The ship lurched on the swell, staggering Sharpe sideways. A bleeding man screamed and fell into the sea. It seemed that the Espiritu Santo must have taken on water for she did not come fully upright, but stayed listed to starboard. A volley of musket fire from Ardiles’s group on the quarterdeck punched a hole in the rebels’ ranks, but Cochrane, seeing the danger, had led a rampaging attack up to the poopdeck and now his men clawed and scrabbled up the last companionway to attack Ardiles and his men on the quarterdeck. Royalist Captain faced rebel Admiral. Their two swords clashed and scraped. More rebels were running past their leader, swarming up to the quarterdeck where a final, fanatic group of Spaniards, including most of the army officers, stood to protect their royal ensign.
A few despairing men still fought on the main deck. Sharpe kicked a man in the ankle, then hammered down the cutlass hilt as the man fell. Two men slashed at him, but Sharpe stepped back from their clumsy blades, then sliced his own forward. A rebel joined him, stabbing forward with a bayonet, and suddenly the portside steps to the poopdeck were open. Sharpe ran up. Above him, on the quarterdeck, Ardiles was pressed back by the man Sharpe supposed was Cochrane. Ardiles was no mean swordsman, but he was no match for the red-haired rebel who was taller, heavier and quicker. Ardiles lunged, missed, retreated and was toppled over the railing by a sudden thrust of his opponent’s sword. The Spanish Captain fell onto the poopdeck at Sharpe’s feet. Sharpe stooped and took his sword.
“You,” Ardiles said bleakly.
“I’m sorry,” Sharpe said.
“Who the hell are you?” the red-haired man asked from above Sharpe.
“A friend! Are you Cochrane?”
“I am, friend, indeed I am.” Cochrane sketched a salute with his sword, then turned to lead the attack on the desperate group that waited to defend their flag. On the poop and main decks the victorious rebels disarmed Spaniards, but about the great gaudy ensign a terrible battle still waged. Pistols flared, muskets crashed smoke. A rebel squirmed in awful pain in the scuppers. Other rebels, trying to fire down at the stubborn stern guard, climbed the mizzen rigging, but Lieutenant Otero, seeing the danger, ordered a group of the frigate’s marines to fire upward. One of the rebels screamed as a bullet thudded into his belly. For a second he hung from the ratlines, his blood spraying bright across the driver-sail, then he fell to crash down into the sea. Another rebel, losing his nerve, leaped after his dying colleague. The horror was not all visited on the attackers. One of the Espiritu Santos midshipmen, no more than eleven years old, was clutching his groin from which blood seeped to spread along a seam between two scrubbed planks of the quarterdeck. The boy was weeping and on his face was a look of utter astonishment. The Mary Starbuck, her fire roaring like a blast furnace, had drifted away from the frigate. The sea between the two ships was littered with wreckage and dead and drowning men.
Lieutenant Otero ordered a final quixotic charge, perhaps hoping to kill Lord Cochrane, but his men would not obey. A rebel officer shouted at the stern guard to surrender. Sharpe, the handle of his cutlass slippery with blood, climbed to thicken the ranks of the rebels who now made a threatening semicircle about the frigate’s last defenders.
“Surrender, sir!” Lord Cochrane called. “You’ve done well! I salute you! Now, I beg you, no more killing!”
Lieutenant Otero crossed himself then, bitterly, threw down his sword. There was a clatter of falling guns and blades as his men followed his example. An army officer, disgusted, hurled his own sword overboard so he would not have to surrender it to rebels. A ship’s boy wept, not because he was wounded, but because of the shame of losing the fight. A rebel slashed at the ensign’s halyard and the bright flag of Spain fluttered down.
“Where are the pumps?” Cochrane shouted in urgent and execrable Spanish. It seemed an odd way to celebrate victory, but then the frigate lurched, and Sharpe, to his horror, realized that the Espiritu Santo, just like the burning Mary Starbuck, was sinking. “The pumps!” Cochrane shouted.