ALEXANDER KENT - TO GLORY WE STEER

Okes snarled, `Are you afraid, Mr. FarquharT He threw back his head and emitted a shrill laugh. `Your uncle won't like that!'

Farquhar parried a thrusting pike and followed Okes down on to the wide deck. It was every man for himself now.

Bolitho strained his eyes through the smoke and watched his men changing from defenders to boarders. Whoever had decided to board the Ondine had made the right guess, he thought grimly. He heard the axes ringing on the tangle of wreckage behind him and knew it was impossible to free Phalarope from its embrace before the Ondine's heavy guns were brought back into action.

He crossed the deck and said to Rennie, `We must board her from aft, too!' He saw the marine nod. `Get some men together immediately!'

He heard someone sobbing and saw Neale on his knees below the lee rail. Midshipman Maynard was lying on his back, one hand held upright entangled in a signal lanyard, his eyes wide and unseeing and strangely peaceful. Neale was holding his hand and rocking back and forth, oblivious to the crash of gunfire and the slapping musket balls which had already claimed his friend.

Bolitho reached down and pulled Neale to his feet. The boy's last reserve seemed to collapse, and with a frantic cry he buried his face in Bolitho's coat, his body shaking with convulsions of grief. Bolitho prised him away and lifted his chin with the hilt of his sword. For a moment he stared down at him, then he said gravely, `Take a grip on yourself, Mr. Neale!' He saw the stunned look in Neale's eyes and shut his mind to the fact that he was talking with a terrified thirteen year-old child who had just lost his best friend. `You are a King's officer, Neale!' He softened his voice. `I said earlier, our people are watching you today. Do you think you can help me now?'

Neale brushed his eyes with his sleeve and looked back at Maynard's body by the bulwark. As the halyard jerked in the breeze his arm moved as if he still held on to life. Then Neale turned back to Bolitho and said brokenly, `I'm all right now, sir!'

Bolitho watched him walk back to the shouting gunners, a small figure half hidden in the smoke and flame of this savage battle.

Rennie reappeared, a cut above one eye. `Ready, sir!' He swung his curved sword. `Shall I take 'em across?'

Bolitho looked around the battered quarterdeck. There seemed to be more corpses than live men, he thought wearily. He faltered as a shot crashed against the quarterdeck ladder and tore into the planking like a plough. With disbelief he saw Proby put his hands to his face and watched his fingers clawing at the sudden torrent of blood. The master staggered against the wheel, but as Strachan left the spokes to hold him he fell moaning on to his side and lay still. His hands thudded on the planking, and Bolitho saw that his face had been torn away.

`We must take the Ondine!' The words were wrung from his lips. `If the French see their command ship strike, they'll…' He faltered and stared again at Proby's body. I've done for the lot of them! He felt the anguish changing to helpless anger. I have sacrificed the ship and every man aboard just

for this!

But Rennie eyed him evenly and said, `It is the right decision, sir!' He straightened his hat and said to his sergeant, `Right, Garwood, do you feel like a little walk?'

Bolitho stared at him. It was as if the marine had been reading his, mind. He said, `The Cassius will support us.' He looked at the waiting marines. They crouched like animals, wild and beyond fear or even anger. `It's us or -them, lads!'

Then, as the men shouted and cheered he jumped on to the Ondine's broken mast and began to claw his way across. Once he looked down at the water below him. It was littered with broken woodwork and sodden corpses, French and British alike.

As he reached the Ondine's poop he felt the balls whining past him and heard screams at his back as men fell to join the waiting corpses below. Then as he reached the scarred bulwark he hacked away the remains of the French boarding nets and leapt down on to the deck. Dead and dying lay everywhere, but when he glanced quickly across the far side he felt a further sense of shock as he saw the Cassius. She was not alongside anymore, but drifting away in the smoke of her own wounds, a mastless hulk,. battered beyond recognition. From every scupper he could see long, glistening streams of blood, which poured down the ship's side to colour the water in one unbroken stain. It was as if the ship herself was bleeding to death. But from the stump of her mizzen the ensign, pitted and torn with shot holes, still flapped in defiance, and as Rennie's yelling marines swept across the Ondine's poop there was a burst of cheering from the Cassius's deck. It was not much of a cheer, for there could not be many left to raise it, but to Bolitho it acted like the stab of a spur.

He ran across the littered deck, cutting down two seamen with hardly a pause, propelled on by the cheering and the battle-crazed men at his back. He could see his men on the Ondine's forecastle, almost encircled by an overwhelming mass of French seamen, their stubborn resistance faltering as they were forced back towards the rail.

Bolitho yelled, `Hold on Phalarope's!' He saw the Frenchmen falter and turn to face this new threat. `To me, lads! Cut your way through 'em!'

More men were swarming from the frigate now, and he saw Herrick's uniform through the smoke as he waved his men forward.

He turned as Okes slashed a path for himself in the press of figures, his sword gleaming red as he cut down a screaming midshipman and went on towards a man who was reloading a swivel gun beside the quarterdeck. Okes was bleeding from a dozen wounds, and as he reached the ladder the swivel gun exploded with a dull roar. The packed grapeshot lifted Okes like a rag doll and flung him lifeless into the fighting men below the ladder. The gunner fell a second later, cut down by a swinging cutlass.

Then, all at once, it was over. The deck clattered with the weapons thrown down by the Ondine's seamen, and Bolitho realised that their cries of defiance had changed to pleas for quarter. He knew he could not hold his men back if they wanted to complete the slaughter. It fell to some unknown sailor to break the spell of destruction and killing.

`A cheer for the Phalarope!' The voice cracked with relief and jubilation. `An' a cheer for Mad Dick!'

Bolitho climbed down the ladder, past the dazed Frenchmen and the mangled litter of entwined corpses.

`Captain Rennie!' He paused beside the remains of Liuetenant Okes. `Hoist our flag above the French ensign!' He felt his hands shaking. `Let them all see what you have done today.'

Sergeant Garwood said gruffly, `The cap'n is dead, sir!' He unrolled the flag carefully. `But I will do it!'

`Dead?' Bolitho stared after him. 'Rennie, too?' He felt Herrick pulling his arm and asked heavily, `What is it’

'The ship is ours, sir!' Herrick was shaking with excitement. `The gundeck is like a slaughterhouse! Our carronades did more than…' He broke off as he saw Bolitho's face.

`Very well, Mr. Herrick. Thank you.' His voice shook. `Thank all of you!' He turned away as more cheering echoed round the bloody decks.

Herrick shook his head as if he was beyond understanding. `A two-decker, sir! What a victory!'

Bolitho replied quietly, `We have a tradition of victory, Mr. Herrick.' He seemed to be speaking to himself. `Now gather our people and send them back to the ship. They have cut the wreckage away.' He stared dully at the Phalarope and let his eyes move slowly along her length. There were great gaping holes in her once-trim hull, and she was well down by the head. It sounded as if the pumps were only just containing the inrush of water. All three topmasts had gone, and the sails flapped in the breeze in long canvas streamers. He could see bodies hanging in the tops, the great patches of scarlet across the smashed and buckled planking below. Intruding for the first time since their -battle had begun came the distant thunder of that other great fight. Still far away and impersonal.

Bolitho made another effort to pull himself together. `Lively, Mr. Herrick! The battle is still not over!'

If only his men would stop cheering. If only he could get away and be with himself.

Herrick waved his arm. `Clear the ship, lads! We can take this wreck later in our own good time!'

Bolitho walked to the bulwark. Across the gap he could see Neale standing just where he had left him beside the wheel. He said, `Tell my coxswain to take Mr. Okes and Captain Rennie over to the ship.' He saw Herrick's sudden anxiety and felt despair closing in again. `Not Stockdale, Mr. Herrick?'

Herrick nodded. 'He fell as you were fighting on the poop, sir. He was defending your back from the marksmen.' He tried to smile. `I am sure that was what he would have wished!'

Bolitho stared at him. Stockdale dead. And he had not even seen him fall.

Farquhar pushed forward, his features wildly excited. 'Captain, sir! The lookouts report that our fleet has broken the enemy's lines in two places!' He stared round the stained, watching faces. 'Rodney has broken the French line, do you hear?'

Bolitho felt the breeze across his cheek, feeling its way through the battle's stench like an awed stranger. So de Grasse was beaten. He stared at the listing frigate below him, feeling the prick of emotion behind his eyes. Was all this sacrifice for nothing after all?

Herrick took his arm and said thickly, 'Look,i sir! Over yonder!'

As the freshening wind pushed away the curtain of smoke from the embattled and shattered ships, Bolitho saw the tall outline of the big three-decker. Her guns were still run out, and her paintwork was gleaming and unscarred by any cannon. Throughout the fighting she had lain impotent or unwilling to face the holocaust of close combat, and no British blood had been given to her massive armament.

Yet in spite of all these things there was another flag flying above her own. The same that flew on the dismasted Cassius and aboard the Ondine. The same as the Phalarope's own ensign and the victorious Volcano which now pushed her way through the last rolling bank of smoke.

Herrick asked soberly, `Do you need more than that, sir? She's struck to you!'

Bolitho nodded and then climbed over the bulwark. `We will get the ship under way, Mr. Herrick. Though I fear she may never fight again!'

Herrick said quietly, `There'll be other ships, sir.'

Bolitho stepped down on to the Phalarope's gangway and walked slowly above the spent and sweating gunners.

`Other ships?' He touched the splintered rail and smiled sadly. `Not like this one, Mr. Herrick.' He tilted his head and looked up at the flag.

`Not like the Phalarope!'

Lieutenant Thomas Herrick pulled his boat cloak closer. around his shoulders and picked up his small travelling bag. The houses around the cobbled square were thickly covered in snow, and the wind which blew strongly inland from Falmouth Bay and seemed to pierce his bones to the marrow, told him that there was more to come. For a moment longer he watched the ostlers guiding the steaming horses into the inn yard, leaving the slush-stained coach which Herrick had just vacated isolated and empty. Through the inn windows he could see a cheerful fire and hear voices raised in laughter and busy conversation.

He was suddenly tempted to go inside and join these unknown people. After the long journey from Plymouth, and four days on the road before that, he felt drained and weary, but as he looked up at the mist-shrouded hump of Pendennis. Castle and the bleak hillside beyond he knew he was only deluding himself. He turned his back on the inn and started up the narrow lane from the square. Everything seemed smaller than he remembered it. Even the church with its low wall and the leaning stones within the graveyard appeared to have shrunk since that last and only visit. He stepped sideways into a mound of muddy snow as two shouting children dashed past him dragging a homemade sledge. Neither gave Herrick a glance. That too was different from the last time.