Kydd had compromised but at the cost of half his guns taken from the task of battering the enemy into surrender.
His senses registered the sea darkening off Preussen’s bow and with a tightening heart knew what it was: the shadow of Odin at last entering the contest.
She burst into view and Kydd was left with a last decision: to leave his duel with Preussen unfinished and face a fresh adversary-or stay locked together and fight the two simultaneously.
As Odin curved about, the decision was taken for him. As though swept away like a spider’s web Preussen’s fore-topmast staysail was shot away and with its gear it fell to the fore-deck, the lines entangling and smothering.
Kydd reacted instantly, giving the orders to get under way.
It was not a deciding blow but it was a reprieve. Until Preussen could make repair she was unable to manoeuvre and her guns were falling silent as men were called away and she shivered into the wind. Now he had what he wanted: an even match, one on one.
This was no time for subtle navigating-Tyger had to be brought around to face Odin in the most advantageous way, which meant falling off the wind and putting distance between them and Preussen.
Odin reacted immediately and warily shaped course to intercept. Her captain could be counted on to be on the alert for any trick-he had seen what Kydd had done to Preussen-but he would know as well that Kydd needed to bring on the encounter as soon as possible, if he were to have any chance at a conclusion before Preussen rejoined the fight, her repairs complete.
They circled each other like prize-fighters, looking for an opening, but this gave Kydd precious time to reload guns on both sides.
He knew his men must be desperately tired and would recognise that they were up against a fresh and vengeful opponent, but any doubts he had vanished when a roar of cheering spread through the ship-some even hanging on the rigging and shaking their fists, shouting, goading their rival unmercifully.
It couldn’t last and the two ships came together under topsails in an oblique fashion, making it impossible for either side to open fire on the other until they met, for their guns could not be pointed so far forward.
They straightened at fifty yards opposite each other and fire was opened simultaneously in a hell of shot and noise. Again the cruel hits and rain of debris-and Kydd saw a ball take one of the midships guns in a welter of splintered carriage and upturned barrel, the gun-crew brutally thrown aside.
Beside him, Dillon walked slowly, his face a mask of control, Bray on his other side, his expression tigerish. At the headrails of the quarterdeck Kydd could see down into the infernal regions of the gun-deck where men strove and fought on in a nightmare of pain and fatigue.
At the wheel Halgren was blank-faced and calm. He was chewing tobacco, which Kydd had never seen him do before, his gaze fixed on some tranquil world beyond Tyger’s bowsprit. His eyes flicked up to the sails from time to time. Although in idleness, as they fought it out, he nevertheless had a duty to counter any wind flaw in the backed sails that might compromise their position.
With all his heart Kydd wished the man should survive the day. In this time of courage and death, the helmsman’s duty was both the most dangerous and the most helpless.
It went on and on-it was almost impossible to think. Kydd snatched a quick glance at Preussen, receding on their quarter. She had men swarming over her forepart-how long before she could rejoin the fight?
But Odin drifted closer, her fire telling, and on both ships casualties steadily mounted.
The frigate loomed-was she closing in for the kill?
Tyger’s gun-crews never faltered, in a manic frenzy serving their iron beasts to pound the enemy in a fight to the finish. It was grit and tenacity, fearlessness and pugnacity on a heroic scale, but in war this was seldom enough. So often fortune dictated the terms: one fatal ball, a worn rope giving way, a stray spark to powder-any could alter the course of the fray and put at nothing the valour of men.
And so it was that day. A chance eighteen-pounder ball shot from a gun with quoin removed to give maximum elevation fired up in the vague direction of the delicate tracery of lines and rigging found a mark: Odin’s foreyard, near the tops. The ball gouged and splintered and, with a massive crack that sounded above the din of battle, the big spar, with its brailed up fore-course, broke in half and gracefully hinged down in a chorus of twanging from severed ropes.
In itself it was not a catastrophe. The fore-course was not set and had little effect on manoeuvrability-the fight could go on. It was what followed that ended the contest.
The doused sail, loosed from its restraints opened and spread as it fell, smothering in canvas the first three guns of the frigate. Even this was no calamity: the sail and tangle of rigging could be cut away readily enough. It was the action of a single gun-captain that ended everything.
Knowing that his reloaded piece had, seconds previously, just been laid on the enemy, he’d fired the gun blindly through the fallen canvas.
In the heat of battle it was understandable-but it had fatal consequences.
The wads seating the powder and shot flew out of the muzzle with the ball but were caught in the loose canvas. Instantly there was a flaring up, spreading fast.
It had all happened so quickly. Kydd was held in horrified fascination as he saw the fire leap and catch in Odin-and then, without warning, there was a muffled whoomf and the entire fore-part of the vessel blazed up.
He knew what had happened and was sickened. Somewhere, trapped under the tangle, a powder monkey had been sent sprawling by the falling wreckage. His salt-box with its cartridge had been knocked open and when the flames reached the struggling boy it had gone off, incinerating the child-and dooming the ship.
As if in recognition of the awful moment Tyger’s guns fell silent and men stared at the spectacle, the increasing roar of the fire easily heard as the tarred lower rigging caught and spread paths of fire aloft.
“Get us out of here,” Kydd demanded hoarsely, aware that to leeward of the conflagration they were in deadly danger.
Tyger bore off slowly and, as the wind caught, slipped ahead, leaving the charnel house to its fate, for a reckoning was waiting.
Preussen was under way-she had set to rights her forestay by some epic feat of seamanship and now was to weather of Tyger, altering towards for the final sanction.
They couldn’t abandon the scene for the enemy frigate was quite capable of single-handedly causing the destruction of the transports. And at the same time Preussen could not achieve this while Tyger remained at large to prevent it.
Logic demanded that they meet in single combat to decide the issue.
Kydd gave orders that saw Tyger fall off the wind and away. This was not flight, it was buying time, for the ship desperately needed relief to tend the wounded, clear the decks of the debris of battle and prepare an exhausted crew for a new onslaught.
There were few preliminaries. Kydd ordered Tyger to wheel about. The two ships approached to grapple, like two punch-drunk pugilists.
They met and the battle began again. This time it was clear that Preussen’s captain was determined on a quick finish. Closing inexorably, the frigate opened fire with all it had-great guns, swivels, muskets-a deathly storm of evil that staggered Kydd with its ferocity.