The boy nodded. 'I need a cool head for the job, Mr Frey.' He lowered his voice confidentially. 'It's a post of honour, Mr Frey, I beg you not to let me down.' The boy's eyes opened wide. He was likely to be dead or covered in glory in the next half-hour, Drinkwater thought.
'I will not disappoint you, sir.'
'Very good. Now, listen even more carefully. When you have discharged the windward carronade you are to cross to the other and train it inboard. If you see a number of black-faced savages come over the taffrail you are to sweep the waist ahead of them with shot, even, Mr Frey, even if you appear to be firing into our own men.'
The boy's eyes opened wider. 'Now that is a very difficult order to obey, Mr Frey. But that is your duty. D'you understand me now?'
The boy swallowed. 'Yes, sir.'
'Very good.' Drinkwater smiled again, as though he had just asked Frey to fetch him an apple, or some other similarly inconsequential task. He went to the forward end of the quarterdeck and called for silence in the waist, where the men were sorting out the small arms, joking at the prospect of a fight.
'Silence there, my lads.' He waited until he had their attention. 'When I order you to fire I want you to pour in as much shot across his hammock nettings then hold him from boarding. If he presses us hard you will hear the bosun's whistle. That is the signal to fall back. Seamen forward under Lieutenants Rispin and Gorton. Marines aft under Mr Mount. When Mr Bourne's reserve party appears from aft you will resume the attack and reman your guns as we drive these impertinent Frenchmen into the sea. I shall then call for the fore course to be let fall in order that we may draw off.'
A cheer greeted the end of this highly optimistic speech. He did not say he had no intention of following the enemy and taking their ship. He did not know how many men knew the rudder was damaged, but some things had to be left to chance.
'Very well. Now you may lie down while he approaches.'
Like an irreverent church congregation they shuffled down and stretched out along the deck, excepting himself and Mount who kept watch from the quarterdeck nettings.
The enemy ship was almost directly to windward of them now and also heaving to. As Drinkwater watched, the side erupted in flame, and shot filled the air, whistling low overhead, like the ripping of a hundred silk shirts.
The second broadside was lower. There were screams from amidships and the ominous clang as one of the guns was hit on the muzzle and a section of bulwark was driven in. A marine grunted and fell dead. Drinkwater nudged Mount. It was Polesworth. Drinkwater felt his coat-tails being tugged. Mr Comley, the bosun, was reporting.
'I brought my pipe aft, sir.'
'Very good, Mr Comley. You had better remain with me and Mr Mount.'
'Aye, sir.'
'Have you served in many actions, Mr Comley?' asked Drinkwater conversationally.
'With Black Dick in the Queen Charlotte at the Glorious First, sir, with Cap'n Rose in the Jamaicky at Copenhagen, when you was in the Virago, sir, an' a score o'boat actions and cuttin' outs and what not…'
A third broadside thudded home. Aloft rigging parted and the main top gallant mast dangled downwards.
'You were with the gun brigs then, on the 2nd April?'
'Aye, sir. An' a precious waste of time they were, an' all. I says to Cap'n Rose that by the time we'd towed 'em damned things across to Denmark and then half the little barky's got washed ashore here an' there…'
But Drinkwater never knew what advice Mr Comley had given Captain Rose in the battle with the Danish fleet. He knew that the Melusine could stand little more of the pounding she was taking without fighting back.
'Open fire!' He yelled and immediately the starboard guns roared out. For perhaps ten whole minutes as the larger ship drove down upon the smaller, the world became a shambles of sights and sounds through which the senses peered dimly, assaulted from every direction by destructive forces. The shot that whistled and ricochetted; the canister that swept a storm of iron balls across the Melusine's deck; the musket balls that pinged off iron-work and whined away into the air; the screams; the smoke; the splinters that crackled about, made it seem impossible that a man could live upon the upperdeck and breathe with anything like normality. Even more astonishing was the sudden silence that befell the two ships' companies as they prepared, the one to attack, the other to defend. It lasted perhaps no more than ten seconds, yet the peace seemed somehow endless. Until that is, it too dissolved into a bedlam of shouting and cursing, of whooping and grunting, of killing and dying. Blades and arms jarred together and the deck became slippery with blood. Drinkwater had lost his hat and his single epaulette had been shot from his left shoulder. It was he who had ended the silence, ordering Frey's brass carronade to sweep the enemy waist from its commanding position at the hance. He had pushed the boy roughly aside as he placed his foot on the slide to repel the first Frenchman, a young officer whose zeal placed himself neatly upon the point of Drinkwater's sword.
Simultaneously Drinkwater discharged his pistol into the face of another Frenchman then, disengaging his hanger, cut right, at the cheek of a man lowering a pike at Mount.
'Obliged, sir,' yelled Mount as he half-turned and shrugged a man off his shoulder who had tried leaping down from the enemy's mizen rigging. The smoke began to clear and Drinkwater was suddenly face to face with a man he knew instinctively was the enemy commander. Drinkwater fell back a step as the small dark bearded figure leapt through the smoke to Melusine's deck. It was a stupid, quixotic thing to do. The man did not square up with a sword. He levelled a pistol and Drinkwater half-shielded his face as Tregembo hacked sideways with a tomahawk. The Frenchman was too quick. The pistol jerked round and was fired at Tregembo. Drinkwater saw blood on the old Cornishman's face and lunged savagely. The French captain jumped back, turned and leapt on the rail. Drinkwater's hanger caught him in the thigh. A marine's bayonet appeared and the French commander leapt back to his own deck. Drinkwater lost sight of him. He found himself suddenly assailed from the left and looked down into the waist. The defenders were bowed back as a press of Frenchmen poured across.
'Mr Comley, your whistle!' Drinkwater roared.
He had no idea where Comley was but the whistle's piercing blast cut through the air above the yelling mob and Drinkwater was pleased to see the Melusines give way; he skipped to the skylight.
'Now, Bourne, now, by God!'
A retreating marine knocked into him. The man's eyes were dulled with madness. Drinkwater looked at Frey. The boy had the larboard carronade lanyard in his hand.
'Fire, Mr Frey!' The boy obeyed.
Drinkwater saw at least one Melusine taken in the back, but there seemed a hiatus in the waist. Most of his men had disengaged and skipped back two or three paces. The marines were drawn up in a rough line through which Bourne's black-faced party suddenly appeared, passing through the intervals, each armed with pike or tomahawk. Bourne at their head held a boarding axe and a pistol. The hiatus was over. The bewildered Frenchmen were suddenly hardpressed. Drinkwater turned to Comley.
'Let fall the fore course, Mr Comley!'
The bosun staggered forward. 'Mr Frey!'
'Sir?'
'Reload that thing and get a shot into the enemy waist from there.'
'Aye, aye, sir.'
Slowly the Melusines were recovering their guns. There were dead and wounded men everywhere and the decks were red with their blood. Drinkwater followed Bourne down into the waist, joining Mount's marines as they bayoneted retreating Frenchmen. The quarterdeck was naked. If the French took advantage of that they might yet lose the ship. Drinkwater turned back. Two or three of the enemy were preparing to leap across. He shot one with his second pistol and the other two were suddenly confronting him. They looked like officers and both had drawn swords. They attacked at once.