She intended to dismast and cripple the Phalarope. Maybe her captain had plans for using another captured ship, just as he had the Andiron.

The long nine-pounders on the quarterdeck recoiled as one, their sharp, barking detonations penetrating the innermost membranes of Bolitho’s ears as he stared through the smoke and then back at his own command. Only on the quarterdeck was there still some semblance of unity and order. Midshipman Farquhar stood by the taffrail, his eyes bright but determined as he passed his orders to the gun captains. Rennie’s marines were standing fast, too. From their smoke-blinded position behind the hammock nettings they kept up a steady musket fire whenever the other ship showed herself through the choking fog of powder smoke.

But the main deck was different. Bolitho let his eyes move slowly over the chaos of scarred planking and grisly remains which marked every foot of deck space. The guns were still firing, but the intervals were longer, the aim less certain.

At first Bolitho had been amazed at the success of that opening broadside. He had known that later the lack of training would slow down the barrage, but he had not dared to hope for such a good opening. The double-shotted guns had fired almost as one, the ship staggering from the combined recoil. He had seen the bulwarks jump apart on the other frigate, had watched the balls tear through the packed gunners and gouge into her spray-dashed hull. It had seemed momentarily that the battle might still be contained.

Through the streaming smoke he saw Herrick moving slowly aft along the starboard battery checking the gunners and aiming each weapon himself before allowing the gun captain to jerk his trigger line. It should have been Okes on the starboard side, but perhaps he was already dead, like so many of the others.

Bolitho made himself examine each part of the agonising panorama which the Phalarope now represented. His body felt sick and numb from the constant battering, but his eye and mind worked in cold unison, so that the pain and suffering was all the more apparent.

Small pictures stood out from the whole, so that wherever he looked there was a pitiful reminder of the cost and the price still to be paid.

Many had died. How many he had no way of knowing. Some had died bravely, serving their guns and yelling encouragement and curses up to the moment of death. Some died slowly and horribly, their mutilated and broken bodies writhing in the blood and flesh which covered the deck as in a slaughterhouse.

Others were less brave, and more than once he had seen men shamming death, even cowering in the stench and horror of the discarded corpses until dragged and kicked back to their stations by the petty officers.

Some had escaped below in spite of Rennie’s sentries, and would now be covering their ears and whimpering in the bilges to face drowning rather than the onslaught from the Andiron’s guns.