Alexander Kent - THE INSHORE SQUADRON

He saw the pall of smoke, two masts with yards and sails in holed fragments standing above it like mute witnesses of the fight.

Then he heard the lookout cry, 'She's a Frenchie, sir!' Bolitho looked at Browne. 'The Ajax.'

Allday came from the poop and watched with the others.

'She'd done her repairs an' was trying to get back to France, I reckon.'

'Probably.'

Bolitho gripped his sword hilt until the pain made him think more dearly. Allday was right, had to be. After such a mauling from Styx the French captain would have needed at least five months to effect repairs. He had probably chosen a port which had become hemmed in by the ice, and now here he was, bringing with him a terrible revenge.

He said harshly, 'Tell Lookout to investigate but not to engage.' He turned and glanced at the sailing master's ruined features and added, 'Lay a course to take the wind-gage off that one, Mr Grubb.'

Herrick lowered his telescope. ` Ajax is not moving. She's lost her mizzen, and I think her steering may have gone.'

The torment of waiting, watching the battered frigate growing larger and larger while Lookout moved warily nearby like a hunter who has discovered a wounded lion, was made more terrible by the silence.

Then Wolfe said, 'Lookout's dropped her boats, sir. Looking for survivors, though after that explosion…' He fell silent as Herrick shot him an angry glance.

Major Clinton had left his marines to join Herrick by the quarterdeck rail. Suddenly he pointed with his stick and said, 'I think the Frenchman's getting under way!'

Wolfe nodded. 'He's cut the wreckage free. Now he's set another topsail.'

They faced Bolitho as he said, 'Run out the lower battery, Mr Wolfe.'

Even the repeated order was hushed. Then the deck gave a long quiver as the great thirty-two-pounders trundled noisily up to their open ports.

'Run out, sir!'

Blackened woodwork and a length of trailing rigging clattered along the Benbow's side. There were corpses, too, or what was left of them.

'Fire a warning shot, Mr Wolfe.'

The gun nearest the bows erupted with a violent bang, and as the smoke fanned out over the water Bolitho saw the great ball slam down almost in line with Ajax 's figurehead.

But the tricolour which had replaced the one lost overboard on the mizzen showed no sign of dipping, and even as he watched Bolitho saw the frigate's shape shortening as she began to turn away.

Wolfe asked, 'Broadside, sir?'

Bolitho stared past him, the French ship blurred in his vision as if through thick glass.

At a range of just over a mile, a full broadside from those great guns would smash the damaged frigate to fragments. The leaks caused by her fight with Relentless and the weight of her own artillery would finish it.

He heard Clinton exclaim, `That captain is a fool!'

Bolitho shook his head. 'Tell the gun captains to fire in succession.'

The second ball smashed through the Ajax 's quarter, hurling wreckage and shattered spars high into the air like straw in a wind.

Bolitho watched the tricolour as it was hauled down and added quietly, 'He is also a brave man, Major.'

A master's mate said, 'Lookout's boats have picked up some people, sir!'

Bolitho barely recognized his own voice. `Alter course to intercept Lookout. Make a signal to Indomitable to board the ' Ajax and take off her company.' He hardened his voice. `Then sink her.'

Speke, still on his lofty perch in the cross-trees, yelled, 'Six hands, sir! Five seamen and a marine!'

Bolitho ducked beneath the furled boarding nets and stood on the starboard gangway as he watched the slow-moving boats, the drifting remains of Peel's command. Flotsam, burned timber, fire-blackened canvas. And men. Men so torn and disfigured that they would have known very little about it.

He gripped the shrouds and almost cried out as his wounded thigh grated against the iron-hard cordage.

A hand reached up and he saw Midshipman Penels staring at him. 'Let me, sir!'

'Thank you.' Bolitho rested his elbow on the boy's shoulder as he waited for the pain to ebb away.

Damerum, however unwittingly, had found an assassin after all.

He made himself look at the procession of bobbing remnants as they parted beneath Benbow s staring figurehead.

Behind him he could hear some of the seamen yelling, congratulating each other on preventing Ajax 's escape.

Penels said in a small voice, 'Sir, I think I saw something move out there.'

Bolitho raised his glass and followed the direction of his arm. Half of an upturned boat and a long spar with one end blasted off like chalk.

There were several corpses floating nearby, and for a moment he thought Penels had imagined it, or had wanted to say something to please him.

He said, 'I see it!' It was just an arm, sticking up over the spar. But it was moving. Alive. Someone who had survived. Who might know…

He was gripped by something like panic. Even in these few moments the ship had moved some fifty yards.

`Captain Herrick! Man in the water, starboard side! Quarter boat, quick!'

He almost fell as Penels darted from beneath his elbow. He had a vague impression of the boy's terrified face, matched only by some last spark of determination, before he was up and diving straight for the water. He broke to the surface and was swimming strongly before Herrick understood what had happened.

Bolitho saw the quarter boat appear around the stem, the coxswain staring blankly at his officers.

Herrick cupped his hands. `Follow that boy, Winslade! Fast as you can!'

Bolitho climbed back to the quarterdeck as Browne said apologetically, `I am sorry, sir, but Indomitable has signalled to say that the Ajax will be destroyed once we are standing clear of the danger.'

Loveys, the surgeon, hurried across the quarterdeck, his white face alien amongst the guns and the seamen.

He said calmly, `The boat is returning, sir. I took the liberty of borrowing a telescope. There are two survivors.' He relented slightly. 'One is Mr Pascoe.'

Bolitho clasped his arm then hurried past him to the rail as the boat nudged carefully alongside.

Winslade, the boat's coxswain, waited for more seamen to limb down the tumblehome to assist and then called, `Just the two, sir!' He swallowed hard before adding, 'I'm afraid we lost young Mr Penels, sir! He just seemed to give up as he reached the boat!'

Bolitho reached the entry port as the two limp figures were handed through. The first he did not recognize, a pigtailed seaman with one arm so badly burned it looked inhuman.

Loveys was on his knees running his hands over Pascoe's body while his aproned assistants hovered behind him like butchers.

Bolitho watched the painful rise and fall of his nephew's chest, the sea water running from beneath his dosed lashes like tears. His clothes had been all but blasted from his body and he gave a quiet groan as the surgeon's boney fingers felt for internal damage.

Loveys said at length, `He's young and fit, of course. Nothing broken. He's lucky.'

He turned to the seaman and said, 'Now, let me have a look at you.'

The seaman muttered vaguely, 'I didn't hear nothin'. One minute the cap'n was yellin' and cussin' about fire.' He shook his head and winced as Loveys touched his burned arm. 'Next thing I was deep underwater. Goin down. I can't swim, y'see?' He realized that Bolitho and Herrick were there and stammered, Beggin' yer pardon, sir!'

Bolitho smiled. `Easy now. What happened next?'

`Our new third lieutenant, sir. Mr Pascoe 'ere, 'e pulls me to some floatin' wreckage, then goes back for my mate, Arthur. But he died afore the boat come for us. It was just me an' Mr Pascoe, sir. The rest is all gone.' He'had to repeat it as if he still could not accept the enormity of it. `All gone!'

As the seaman was carried away to the sick-bay, Pascoe opened his eyes. Surprisingly, he smiled and said weakly, `I've come back after all, Uncle!' Then he fainted.

Bolitho sat at a small table in the stern cabin, a pen poised above his report. Someone would read it, he thought grimly, log books and written reports always seemed to survive no matter what.

It was a strange feeling, like sitting in an abandoned house. The furniture had all been taken below, and without looking up from the table he knew that the gun crews of the nearest nine-pounders were sharing the space with him. Screens had been taken down, and the ship, as she moved very slowly towards the Danish coastline once again, was cleared for battle from bow to stern.

Unlike Nelson's fleet, Bolitho's squadron had been under way throughout the night, his four ships of the line divided into two short columns so that they could watch as much of the area as possible.

The seamen and marines had worked watch and watch, snatching a few hours rest beside their guns and nourished by neat rum and stale food. The galley fire had long since been doused for safety's sake, for each ship in the squadron had to be prepared to fight at minutes' notice.

Bolitho looked at the lines he had written about Mr Midshipman George Penels, aged twelve years and nine months, who had died the previous day in one desperate act of courage.

What had the boy been thinking of? Of Pascoe, whom he had got involved in Babbage's desertion, of his admiral, who had cared enough to put him in Browne's charge when everyone else had shunned him?

This carefully worded report might help the boy's mother when the news eventually reached her in Cornwall. Bolitho had no doubt that Herrick would make certain no mention of Babbage would mar his memory for her.

Allday walked to an open port and leaned down to watch the sea, cold and grey in the morning light. Two cables abeam, Nicator, followed by Inch's Odin, brought life to the dreary scene.

He said, 'Not long now, sir.'

Bolitho waited for Yovell to seal the envelope and replied, _ 'The attack will begin in two hours, if everything is timed correctly.'

He glanced along the deck, past where the screen door would normally be, to the gloom beneath the poop and beyond to the crowded activity of the quarterdeck.

'Our part will happen at any moment.' He stood up and tested his leg warily. `Get my sword, will you?'

How quiet the ship was, he thought. The excitement of the Ajax 's capture and her terrible end when the fuses had been fired in her magazine had been dulled by the loss of Peel's ship. Altogether, Lookout had found ten survivivors. With Pascoe and the burned seaman also rescued, that meant a total bill of some two hundred sailors and marines killed. It was too much of a price to pay.

Bolitho had visited his nephew several times during the night. Each occasion had found Pascoe wide awake, defying Loveys' efforts to make him rest and save his strength.

Perhaps those last moments in the water were too stark in his mind, as if by going to sleep he would never reawake and find his survival only part of a nightmare.

But Pascoe's descriptions, brief though they were, completed a full and horrific picture.

The cruellest part of it had been that Peel had been winning. But some last fury had brought the Ajax too close, so that both frigates had collided bowsprit to bowsprit, bringing down the Frenchman's mizzen and hurling many of the men from their feet. -

Pascoe vaguely remembered Peel shouting about smoke even as Relentless's cheering boarders had rushed to grapple the enemy hand to hand.

He had been on the quarterdeck, the second lieutenant having been killed in the opening.broadsides. The next minute he had felt himself flying through the air and then being smashed, choking, into the sea.