“Starboard battery!” Massie was there now, his sword in the air, his face a mask of concentration as he watched the brig swinging away, caught and unprepared for Unrivalled’s change of tack.
“Fire!”
It must have been like an avalanche, an avalanche of iron. When the whirling smoke, swept aside by the wind, laid bare the other vessel it was hard to recognise her, almost mastless, her shattered stumps and rigging dragging outboard like weed. She was a wreck.
Adam took a telescope from Midshipman Fielding, and felt the youth’s hand shaking. Or is it mine?
“Again, Mr Cristie! Man the braces and stand by to wear ship!” He tried to calm himself and steady the glass.
The terrier was dead. The real target could never outpace them.
“All loaded, sir!”
He watched the other ship. Saw the scars left by Unrivalled’s first controlled broadside, the holes punched in her darkly tanned canvas.
Galbraith called, “Ready, sir!” He sounded hoarse.
“Bring her about and lay her on the starboard tack.” He glanced up at the forecourse, at scorched holes which had not been there earlier. Earlier? On my birthday.
Galbraith’s voice again. “We could call on him to strike, sir.”
“No. I know what that feels like. We will open fire when we are in position.” The smile would not come. “The wind will not help him now.” He saw Midshipman Bellairs watching him fixedly, and said, “Signal the brig to lie to. We will board her presently.”
Bellairs beckoned to his signals party. “A prize, sir?” Like Galbraith he sounded parched, as if he could scarcely speak.
“No. A trophy, Mr Bellairs.” He looked at Galbraith. “Bring her about and take in the t’gallants. We shall commence firing.” He measured the distance again. “A mile, would you say? Close enough. Then we will see.”
He watched the sudden activity on deck, the shadows swinging across the flapping sails while the frigate continued to turn, the grim faces of the nearest gun crews.
It was neither a contest nor a game, and they must know it.
He saw Massie pointing with his sword and passing his orders, the words lost in the din of canvas and tackles.
Unless that flag came down, it would be murder.
Using the wind across his quarter to best advantage, Tetrarch’s captain had decided to wear ship, not to close the range but to outmanoeuvre and avoid Unrivalled’s challenge.
Adam observed it all in silence, able to ignore the bark of commands, the sudden protesting bang of canvas as his ship came as close to the wind as she could manage.
He raised his telescope again and trained it on the other vessel as she began to come about; he could even discern her figurehead, scarred and rendered almost shapeless by time and weather, but once a proud Roman governor with a garland of laurel around his head. Her captain might try to elude his adversary until nightfall. But there was little chance of that. It would only prolong the inevitable. He stared at the other ship’s outline, shortening, the masts overlapping while she continued to turn.
He could sense Galbraith and some of the others watching him, all probably full of their own ideas and solutions.
If they came too close and the other ship caught fire, her lethal cargo could destroy all of them. Adam had done it himself. Jago had been there then, also.
He said sharply, “Stand by to starboard as before, Mr Massie! Gun by gun!”
He wiped his eye and looked again. The enemy was bows-on, and in the powerful lens it looked as if her bowsprit would parry with Unrivalled’s jib-boom.
“As you bear!”
He saw the Tetrarch’s canvas billow and fill, the bright Tricolour showing itself briefly beyond the braced driver. What did the flag mean to those men, he wondered? A symbol of something which might already have been defeated.
He thought of Frobisher, the cruel twist of fate which had brought her and her admiral to an unplanned rendezvous with two such ships as this one.
“Fire!” He watched the first shots tearing through the enemy’s forecourse and topsails, and felt although he could not hear the sickening crash of falling spars and rigging.
Like Anemone…
But she continued to turn, exposing her broadside and the bright flashes from her most forward guns. Some hit Unrivalled’s hull, others hurled waterspouts over the side, where gun crews were working like fiends to sponge out and reload.
He heard Lieutenant Luxmore of the Royal Marines yelling a name as one of his marksmen in the maintop fired his Brown Bess at the enemy without waiting for the order. At this range, it was like throwing a pike at a church steeple. The madness. No one could completely contain it.
There was a wild cheer as with tired dignity Tetrarch’s foretopmast appeared to stagger, held upright only by the rigging. Adam watched, unable to blink, as the mast seemed to gain control, tearing shrouds and running rigging alike as if the stout cordage were made of mere twine, the sails adding to the confusion and destruction until the entire mast with upper spars and reeling foretop spilled down into the smoke.
Only a part of his mind recorded the shouts from the gun captains, yelling like men possessed as each eighteen-pounder slammed against its open port. Ready to fire.
He moved the glass very slightly. There was a thin plume of smoke from the main deck of the other ship. Any fire was dangerous, in a fight or otherwise, but with holds full of gunpowder it was certain death. He glanced at Unrivalled’s upper yards and the whipping masthead pendant.
“Fall off a point!”
He saw Massie staring aft towards him, his sword already half raised.
There was no room for doubt, less for compassion. Because that captain could be me.
Tetrarch was still turning, her bows dragging at the mass of fallen spars and cordage. There were men too, struggling in the water, calling for help which would never come.
The next slow broadside would finish her. At almost full range, high-angled to the rise of the deck, it would smash through the remaining masts and canvas before Tetrarch’s main battery could be brought to bear.
“As you bear!” It was not even his own voice. He thought he saw the sun lance from Massie’s upraised blade, and somehow knew that the gun crews on the larboard side had left their stations to watch, their own danger forgotten.
He stiffened and steadied the glass again. This time, he knew it was his own hand shaking.
“Belay that order!”
There was too much smoke, but certain things stood out as clearly as if the enemy had been alongside.
The forward guns were unmanned, and there were figures running across the ship’s poop and half deck, apparently out of control. For an instant he imagined that the fire had taken control, and the ship’s company were making a frantic attempt to escape the imminent explosion.
And then he saw it. The French flag, the only patch of colour on that broken ship, was falling, seemingly quite slowly, until somebody hacked the halliards apart so that it drifted across the water like a dying sea bird.
Cristie grunted, “Sensible man, I’d say!”
Someone else said harshly, “A lucky one too, God damn his eyes!”
Tetrarch was falling downwind, her main course and mizzen already being brailed up, as if to confirm her submission.
Adam raised the glass again. There were small groups of men standing around the decks; others, dead or wounded it was impossible to tell, lay unheeded by the abandoned guns.
Midshipman Bellairs called, “White flag, sir!” Even he seemed unable to grasp what was happening, even less that he was a part of it.
“Heave-to, if you please!” Adam lowered the glass. He had seen someone on that other deck watching him. With despair, hate; he needed no reminding. “Take the quarter-boat, Mr Galbraith, and pick your boarding party. If you find it safe for us to come alongside, then signal me. At any sign of treachery, you know what to do.”
Their eyes held. Know what to do. Unrivalled would fire that final broadside. Any boarding party would be butchered.