Forward, under the fo’c’sle, the sheer weight and number of the three hundred Spaniards, now half recovered from their surprise, was pushing the Sophies back, driving a solid wedge between his band and Dillon’s in the bows. Dillon must have been held up. The tide might turn at any second now. He leapt on to a gun and with a hail that ripped his throat he roared, ‘Dillon, Dillon, the starboard gangway! Thrust for the starboard gangway!’ For a fleeting moment, at the edge of his field of vision, he was aware of Stephen far below, on the deck of the Sophie, holding her wheel and gazing collectedly upwards. ‘Otros cincuenta!’ he shouted, for good measure: and as Stephen nodded, calling out something in Spanish, he raced back into the fight, his sword high and his pistol searching.
At this moment there was a frightful shrieking on the fo’c’sle, a most bitter, furious drive for the head of the gangway, a desperate struggle; something gave, and the dense mass of Spaniards in the waist turned to see these black faces rushing at them from behind. A confused milling round the frigate’s bell, cries of every kind, the blackened Sophies cheering like madmen as they joined their friends, shots, the clash of arms, a trampling huddled retreat, all the Spaniards in the waist hampered, crowded in upon, unable to strike. The few on the quarter-deck ran forward along the larboard side to try to rally the people, to bring them into some order, at least to disengage the useless marines.
Jack’s opponent, a little seaman, writhed away behind
the capstan, and Jack heaved back out of the press. He looked up and down the clear run of deck. ‘Bonden,’ he shouted, plucking his arm, ‘Go and strike those colours.’
Bonden ran aft, leaping over the dead Spanish captain. Jack hallooed and pointed.
Hundreds of eyes, glancing or staring or suddenly looking back, half-comprehending, saw the Cacafuego’s ensign race down her colours struck.
It was over. ‘ ‘Vast fighting,’ cried Jack, and the order ran round the deck. The Sophies backed away from the packed mob in the waist and the men there threw down their weapons, suddenly dispirited, frightened, cold and betrayed. The senior surviving Spanish officer struggled out of the crowd in which he had been penned and offered Jack his sword.
‘Do you speak English, sir?’ asked Jack.
‘I understand it, sir,’ said the officer.
‘The men must go down into the hold, sir, at once,’ said Jack. ‘The officers on deck. The men down into the hold. Down into the hold.’
The Spaniard gave the order: the frigate’s crew began to file down the hatchways. As they went so the dead and wounded were discovered – a tangled mass amidships, many more forward, single bodies everywhere – and so, too, the true number of the attackers grew clear.
‘Quickly, quickly,’ cried Jack, and his men urged the prisoners below, herded them fast, for they understood the danger as well as their captain. ‘Mr Day, Mr Watt, get a couple of their guns – those carronades – pointing down the hatchways. Load with canister – there’s plenty in the garlands aft. Where’s Mr Dillon? Pass the word for Mr Dillon.’
The word passed, and no answer came. He was lying there near the starboard gangway, where the most desperate fighting had been, a couple of steps from little Ellis. When Jack picked him up he thought he was only hurt; but turning him he saw the great wound in his heart.
Chapter Eleven
H.M. Sloop Sophie off Barcelona
Sir, I have the honour to acquaint you, that the sloop I
have the honour to command, after a mutual chase and a warm action, has captured a Spanish xebec frigate of 32 guns, 22 long twelve-pounders, 8 nines, and 2 heavy carronades, viz, the Cacafuego, commanded by Don Martin de Langara, manned by 319
officers, seamen and marines. The disparity of force rendered it necessary to adopt some measure that might prove decisive. I resolved to board, which being accomplished almost without loss, after a violent close engagement the Spanish colours were obliged to be struck. I have, however, to lament the loss of Lieutenant Dillon, who fell at the height of the action, leading his boarding-party, and of Mr Ellis, a supernumerary; while Mr Watt the boatswain and five seamen were severely wounded. To render just praise to the gallant conduct and impetuous attack of Mr Dillon, I am perfectly unequal to.
‘I saw him for a while,’ Stephen had said, ‘I saw him through that gap where two ports were beaten into one:
they were fighting by the gun, and then when you called out at the head of those stairs into the waist; and he was in front – black faces behind him. I saw him pistol a man with a pike, pass his sword through a fellow who had beaten down the boson and come to a redcoat, an officer. After a couple of quick passes he caught this man’s sword on his pistol and lunged straight into him. But his
sword struck on the breastbone or a metal plate, and doubled and broke with the thrust: and with the six inches left he stabbed him faster than you could see – inconceivable force and rapidity. You would never believe the happiness on his face. The light on his face!’
I must be permitted to say, that there could not have been greater regularity, nor more cool determined conduct shown by men, than by the crew of the Sophie. The great exertions and good conduct of Mr Pullings, a passed midshipman and acting lieutenant whom I beg to recommend to their Lord-ships’ attention, and of the boatswain, carpenter, gunner and petty officers, I am particularly indebted for.
I have the honour to be, etc.
Sophie’s force at commencement of action: 54 officers, men, and boys. 14 4-pounders. 3
killed and 8 wounded.
Cacafuego’s force at commencement of action: 274
officers, seamen and supernumeraries. 45 marines.
Guns 32.
The captain, boatswain, and 13 men killed; 41
wounded.
He read it through, changed ‘I have the honour’ on the first page to ‘I have the pleasure’, signed it Jno. Aubrey and addressed it to M. Harte, Esqr. – not to Lord Keith alas, for the admiral was at the other end of the Mediterranean, and everything passed through the hands of the commandant.
It was a passable letter; not very good, for all his efforts and revisions. He was no hand with a pen. Still, it gave the facts – some of them – and apart from being dated ‘off Barcelona’ in the customary way, whereas it was really being written in Port Mahon the day after his arrival, it contained no falsehood: and he thought he had done everyone justice – had done all the justice he could, at least, for Stephen Maturin had insisted upon being left out. But even if it had been a model of naval eloquence it would still have been utterly inadequate, as every sea-officer reading it would know. For example, it spoke of the engagement as something isolated in time, coolly observed, reasonably fought and clearly remembered, whereas almost everything of real importance was before or after the blaze of fighting; and even in that he could scarcely tell what came first. As to the period after the victory, he was unable to recapture the sequence at all, without the log: it was all a dull blur of incessant labour and extreme anxiety and weariness. Three hundred angry men to be held down by two dozen, who also had to bring the six-hundred-ton prize to Minorca through an ugly sea and some cursed winds; almost all the sloop’s standing and running rigging to be set up anew, masts to be fished, yards shifted, fresh sails bent, and the bosun among the badly wounded; that hobbling voyage along the edge of disaster, with precious little help from the sea or the sky. A blur, and a sense of oppression; a feeling more of the Cacafuego’s defeat than the Sophie’s victory; and exhausted perpetual hurrying, as though that were what life really consisted of. A fog punctuated by a few brilliantly clear scenes.
Pullings, there on the bloody deck of the Cacafuego, shouting in his deafened ear that gunboats were coming down from Barcelona; his determination to fire the frigate’s undamaged broadside at them; his incredulous relief when he saw them turn at last and dwindle against the threatening horizon – why?
The sound that woke him in the middle watch: a low cry mounting by quarter tones or less and increasing in volume to a howling shriek, then a quick series of spoken or chanted words, the mounting cry again and the shriek – the Irish men of the crew waking James Dillon, stretched there with a cross in his hands and lanterns at his head and his feet.
The burials. That child Ellis in his hammock with the