Free The Battle of All the Ages by J. D. Davies

suddenly all was very quiet.
    ‘What did he mean, Sir Matthew?’ asked the Earl of Rochester.
    ‘What is the worst he can unleash on us? How will we perish terribly?’ Musk peered out into the darkness, his eyes straining to see into the gloom. Without turning to face Rochester, he said one word: the single word that was in the thoughts of every seaman aboard. The one thing that sailors feared almost as much as the sea itself.
    ‘Fireship.’
    * * *
    It was on us almost before anyone saw it. A tiny craft, its crew stealthily secured it to our starboard quarter using grappling hooks. Marinesand seamen fired their muskets at where they thought the departing crew would be, rowing for dear life away from their deadly charge, but by then, smoke was already billowing from the fireship’s hold. It was followed in short order by the first flames, licking across the deck toward the hull of the
Royal Sceptre
.
    There was one chance, and one chance only, of saving our ship. I ran down to the main deck, then to the stern, to the space that contained my cabin; or would have contained it, if the partitions had not been taken down when the deck was cleared for action. If I could climb out of a quarter gallery window, and get down onto the deck of the fireship…
    but another had had the same thought. Kit Farrell was already at the quarter gallery. All along the deck, men stood by their guns, looking on in fear and astonishment: fear at the knowledge of what lay just a few feet away from them, secured firmly to the ship’s side; astonishment at the sight of their two most senior officers disputing which of them should go to an almost certain death by trying to cut the fireship adrift before it could take hold.
    ‘My ship, Mister Farrell!’ I shouted. ‘My responsibility!’
    ‘Not your only responsibility, Sir Matthew. You have a wife, and you are the heir to an earldom. It does not matter if the poor tarpaulin Kit Farrell dies down there, but it matters greatly if Sir Matthew Quinton does.’
    ‘But your wound, Kit!’
    ‘Better to reopen the wound than for all of us to burn alive, Sir Matthew.’
    Musk appeared by my side, having made his way from the quarterdeck at a rather more sedate pace than my own.
    ‘He’s right,’ the old man said. ‘You know full well he’s right. And if you argue the toss any longer, the ship’ll burn.’
    He
was
right. But that did not make it any easier as I watched Kit seize hold of a rope fastened to the carriage of the nearest demi-cannon,haul himself painfully out of the quarter-gallery, and lower himself down the rope into the dense, stinking smoke billowing from the fireship.
    I peered out of the window, trying to make out Kit’s figure on the deck far below. He had been down there too long – he must have been overcome by the smoke, or burned by the flames that were now melting the paintwork of the quarter-gallery – or else his efforts had reopened the wound he sustained but a few months earlier.
    Long moments of silence and dread turned into minutes. Kit had failed, he was dead, and very soon, the rest of us would be so too.
    There was a sudden jolt, then the creaking of wood.
    ‘He’s done it!’ I cried.
    Clear water appeared between the fireship and our hull. The blazing wreck began to drift away upon wind and tide, the grappling ropes that secured her to the
Sceptre
’s hull neatly severed. And there, hauling himself up the ship’s side on the rope secured to the demi-cannon, was Kit Farrell.
    Eager hands pulled him inboard, and we sat him down on the deck to recover his breath. I despatched Denton, my servant, to fetch him a tankard of ale, which he downed in one.
    ‘Hot work, Lieutenant?’
    ‘Smoke too thick – couldn’t find the fastenings for the grappling ropes –’
    ‘Take your time, Kit. Get your breath. You saved the ship. Men have been granted commands for less –’
    ‘Sir Matthew!’ It was Kellett’s voice, from the ladder to the upper deck.