“Fire!”
The Frenchman’s sails were all a‑shiver; she was not under proper control, and with those nine‑pounder balls sweeping her deck she would not recover quickly. Hotspur must not pass ahead of her; he still had a little time and a little room to spare.
“Main tops’l aback!”
This was a well‑drilled crew; the ship was working like a machine. Even the powder‑boys, climbing and descending the ladders in pitch darkness, were carrying out their duties with exactitude, keeping the guns supplied with powder, for the guns never ceased from firing, bellowing in deafening fashion and bathing the Frenchman with orange light while the smoke blew heavily away on the disengaged side.
He could not spare another moment with the main topsail aback. He must fill and draw ahead even if it meant disengagement.
“Braces, there!”
He had not noticed until now the infernal din of the quarterdeck carronades beside him; they were firing rapidly, sweeping the transport’s deck with grape. In their flashes he saw the Frenchman’s masts drawing aft as Hotspur regained her way. Then in the next flash he saw something else, another momentary picture — a ship’s bowsprit crossing the Frenchman’s deck from the disengaged side, and he heard a crash and the screams. The next Frenchman astern had run bows on into her colleague. The first rending crash was followed by others; he strode aft to try to see, but already the darkness had closed like a wall round his blinded eyes. He could only listen, but what he heard told him the story. The ship that rammed was swinging with the wind, her bowsprit tearing through shrouds and halliards until it snapped against the main‑mast. Then the fore-topmast would fall, yards would fall. The two ships were locked together and helpless, with the Little Girls under their lee. Now he saw blue lights burning as they tried to deal with the hopeless situation; with the ships swinging the blue lights and the red lights on the yards were revolving round each other like some planetary system. There was no chance of escape for them, as wind and current carried him away he thought he heard the crash as they struck upon the Little Girls, but he could not be sure, and there was no time — of course there was no time — to think about it. At this stage of the ebb there was an eddy that set in upon Pollux Reef and he must allow for that. Then he would be out in the Iroise, whose waters he used to think so dangerous before he had ventured up the Goulet, and an unknown number of ships was coming down from Brest, forewarned now by all the firing and the tumult that an enemy was in their midst.
He took a hash glance into the binnacle, gauged the force of the wind on his cheeks. The enemy — what there was left of them — would certainly, with this wind, run for the Raz du Sein, and would certainly give the Trepieds shoal a wide berth. He must post himself to intercept them; the next ship in the line must be close at hand in any case, but in a few seconds she would no longer be confined to the narrow channel of the Goulet. And what would the first frigate be doing the one he had allowed to pass without attacking her?
“Main chains, there! Get the lead going.”
He must keep up to windward as best he could.
“No bottom! No bottom with this line.”
He was clear of Pollux, then.
“Avast, there, with the lead.”
They stood on steadily on the starboard‑tack; in the impenetrable darkness he could hear Profuse breathing heavily at his side and all else was silence round him. He would have to take another cast of the lead soon enough. What was that? Wind and water had brought a distinctive sound to his ears, a solemn noise, of a solid body falling into the water. It was the sound of a lead being cast — and then followed, at the appropriate interval, the high pitched cry of the leadsman. There was a ship just up there to windward, and now with the distance lessening and with his hearing concentrated in that direction he could hear other sounds, voices, the working of yards. He leaned over the rail and spoke quietly down into the waist.