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moon disappeared behind a cloud as it roared.
    The concussion wave of a terrific explosion swept the two vessels, momentarily stopping the combatants. Away to the south six hundred men had ceased to exist as the seventy-gun San Domingo blew up, fire reaching her magazine and causing her disintegration.
    The interruption of the explosion reminded them all of the other ships engaged to the southward. Drinkwater reloaded the musket. Enemy balls no longer whizzed round him. He looked up levelling the barrel. The Spanish frigate’s mainmast leaned drunkenly forward. Stays snapped and the great spars collapsed dragging the mizen topmast with it. Cyclops drew ahead.
    Hope and Blackmore stared anxiously astern where the crippled Spaniard wallowed. Wreckage hung over her side as she swung to starboard. If the Spanish captain was quick he could rake Cyclops, his whole broadside pouring in through the latter’s wide stern and the shot travelling the length of the crowded decks.
    It was every commander’s nightmare to be raked, especially from astern where the comparative fragility of the stern windows offered little resistance to the enemy shot. The wreckage over her side was drawing the Spaniard round. One of her larboard guns fired and splinters shot up from Cyclops’s quarter. Certainly someone appreciated the opportunity.
    Cyclops’s helm was put down in an attempt to bring Cyclops on a parallel course but the spanker burst as the Spaniard fired, then the mizen topmast went and Cyclops lost the necessary leverage to force her stern round.
    It was a ragged broadside compared with that of the British but its effects were no less lethal. Although nearly a quarter of a mile distant, the damaged enemy had fought back with devastating success. As Captain Hope surveyed the damage with Devaux a voice hailed them:
    ‘Deck there! Breakers on the lee bow!’
    Although the British frigate had started her turn the loss of her after sails deprived her of manoeuvrability. There were anxious faces on the quarterdeck.
    The officers looked aloft. The lower mizen mast still stood, broken off some six feet above the top. The wreckage was hanging over the larboard side, dragging the frigate back that way while the gale in the forward sails still drove the ship inexorably downwind to where the San Lucar shoal awaited them. Axes were already at work clearing the raffle.
    Hope saw a chance and ordered the helm hard over to continue the swing to port. Devaux looked forward and then at the captain.
    ‘Set the cro’jack, bend on a new spanker and get the fore tops’l clewed up!’ The captain snapped at him. The first lieutenant ran forward screaming for topmen, anyone, pulling the upperdeck gun crews from their pieces, thrusting bosun’s mates here and thereЕ
    Men raced for the riggingЕ disappeared below, hurrying and scurrying under the first lieutenant’s hysterical direction.
    ‘Wheeler, get your lobsters to brace the cro’jack yard!’
    ‘Aye, aye, sir!’
    Wheeler’s booted men stomped away with the mizen braces as the topmen shook out the sail. A master’s mate unmade the weather sheet, he was joined by another, they both hauled as two or three seamen under a bosun’s mate loosed the clew and buntlines. The great sail exploded white in the moonlight, flogging in the gale; then it drew taut and Cyclops began to swing.
    Still in his top Drinkwater could see the shoal now, a line of grey ahead of them perhaps four or five miles away. He became aware of a voice hailing him.
    ‘Foretop there!’
    ‘Aye sir?’ he looked over the edge at the first lieutenant staring up at him.
    ‘Aloft and furl that tops’l!’
    Drinkwater started up. The fore topsail was already losing its power as the sheets slackened and the clew and buntlines drew it up to the yard. It was flogging madly, the trembling mast attesting to the fact that many of its stays must have been shot away.
    Tregembo was already in the rigging as Drinkwater forsook the familiar