Colours Aloft!

by Alexander Kent

The hull shook violently as more shots hammered into it, and an eighteen-pounder was lifted by an invisible hand and toppled onto some of its crew. The barrel must have been as hot as a furnace, but the men soon died, their screams lost in the bombardment. The fore-topsail blew in ribbons, and without warning the main-topgallant mast staggered and then plunged to the deck like a forest giant.

  Bolitho stared through the smoke, his eyes stinging and streaming. They had to get alongside. A sudden gap in the smoke made him realize how close they were to the convoy. He saw Benbow, her flags still flying, but her mizzen gone, firing without a pause into the ship nearest to her. The other one was almost dismasted, and he saw the two little brigs firing at her before the smoke swirled down again.

  His foot touched Stayt’s outflung arm and he looked down at him. In those few minutes he had learned more about the man than ever before. How petty and empty all the jealousy and hate seemed now.

  He looked at Keen. “We have the wind. Use it.” His voice hardened. “Ram her!” Then he drew his sword and heard Allday pull out his cutlass.

  “Now! Hard over!”

  Keen swung away. It was pointless to try to protest or explain. Jobert’s company would overwhelm them. They would have no chance. But they never had from the beginning.

  He shouted, “Man the braces! Put up your helm, Mr Fallowfield!”

  But the master’s mate had taken charge. Fallowfield lay near the wheel where he had died, his ear to the deck as if he were listening for something.

  “Mr Paget! Prepare to ram!”

  Paget stared up at him and then ran towards the forecastle, his hanger already drawn as, with ponderous intent, Argonaute turned towards her enemy, her jib-boom like a lance, her sails so torn and holed that even the jubilant wind, a cruel spectator to the fight, could barely offer steerage-way.

  Despatch was alongside another ship, her guns still firing even though her muzzles were grinding against those of her enemy.

  Jobert had now realized Bolitho’s intention but could do little about it. By changing tack directly towards the convoy he had the wind abeam. He could neither turn towards Argonaute, nor could he allow the wind to carry him away without exposing his stern to a murderous broadside.

  Oblivious to the din, Bolitho watched the shrieking balls as Jobert’s guns tried to traverse onto the slow-moving ship with the huge Jack at her foremast.

  French sailors were already running along the gangway, firing towards Argonaute, some falling or pitching overboard as they came under fire from Bouteiller’s marksmen. A swivel blasted out from somewhere, and Bolitho saw one of the scarlet coats fall. It was Lieutenant Orde, his sword still in his hand as he stared up at the sky.

  Keen gripped the rail, watching transfixed as the big threedecker, once so aloof and distant, loomed above them. Men were firing down, and he felt the planks jerk by his feet. A heavy ball hit Stayt’s body so that it convulsed as if he were only shamming death. The Frenchmen were running to the point of impact, and the chorus of their cries and curses was like one tremendous voice which even the battle could not quench.

  Keen turned as Bolitho touched his sleeve. “Are the guns ready?”

  Keen nodded. “At this range, sir?” The jib-boom thrust slowly through Léopard’s foremast shrouds. It looked such a gentle motion but Keen knew the whole weight of his command was behind it. He waved his sword to the lieutenant at the larboard battery. The seconds seemed like hours and Keen had time to consider several things at once. The great chorus of voices and then, in that fragment of time before the trigger-lines were jerked taut, he heard Bolitho say, “Fine words do not a broadside make, Val.”

  Then the space between the hulls vanished in a frothing torment of flame and smoke. Burning wads floated towards the torn sails, and the crash of metal against the enemy’s hull was like a thunderclap.

  The mass of French seamen and marines were gone, and Léopard’s side below the gangway was running bright red, so that the ship herself seemed to be bleeding to death.

  Then like a last convulsion the two vessels ground together, the shrouds and spars entangled, guns, men and wind all suddenly silent. As if their world had ended.

  Bolitho was almost knocked over by the marines from the poop as they charged towards the forecastle, some hatless and wild-eyed, their bayonets glittering in the smoky sunshine. The ships rolled more heavily together and, through the dangling creepers of rigging and strips of blackened canvas, Bolitho saw the stab of musket fire and the gleam of steel as the two sides came together.

  From above the smoke the marksmen kept up their fire, and Bolitho saw Phipps, the fifth lieutenant, clutch his face as a ball smashed into his forehead. He had been one of Achates ’ midshipmen. In the twinkling of an eye he had become nothing.

  The ships were being carried slowly and heavily downwind and away from the convoy. It would give Herrick a chance, but no more than that unless—Bolitho saw several seamen cut down by a blast of swivel, the canister shot raking them into bloody ribbons while they screamed and kicked out their lives.

  Bolitho shouted, “Take the ship, Val! Hold her!” He saw the shocked understanding on Keen’s face and repeated, “No matter what!” Then with his sword in his hand he ran along the starboard gangway with Allday and Bankart behind him. He found time to wonder what was keeping Bankart from hiding below, how long it would be before it all ended, as it had for too many already.

  Allday rasped, “God, they’re aboard us!”

  Bolitho saw Paget by the foremast and shouted, “Clear the lower battery! Every man on deck!”

  Then he found himself by the starboard cathead, and already the place was littered with corpses. Seamen and marines, friends and enemies, clawed for handholds on the beak-head, and slid down stays and torn sails to get at each other. Bayonets thrust; others hacked at the boarders with anything they could find, cutlasses and axes; one man was even using a rammer like a club until a ball brought him down and he tumbled outboard between the grinding hulls.

  From the quarterdeck Keen watched despairingly as more enemy uniforms appeared through the smoke, some already on the larboard gangway. They would swamp his company. He stared round and saw Hogg, his coxswain, fall to the deck, one hand reaching for help even as the light died in his eyes.

  They were all dying, and for two ships full of bloody gold.

  He yelled, “Open fire with the nine-pounders, Mr Valancey! Mark down their poop!”

  It was almost impossible to speak or breathe as the smoke billowed over the decks and men slipped and hacked at each other, stamping on the corpses of their companions.

  There was a cracked cheer and Keen saw more men swarming up from the lower gun deck, Chaytor, the second lieutenant, waving them forward with his hanger.

  The nine-pounders lurched inboard on their tackles and blasted grape into the smoke, some of which might find a target on the enemy’s stern and amongst her officers.

  Keen saw a seaman running towards him and his startled mind made him realize it was one of the enemy, a single seaman suddenly cut off from the rest of the boarders.

  He lunged forward, seeing the stranger through a mist of combined pain and fury. Hogg was dead, Bolitho would soon be killed or captured as he led his own counter-attack.

  The French seaman aimed a pistol but a mocking click from the hammer made him stare wildly before flinging the useless weapon away. He raised his heavy cutlass and kept his eyes on Keen’s face.

  He was young and nimble-footed, but the madness of battle blinded him to Keen’s skill.

  Keen parried the heavy blade, the weight and power of the man’s thrust carrying his attacker almost past him. Then Keen slashed him across the neck and, as he fell, shrieking, hacked him once again across the face.

  He turned away, the anger giving him an unnatural strength; he did not even look round as more shots whimpered past him or slammed into the deck.

  Then he stared towards the forecastle. It was the most terrible scene of all.

&
nbsp; Captain Inch, naked but for his breeches, was hurrying to the larboard ladder, his raw stump jerking violently as he waved his sword and yelled, “Stand fast, Helicons!” The words were torn from him, the agony of his wound making it pitiful. He shouted again, his voice rising above the clash of steel and the screams of the dying, “To me, Helicons! Repel boarders, my lads!”

  Keen wiped his eyes with his sleeve.

  “In God’s name, he thinks he’s in his own ship again!”

  It could not last. The packed, stamping figures were being forced back, and there were some French boarders already fighting amongst the fallen cordage and bodies on the main deck.

  A midshipman, unarmed, driven beyond reason, ran for a hatchway, his ears covered with his hands as he tried to escape.

  Keen saw it was Hext, one of the youngest aboard. As he reached the hatch coaming he slipped on some blood and fell sprawling. A tall Frenchman bounded towards him, his cutlass already swinging. The boy rolled over and stared at him. He did not cover his face or plead, he just lay and watched death.

  But Inch was there, and drove his blade under the seaman’s ribs, swinging him round, the man’s weight tearing the sword from his grasp. The sailor dropped beside Midshipman Hext, his bare feet drumming in agony on the deck.

  Keen saw a boarding pike come from the smoke. It took Inch in the back. As he fell to his knees the pike was torn free and then driven into him once more.

  Bolitho watched Inch fall, and then, along the length of the deck, above the swaying, exhausted figures he saw Keen looking at him. For a moment longer the battle seemed elsewhere. They shared the moment. All their memories, and the brave Zenoria. The brightness of hope and love, the illusion of a precious discovery.

  The voices roared through it and Bolitho swung round to face a French lieutenant.

  Savagely he slashed the young officer’s blade aside and then seized his lapel and drove the knuckle bow into his jaw. The lieutenant lurched aside and gasped in terror as Allday’s great cutlass swept across the sunlight like a shadow.

  Allday wrenched the blade free and gasped thickly, “We can’t ’old ’em!”

  Bolitho saw his men falling back; they were trapped here; both gangways had as many Frenchmen on them as Keen’s people.

  Bolitho shouted, “Hold fast, lads!” A seaman dropped on his knees and tried to fend off another bright blade. He screamed as his severed hand fell beside him. Bolitho lunged over the wounded man’s shoulder and felt the Frenchman against the sword, then reel over as the point grated off his crossbelt and slid into his chest.

  He turned to rally some seamen and marines on the other side and then saw something rising above the great pall of smoke.

  Allday croaked, “Bastards are alongside! ’Nother of ’em!”

  One of the French seventy-fours must have fought free of Bolitho’s ships and was coming to assist his admiral.

  There was a crazed cheer and Bolitho saw that the newcomer had lost her mizzen. Guns bellowed from her side, and Bolitho felt the jerk of iron transmit itself even to Argonaute’s own deck.

  It was an impossible dream, the stern-faced figurehead in breastplate and with out-thrust sword. Admiral Benbow .

  Cheering and whooping, Herrick’s marines and seamen swarmed across in a tide of smoke-blackened, battered men, who had already fought and won their battle to protect the convoy.

  Suddenly Bolitho was being carried forward on Argonaute’s new strength and almost fell into the swirling water as two seamen hauled him roughly over the forecastle rail and onto the bowsprit. Caught between Benbow’s men and Keen’s own company, the French were already fighting their way onto one gangway, a bridge of escape to their own ship, and still held the advantage over those below them.

  Bolitho heard Bouteiller yell, “Royal Marines, still!”

  He could not see them but pictured the scarlet coats, no longer smartly pressed and clean, as they responded to their captain’s command. Dazed, wild, even the fury within them was not enough to withstand their familiar discipline.

  They stood or knelt along the opposite gangway, their muskets rising as one. A marine fell dead from the rank, but nobody flinched. Revenge would come later.

  Bouteiller yelled, “Fire!”

  The musket balls crashed into the packed mass of boarders and, even as the living struggled free from the dead, the marines were already charging towards them, shouting and screaming like demons as they went in with their bayonets.

  Bolitho slipped, but held on to the massive bowsprit, his feet kicking at the spritsail yard and shrouds while he stared with stunned disbelief at the deck below him, Léopard’s forecastle. But for the lanyard around his wrist he would have lost his sword for ever.

  There was more firing from that other existence beyond the smoke, ships locked together or surging towards the French rearadmiral’s flag, Bolitho could not tell. A command flag was supposed to lead and direct. Now it had become a beacon, a guide for carnage. Men fought and struggled all around him; it was impossible to grasp direction or time. Bodies were sometimes pressing against him, with brief flashes of recognition as a wild face found his. Someone even managed to shout, “ ’Tis the admiral, lads!” Another yelled, “You keep with us, Dick!”

  It was wild, terrifying, and yet the madness was like rich wine. Bolitho locked hilts with another lieutenant and was astonished that he found it so easy to disarm him with one twist of the wrist which tore the weapon from his hand. He would have left it at that as the yelling, panting seamen carried him along, but a marine paused and glared at the cowering officer. All he said was, “This is for Cap’n Inch!” The thrust carried the lieutenant to the rail, the point of the bayonet glinting red through the back of his coat.

  Bolitho dashed his wrist across his face. It felt like a furnace and he was almost blinded by sweat.

  He saw the gouged planks across the broad sweep of quarterdeck where Keen’s grape had fired so blindly. Bodies lay scattered near the abandoned wheel, others ran to meet the rush of boarders, probably unable to accept what had happened.

  A sailor darted under a bayonet and headed for Allday. He stared at the Frenchman and then lifted his cutlass. He almost laughed through his despair. It was so easy.

  As he raised the blade and tightened his hold on the cutlass he suddenly cried out, the pain in his old wound burning through his chest, rendering him helpless, unable to move.

  Bolitho was separated from him by an abandoned gun, but hurled himself towards him, his sword hitting out.

  But Bankart leaped between them armed only with a belaying pin.

  He screamed, “Get back! Don’t you touch him!” He threw himself protectively against his father, sobbing with anger and fear as the Frenchman darted forward for the kill.

  Bolitho felt the ball fan past his face, although his dazed mind did not record the sound of a shot.

  He saw the Frenchman slide back and drop to the deck, his cutlass clattering beneath the feet of the crowd.

  Bolitho saw Midshipman Sheaffe, his face white with strain, with Stayt’s pistol still smoking in one hand, his puny dirk in the other.

  Then he forgot him; even the fact that, with Allday about to be cut down, his son had found himself and the courage which he believed would never be his.

  Bolitho saw Jobert by the poop ladder, saw him shouting to his officers, although the din, the mingled roar of victory and defeat, made it impossible to understand.

  Lieutenant Paget, his coat sliced from shoulder to waist and cut about the face by wood splinters, waved his bloodied hanger to his men.

  Bolitho stared through the smoke, now almost blind from it, or was it something worse? He could not even find the will to care any more.

  Paget yelled, “Get him! Cut the bastard down!”

  Bolitho found himself lurching through the jubilant seamen, some of whom were strangers from Herrick’s ship.

  It had to stop. The past could not repair anything; nor must it destroy.

  He knocke
d a marine’s musket aside with the flat of his sword. He heard Allday gasping behind him. He would die rather than leave him now.

  Bolitho shouted, “Strike, damn you!”

  Jobert stared at him, his eyes shocked. He peered past Bolitho and must have sensed that only he was keeping him alive. There was a great wave of cheering and someone yelled, “There goes their flag, mates! We beat the buggers!”

  The voices and faces swirled round, while the cornered Frenchmen in various parts of their ship began to throw down their weapons. But not Jobert. Almost disdainfully he drew his sword and tossed his hat to the deck.

  Paget gasped, “Let me take him, Sir Richard!”

  Bolitho gave him a quick glance. Paget, the man who had faced the odds of Camperdown, was no longer the calmly efficient first lieutenant. He wanted to kill Jobert.

  Bolitho snapped, “Stand back.” He raised his sword and felt the raw tension in his wrist and forearm.

  So it was a personal duel after all.

  There was silence now, and only the groans and cries of the wounded seemed to intrude. Even the wind had dropped without anyone noticing it. Jobert’s command flag flapped only slightly and in time with the bright Union Flag on the ship whose jibboom still impaled the shrouds.

  The blades circled one another like wary serpents.

  Bolitho watched Jobert’s face, as dark as Stayt’s. It was all there. He had been a prisoner before, and his flagship had been taken from him only to rise again and repeat the disgrace. The impossible had happened. Jobert was a professional officer, and did not have to look farther than the man who now faced him for the reason. A last chance to even the score, to give him the seeds of a victory even if he never lived to see it for more than minutes after Bolitho had fallen.

  Jobert moved around the deck and even the English sailors fell back to give him room.

  Paget pleaded desperately, “Can I take him?” He saw Bolitho’s foot catch on some broken rigging, the way he staggered. Paget whispered, “Fetch Captain Keen, for God’s sake!” The messenger scuttled away, but Paget knew he would be too late.

  Then Jobert struck, lunged forward again and again, his foot stamping hard down as he advanced. He turned still farther and made Bolitho twist his head as the sunlight lanced down through the ragged sails and blinded him.