To Glory We Steer by Alexander Kent Page A

wear ship!”
    Allday ran his fingers along the cold breech and whispered fervently, “Come on! Get it over with!”
    The Phalarope was outclassed and outgunned, even he could see that. With half her men already too terrified to think it was just a matter of how soon her colours would fall.
    He glanced down at his legs and felt a chill of terror. It never left him, and the years on the quiet Cornish hillside amongst the sheep had done nothing to dispel it. The fear of mutilation, and the horror of what followed.
    Old Strachan called softly from the next gun, “’Ere, you lads!” He waited until his words had penetrated the minds of the new men. “Wrap a neckscarf around yer ears afore we start to blow! You’ll ’ave no eardrums else!”
    Allday nodded. He had forgotten that lesson. If only they had been prepared and ready. Instead they had stumbled out from their hammocks and almost at once the nightmare had begun. First the excitement of a friendly ship, fading instantly in the drummer’s roll as the men ran gasping and wide-eyed to quarters. He could just see the same little drummer boy beside one rank of marines. He was staring across at the captain as if to read his own fate.
    Pryce muttered, “Never bin a fight like this afore.” He looked up at the billowing sails. “Too much wind. It’ll be hit hard an’ run, you mark my words!”
    There was a rasp of steel as Herrick drew his sword. He lifted it above his head, the blade holding the sun like firelight.
    â€œStand by in the larboard battery!”
    Ferguson moaned softly, “Oh, Grace! Where are you, Grace?”
    From aft Vibart bellowed, “Put the helm down! Hard down there!”
    They all felt the deck begin to cant further as the seamen forward let go the headsail sheets and allowed the plunging frigate to swing wildly across the wind.
    Allday swallowed hard as the gunports suddenly darkened and the other ship’s raked bow pushed across his vision. She filled the port, her guns and spray-soaked hull leaning at an angle as if to reach out and smash the Phalarope as she swung impudently towards her.
    Herrick dropped his sword. “Fire!”
    The captains jerked their lines and the whole world fell apart in the staggering, uneven broadside. Choking smoke billowed back through the ports, rasping the lungs and filling every eye as the guns lurched angrily back on their tackles. It was like hell, too terrible to understand.
    But already the gun captains were yelling like fiends, urging and hitting at their stunned gunners as the powder monkeys ran forward with fresh cartridges and new, gleaming balls were lifted from the racks.
    Pryce knocked down a man’s arms and screamed, “Sponge out, you bastard! Remember what I taught you! You’ll blow us all up if you drop a charge into a burning gun!” The man mumbled dazedly and obeyed him as if in a trance.
    Herrick shouted, “Reload there! Lively, lads!”
    Allday waited a few more minutes and then threw his weight on the tackles. Squealing like angry pigs the gun trucks rumbled forward again, the muzzles racing each other to be first through the ports.
    But the Phalarope was almost into the Andiron ’s bow. A few more feet and it seemed as if both ships would smash into each other, to die together in locked combat.
    â€œFire!”
    Again the savage roar of a broadside, the deck yawing away beneath them with its force. But this time more ragged, less well aimed. Through the din of shouts and groaning spars Allday heard some of the balls strike home, and saw Maynard, one of the midshipmen, waving his hat in the streaming smoke and yelling to the sky, his words lost in the guns’ roar.
    The Andiron must have fired simultaneously with the Phalarope , her gunfire lost in the general thunder of noise. There was more of a feeling than a sound, like a hot wind, or sand blasted across a parched desert.
    Allday looked up