Then, in a frantic rush, the launch was alongside and he was leaping up, grasping at a loop of rigging and kicking out with his feet to find a foothold. The wood was slippery from the weed but his feet found the edge of a plank that was standing proud. He levered himself upwards, kicking and grasping, until he found he had reached the headrails. He ducked through them and worked his way up to the beakhead bulkhead, conscious just as he reached it that a French voice was shouting a challenge.
Several more men from the launch had managed to scramble up, and were almost alongside him. In fact as he looked below, the whole bow of the ship seemed to be a wriggling mass of men. He stretched up again and got a grip on the Marine's walk, the short strip of gangway leading from the fo'c'sle to the bowsprit. Then he swung himself up, kicking and struggling, until he was sprawled on the walk, and a few moments later found himself on the fo'c'sle, only a few feet from the foremast.
By now the French voice was shouting hysterically: it had stopped challenging and was calling out an alarm. Obviously there had been a single lookout forward, and he must have been dozing. Ramage heard a voice answer in the distance and knew it would be only a matter of moments before the men boarding aft would be spotted. The shooting would start any second now, and as he stood upright on the fo'c'sle he wrenched out the pistols from his belt.
He suddenly realized that Jackson, Stafford and Rossi, all puffing from their exertions, were standing beside him at the forebitts, beside the foremast. More men were climbing up the beakhead bulkhead while others were scrambling up on to the Marine's walk.
Suddenly there was the rattle of musket fire from aft and shot ricocheted off the mast. 'Start those fires!' shouted Ramage, knowing that any moment a barrage of musketry fire could sweep the deck.
Lanterns suddenly appeared and he saw several slowmatches sparkling in the darkness. There was a glow as someone took a candle from a lantern and used it to light a piece of cloth.
Now the musketry fire from aft was closer: the French were advancing along the deck towards them. What had happened to the boarders aft? Just as he wondered, Ramage noticed that some of the muskets and pistols were now aimed aft: at last the rest of the Didos had appeared. They had a far more difficult task than the men boarding over the bow: there was much less to hold on to.
'Come on,' Ramage called, 'let's get some fires started amidships.' He noticed that one of his men was crumpled up on the deck, obviously hit by a musket ball, and then Jackson shouted: 'Here they come!'
Ramage just had time to see a group of Frenchmen running along the gangway each side, heading towards them, cutlass blades reflecting in the flash of muskets and pistols. By now many more men, including Gilbert, Louis, Auguste and Albert, had joined him and Ramage led them along the starboard gangway, to meet the French halfway.
The fire from the muskets and pistols had stopped: obviously the French were not going to stop and reload, so now it would be a fight with cutlasses and boarding pikes - except that the Didos had not yet fired their pistols. How many Frenchmen were there? It was difficult to distinguish in the darkness. How many were trying to drive off the Didos attacking from aft? Impossible to say. Perhaps fifty, maybe more. The Didos had the slight temporary advantage that the French would be sleepy, just roused out of their hammocks, but they would soon be wide awake: there was nothing like a few gunshots to get rid of sleepiness.
Ramage cocked the pistols as he ran, cursing as he bumped into various projections which all seemed to have been fitted shin-high. He found himself ahead of the others but heard Jackson shouting at them to hurry.
Then the first of the French were only a few feet away, running towards him shouting at the tops of their voices. Ramage stopped and raised his pistols, aiming into the midst of the mass. He squeezed the triggers and the twin flash of them firing blinded him momentarily.
And then the French were on him. He threw away the pistols and wrenched his sword from its sheath and at the same time Jackson was alongside him, shouting defiance and slashing with his cutlass. Ramage sliced at a boarding spike jabbing at him and then ducked backwards to avoid a swinging cutlass. There was only the starlight now, apart from the occasional flash of a pistol or musket, and he found himself fighting shadows.
He felt rather than saw a cutlass blade rip his right sleeve and immediately stabbed into the darkness with his sword. He felt the blade entering flesh and heard a shriek of pain. Then behind him he heard a roar as Southwick joined the fight, and Ramage could imagine him twirling his sword two-handed, his white hair flying.
By now more Didos were running along the gangway to join him and the French were halted. He cut at a shadowy Frenchman and heard a grunt as the man collapsed. He recognized a stream of French curses as coming from Auguste and Gilbert. Then he glanced forward for a moment and saw that a small fire had been started by the forebitts and the wind was fanning it.
It was also throwing a flickering light on the Frenchmen, and Ramage jabbed again at a bearded and wild-eyed man who was slashing away with his cutlass with all the abandon of a frenzied axeman chopping at a tree trunk. The man collapsed like a pricked bladder, and Ramage guessed he had been drunk.
There was now a lot of shouting from aft, and Ramage guessed that the Didos who had boarded from aft had now sorted themselves out and were driving the French back so that they could start some fires. Another glance forward showed at least two more fires had been started, one against the beakhead bulkhead and another by the knightheads. And out of the corner of his eye he saw men scrambling up the foreshrouds - the topmen whose job was to start fires aloft among the sails.
All at once the French rallied and fought their way a few feet along the gangway, shouting and slashing with cutlasses. For a minute or two Jackson and his men were driven back, and Ramage and Southwick found themselves fighting side by side, surrounded by Frenchmen. Cutlass clanged against cutlass, men grunted and shouted, and for a moment Ramage thought he and the old master would be overwhelmed, but suddenly Jackson appeared out of the darkness with Rossi and Stafford, all of them shouting 'Dido' at the tops of their voices, to distinguish themselves in the darkness.
By now the flickering of fires forward was lighting up the Frenchmen and Ramage was able to see that there were several bodies lying on the gangway. There was a spurt of pistol fire from aft as the other Didos fired and then attacked with cutlasses and boarding pikes.
How many men were there fighting on the gangways? Ramage estimated about twenty-five French and the same number of British were fighting on this side, and guessed an equal number were fighting it out on the larboard gangway. But the important thing was that fires were being started: as the French were being held on the gangways, the men were able to set fire to the greased cloths and, any moment now, the sails.
The fire by the forebitts was now big enough to start a glow which lit the underside of the rigging and forecourse; Ramage could make out the belfry and the galley chimney. The fire, he thought grimly, had taken a good hold and beneath it - admittedly many feet away in the bowels of the ship - was the magazine.
Ramage parried a sudden attack from a Frenchman wielding a cutlass like a scythe and slashed him across the throat. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Southwick launch himself at a group of Frenchmen, his great sword jerking in front of him like a flail.