The forward division on the larboard side, guns one,
three, five and seven, were fine modern flintlock pieces; two were already run out –
primed, cocked and waiting. Number one’s port-lid was jammed, its crew prising with their crows and handspikes in the confined space, thumping it with shot, hauling on the port-tackle, all smelling of brown men in violent emotion. Jack bent low under the beams, straddled the gun: with his hands hard on the carnage he lashed out backwards with all his might. Splinters and flakes of paint dropped from the port: it did not budge – seemed built into the ship. Three times. He slipped off, hobbled round to check the breeching, cried ‘Bowse her up’ and as the gun’s muzzle came hard against the port, ‘Stand by, stand by.’ He pulled the laniard. A spark, a great sullen crash (damp powder, by God), and the gun leapt back under him. The acrid smoke tore out of the shattered port, and as it thinned Jack saw the sponger already at work, his swab right down the barrel of the gun, while the rest of the crew clapped on to the train-tackle. ‘They know their business’ he thought with pleasure, leaning out and tearing the wreckage from its hooks. ‘Crucify that God-damned gunner!’ But this was no time for reflection. Number three was still inboard. Jack and Major Hill tailed on to the side-tackles, and with ‘One – two – three’ they ran it up, the carriage crashing against the port-sill and the muzzle as far out as it could go. Number five had no more than four Lascars and a midshipman to serve it, an empty shot-rack and only three wads: it must have run itself out on the roll when they cast loose. ‘Where are your men?’
he asked the boy, taking his dirk and cutting the seizing within the clinch.
‘Sick, sir, all sick. Kalim is nearly dead – can’t speak.’
‘Tell the gunner we must have shot and a cheese of wads. Cut along. Now, sir?’ to another midshipman.
‘Captain asks what did you fire for, sir,’ panted the young man.
‘To open the port,’ said Jack, smiling into his round-eyed, anxious face. ‘Tell him, with my compliments, there
is nothing like enough eighteen-pound shot on deck. Cut along now.’ The boy shut his mouth on the rest of his message and vanished.
Number seven was in good shape: seven men to its crew, powder-boy standing over to starboard with a cartridge in his hands, gun levelled, tackle-falls neatly faked down; all ship-shape. Its captain, a grizzled European, only replied with a nervous chuckle, keeping his head bent away, feigning to look along the sights. A run seaman, no doubt, a man who had served with him in some commission, who had deserted, and who was afraid of being recognized. Once a quarter-gunner, to judge from the trimness of the gear. ‘I hope he can point his piece as well as he. .
Jack straightened from his inspection of the flint and pan and glanced right and left. The hammocks were coming up in relays, piling into the netting. Half a dozen very sick men flogged on deck by the serang’s mates, were creeping about with shot, and he was standing behind them, obviously in full control; there was still some confusion on the quarterdeck, but the air of frantic haste had gone. This was a breathing-space, and lucky
they were to have it. Fore and aft the Indiaman looked like a fighting-ship: thinly manned, decks still encumbered, but a fighting-ship. He looked out over the sea: light enough to see the red of the tricolour five hundred yards away – a severe cold light now the rain had stopped, and a grey, grey sea. Wind steady in the west; high cloud except on the horizon; a long even swell. The Bellone still had her larboard tacks aboard: she was hanging off to see what weight of metal the Lord Nelson carried. And the Lord Nelson was still before the wind, moving heavily – this was one of her many bad points of sailing. If Captain Spottiswood continued to run it was likely that the Frenchman would bear up, and moving two miles for the Lord Nelson’s one, cross under her stern and rake her. That was his business: for the moment Jack’s world was confined to his guns: there was a comfort in subordination, in small responsibility, no decisions…
Seven, five and three were well enough: number one was still too cluttered for a full team to work it fast, and a full team it must have. A last sharp look at the privateer – how beautifully she breasted the swell – and he dived under the forecastle.
Hard, fast, dogged, mechanical work, shifting heavy lumps, bales, casks: he found that what he was whistling under his breath was the adagio from Hummel’s piece -Sophia’s inept playing of it – Diana’s rough splendid dash
– a jet of intense feeling for Sophia – loving, protective -a clear image of her on the steps of that house. Some fool, Stephen of all people, had said you could not be both busy and unhappy, sad.
The Bellone’s opening gun cut short these reflections. Her starboard bow eight-pounder sent a ball skipping along the Lord Nelson’s larboard side; and as though he had needed this to set him going, Captain Spottiswood called out his orders. The yards braced round, the seascape turned, and the privateer came into view through the number one gun-port, framed there, bright against the darkness of the low crowded forecastle. The Lord Nelson fell off a little, steadied on her new course with the Bellone on her larboard quarter, so that now Jack saw no more than her head-sails, four hundred yards away, long musket-shot.
And as the Indiaman steadied, so her after guns went off, a six-fold crash, a thin high-pitched cheering, and the word came forward. ‘Fire as they bear.’
‘This is more like it,’ said Jack, plunging out of the forecastle. The long pause before action was always hard to bear, but now in a few seconds everything would vanish but for the living instant – no sadness, no time for fear. Number seven was in good hands, trained right round aft as far as the port would allow, and its captain glaring along the barrel, poised for the roll. The waist guns went off together, and in their eddying smoke – it filled his lungs, a choking exaltation – Jack and Major Hill flung themselves upon the long crows to heave number five,
that dull inanimate weight, while the Lascars tailed on to the forward train-tackle to help traverse it to point it at the Bellone’s stern, just in view over the dispart-sight. Number
seven went off with a poor slow explosion and a great deal of smoke. ‘If the powder is all like that,’ thought Jack, crouching over number five, his handspike ready to elevate the gun, ‘we might as well try boarding right away. But,’ he added, ‘it is more likely the mumping villain has never drawn it this last week and more.’ He waited for the smoke to clear, for the roll of the ship to bring the gun to bear, slowly up and up, and just as he heaved on the laniard he saw the Bellone vanish in the white cloud of her own broadside.
The gun sprang from under his arched body. He could not see the fall of the shot for the smoke, but from the fine round crash it must have been well pitched up. The privateer’s broadside sang and howled overhead – holes in the foretopsail, a bowline hanging loose.
The bow-gun overhead went off, and he darted into the forecastle, leaping over the train-tackle as number five was sponged and reloaded. He laid three and one, fired them, and ran back along the line to help run out number five again.
The firing was general now: the Lord Nelson’s thirteen larboard guns spoke in ones or twos every half minute or so; the Bellone’s seventeen, having fired three steady broadsides in five minutes – a splendid rate even for a man-of-war – had now become irregular, an uninterrupted roll of fire. Her leeward side was veiled in a cloud of smoke that drifted across the intervening sea to join the smoke shot out against the wind by the Indiaman’s guns, and through it all there was the stab-stab of orange flame. Only twice could Jack be sure of the flight of his division’s shot, once when a flaw in the wind, tearing the curtain aside, showed number seven strike her amidships, just above the main-chains, and again when he saw his own hull her in the bows: her sails were not as pretty as they had been, either, but she had nevertheless closed the distance and she was now on the Lord Nelson’s beam, hammering her hard. Would she forge ahead and cross?