Stand Into Danger by Alexander Kent Page B

tumbling across to help the men on the opposite side where the twelve-pounders still pointed at their sealed ports.
    More spray burst over the quarterdeck as another sea surged jubilantly across the nettings and drenched the men nearby. Order was being restored, and Bolitho saw seamen straining back on the braces until they seemed to be touching the deck itself.
    He shouted, “Stand to, men!” He was groping for his hanger even as he realized that Rhodes and his midshipman had already gone running to the bows. “She’ll be into us directly!”
    A shot echoed above the din of sea and wind, but whether fired by accident or by whom, Bolitho did not know or care.
    He felt Jury by his side.
    â€œWhat’ll we do, sir?”
    He sounded frightened. As well he might, Bolitho thought. Merrett was clinging to the nettings as if nothing would ever shift him.
    Bolitho used something like physical strength to control his stampeding thoughts. He was in charge. Nobody else was here to lead, to advise. Everyone on the upper deck was too occupied with his own role.
    He managed to shout, “Stay with me.” He pointed at a running figure. “You, clear the starboard battery and prepare to repel boarders!”
    As men floundered cursing and shouting in all directions, Bolitho heard Dumaresq’s voice. He was on the opposite side of the deck, yet seemed to be speaking into Bolitho’s ear.
    â€œ Board, Mr Bolitho!” He swung round as Palliser sent more men to shorten sail in a last attempt to delay the impact of collision. “She must not escape!”
    Bolitho stared at him, his eyes wild. “Aye, sir!”
    He was about to draw his hanger when with a thundering crash the other vessel drove hard alongside. But for Dumaresq’s quick action she would have rammed into the Destiny ’s broadside like a giant axe.
    Yells changed to screams as a rumbling mass of cordage and broken spars crashed on and between the two hulls. Men were knocked from their feet as the sea lifted the vessels together yet again, bringing down another tangle of rigging and blocks. Some men had fallen, too, and Bolitho had to drag Jury by the arm as he shouted, “Follow me!” He waved his hanger, keeping his eyes away from the sea which appeared to be boiling between the two snared hulls. One slip and it would all be over.
    He saw Little brandishing a boarding axe, and of course Stockdale holding his cutlass like a dirk against his massive frame.
    Bolitho gritted his teeth and leapt for the other vessel’s shrouds, his legs kicking in space as he struck out seeking a foothold. His hanger had gone from his hand and swung dangerously from his wrist as he gasped and struggled to hold on. More men were on either side of him, and he retched as someone fell between the two vessels, the man’s scream cut off abruptly like a great door being slammed shut.
    As he dropped to the unfamiliar deck he heard other voices and saw vague shapes rushing across the fallen wreckage, some with blades in their fists, while from aft came the sharp crack of a pistol.
    He groped for his hanger and shouted, “Drop your weapons in the King’s name!”
    The roar of voices which greeted his puny demand was almost worse than the danger. Perhaps he had been expecting Frenchmen or Spaniards, but the voices which yelled derision at his upraised hanger were as English as his own.
    A spar plunged straight down into the deck, momentarily separating the two opposing groups and smashing one of the figures to pulp. With a final quiver the two vessels wrenched themselves apart, and even as a sword-blade darted from the shadows towards him, Bolitho realized that Destiny had left him to fend for himself.

4 B LADE TO BLADE
    CALLING to each other by name, and matching curses with their unknown adversaries, the Destiny ’s small boarding party struggled to hold together. All the while the deck was flung about by the sea, the motion