With a jarring crash the long spar pitched over the bulwark and remained trapped and tangled in a mass of rigging, the torn sail ballooning in the water alongside and dragging at the ship like a sea anchor.
To add to the horror, Herrick could see the man, Betts, the one who had first sighted the other frigate, pinned in the trailing rigging like an insect in a web.
Vibart yelled, “Axes there! Cut that wreckage adrift!”
Betts stared up at the frigate with glazed eyes, his voice short and painful between his teeth. “Help me! Don’t let me go to the bottom, lads!”
But already the axes were at work, the men driven half mad by the din, too dazed to care for the suffering of one more seaman.
Okes seized Herrick’s arm. “Why doesn’t he strike? For Christ’s sake look what he’s doing to us!”
Herrick’s mind was dulled and refused to work clearly any more. But he could see what Okes was trying to show him. The heart had gone out of the men, what heart there had been. They crouched and whimpered as the enemy balls thundered all around them, and only occasionally did a single gun reply. Then it was usually a small handful of men led by one seasoned and dedicated gun captain which kept up a one-sided exchange with the enemy.
Herrick shut his ears to the screaming wounded as they were dragged below and closed his eyes to everything but the small open patch of quarterdeck where Bolitho stood alone by the rail. His hat had gone and his coat was stained with powder and blown spray. Even as he watched Herrick saw a messenger run towards the captain, only to be cut down by musket fire from the other vessel as she loomed sideways out of the smoke. Musket balls were thudding against the hammock nettings and biting across the deck, yet Bolitho never budged, nor did he alter his expression of detached determination.
Only once did he look up, and then to glance at the large scarlet ensign which streamed from the gaff, as if to reassure himself that it still flew.
Herrick shook his head. “He’ll not strike! He’ll see us all dead first!”
5
RUM AND RECRIMINATIONS
THE DECK slewed over as the Phalarope’s helm went hard down and she swung blindly on to her new course. Bolitho had lost count of the number of times his ship had changed direction, or even how long they had been fighting.
Of one thing he was sure. The Andiron was outmanœuvering him, was still holding to windward and keeping up a steady barrage. His own gunners were hampered by yet another hazard. The wind was falling away, and his men were now firing blindly into an unbroken bank of thick smoke which rolled down from the other ship and mingled with their own intermittent firing. The smoke seemed to writhe with many colours as the American privateer continued the attack. Once, when a freak wind had blown the smoke skywards like a curtain Bolitho had seen the Andiron’s battery belching long orange flames as each gun was trained and fired singly across the bare quarter mile between the two frigates. They were firing high, the balls screaming through the rigging and slashing the remaining sails to ribbons. Ropes and stays hung from above like weed, and every so often heavy blocks and long slivers of wood would fall amongst the labouring gunners or splash in the clear water alongside.