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blew up, vast pieces of her planking flying into the air like paper blown by a breeze. By then I had more urgent matters to occupy me, but as Francis Gale said a prayer for the men of the burning wreck, one thought above all consumed me. The blazing ship flew the flag of the Zeeland Admiralty. Thus I prayed that she was not the command of my brother-in-law, Captain Cornelis van der Eide. Cornelis was a stolid, humourless man, but he was brave, a fine sailor, and above all, he was my wife’s brother; and I did not relish the prospect of telling Cornelia that her twin had perished, not by suffering the noble death-wound in the heat of battle that all seamen of honour dream of, but by drowning or being burned alive, the fates that all seamen dread.
    * * *
    For the next half-hour or so, we were engaged with a stubborn opponent that carried some fifty guns and flew the flags of the North Quarter Admiralty. The wind had now abated a little, and althoughwe still could not open the lower deck gunports, Burdett and his gun crews were able to maintain a more accurate fire. So could our enemy, of course, but this captain had a different intent. He evidently fancied himself a hero, and luffed up to bring his ship’s bows toward us three or four times, as if intending to come as close as he could into the wind to grapple and board us. But although we had less freeboard, we were still significantly higher out of the water than our opponent, and that gave us the advantage in small arms fire. Parks’s Marines swarmed to the larboard rail of the forecastle and into the tops, sending down a hail of musket fire onto the Dutchman’s deck and toward her gunports , trying to deter the gun crews on her lower decks. Much as I resented the presence of these new-fangled sea-soldiers, and disliked Parks himself, I could only admire the accuracy and speed of their fire. A very few of the Sceptres were useful with a musket – Macferran, up in the maintop with a dozen or so of the Marines, had been a prodigious poacher in Argyll, and could hit a deer or a man a quarter-mile away with the right weapon – but most seamen preferred the likes of the cutlass and the half pike, for which as yet there were no opportunities . But we were close enough to hurl
grenados
, and the men in the waist, martialled by Kit Farrell and Boatswain Uruqhart, were throwing them at the Dutchman with loud shouts and deprecations.
    ‘This one’s for my brother that you killed at Guinea!’
    ‘For God, King Charles and Mevagissey!’
    ‘Stick this up De Ruyter’s arse!’
    The quarterdeck was a little more refined, but equally warlike. Francis Gale had tucked his cassock beneath a breastplate and was firing his musket with some skill. Musk preferred pistols; there was a persistent rumour within the Quinton family to the effect that he had been a highwayman in his young days, and he was certainly proficient with the road-thief’s weapon of choice. Above all, Musk was a fine judge of distance, invariably sensing the moment when the two ships moved too far apart to be within range of each other. Meanwhile, LordRochester had discovered
grenados
with unconcealed delight, and was cheerfully lobbing them toward the Dutchman. But the noble Earl was hopelessly unco-ordinated. Musk and I both glanced at him in trepidation, fearful that he would release a shell at the wrong moment, or send it in entirely the wrong direction. The possibility of the entire quarterdeck of the
Royal Sceptre
, including the heir to Ravensden, being obliterated by a disastrous mis-throw from the over-eager young libertine, seemed rather more immediate than the prospect of any serious damage being inflicted by our Dutch opponent.
    For my part, I maintained a steady fire with my pistols, reloaded and returned me with brisk efficiency by Kellett and my other young servants, Coleby, Smart and Denton. But the more I fired, the more I doubted the point of doing so. The sea might have been a little quieter, but