“This way!” Sharpe jumped down to the poop, then to the waist. From there he slithered down a rope to the gundeck where the main pumps were situated. He saw that the explosion of the Mary Starbuck had made a terrible slaughter on the gundeck. Until the moment the whaler blew up, the frigate’s gunners had been firing point-blank through open hatches into the wooden hull that had been grinding against the Spanish warship, but the explosion had speared flame and debris through the open gun hatches to fan slaughter through the low-beamed deck. Two of the frigate’s guns had been blown clean off their carriages. One dismounted gun was lying atop a dying, screaming man. Cochrane killed the man with an efficient slice of his sword, then shouted at his men to start the pumps working.
“Chippy! Find me the chippy!” Cochrane roared. The carpenter was fetched and ordered to discover the extent of the damage to the frigate’s hull, then to start immediate repairs. The wounded Spanish gunners moaned. The frigate was already listing so far over that roundshot were rolling across her deck. “Can’t talk now, bloody boat’s sinking,” Cochrane said to Sharpe. “We’ll all be dead if we don’t watch it. Pump, you bastards! Pump! Put the prisoners to work! Pump! Well done, Jorge! Well fought, Liam! But start pumping or we’ll all be sucking the devil’s tits before this day’s done!” Cochrane, ducking under the gun-deck’s beams, scattered praise and humor among his victorious men. He set the rear pump working and peered down into the orlop deck where the women and children cowered. “Not flooded yet, good! Maybe there’s hope. Christ, but that bugger should never have exploded. Are you Spanish?” This last question was addressed to Sharpe, shouted as Cochrane climbed nimbly back up to the bloody and wreckage-strewn main deck.
“English.”
“Are you now?” Cochrane brushed ineffectively at the powder stains on his green uniform coat. “I suppose I’ve got to take the proper surrender from their poor bastard of a Captain. Rotten luck for him. He fought well. Ardiles, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” Sharpe said, “he’s a good man,” then took a pace backward as Captain Ardiles, his face stricken, walked with fragile dignity toward Lord Cochrane. The Spanish Captain had retrieved his sword, but only so that he could offer it in surrender to his victor. Ardiles held the sword hilt forward, the gesture of surrender, but he could not bring himself to speak the proper words.
Cochrane touched the hilt, his gesture of acceptance, then pushed the weapon back to Ardiles. “Keep it, Captain. Your men fought well, damned well.” His Spanish was enthusiastic, but clumsy. “I also need your help if we’re to save the ship. I’ve sent a carpenter down to the bilge, but your man will know the timbers better than he will. The pumps are going. That damned explosion must have sprung some of the timbers! Would you fetch your ladies up? They’ll not be harmed, I give you my word. And where’s the gold?”
“There is no gold,” Ardiles said very stiffly.
Cochrane, who had been speaking and moving with a frenetic energy, now stopped still as a statue and stared openmouthed at Ardiles. Then, a second later, he looked quizzically at Sharpe who confirmed the bad news with a nod. “Goddamn!” Cochrane said, though without any real bitterness. “No gold? You mean I just blunted a sword for nothing!” He gave a great billow of laughter that turned into a whoop of alarm as the Espiritu Santo gave another creaking jolt to starboard. A cutlass slid down the canted deck to clash into the scuppers. “Help me!” Cochrane said to Ardiles, and suddenly the two men disappeared, lost in technical discussion, while beneath Sharpe’s feet the pumps clattered to pulse puny jets of water over the side.
Somehow they stopped the ship from sinking, though it took the best part of that day to do it. Cochrane’s men salvaged the mainsail that had fallen overboard when the mainmast fell and from it cut great squares of canvas. They sewed the squares together to make a huge pad that was then dragged under the ship by means of cables which were first looped under the frigate’s bows, then dragged back under her hull till the huge pad of material was fothered up against the sprung timbers. The explosion on board the whaler had driven in a section of the frigate’s hull, but once the canvas fother was in place the pumps at last could begin to win the battle. Behind them, on an ocean scattered with the flotsam of battle, the Mary Starbuck gave a last hiss of steam as she sank.