it. Had planned it with Conway's silver inkwells.
Even without a glass it was possible to see some small boats moving from the fortress's pier towards the stranded hull which now lay totally dismasted, the spray leaping over it like some old hulk. Occasional stabs of fire showed where marksmen were firing into the wreckage, and Bolitho prayed that the fuse was still alight, that Herrick would not be captured alive.
The explosion when it came was so sudden, so violent in colour and magnitude that it was hard to face, harder still to gauge. A solid wall of orange flame exploded from the rocks and spread out on either hand like huge fiery wings, engulfing the circling boats, searing away men and weapons and reducing them into ashes.
And then the sound came. When it reached the frigate it was with a steadily mounting roar which went on and on, until men stood clutching their ears, or staring stupefied at the miniature tidal wave which rolled past the frigate's hull, lifting it easily before dissipating itself astern in the last departing shadows.