A Tradition of Victory by Alexander Kent Page B

marine dropped to his knees, blood pouring from his face, as two of his comrades dragged him to safety. Their first casualty.
    A blazing lugger, ungainly and out of command, with flames darting from weapon ports like red tongues, passed dangerously down the larboard side, where the boatswain and his men waited with water buckets and axes to quench any outbreak of fire in the tarred rigging and vulnerable canvas.
    Neale said flatly, “ Phalarope is not responding, sir.”
    “Signal Phalarope to make more sail. ” Bolitho felt some of the men watching him, still unwilling or unable to believe what was happening.
    “She’s acknowledged, sir.”
    It was almost impossible to think with guns firing and the decks filled with choking smoke.
    Bolitho looked at Neale. If he broke off the action now and abandoned the enemy, they could come about and with luck fight clear. If not, Styx could not hope to destroy more than a handful of vessels, and only then at the cost of her own people.
    He stared at the other frigate as she fell further and further astern, until his eyes and mind throbbed with pain and anger.
    Browne had been right from the beginning. Now there was no chance left, and it was certainly not worth losing a whole ship and her company.

    He cleared his throat and said, “Discontinue the action, Captain Neale. Bring her about. It is finished.”
    Neale stared at him, his face filled with dismay.
    “But, sir, we can still hit them! Single-handed if we must!”
    The masthead lookout’s voice shattered the sudden silence even as the guns ceased firing.
    “Deck there! Three sail in sight to the nor’-west.”
    Bolitho felt as if the whole ship had been stricken. No one moved, and some hands on the forecastle who had cheered the last order, believing it to be the signal of their victory, now peered aft like old men.
    Perhaps the lookouts, good though they were, had been dis-tracted by the oncoming mass of small vessels, and then the menace of larger ships hull-up on the horizon, but whatever the reason, they did not see the real danger until it was already upon them.
    It fell to one of Neale’s leadsmen as he took up his station in the chains as Styx had headed towards the same shallow channel to scream, “Wreck! Dead ahead!”
    Bolitho gripped the rail and watched as the men near him broke from their trance and stampeded to obey the cry to shorten sail still further, while others strained at the braces to haul round the yards and change tack.
    It was possibly one of the very craft they had sunk the previous day, drifting waterlogged with wind and tide until it found its destroyer. Or it might have been an older wreck, some stubborn survivor from the chain of reefs and sandbars which guarded the Loire’s approaches like sentinels.
    The shock when it came was not sudden. It seemed unending as the frigate drove on and over the hulk, her frames shaking, until with the crashing roar of an avalanche the main and fore masts thundered down across the forecastle and into the sea.
    Great coils of trailing shrouds and splintered spars followed, while men shrieked and cursed as they were smashed underneath or
    dragged bodily over the side by the tendrils of runaway rigging.
    Only the mizzen remained standing, Bolitho’s flag still flapping above the destruction and death as if to mark the place for all time. Then as the wreck tore free from Styx ’s keel and giant air bubbles exploded obscenely on either beam, it too swayed and then plunged headlong to the gun-deck.
    Neale yelled, “Mr Pickthorn!” Then he faltered, aware of the blood on his hand which had run down from his scalp, and of his loyal first lieutenant who had been cut in half by one of the broken shrouds as it had ripped over him with the whole weight of the topmast stretching it like a wire.
    He saw Bolitho as Allday aided him to his feet and gasped,
    “She’s done for!”
    Then he swayed and would have fallen but for Bundy and one of the midshipmen.
    Bolitho