The sword caught the frail sunlight as he swung it down. “Fire as you bear!”

Below the rail the nearest carronade exploded with a deafening roar, hurling its blunt barrel inboard on its slide while the crew darted towards it with their sponges and rammer. Bolitho felt the detonation in his head like some terrible pain, and watched the great sixty-eight-pound ball burst into the nearest bank of oars in a blinding orange flash. As the ball exploded to discharge its scything mass of grape the oars broke and flew in all directions, and he saw the hull lurching round to drive against the next chebeck in the converging line. Another carronade belched smoke and fire, and then a third from the opposite side as a chebeck pushed too near to the Hekla’s larboard bow to receive the heavy ball full in the prow. Yelling figures, the raked foremast and the chebeck’s unfired gun all vanished in a pall of choking brown smoke. As it fanned away Bolitho saw the boat already rolling over, the sea boiling across the submerged oars to finish the kill.

Swivels cracked and banged from both forward and aft, hurling their canister amongst the white-clad figures who still crowded the chebecks’ gangways, waving their scimitars and firing muskets to add to the frightful din of battle.

The hull shivered again, and Bolitho saw a ball smash into the bulwark, scattering seamen and leaving a trail of blood and flesh in its wake.

A chebeck crashed below the taffrail, her helmsman either dead or too crazed by the roar of guns to gauge his approach. As she ground and bumped across the stern the swivels raked her from stem to stern, and as she fell away the larboard carronades put two balls into her so that she broke apart and began to founder.

But two more were already alongside, and as seamen dashed to repel boarders the first yelling figures started to claw their way up and into the nets which Inch had rigged before dawn.

Bolitho cupped his hands. “Now, lads!” And through the hatch came the rest of the extra hands, amongst them many of his own ship’s company who had already faced death in the fight for Djafou.

Yelling and cheering they charged forward, thrusting with pikes and cutlasses at the boarders who hung kicking in the slack nets, impaled by the razor-sharp steel before they could get free.

Somewhere in the smoke he could hear warning cries and knew that up forward at least some of the attackers had hacked their way through the nets.

He shouted at Inch, “Stay here!” To Allday, “Follow me! We must keep these carronades firing or we are done for!”

Sparks flew from the capstan and iron ricocheted overhead. More balls slammed into the lower hull, although the chebecks’ gunners were probably killing as many of their own men as the Hekla’s as they fired their long cannon into the dense smoke.

He saw several seamen falling around the forward carronade, heard their cries as the first of the attackers loomed into view, scimitars and broadswords slashing and cutting in crazed fury.