Bolitho #18 - Colours Aloft! by Alexander Kent

Author:Alexander Kent [Kent, Alexander]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2011-09-20T12:56:08+00:00

156

COLOURS A LOF T!

“Fire!”

The broadside thundered out again, and Bolitho heard someone cheering, like a demented soul in Hell, he thought.

Allday exclaimed, “Her mizzen’s gone! She’s tryin’ to come about, to save her stern from the Smasher!” Bolitho seized a glass and pressed it to his right eye. All the jokes about Nelson at Copenhagen were not so funny now. He saw the hazy outline of the French ship, shortening as Argonaute turned towards her, the bowsprit pointing directly at her poop.

The other captain had not regained control completely when the second broadside struck and raked his ship from bow to stern.

Instead of continuing to turn, she was falling downwind, her afterpart shrouded in fallen spars and canvas, while here and there along her battered side a few guns fired independently, and on her gangway tiny stabbing flashes showed that her marksmen were fighting back.

“Steady as you go!”

Keen crouched down to peer through the pall of smoke and straining rigging. The wind had risen; he had to hold the gage or lose all the advantage his attack had gained. He saw the water-lighter tilting over, spilling men and casks into the sea, the hull so pitted with holes it was a wonder it had taken so long. On the opposite, disengaged side, another harbour craft, a big yawl, had cast off, and was probably trying to beat away from her big consort before she shared the lighter’s fate.

Keen made up his mind. “Mr Fallowfield, lay her on the starboard tack!” The Frenchman was still beam-on to the wind, her progress further hampered by the trailing wreckage of spars and rigging alongside. The shattered lighter was sinking rapidly and he realized that she was still made fast by the bow to the two-decker. Either they had not had time to cast off, or the men so ordered had been scythed down by the last murderous broadside.

But Keen had been in enough fights to know how quickly the COLOURS A LOF T!

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balance could alter. The French captain had kept his mind above the disaster which had caught him unprepared, and had found time to order his gun crews to load with chain-shot. A well-aimed fusillade could bring down a vital spar—victory and defeat were measured by such delicate distinctions.

Orders were yelled and men hauled at the braces yet again.

Bolitho felt a shot fan past him, heard a crack and something like a fierce intake of breath as the musket ball hurled a marine from the nettings, the side of his skull blasted away. His companions left their stations as the after-guard was piped to the mizzen braces, while the ship tilted steeply and began to plough over to the opposite tack.

Keen joined Bolitho and shouted above the noise of gunfire and bellowed orders, “They see you, sir! Put on my coat!” Bolitho clung to a stay and shook his head. “I want them to see me!” More shots hissed past him and smacked into hammocks on the opposite side or cracked against the planking.

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