Heads were already coming up and over the bulwark, which having no boarding nets was protected only by its gangway. Bolitho watched the seamen hacking and slashing with pikes and cutlasses alike, heard the yells and cries rising to a deafening crescendo as more and more dark-skinned attackers fought their way up the ship’s side. Some were already on the forecastle, only to vanish like blown paper as the swivel gun belched fire and swept them away in a hail of canister.

“Jesus! Watch your back, Captain!” Allday swung his cutlass and hacked a turbaned figure across the face, cutting the jaw away before even a scream could escape.

Bolitho saw a bearded giant wielding an axe cut down two Spanish seamen and then run crazily towards one of the hatch-ways. He thought of the women and children, the terrified wounded, and what could change any spark of hope into a raging defeat if this giant got amongst them. Before Allday could intervene he was across the hatch, one foot on the coaming, as the onrushing man skidded to a halt, the axe poised above his head, still bloody from its earlier victims.

The axe started to descend and Bolitho leapt to one side, his sword darting under the man’s massive forearm, swinging him round above the hatch, his teeth bared in agony as the razor-edged blade grated against and between his ribs. Bellowing and roaring like a wounded beast he still came on, the axe making a silver arc as he slashed at Bolitho, forcing him back and back towards the poop. A seaman charged forward with a boarding pike, but the giant knocked it to one side and brought the axe across the man’s neck without even losing its precision, sending the man flailing across the deck, his head almost severed from his body.

Bolitho knew that if he was pinned against the poop the other man would cut him down just as easily.

He braced himself, and as the man raised the axe above his head, seemingly oblivious to the terrible wound left by the sword, he darted forward, the blade pointed straight for his bearded throat. But his shoe slipped on a patch of blood, and before he could recover he felt himself falling hard against one of the guns, the sword clattering from his hand and beyond his reach.

In those split seconds he saw everything like one great painting, the faces and expressions standing out as if fixed in the mind of an artist. Allday, too far away to help, parrying with a redturbaned pirate. Grindle and some seamen grappling wildly below the larboard gangway, sword-blades flashing and ringing, eyes wide with ferocity and terror.

He saw too the man with the axe, pausing, balancing on his great bared toes as if to measure this final blow. He was actually grinning, savouring the moment.

Bolitho did not hear the shot through all the other awful sounds, but saw his attacker tilt forward, his expression changing to one of complete astonishment and then a mask of agony before he pitched forward at his feet.