Farquhar said sharply, “Time to send the guns over!” Okes nodded dumbly, his eyes still fixed on the blazing transport as it rolled slowly on to one side. Men were swimming and floating amongst the great mass of fragments and charred flotsam, and the glittering water was constantly pock-marked by falling wreckage from muffled explosions within the shattered hull. Faintly through the drifting smoke he could see the second transport already hard aground, her masts leaning at a dangerous angle.

Behind him he heard the rumble of chocks and then a ragged cheer as the sailors sent the first gun careering over the cliff edge and on to the rocks below. A second and then a third gun crashed after it, and he heard McIntosh yelling at his men to throw their weight against the others.

Okes could feel the strength draining from his limbs, and wanted to run from the scene of hell and destruction which lit the whole anchorage in a panorama of red flames and spark-dappled smoke. It was all sheer madness, something which none of them could control.

There was no sign of Bolitho, and even if he had succeeded in escaping from his drifting fireship he would have a much longer passage to make back to the headland.

Farquhar said, “Look sir! There are troops coming over the hill!”

As Okes tore his eyes away the transport took a final roll and plunged beneath the surface. Immediately the fierce light was extinguished like a candle and the anchorage was once more plunged into deep shadow. Okes blinked through the smoke and realised for the first time that the sky was already brighter and there was a tinge of grey along the ridge of hills beyond the anchorage. The fierceness of the blazing ships had hidden the dawn’s stealthy approach, and now as he followed the direction of Farquhar’s arm he saw with rising panic the faint glint of bayonets and the bright colours of a raised standard moving inexorably over the rim of the nearest hill like a mechanical caterpillar.

His eyes darted from the marching troops to the bridge. From his own position on the battery to the end of the coast road. In a voice he no longer recognised he shouted, “Prepare to blow the magazine, Mr Farquhar!” He stared round like a trapped animal. “I must see Rennie at once. You carry on here!”

He started to walk quickly away from the battery, ignoring the curious stares of the seamen and Farquhar’s look of questioning contempt. His racing thoughts seemed to take over his feet, so that all at once he was running, his breath gasping painfully, his shoes skidding across stones and gorse alike as he ran blindly across the bridge, past the armed sailors on the far side and out along the open road. Here and there he could see the scarlet patches of crouching marines amongst the hillside bracken, and he was horrified to realise that he could already see the beach below and the jumble of houses beyond the pier. The growing daylight added to his sense of nakedness, and in his imagination he thought he heard the tramp of French soldiers as they marched steadily to cut his escape to the sea.