“Let go and haul!” Keverne had not raised his eyes from the men on deck. “Heave there!”

Slowly but steadily the great yards began to respond to the braces, until with a sound of hill thunder the sails billowed out, full and bulging to the wind, while the deck heeled over to the opposite tack.

Bolitho watched fixedly as the other ship appeared to swim backwards through the mass of rigging around the foremast, until she lay not safely across the larboard quarter, but there, fine on the starboard bow.

There was no sign of the boat or the swimmer, and he found time to hope someone was watching out for them.

“Pass the word. Mr Keverne! Lower batteries run out!”

As the port lids lifted and he heard the familiar squeak and groan of gun trucks, he could imagine the cursing men far below his feet as they hauled their massive charges up the tilting decks towards the sunlight.

“Run up the colours. Mr Tothill!”

Broughton’s voice made him turn. “That was a fierce turn, Bolitho. I thought you would have the sticks out of her.” He had appeared on deck in his gold-laced coat, wearing the beautiful sword, as if for another of his inspections.

There was a dull bang and a puff of smoke drifted across the Spaniard’s poop. A gun must have been kept loaded and ready, Bolitho thought, although he did not see where the ball went.

“Get the t’gallants on her, Mr Keverne! This one intends to run for it!”

The two ships were on parallel courses, with the Euryalus now some two cables’ length astern.

There was another bang and someone gasped with alarm as a ball smacked through the fore topsail and splashed down far to windward.

The Spanish ship had a very curved stern, and Bolitho guessed she had some powerful guns mounted there to protect herself from a pursuer.

Broughton snapped, “No sense in delaying things.”

Bolitho nodded. Any minute now and a ball might bring down a vital spar. “Middle battery, Mr Keverne. Fire in succession!”

To Partridge he snapped, “Bring her up a point to wind’rd!”.

While the Euryalus swung slightly away from her intended victim the middle gundeck erupted in a cloud of brown smoke. From forward to aft, cannon after cannon crashed out at regular two-second intervals, each massive twenty-four-pounder hurling itself inboard as the savage orange tongue left its muzzle.

Bolitho watched the leaping waterspouts bursting near and beyond the Spaniard’s quarter, saw splintered woodwork fly from her bulwark as some of the balls smashed home.

From below he could hear the gunners cheering, the squeak of trucks as they raced each other up the canting deck towards the ports.

Keverne was watching him, his eyes dark with tension. “They have not struck, sir.”

Bolitho bit his lip. The red and orange flag of Spain still floated above the poop, and even as he watched another gun banged across the water and a ball screamed close overhead like a tortured spirit in hell.