How useful, Hovell, thinks Penhaligon, to have Snitker utter what you dare not to have Snitker utter what you dare not. 'Ask Snitker how the Japanese would treat him were he to be thrown overboard here.'

Hovell translates, and Snitker withdraws like a whipped dog.

Penhaligon turns his attention back to the Dutchmen on the Watchtower.

At closer range Marinus, the scholar-physician, looks lumpen and uncouth.

De Zoet, by contrast, is younger and better turned out than expected.

Let's pit your Dutch courage, Penhaligon thinks, against English munitions against English munitions.

Waldron's torso appears above the hatch. 'Ready for your word, Captain.'

The Oriental rain is fine as lace on the sailors' leathern faces.

'Give it them, Mr Waldron, straight in the teeth . . .'

'Aye, sir.' Waldron announces the order below: 'Starboard crews, fire fire!'

Major Cutlip, at his side, hums, 'Three blind mice, three blind mice . . .'

Out of the gun-ports, over the bulwarks, fly the flintmen's cries of Clear! Clear!

The Captain watches the Dutchmen staring down the mouths of his guns.

Lapwings fly over stone water: their wingtips kiss, drip and ripple.

Work for a soldier or madman, Penhaligon thinks, not a doctor and shopkeeper not a doctor and shopkeeper.

The first of the guns erupts with a skull-cracking ferocity; Penhaligon's middle-aged heart pulsates as it did in his first fight with an American privateer a quarter-century ago; eleven guns follow, over seven or eight seconds.

One warehouse collapses; the seaward wall is smashed in two places; roof-tiles spray upwards and, most gratifyingly, the Captain is confident as he squints through the smoke and destruction, de Zoet and Marinus are scuttled to Earth with their tails firmly between their Netherlander shanks . . . de Zoet and Marinus are scuttled to Earth with their tails firmly between their Netherlander shanks . . .

. . . she chopped off their tails, Cutlip hums, with a carving knife . . .

The wind blows the gun-smoke back over the deck, bathing the officers.

Talbot sees them first: 'They're still on the Watchtower, sir.'

Penhaligon hurries over to the waist-hatch, his foot howling for mercy and his stick striking the deck: damn you, damn you damn you, damn you, damn you . . . you . . .

The lieutenants follow like nervous Spaniels, expecting him to topple.

'Ready the guns for a second round,' he bellows down the hatch to Waldron. 'Ten guineas for the gun-crew who cut down the Watchtower!'

Waldron's voice shouts back, 'Aye aye, sir! You heard the Captain, crews!'

Furious, Penhaligon drags himself back to the quarterdeck; his officers follow.

'Hold her steady, Mr Wetz,' he tells the Sailing Master.

Wetz is engaged in an instinctive algebraic sum, involving wind speed, sail yardage and rudder angle. 'Holding her steady, Captain.'

'Captain,' Cutlip is speaking, 'at a hundred and twenty yards my lads could embroider that brassy duo with our Brown Besses.'

Tristram, the Captain was told by HMS Blenheim Blenheim's Captain Frederick, was minced by chain shot on the quarterdeck: he could have thrown himself against the deck and possibly lived, like his lesser warrant officers, but not Tristram, who never blinked at danger . . . was minced by chain shot on the quarterdeck: he could have thrown himself against the deck and possibly lived, like his lesser warrant officers, but not Tristram, who never blinked at danger . . .

'I'd not risk grounding us, Major. The day would not have a happy ending.'

Remember Charlie's bulldog, Penhaligon sighs, and the cricket bat? and the cricket bat?

'The smoke,' the Captain blinks and mutters, 'is wringing out my eyes.'

Cowards, like crows, he believes, consume the courageous dead consume the courageous dead.

'This all brings to mind,' Wren tells Talbot and the midshipmen, 'my Mauritius campaign aboard the Swiftsure Swiftsure: three French frigates had the legs of us and, like a pack of baying fox-hounds . . .'

'Sir,' Hovell says quietly, 'might I offer you my cape? The rain . . .'

Penhaligon chooses to bridle. 'Am I in my dotage already, Lieutenant?'

Robert Hovell retreats into Lieutenant Hovell. 'No offence meant, sir.'

Wetz shouts; topmen reply; ropes strain; blocks squeak; rain glistens.

A tall, thin warehouse on Dejima belatedly collapses with a shriek and clatter.

'. . . so finding myself stranded on the enemy ship,' Wren is saying, 'in the dusk, smoke and pell-mell, I pulled down my cap, took a lantern, followed a monkey down to the powder locker - 'twas black as night - slipped into the adjacent cordage locker where I played the fire-bug . . .'

Waldron reappears. 'Sir, the guns're primed for the second round.'

Strike the pose of naval officers, Penhaligon watches de Zoet and Marinus . . .

. . . then you may die as naval officers. 'Ten guineas, remember, Mr Waldron.'

Waldron disappears. His bedlamite's yell orders, 'Let 'em have it, men!'

Small cogs of time meet and mesh. The flintmen cry, 'Clear!'

Explosions hurl the shots in beautiful, terrible, screaming arcs . . .

. . . into a warehouse roof; a wall; and one ball passes within a yard of de Zoet and Marinus. They drop to the platform, but all the other balls fly over Dejima . . .

Damp smoke obscures the view; the wind lifts the damp smoke.

A noise comes like a shrieking trombone, or a great tree, falling . . .

. . . it comes from behind Dejima: an appalling crash of timber and masonry.

De Zoet helps Marinus stand; his stick is gone; they look landwards.

Courage in a vilified enemy, Penhaligon thinks, is a distasteful discovery is a distasteful discovery.

'Nobody can accuse you, sir,' says Wren, 'of failing to give due warning.'

Power is a man's means, thinks the Captain, of composing the future . . . of composing the future . . .

'These medieval Asiatic pygmies,' Cutlip assures him, 'shan't forget today.'

. . . but the composition, he removes his hat, has a way of composing itself has a way of composing itself.

Unearthly screaming boils up through the hatches from the gun deck.

Penhaligon guesses, Someone caught by the recoil Someone caught by the recoil, with nauseous certainty.

Hovell hurries to investigate, just as Waldron's head emerges.

The Gunner's eyes bear a hideous after-image. ' 'Nother round, sir?'

John Penhaligon asks, 'Who was hit, Mr Waldron?'

'Michael Tozer - the breech-rope snapped clean through, sir, and . . .'

Stabbed sobs and rasped screams sound in the background.

'Is his leg to come off, do you suppose?'

'It's already off, sir, aye. Poor bastard's bein' taken to Mr Nash now.'

'Sir--'

Hovell, Penhaligon knows, wants permission to go with Tozer.

'Go, Lieutenant. Might I have the loan of your cape, after all?'

'Aye, sir.' Robert Hovell gives his captain his cape and goes below.

A midshipman helps him into the garment: it has Hovell's scent.

The Captain turns to the Watchtower, drunk with venom.

The Watchtower still stands, as do the men; and the Dutch flag flies.

'Demonstrate our carronades. Four crews, Mr Waldron.'

The midshipmen look at one another. Major Cutlip hisses with pleasure.

Malouf asks Talbot in a low voice: 'Won't carronades lack kick, sir?'

Penhaligon replies: 'They are are built for closer-range smashing, yes, but . . .' built for closer-range smashing, yes, but . . .'

De Zoet, he sees, is watching him through his telescope.

The Captain announces, 'I want that damned Dutch flag torn to rags.'

A house on the hill spews oily smoke in the wet and falling air.

The Captain thinks, I want those damned Dutchmen torn to rags I want those damned Dutchmen torn to rags.

The gun-crews clamber up from below, grim-faced from Tozer's accident. They remove panels from the quarterdeck's bulwarks and manoeuvre the short-bore wheeled carronades into position.

Penhaligon orders, 'Load up with chain-shot, Mr Waldron.'

'If we're aiming at the flag, sir, then . . .' Gunner Waldron indicates the Watchtower, just five yards below the top of the flagpole.

'Four cones of whistling, spinning, jagged, broken chains,' Major Cutlip shines like an aroused lecher, 'and jagged links of metal will wipe the smiles off their Netherland faces . . .'

'. . . and their faces off their heads,' adds Wren, 'and their heads off their bodies.'

The powder-monkeys appear from the hatch with their bags of explosives.

The Captain recognises Moff the Penzance urchin. Moff is pale and pink.

Gunpowder is packed into the short, fat muzzle by a bung of rags.

Chain-shot rattles from rusted scuttles tipped inside the carronades' barrels.

'Aim at the flag, crews,' Waldron is saying. 'Not so high, Hal Yeovil.'

Penhaligon's right leg is become a pole of scalding pain.

My gout is winning, Penhaligon knows. I shall be bedbound within the hour I shall be bedbound within the hour.

Dr Marinus appears to be remonstrating with his countryman.

But de Zoet, the Captain consoles himself, shall be dead within the minute shall be dead within the minute.

'Double-tie those breech ropes,' orders Waldron. 'You saw why below.'

Might Hovell be right? the Captain wonders. the Captain wonders. Has my pain been thinking for me these last three days? Has my pain been thinking for me these last three days?

'Carronades ready to fire, sir,' Waldron is saying, 'at your word.'

The Captain fills his lungs to pass the death sentence on the two Dutchmen.

They know. Marinus grips the rail, looking away, flinching, but staying put.

De Zoet removes his hat; his hair is as copper, untameable, bedraggled . . .