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Beside Kydd, Purchet pounded his fist into his palm. Then, in the hellish noise, Hallum snatched at Kydd's sleeve and pointed. Looming out of the roiling smoke and appallingly close, a powerful prame as big as a frigate was lunging towards them.

As Teazer passed beyond the schuyts, the prame slewed about parallel to bring its full broadside of twenty-four-pounders to bear—at near point-blank range it would be slaughter, and with Teazer's guns not yet reloaded they could not fire back.

Kydd agonised as he waited for the eruption—his skin crawled as the moment hung—then suddenly he swung round to look in the other direction. As he suspected, a lumbering transport was to leeward; the prame dared not open up on Teazer while it was in the line of fire.

Light-headed with relief, Kydd tried to think of a way out. They couldn't stay with the transport for ever. It was hard to concentrate as a chaotic swirl of noise and smoke battered in on his senses but the matter was shortly taken out of his hands. With an avalanche of muffled thuds and a sudden rearing of gunsmoke on the other side of the prame, the ship-sloop Falcon had taken her chance to attack while its attention was on Teazer.

The prame wheeled about on its tormentor and Teazer pulled into the clouds of powder-smoke rolling downwind from the two. Suddenly, with a hideous splintering crash, they were careering along the side of a ship—timbers smashing to wreckage, sails snatched and torn away, ropes parting with a vicious twang in a long agony of collision.

They stopped, two ships locked together in a hideous tangle and, for a moment, a shocked quiet descended. "It's a Frenchy!" someone screamed, and broke the spell. Kydd fought to keep cooclass="underline" this was an enemy and it was bigger than Teazer. "Teazers t' board!" he yelled. "T' me, the boarders!" He whipped out his precious fighting sword and leaped on to the enemy deck where Teazer's bulwarks had been beaten flat.

The French gun crews gaped at him, caught off-balance and dazed by the sudden turn of events. The first to recover was a dark-featured officer with a red sash who snarled in anger and rushed at him, swinging a massive sword. Kydd dropped to one knee with his own blade above his head. The weapons met in a clash, the shock numbing his arm, but his fine Toledo steel held and deflected the blow to one side.

He let the stroke spend itself and, with a dextrous twist, got inside it and thrust out savagely, taking the man in the lower body. With a howl of anguish he dropped his sword and clutched at the skewering blade, then crumpled, knocking Kydd sprawling and tearing it from his grasp.

The Teazer gun crews had snatched up rammers, tomahawks, anything to hand and were racing toward the unarmed Kydd. With an urgent thump on the deck, Renzi arrived first, taking position over Kydd with a boarding pike out-thrust, its lethal point questing for the first to dare an assault.

The Teazers soon had their bridgehead; the disorganised gun crews saw no chance against fully equipped boarders and skidded to a stop. The rush turned to a rout.

More Teazers arrived and the ship was theirs. Trembling with reaction to the near-disaster, Kydd sent parties to secure the vessel and looked about the battlefield. The action had moved away from them: the flotilla was doggedly pressing on towards Calais, and the English, firing wildly, were staying with them.

He looked across at Teazer. The wreckage seemed confined to the bulwarks and fore-shroud channels but there was a trail of dismounted guns and, at more than one spot, the dark staining of blood on the decking.

Purchet loped up and reported, "Spars still sound, sir, but th' standin' rigging t' larb'd is in a sad moil."

"Get us free, quick as y' like, Mr. Purchet. Stoppers and doubling— anything as'll see us under canvas again."

He looked out at the broader battle scene. Actaeon was beset by four large sloops and nearly hidden by towering clouds of powder-smoke but gun-flashes regularly stabbed through from her and, as Kydd watched, a mast on one of the sloops descended and the damaged vessel fell away.

The enemy did not seem inclined to pay attention to the two vessels locked together so they had a chance. The Royal Marines took charge of prisoners while the entire seaman complement of Teazer swarmed over the rigging aloft, passing stoppers that joined the severed ends of ropes and adding relieving tackles to weakened sections.

When it was complete Kydd sent Hallum to limp back in the prize while he considered the state of Teazer. At a pinch they could keep to the wind, particularly running large as the flotilla was doing, but effectively they had lost all except one of the larboard guns and were open to the weather and small-arms fire along that side. And they had numbers away as prize-crew.

Kydd watched the receding battle. He had been shaken by the savagery of the fighting, the desperate flinging of their force into the midst of the armada. And the French were far from running: they were staying together to brute it through and add this huge number of invasion craft to their concentrations.

There was no alternative but to do his duty. With Kydd warily keeping an eye on the makeshift repairs aloft, Teazer set out after them but well before they were able to overhaul the rear the enemy entered Calais roads and the unassailable shelter of the fortress batteries.

Regrouping beyond the treacherous offshore ground of the Ridens de la Rade the flying squadron hove to; it seemed that the Franco-Batavian flotilla had indeed won precious miles from Dunkirk towards their eventual destination, Boulogne, and all the squadron could now do was to leave a pair of watching cutters and return to the Downs.

Yet within the hour there was movement: incredibly the flotilla was putting out once more. It was no feint: the canny Dutch commander had merely added to their number by drawing in those who had sheltered in the port earlier. Now nearly a hundred sail were issuing out, steadily heading south-west.

It was an audacious and cynical move: they had no doubt reasoned that while the English were occupied in their butchery of the unfortunates, there would be left many more to plough on regardless and make their destination. The simple outworking of time and numbers would ensure that by far the majority survived.

It was still before noon when heavy guns thundered out from the great citadel and no less than five forts. Falling back but warily pacing with them out to seaward, the squadron waited until the strung-out flotilla was clear of the port and its defences, then one by one selected a victim and once more sailed in to close with the enemy.

Teazer was no longer in the best shape for another deadly action but the stakes were extreme. Therefore, with torn sails and trailing ropes, she set her bowsprit resolutely at the foe—three of the flat-bottomed bateaux canonnières, equipped with a stern ramp to take on even field guns and horses. These were therefore of prime value to Bonaparte and worth any sacrifice.

At this point, with fewer sandbanks, the immense sea cavalcade huddled close inshore. It seemed incongruous to join battle before the mussel beds and lowly dunes, and with no larboard guns Teazer must work some miracle to come inside them to fight.

But as she made her approach guns opened up—guns that had no right to be there. Shot tore up the sea all around and two heavy thumps told of hits—but from where?

Through his telescope Kydd saw troops of horse artillery cantering up, unlimbering their field guns on the crest of the dunes and blazing away. It was an intelligent use of the immense military machine being assembled but it would only serve while they were close in with the land. Beyond the range of the fortress on the heights of Cap Blanc Nez there were devilish offshore hazards, which the French called "The Barrier," that would force the armada miles out to sea.