The roar of the cannon made him jerk, involuntarily, and the ball came whistling across the water, skipping two, three times along the wave-tops, like a stone thrown by a boy. It looked as though it came straight for him, an illusion. The whole ship groaned as the ball punched at the bows, and splinters flew like a sudden blizzard out of the open portholes. They peppered Laurence's legs, stinging like a flock of bees, and his stockings were quickly wet with blood. He clung on to the harpoon arm and kept sawing; the frigate was still firing, her broadside rolling on, and the roundshot hurtled at them again and again. There was a sickening deep sway to Goliath's motion now as she took the pounding.

He had to hand the cutlass back and shout for a fresh one to get through the last strand. Then at last the cable was cut loose and swinging away free, and they pulled him back in. He staggered when he tried to stand, and went to his knees slipping in blood: stockings laddered and soaked through red; his best breeches, the ones he had worn for the trial, were pierced and spotted. He was helped to sit against the wall, and turned the cutlass on his own shirt, for bandages to tie up the worst of the gashes; no-one could be spared to help him to the surgeons. The other harpoons had been cut and they were moving at last, coming around. All the crews were fixed by their guns, savage in the dim red glow, teeth bared and mazed with blood from cracked lips and gums, their faces black with sweat and grime, ready to take vengeance.

Suddenly, a loud pattering like rain or hailstones came down: small bombs with short fuses dropped by the French dragons. Lightning flashes were visible through the boards of the deck. Some rolled down through the ladderways and burst in the gun-deck, hot flash-powder smoke and the burning glare of pyrotechnics, painful to the eyes. Then the cannon were speaking as they hove around in view of the frigate, and the order came down to fire.

There was nothing for a long moment but the mindless fury of the ship's guns going: impossible to think in that roaring din, smoke and hellish fire in her bowels choking away all reason. Laurence reached up for the port-hole when they had paused, and hauled himself up to look. The French frigate was reeling away under the pounding, her foremast down and hulled below the water-line, so each wave slapping away poured into her.