"Ready, sir! "
"On the uproll, lads! " Flemyng was hatless and there was blood splashed like paint on his forehead. "Fire! "
Men were cheering and hugging each other. "'Er bloody foremast's comin' down! "
By one of the guns a seaman held his mate in his arms, and frantically pushed the hair from his eyes as he babbled, "Nearly done, Tim! The buggers are dismasted! " But his friend did not respond. Together they had lived and yarned by this one gun. Every waking hour it had been here-waiting.
A gunner's mate said roughly, "Take that man an' put 'im over! 'E's done for! " He was not an unduly hard man, but death was terrible enough without seeing it lingering on.
The seaman clutched his friend closer to him so that his head lolled across his shoulder as if to confide something. "You won't put 'im over, you bastards! "
Segrave felt Fittock's hard hand helping him to his feet as he called, "Leave them, Gunner's Mate! " He did not recognise himself. "There is enough to do! "
Fittock glanced across at his own crew, his teeth very white in his grimy face.
"Told you, eh? Right little terrier! " Then he guided Segrave to the curve of one great timber so that the others should not see his distress. He added, "One of the best! "
Throughout the ship men stood or crouched at their tasks, bodies streaked with sweat, ears bandaged against the deafening roar of cannon fire, fingers raw from hauling, ramming and running-out again and again.
It took time for the marine's trumpet call to penetrate each deck, and then the cheering clawed its way up towards the smoky sunlight, that other place where it had all begun.
Bolitho stood by the quarterdeck rail and watched the enemy ship. As she drifted downwind she turned her high stern towards him, the name San Mateo still so bright in the sunlight. He had thought it would never stop, and yet he knew that the whole action, from the time the Danish flag had been hauled down and his own run up to the fore, had lasted barely thirty minutes.
He said, "I knew we could do it." He felt Allday near him, heard Keen yell, "Stand by to starboard! "
There had been casualties. Men killed when seconds before they had been waiting to start the game.
"Nicator's signalling, sir! " Jenour sounded hoarse.
Bolitho raised a hand in acknowledgment. Thank God. Jenour was safe too. Black Prince must have fired three broadsides before the enemy had gathered wits enough to return a ragged response. By then it was already too late.
He said. "Signal Nicator to close with the convoy. Make certain that she tells the boarding parties that if they try to scuttle our ships or harm the crews, they will have to swim home! " He heard men muttering with approval and knew that had he so much as suggested it, they would have run every French prisoner up to the mainyard.
It was what war dictated. A madness. A need to hurt and kill those who had brought fear to you.
He thought suddenly of Ozzard. So innocuous, and yet he had known, had recognised that it was that same ship which had so brutally destroyed Hyperion. Maybe it was the ship, and not the men who crewed her? French flag, Spanish, and now if she surrendered, an addition to His Britannic Majesty's fleet. Would she, the ship remain unchanged, like something untamed?
It still sickened him to recall how San Mateo had poured her broadsides into Hyperion, regardless of the destruction and murder she was causing to her own consorts, which were unable to move clear. The ship then.
Keen walked round to face him.
"Sir?" He watched quietly. Feeling it. Sharing it. There was pride too. More than he had dared to hope for.
Bolitho seemed to rouse himself. "Has she struck yet?" Is that me? So cold, so impersonal… An executioner.
Keen answered gently, "I believe her steering is shot away, sir. But their guns are still, and I think many of her people are dead."
Bolitho said, "A glass if you please." He saw their surprise as he crossed to the opposite side and levelled the telescope on Herrick's flagship. Unmoving and heavy in the water, her masts and trailing rigging dragging from either side. Thin scarlet threads ran down from the upper deck scuppers to the littered surface and the ship's unmoving reflection. As if she herself were bleeding to death. He felt his heart leap as he saw the tattered ensign still trailing from the poop where someone had braved hell to nail it there. Beyond Benbow, the other vessels drifted to no purpose. Spectators, victims; waiting for it all to end.
He called sharply, "Prepare all divisions to fire, Captain Keen! " There was no reply, and he could almost feel them holding their breath. "If they do not strike, they will die." He swung round. "Is that clear?"
Another voice; another still alive. Bosanquet called, "Brig Larne is closing, sir! "
Perhaps his meticulous interruption helped. Bolitho said, "Call away my barge and ask the surgeon to report to me. Benbow will need help. Your first lieutenant would be a great asset." He shook himself and walked to his friend. "My apologies, Val. I had forgotten."
Cazalet had fallen to the first exchange. A ball had all but cut him in half while he had been sending men aloft to attend repairs.
They were cheering again; it went on and on and Bolitho believed he could see men in Nicator's yards waving and capering, their voices lost in distance. Like great falling leaves the two French flags drifted down from San Mateo 's rigging and men stood back from her guns, silently watching like mourners.
Keen said harshly, "She's struck! " He could not contain his relief.
Bolitho saw his barge lifting and then dipping over the nettings, and knew that Keen had been dreading the order to re-open fire, flags or not.
Allday touched his hat. "Ready, Sir Richard." He studied him anxiously. "Shall I fetch a coat?"
Bolitho turned to him and winced as the sunlight pricked at his eye.
"I have no need for it."
Julyan the sailing-master called, "What about your hat, Sir Richard?" He was half-laughing, but almost sobbing with relief. Men had died right beside him. He was safe-one more time. Another step up the ladder.
Bolitho smiled through the smoky sunshine. "You have a son, I believe? Give it to him. It will make a good yarn, one day."
He turned away from the surprise and gratitude in the man's face and said, "Let us finish this."
It was a silent crossing, with only the creak of oars and the bargemen's breathing to break the stillness.
As Benbow's great shadow loomed over them, Bolitho did not know where he would find the strength to meet whatever lay ahead. He pinched the locket beneath his filthy shirt and whispered, "Wait for me, Kate."
Followed by the others, he clambered up the side. Shot holes pitted the timbers from gangway to waterline, rigging, some with corpses trapped within it like weed, tugged beneath the sea, pulling her down.
Bolitho climbed faster. But a ship's heart could be saved. He saw faces staring at him from open gunports, some driven half-mad, others probably killed at the outbreak of the battle.
He reached the quarterdeck, so bare now without the main and mizzen to protect it.
He heard Black Prince's surgeon calling out orders, and another boat already hooking alongside with more willing hands; but at this moment he was quite alone.
The centre of any fighting ship, where it all began and ended. The shattered wheel with the dead helmsmen scattered like bloodied bundles, even caught in attitudes of shock and fury when death had marked them down. A boatswain's mate who had been kneeling to fix a bandage to the flag lieutenant's leg, then both of them killed together by a hail of cannister shot. A sailor still bending on a signal when he had fallen, and the halliards were torn from his hands as the mast had gone careering overboard.
Propped against the compass box with one leg bent beneath him was Herrick. He was barely conscious, although Bolitho guessed that his pain was deeper than any gunshot wound.