Bolitho banged the rail with his hands, ignoring the whining balls and the cries from forward. In his mind he was picturing the enemy ship’s lower gun-deck. Cleared for action it was one long battery which ran from one end of the ship to the other. Bolitho had been a midshipman in a ship of the line, and he knew that there must be upwards of three hundred men in there, stooping in semi-darkness, choking in the acrid fumes, and firing their guns more from familiarity than accuracy.

He shouted, “The carronades, Mr McIntosh! Fire as we cross her stern!”

Rennie grinned and wiped his face with his sleeve. “That’ll kill a few, sir!”

Bolitho bit his lip as the sound of a mast thundering across smashed and broken rigging broke through the roar of combat. Cassius was a very old ship. Much more of this punishment and she would either break up or sink as she fought!

He wondered what had happened to the Volcano, and worse, the crippled three-decker. If the latter was able to engage, it would be over in minutes. Her lower gun-deck was crammed with thirty-two-pounders. One of those could smash through two and a half feet of solid oak at maximum range. Bolitho tried not to picture what would happen to the Phalarope’s frail timbers.

“Ready, sir!” McIntosh was yelling like a madman.

Bolitho drew his sword. “Larboard a point, Mr Proby!” He watched the jib flapping and dropped his sword.

“Fire!”

* * *

Herrick felt the deck shudder beneath him as both carronades fired almost together. As the thick muzzle smoke eddied clear he stared up at the French ship’s stern momentarily forgetting the battle which raged around him. A few seconds earlier he had watched the tall stern emerge from the fog of gunfire and had seen the great cabin windows with their life-sized figures on either quarter, full-breasted nymphs carrying tridents with the vessel’s name, Ondine, in scarlet and gilt across the wide counter between them, and had marvelled at the ship’s overpowering appearance of grandeur and indestructibility. As the smoke moved clear he gaped at the black jagged holes which left the stern like the entrance of a fire-scarred cave. At the horror and chaos beyond he could only briefly imagine, for as a fresh gust of wind moved busily through the Phalarope’s sails the deck tilted, and with her helm hard over she swung in a tight arc around the enemy ship’s larboard quarter.

He shouted hoarsely above the din. “Ready, lads!” He peered along the crouching line of gun captains. “Fire as you bear!”

The first guns of the starboard battery fired as one, and in ragged succession the others followed as lanyard after lanyard was pulled taut, and the double-shotted charges crashed into the trapped smoke alongside.

A few men were cheering, their cries broken by coughs and curses as the smoke swirled back through the open ports.

Herrick yelled, “Reload! Reload and run out!” He watched narrowly as the frigate moved down the other ship’s beam, barely twenty yards clear. He could see the crowded heads on the high bulwark, the stabbing yellow flashes of muskets from her tops, but from the lower gun-deck with its line of powerful guns there was not a single shot in reply. The carronades’ lethal attack must have swept through the crowded gun-deck like a scythe through a field of standing corn.