Kydd turned back to fend off a frenzied stab from a wild-eyed man – the crude flailing had no chance against Kydd’s skill and experience and, with one or two expert strokes, he had forced him to a terrified defensive. The man slipped and tried to ward off Kydd’s straight-arm thrust to his throat, but in vain – he went down gurgling and writhing.
Suddenly there were no more opponents: he saw that the makeshift gangway had clattered down between the ships and many were left impotently on the wrong side. He whirled round. Renzi, in a practised fencer’s crouch, lunged up at a frigate officer in a blur of motion. The man stood no chance.
Defenders from the privateer’s side righted the gangway, then sprang across the deck. The smoke-wreathed chaotic mêlée, wreckage, stench of blood, groaning bodies and frayed cordage whipping about was a scene from hell.
The frigate was in heaving movement with the high seas, the vertical motion making it a trial for those dropping down on to Teazer’s deck from its higher bulwarks. The attackers had to time their move, unavoidably signalling this to the defenders, and when they landed, stumbling and off-balance, they were easy meat for the pikemen.
A trumpet bayed from within the frigate above the clash of battle – and then again. The retreat? With swelling exultation, Kydd saw the attackers left on Teazer’s deck fling down their weapons in despair, knowing the penalty for turning their backs to return to their ship.
It was incredible, glorious, and Kydd’s blood sang. They had repelled the enemy and Teazer was made whole again. Inside, a cooler voice chided that in large part they owed their success to the restless seas.
The frigate pulled away and cheers were redoubled again and again from the smoke-grimed and bloodied Teazers. But in a cold wash of reality Kydd knew what was coming next.
‘For y’ lives! Hands to wear ship!’ he bellowed, stumping up and down to get the men from their guns and to the ropes. Teazer began her swing – but was it too late? The frigate was wearing about as well, but Kydd was gambling that their own turning circle was less.
It was – but it was not enough to escape. The frigate now no longer saw Teazer as a prize but an enemy who must be crushed. And against the unrestrained broadsides of a frigate the little sloop had no chance.
When it came the punishment was hideous. Quartering across Teazer’s stern the bigger ship’s cannon blows brought a cascade of ruin and devastation, a tempest of iron that smashed, splintered and gouged, brought down spars, turned boats to matchwood.
In the blink of an eye Purchet, who had been with the ship from the first, was disembowelled and flung across the deck, his entrails strung out into a bloody heap against the waterway. The inoffensive sailmaker, Clegg, huddled by the main-hatch, was frantically trying to stitch repairs when he simply dropped, his head dissolved into a spray of brain.
From all sides came shrieks of pain from cruel, skewering splinters.
Shaken by the destruction, Kydd shouted hoarsely for sail of any kind on the fore. If they could just . . .
The frigate completed her veering, but she had another broadside waiting on her opposite side and she took time to tack about, a manoeuvre that would end in her coming up alongside the wreck that would be Teazer.
He felt a cold wetness: a grey advance of drizzle brought a soft misery that seemed to shroud the scenes of dying and ruin from mortal eyes. It fell gently, dissolving the blood so that Englishman and Frenchman mingled in fraternal embrace before trickling together through the scuppers into the sea.
Kydd pulled himself together. There was now no alternative to yielding: he must therefore face— But, no, he saw one last move . . . As the frigate completed its turn and took up for its final run he wheeled the wounded sloop off the wind and steered straight for the privateer to leeward. By feinting at it and causing it to run directly from his ship, Kydd was bringing it into the line of fire from the frigate chasing Teazer. They would not fire on their own: for the moment Teazer was safe.
But they did.
The broadside erupted without warning. The storm of shot that broke over Teazer was cataclysmic, smashing into her with an intensity that numbed the senses. A series of unconnected images flashed in front of Kydd. The fore-hatch bursting upwards a split second before a ball ended its flight with a colossal clang against an opposite gun. A ship’s boy snatched from the deck and flung like a bloody rag into the scuppers. Hallum’s face turning towards him in horror and pain, his mouth working as the splinter transfixing his lower body turned in the wound. And then came the deafening timber-cracking of the main-mast as it fell in dignified but awful finality, taking what remained of the fore-mast with it in a tangle of cordage, ruined spars and canvas.
It had finished. It was defeat. The end of everything.
As if in a dream he watched men slowly emerge from under the wreckage, go to the wretched bodies, stare in haggard disbelief at the passing frigate – and then from forward came the single crash of a gun.
Squinting past the heaped ruin of spars and canvas he saw it was his gunner’s mate, Stirk, dragging a foot behind him but going methodically from gun to gun, sighting carefully and banging off defiance at their nemesis – whatever else, Teazer would be seen to go down fighting.
Eyes pricking, Kydd had not the heart to stop him. The frigate began its final turn to take possession of them – and, extraordinarily, one of Stirk’s shots told. At the precise point of the slings of its crossjack there was a sudden jerk, tiny pieces flew off and the spar dipped awkwardly, then fell, rending the mizzen topsail above it and engulfing the driver.
The frigate – name still unknown – fell back on its course. Disabled and unable to turn back, it eventually disappeared into the grey mists of rain. The privateer stayed with it and suddenly Teazer was alone and desperately wounded in the desolate expanse of the Atlantic.
Dizzy with reaction Kydd mustered the Teazers. They seemed dazed, the petty officers half-hearted in their actions, the men shuffling in a trance. Kydd didn’t waste time on words: if they were to survive it needed every man to rally to the aid of their ship. The time of grieving would come later.
Teazer wallowed sickeningly broadside to the seas, her fore-mast a three-foot stump, her main a giant jagged splinter. It was a deeply forlorn experience to see nothing aloft but empty sky, and with the loss of steadying sails, the vessel lurched to the swell like a log.
The first urgency was for a party of men to find the wounded and carry them below. The dead were heaved over the side. Hallum was dragged with rough kindliness to the lee of the capstan where he died quietly. Another party was sent to find the few Frenchmen still aboard who had hidden in fear of their own ship’s broadside.
But the main chore was to clear the deck and try by any means to get sail on. All hands turned to, including Renzi, who stood in for Purchet and led the fo’c’sle party to set a series of purchases on the main spars and haul them clear before starting work on a species of sheer-leg. Even a rag of sail set to the streaming oceanic winds would serve.
Kydd forced his mind to coolness as he reviewed their situation. There was just one thing in their favour: these Atlantic winds were south-westerlies that blew directly for England. If they could keep sail on Teazer they would eventually make an English port, however long it took.