"Stand by to repel boarders!" Ramage shouted at the top of his voice and at the same instant realized he was unarmed: the cutlass given him by Southwick was still stuck in the deck somewhere. He could hear the Master repeating his cry, but it was unnecessary: there was not a man in the Triton who did not realize there was no chance of the Triton avoiding the Peacock crashing alongside.
Ramage glanced back at the Greyhound: she was coming up fast - she had perhaps two ship's lengths to go before she was alongside the Peacock. A matter of minutes, almost moments. And in that time the bunch of cut-throats in the Peacock - obviously French privateersmen, although he hadn't the slightest idea how they got there - would have slaughtered every man in the Triton.
There was no point in standing up here on the bulwark like a pheasant on a gate, Ramage told himself; he could see all that was necessary from the deck. He jumped down and ran over to the rack of boarding pikes fitted round the mainmast. As he snatched one, the brig gave a sudden lurch: the Peacock had crashed alongside.
Boarding nets, Ramage thought with irritation: I didn't order them to be rigged up. But there was no sudden swarm of screaming Frenchmen over the top of the Triton's bulwarks; instead the men at the guns continued sponging, loading, ramming, running out and firing into the French ship.
As he realized the enemy was not still alongside he saw Southwick was standing beside him, shouting something ... "Managed to turn to starboard enough to dodge ... Should I repeat it if the Peacock -"
"Yes, right now!" Ramage yelled as he felt the Peacock crash alongside once more and saw men holding on to her rigging, poised to jump and waving cutlasses that glinted in the flash of the guns.
Every available Triton was waiting at the bulwarks. Many had muskets, with cutlasses slung over their shoulders; others held boarding pikes, the seven-feet-long ash staves with long, narrow spear tips.
A flash and a noise like tearing canvas warned Ramage that a roundshot from one of the Peacock's guns had missed him by a matter of inches. Then he saw, in the flash from one of the Triton's guns, eight or ten Frenchmen toppling from the Peacock's main shrouds. It took him a few seconds to realize that the Triton's Marines were clearing the Peacock's rigging by firing volleys from the musketoons. It said something for the coolness of the Marine corporal...
Suddenly there were twenty Frenchmen screaming and scrambling at the bulwarks where Ramage had been standing: they had all leapt at the same instant and, Ramage guessed, misjudged the distance slightly in the darkness. Instinctively Ramage lunged with the boarding pike, felt the wood jar his arms as the point came hard up against bone, and wrenched it back ready to stab again into the mass of men.
Jackson and Stafford were beside him, screaming like madmen and slashing with their cutlasses; a stream of blasphemy in Italian, the Genoese accent unmistakable, showed that Rossi was close by.
More Frenchmen were streaming on board and overrunning the carronades, and out of the corner of his eye Ramage saw Jackson slip. A Frenchman paused above him, bracing to slash down with his sword. Without thinking Ramage hurled the boarding pike like a spear and caught the Frenchman in the side of the chest. As he fell, Jackson got to his feet again and waved cheerfully before leaping at the nearest group of boarders.
Ramage caught sight of a cutlass lying on the deck, snatched it up and turned back towards the Peacock. There was a bellow of wrath a few feet away and he caught sight of Southwick, hatless and his white hair sticking up like a mop, slashing away with his enormous sword and driving three Frenchmen before him.
But there was something odd about the Frenchmen now; no more were boarding and the shouting was dying down. In fact, he suddenly noticed, many of them were scrambling back on board the Peacock.
Then the dull rumble of a heavy broadside warned him that the Greyhound frigate had just run aboard the Peacock on the larboard side.
All over the brig there were small groups of Tritons hacking and slashing away with pikes and cutlasses at groups of similarly armed Frenchmen, but there was something else happening. Ramage knew he would have to pause a moment before he could fathom what it was. The screaming Frenchman with whom he was fighting suddenly collapsed, stabbed by Rossi's pike, and Ramage leapt sideways and made for the mainmast. Standing with his back against it, cutlass in his right hand, he looked across at the Peacock and realized that all three ships, locked together, were slowly swinging. The "something else" that puzzled him was the change in movement as they swung broadside on to the sea in the lee of the Greyhound.
He stared at the Peacock's masts, and then at her shrouds. There was no doubt about it - she was drawing away from the Triton. A moment later a group of Frenchmen noticed it and scrambled on to the bulwark to try to get back on board. But the gap was too wide: the Greyhound must have rigged grapnels from the ends of her yards and these were holding the Peacock alongside. The Triton with nothing holding her against the Peacock, was drifting off to leeward.
There would be no more boarders now, and he must quickly rally the Tritons.
He ran to the wheel shouting, "Tritons! To me, Tritons!"
Other seamen took up the cry as they joined Ramage until it was a regular chant by thirty or more men, among them Southwick. Now he could clear the ship of the enemy, but as he was about to shout the orders he heard a terrible wail and saw that most of the remaining boarders had rushed to the larboard side and were looking at the Peacock, now ten yards away. Some of their shipmates appeared at her bulwarks and began throwing lines over the side. With that one Frenchman after another jumped into the sea and began splashing his way back to the Peacock.
Within a minute Ramage and Southwick were staring at each other in amazement: there was not one able-bodied Frenchman left on board the Triton.
"I want a dozen men to deal with the wounded," Ramage told Southwick, "and all the larboard side guns are to be reloaded. Let's get the ship under way again and give the Greyhound a hand."
Before all the wounded had been carried below and the sails trimmed, the firing from the Peacock's guns had become sporadic. The thunder of the Greyhound's broadsides continued for another four or five minutes before stopping abruptly, signalling that the Peacock had been captured.
An hour passed before Ramage, tacking the Triton up to windward again, found the convoy and got back into position. By then Bowen had reported the casualties to him. Six Tritons had been killed - all by the Peacock's six-pounders - and, by what Ramage privately thought could only be a miracle, only five had been wounded. The French boarding party had left eight dead behind, but had apparently taken their wounded with them. Privateersmen, never giving or asking quarter, took care of their wounded whenever it was possible.
The Topaz was back in position, leading the column; but there were only six ships in the column itself. Ramage wondered what had become of the second ship that came up the inside of the column. As far as he could remember, he had not noticed it firing a single shot... But all that mattered was that Maxine's ship was safe.