The thought of Nathaniel came back to me with a sudden shock. It seemed ages since I had seen those small black figures moving ashore from the stranded Royal Savage. I climbed on the rail to look shoreward, wondering what in God’s name could be keeping the boats that had gone for the castaways. I saw the splash of oars, then, close to the rocky banks, and made out the boats, moving toward us at last.

I turned to tell Arnold.

Against the glare of that southern sun the black schooner took on an added blackness. She hung head to wind, still, unable to make sail. Around her the water foamed from the skittering of grape shot, or spouted up in liquid plumes at the impact of solid shot. On her bowsprit the small black figure had ceased to struggle with the jib, and was making its way to the tip of the jib-boom.

“There’s a brave man,” Arnold said. “He ought to go far if he lives five minutes more.”

The figure that stood so carelessly at the end of the jib-boom, with no apparent thought for the shot that howled around him, was, we later learned, Pellew. Two gunboats moved slowly towards the schooner’s larboard bow; and Pellew, clinging to the preventer stay, leaned far outboard to heave a rope to one of them. The boat crew snatched at it and missed. Pellew drew it in, coiling it neatly, and threw it out once more. The boats turned and rowed off, dragging the Carleton’s head around at last.

Angry howlings rose from our main deck as the schooner crept from the line of battle, listed over like a man who leans heavily to ease his hurts.

Arnold shook his head. “No use; no use! We can’t sink her: not with these pop-guns. She’s got some dead aboard, though; and she’s out of the fight. That’s something. That’s something! Now we can tend to those gunboats.”

Tom Bickford brought the bucket of rum and water and set it at the break in the deck. The men crowded up to it, unhooking tin cups from their belts or drawing them from hidden corners of their garments. They were a motley company, in their tattered travesties of clothes. Splinters had gashed them, and the blood was caked brown on the untended scratches. Some wore dirty, blood-stained rags around their heads: around arms and legs. Their faces were smeared with black: streaked with sweat and with the tears that powder-smoke had brought.

Tom handed up a cupful. Arnold took it and gulped it down. One of the men, watching him, smacked his lips and exhaled ecstatically.

Arnold gave them a tight-lipped grin. “You fought well!” he said. “You’ve done well! You’ve outfought a British fleet! There’s nobody that can say more! See you keep it up!” He drank his second drink.