There was little time for thought as Jack raced from gun to gun, bearing a hand, running out, swabbing and loading, but it was clear that the Bellone had no heavier guns than eight-pounders, that she meant to tear the Indiaman’s sails, rigging and spars to pieces rather than to damage her valuable hull and cargo. There was little doubt that she did not relish the eighteen-pound shot that hit her – three or four between wind and water would be very serious, and a single ball might carry away a straining topmast. If they did not hit her hard soon, she would close – abandon her elegant tactics and close. She was an awkward customer, with her formidable gunnery and her repeated attempts at crossing the Lord Nelson’s bows; she would be more awkward still at close quarters. ‘Deal with that when we come to it,’ he thought, tallying on to a rope.
An enormous ringing crash inside his head and filling the outside world. He was down.
Blindly struggling away from number five’s recoil, he tried to make out whether he was badly wounded or not – impossible to tell at once. He was not. Number seven had exploded, killing three of its servers, blowing its captain’s head to pieces – it was his jaw that had gouged the wound across Jack’s forearm – and scattering bits of iron in all directions, wounding men as far away as the mainmast – a splinter of iron had grazed his head, knocking him down. The face he was staring at so stupidly was Pullings’s, repeating the words, ‘You must go below, sir. Below. Let me give you a hand below.’
He came fully to life and cried, ‘Secure that gun,’ in a voice that he could hear as if from another throat. By the grace of God what was left of the barrel and the carriage had not burst free from the ring-bolts; they made it fast, slid the bodies overboard, and hurried what was left of its gear over to number five.
Three more rounds, three more of those hammer-blow explosions right by his ear, and the bursting gun, the dead
men, his own wound, all merged into the one din and the furious activity of battle.
The smoke was thicker, the Bellone’s flashes closer, far closer. She was edging down fast. Faster and faster they worked their guns: with the rest of number seven’s crew and two men sent up from a dismounted six-pounder on the quarterdeck they plied them without a second’s pause. The metal was hot, so hot the guns kicked clear of the deck, flying back with a terrible note on the breeching. Then the Bellone’s guns fired a round of grape, followed by a furious discharge of musketry. The smoke swept away and there she was, right upon them, backing her main topsail to check her way and come alongside.
Small-arms cracking in her tops to clear the Lord Nelson’s decks, men on her yard-arms to lash her spars to theirs, grappling-irons ready in the waist and bows, a dense swarm on her forecastle and in her foreshrouds.
‘All hands to repel boarders,’ from the quarterdeck, the grinding crash as they touched, the Frenchmen’s cheer and here they were cutlasses slashing the boarding-netting, pole-axes, the flash of swords. He snapped one pistol at a determined face coming through the wrecked number seven port, snatched up the great heavy crow, and with an extraordinary feeling of strength and invulnerability
– complete certainty – he flung himself at the men in the netting who were trying to come over the bows -the main attack was in the bows. He stood there with one foot on the broken rail, holding the massive crow in the middle, banging, thrusting, beating them down. All around him the shrieking Lascars fought with their pikes, axes, pistols. A rush of Company’s men from the waist and the quarterdeck cleared the gangway, where a dozen privateers had come aboard, and carried on to the forecastle, charging with pikes.
The Indiaman’s deck was higher by a good spring than the Bellone’s; she had a pronounced tumblehome -her sides sloped inwards – which left an awkward space.
But the Frenchmen clung there obstinately, hitting back, striving most desperately, crowding to come aboard. Flung back, yet coming again and again, fresh men by the score and score, until a heave of the sea separated the ships, and a whole group clinging to the forechains fell between them, blasted by Mr Johnstone’s blunderbuss fired straight into the mass. The serang ran out on to the yard-arm and cut the lashing, the grappling-irons scraped harmlessly over the rail, and the quarterdeck guns fired three rounds of grape, wounding the French captain, unshipping the Bellone’s wheel, and cutting her spanker halliards. She shot up into the wind, and if only the Lord Nelson had had enough
men both to repel boarders and fight her guns, she could now have raked the Bellone at ten yards’ range; but not a round could she fire – her head dropped off, and the two ships drifted silently apart.
Jack carried a boy down to the cockpit – both arms slashed to the bone as he flung them up to guard his face
– and Stephen said, ‘Keep your thumb pressed here till I can come to him. How do we stand?’
‘We beat ’em off. Her boats are picking up her men.
Two or three hundred she has. We’ll be at it again directly.
Hurry, Stephen, I cannot wait. We must knot and splice.
How many have you here?’
‘Thirty or forty,’ said Stephen, fastening the tourniquet. ‘Boy, you will do very well: lie quiet.
Jack, show me your arm, your head.’
‘Another time. A couple of lucky shots and we disabled him.’
A lucky shot. How he prayed for it – every time he laid his gun he prayed for it. ‘The name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.’ But in the failing wind the smoke lay thick and heavy all round the Bellone – he could see nothing, and he had only two guns firing now.
Number one’s breeching had gone at the first discharge, wounding
two Lascars and a midshipman, and the gun was lying on its side, precariously wedged behind a cask. His crews had thinned – the whole deck had thinned – and the Lord Nelson’s fire had slackened to a gun a minute, while the Bellone kept up a steady thunder fifty yards to windward. The deck, when he had time to look aft, showed no more than a sparse line of men – no crowded knots at every gun. Some had been wounded, others had run below -the hatches had not been laid – and those that were left were drawn, ashy, weak, their forces drained: they fought without conviction. For a long moment Hill had vanished, but he was back now, laying number three. Jack rammed down the wad, felt behind him for the shot. No shot. That damned powder-boy had run. ‘Shot! Shot!’ he cried, and there was the boy, waddling from the mainhatch with two heavy balls clasped in his arms – a new boy, absurdly dressed in shore-going rig, new trousers, blue jacket, pigtail in a ribbon. A fat boy. ‘Take them from for’ard, you poxed son of a whore,’ said Jack into his mute, appalled face, snatching one and thrusting it down the barrel. ‘From for’ard, from number one. There’s a dozen there. At the double, at the double!’ The second wad, rammed hard into the scorching gun. ‘Run her up! Run her up!’
Painfully, straining, they forced the great weight up against the roll: one little blue Lascar was vomiting as he heaved. The Bellone’s broadside bawled out, all in one; grape and chain, from the shrill scream overhead as they lay to the tackles. He fired, saw Hill snatch the boy from the recoil, and instantly ran forward through the smoke to number three. That damned boy was underfoot. He picked him up, said kindly, ‘Stand clear of the guns.
You’re a good boy – a plucked ‘un. Just bring one at a time,’ pointing to the forecastle, ‘but look alive. Then cartridge. Bear a hand. We must have cartridge.’
The cartridge never came. Jack fired number five, caught a glimpse of topsails towering overhead, saw the Bellone’s foreyards glide into the Lord Nelson’s shrouds, and heard an enormous cheering, roaring of boarders behind him, behind him. The privateer’s boats had slipped round unseen in the smoke and there were a hundred Frenchmen coming up the unprotected starboard side.
They filled the Lord Nelson’s waist, cutting the quarterdeck off from the forecastle, and the press of men coming in over the bows through the chain-torn netting was so great they could not fight. Faces, chests, arms, so close to him he could not get his long bar free, a little devilish man clinging round his waist. Down, trampled upon, a passing kick. Up and facing them, hitting short-arm blows – a stab. The crowding force, the weight of men. Back, back, step by step, tripping on bodies, back, back. And then a falling void, an impact faintly, faintly heard, as though from another age.