Herrick jumped up beside him, his eyes flashing as he shouted, “Come on, lads! We’ll give the buggers a lesson!”

Somebody voiced a faint cheer, and the men not employed at the guns surged up to the gangway, their cutlasses and pikes puny against the great press of boarders.

Bolitho felt a man drop screaming at his side, and another pitched forward to be ground between the hulls like so much butcher’s meat. He could see the privateer’s officers urging their men on and pointing him out to their marksmen. Shots banged and whistled around him, and the cries and jeers had risen to one, terrifying roar.

The hulls shuddered once more and the gap began to disappear. Bolitho peered back at Farquhar. The quarterdeck with its dead marines seemed a long way away, but as he waved his sword in a swift chopping motion he saw the midshipman jerk the lanyard and felt the gun’s savage blast pass his face like a hot wind.

The canister shot contained five hundred closely packed musket balls, and like a scythe the miniature bombardment swept through the cheering boarders, cutting them down into a bloody tangle of screams and curses. The boarders faltered, and a young lieutenant who had climbed up on the Andiron’s bowsprit dropped unsupported on to the Phalarope’s gangway. His scream was cut short as a big seaman lashed out and down with an axe, and then his body was pinned between the hulls and forgotten.

Bolitho shouted wildly, “Come on, you gunners! Run out! Run out!”

He held out his sword like a barrier in front of his men. “Back there! Get back!”

His small party fell back, confused by this turn of events. They had faced certain annihilation, and had accepted it. Now their captain had changed his mind. Or so it seemed.

But Herrick understood. Almost choking with excitement he yelled, “All guns run out!”

Bolitho saw the survivors from the carronade’s single blast falling back towards their guns, shocked and dismayed as the Phalarope’s muzzles trundled forward and upwards towards them.

“Fire!” Bolitho almost fell overboard, but felt Stockdale catch his arm as the whole battery exploded beneath his feet.

The air seemed to come alive with inhuman screams as the whirling chain shot cut through sails and rigging alike in an overwhelming tempest of metal. Foremast and maintopmast fell together, the great weight of spars and canvas smashing down the remaining boarders and covering the gunports in a whirling mass of canvas.

The recoil of Phalarope’s broadside seemed to drive the two ships apart, leaving a trail of wreckage and corpses floating between them.

Bolitho leaned against the nettings, his breath sharp and painful. “Reload! Carry on firing!” Whatever happened next, the Phalarope had spoken with authority, and had hit hard.

The frigate’s proud outline was broken and confused in tangled shrouds and sails. Where her foremast had been minutes before there was only a bright-toothed stump, and the resonant cheers had given way to screams and confusion.