Bolitho was quite motionless by the rail, the sling white against his coat and the sword hanging in his hand by his side. He saw too the captain’s coxswain at his back, and Pascoe watching him with something like despair.

It was then that he made up his mind. Bolitho had given them, and him, all this, yet now that he was crushed by grief none of them could help.

Almost angrily he strode aft and snapped, “By God, we’ll teach that fellow a lesson, eh, lads?” He felt his tight skin cracking into a grin. “How about it, Mr Keverne? Another three-decker for the fleet!”

Keverne swallowed hard. “As you wish, sir.”

Bolitho lifted his head and looked at him. “Thank you, Sir Lucius.” He sighed and rested his sword on the top of the rail. “Thank you.”

When he looked again at the French flagship she seemed much clearer. And his mind had become empty of everything but the need to destroy her.

Broughton was on the opposite side of the quarterdeck and peering at the French two-decker.

“She’s wearing!” He gestured to Bolitho. “Look!”

Bolitho saw the enemy ship swinging heavily away to expose her full broadside to Euryalus’s starboard quarter. Either her captain had failed in a first intention to cross their stern, or had changed his mind about drawing too near.

Then the Frenchman fired. Being the first time she had taken part in the desperate battle the broadside was well timed and aimed, and as the thick smoke billowed along her hull Bolitho felt the deck lurch sickeningly, the air suddenly alive with splinters and that terrible screaming sound they had heard earlier.

The deck gave one more tremendous lurch, and as his hearing returned he heard Giffard yelling, “The mizzen! The bastards have got it!”

Before he could follow Giffard’s agonised stare he saw the slicing shadow sweep across the poop, as with rigging and shrouds and screaming men falling on every hand the mizzen, complete with topsail and yards, thundered amongst them.

Trailing lines and braces tore through the crouching gun crews and startled marines like deadly snakes, as with a further savage crash the mast toppled drunkenly over the side. Another blaze of gun flashes made the smoke writhe above the deck, and he felt the chain shot whirling overhead and crashing into the hull with a scream of metal.

Blackened figures pushed past him, and he saw Tebbutt, the boatswain, waving an axe, urging his men to hack away the great weight of wreckage alongside. Mast and spars, mangled corpses and a few trapped seamen from the top who were still trying to struggle free before they were carried astern, all were acting like a sea anchor, dragging the ship round in a nightmare of smoke and deafening explosions.

Where there had been a line of marines seconds earlier was a grotesque heap of ripped and pulped bodies, broken muskets and a fast-spreading pattern of blood. Giffard was already yelling orders, and other marines were stepping blindly amongst the carnage to fire their muskets into the choking smoke.