Witrand’s pistol was still smoking as he lowered it from his forearm and yelled, “Are you ’urt, Capitaine?”

Bolitho groped for his sword and stood up, shaking his head. “No, but thank you.” He grinned. “I think that we are winning this fight!”

It was true. Already the boarders were retreating along the gangway, leaving their dead and wounded to be trampled underfoot as the battle swayed back and forth above the deck.

Bolitho pushed past several yelling Spaniards and stood beside Allday, his sword parrying a scimitar and opening the shoulder of its owner in a long scarlet gash. Allday watched the man reel towards the side and slashed him down with his heavy cutlass, gasping, “That’ll speed him on his way, by God!”

Bolitho wiped his streaming face and peered down into the boat alongside. Already it was being poled clear, and he could see some of the boarders leaping back on to its narrow side deck, beneath which the hidden oarsmen were trying to free their blades from the Navarra’s side.

Several muskets were banging from below, and he felt a ball rasp against the rail by his fingers, and saw a red-robed figure pointing him out to some marksmen on the chebeck’s slender poop.

But the oars were gaining control, and as the drumbeat rose above the yelling Spanish seamen, the screaming wounded and those of her own crew who were floundering in the water, the chebeck began to move down the ship’s side.

Bolitho noticed that her consort was some mile distant, and must have stayed out of range for the whole fight.

He thought of Meheux in the cabin and shouted hoarsely, “I must tell them to use the gun!”

He turned to run aft and almost fell across a sprawled corpse, its face glaring fixedly at the lifeless sails and one hand still grasping a bloodied sword. It was Grindle, the master’s mate, his grey wisps of hair giving the impression that it was somehow managing to stay alive without him.

Bolitho said, “Take him, Allday.”

Allday sheathed his cutlass and watched Bolitho hurrying away. To the dead master’s mate he said wearily, “You were too old for this kind of thing, my friend.” Then he dragged him carefully into the shade of the bulwark, leaving a smeared trail of blood behind him.

Meheux managed to get one more shot into the enemy before the power of their oars carried them safely out of range. The chebeck which had so daringly boarded the Navarra had dropped almost three cables astern when Meheux was satisfied enough to fire. The ball smashed the other vessel on the poop, carrying away the small lateen mizzen and ripping through the carved scroll-work before plunging into the sea in a welter of spray.

The leading chebeck had sunk, leaving only a few pieces of flotsam and corpses as evidence. The rest made off to the south as fast as their oars could drive them, while the Navarra’s dazed and bleeding defenders stared after them, still unable to accept their own survival.