The boom of a heavy gun floated over the water and Drinkwater recalled Wykeham's report of a traversing cannon mounted amidships in one of the schooners. The moment to press his carefully planned counter-attack had arrived.
He swung around. The remaining three corsairs were in the clear air to windward and astern of them, working round to the southward of the convoy.
'Where's Sprite?' he asked Quilhampton.
'There, sir!' Quilhampton pointed. In a gap between two Indiamen Drinkwater caught a glimpse of the British schooner beating up to place herself between three ships and the convoy. Sundercombe carried his little vessel into action with an apparent contempt for the odds against him.
'And there's Icarus!' Ashby's frigate was in silhouette. Only her foreshortening against the sunset as she swung identified her as a warship. Even as Drinkwater watched, the bulk of the Lord Mornington interposed itself as they swept past. He would have to depend upon Ashby's steadiness in support of Sundercombe to guard the convoy's rear.
'Cymbeline's coming up alongside the outboard schooner, sir!' Quilhampton reported, his voice shrill with excitement, and Drinkwater whirled round.
They had dropped the Lord Mornington astern and were almost up with the Windsor, the East India Company ship next ahead of her and directly astern of the Lady Lennox. The Windsor was hauling her yards, a row of white-shirted lascars straining at the braces clearly visible, as she pulled to port to avoid the fracas erupting under her bow. She was also still firing her guns and these presented a greater threat to the overtaking Patrician than to the low, rakish schooners grappling her sister-ship ahead.
'Cease fire, damn you!' Drinkwater roared at the offending Company officers who turned in astonishment at the apparition looming out of the smoke astern. They must have been aware of Cymbeline overtaking them, but had clearly not seen Patrician coming up hand over fist in her wake.
'God damn, we've got 'em!' shouted Quilhampton jubilantly, dancing a jig on the rail and bringing a laugh from the men at the wheel and the quarterdeck guns whose comprehension of events was as confused as that of the officers of the Windsor. Drinkwater drew himself up in the mizen rigging to get a better view. The pall of smoke rolled slowly along with them, lifting like fog, but at sea-level it was clear and he could see the hull of yet another Indiaman, her name blazoned in gold letters across her stern below the windows of the great cabin which reflected the glory of the sunset: Lady Lennox. A schooner was fast to either of her sides like hounds on a stag's flanks, except that the privateer on the Indiaman's starboard beam was crushed between Cymbeline's hull, and boarders were pouring down the frigate's tumblehome like a human torrent, the air full of their shouts and the spitfire flashes of small arms.
Even as Thorowgood's men scrambled down the side of their frigate to board the schooner, men from the second schooner to port were boarding the Indiaman.
'Mr Moncrieff!'
'Sir?'
'Your men to open fire on those boarders.'
'Aye, aye, sir!'
'What is it?' Drinkwater addressed Midshipman Porter, redder than usual from his run up from below.
'Mr Frey says the guns won't depress enough to hit the enemy, sir.'
'Boarders, Mr Porter, through the gun ports as soon as we're alongside.'
Beside him Moncrieff's marines jostled, levelling their muskets on the hammocks in the nettings, drawing back the hammers and flicking the frizzens. The air crackled with the vicious sputter of musketry and the solider boom of cannon as somewhere forward, in defiance of the laws of ballistics, several guns were fired. Amid the smoke and racket, Wyatt, Quilhampton, Moncrieff and Drinkwater bawled their orders as Patrician ranged up alongside her quarry.
'Douse the stuns'ls ... rig in the booms and look lively there!'
'Steady, steady as you go ...'
'Another point to starboard, Mr Wyatt, if you please. Crush 'em, damn it, and don't overrun her!' 'Aye, aye, sir!'
Drinkwater looked up, gauging the diminishing distance, before Patricians bulk sandwiched the Yankee schooner against the Lady Lennox. At the Indiaman's stern an American officer was hacking at the ensign halliards, the last rays of the sun flashing on the sword blade. He looked up, suddenly aware the ship bearing down on them from astern was not another Indiaman, as he had supposed, but a second British frigate. Drinkwater could clearly see him turn and bellow something, he even thought he caught the noise of his order above the shouts and screams and clash of steel. Moncrieff had seen the man too.
'Marine!' he bellowed, his face distorted by excitement, 'Hit that bastard beside the ensign halliards!'
'Yessir!'
There was a crash which sent a tremor through the Patrician as the big frigate's starboard bow drove into the larboard quarter of the American schooner and she ground her way past. The ebb and flow of men upon the Lady Lennox where American, Briton, lascar and Chinaman contended for the deck in a dozen desperate fights, seemed to freeze for a brief moment as the impact of the Patrician's arrival made them stagger.
Into this melee Moncrieff's marines poured a withering fire. Drinkwater saw the man at the Indiaman's ensign halliards drop his sword, spin round and fall from sight. Men began sliding down the Lady Lennox's side, Americans, Drinkwater guessed, trying to regain their own ship. Beyond the Lady Lennox's farther rail, the bulk of the Cymbeline dominated the second schooner, invisible to Drinkwater's summary gaze. He looked down. The deck of the crushed schooner lay exposed, the caulking worming from her sprung deck planking, the long gun on its traversing mounting jammed as its crew fought to swing it round at the Patrician. With a thunderous crash the main and fore chain-whales gave way under the compression of the Patricians hull and the schooner's masts came down, a mass of spars, sails and cordage which obscured the marines' targets and hid the unfortunate Americans from their vengeful enemies.
From the gun ports below, like imps of hell intent on some terrible harvest, dark shapes in the gathering shadows, the gun-crews squeezed through, dropping on to the schooner's decks. They rooted under the canvas with their pikes, savagely pitch forking at every movement in a wild catharsis of relief after weeks of fruitless cruising, venting pent-up emotions and repressed urges in an orgy of licensed butchery so that the schooner's deck assumed the bloody aspect of an ampitheatre of death.
The sight revolted Drinkwater and he picked up a speaking trumpet.
'D'you strike, there?' he shouted, 'Strike, sir, and put an end to this madness!'
A man, an officer by his torn blue coat and brass buttons that gleamed dully in the fading light, fought his way clear of the encumbering bunt of the huge mainsail and waved his hand. It was covered with blood which fell upon the canvas beside him. Drinkwater recognized him as the man who had, a few moments earlier, been on the point of hauling down the Lady Lennox's ensign. Somehow he had regained his own deck under Moncrieff's murderous fire.