There were still plenty of men down in the ditch who had not yet had time to scale the scarp; one of them, waving an axe, plunged through the crowd and began to climb up. But Silk, the immensely powerful bosun’s mate who commanded a section of seamen in Bush’s division, came running along the shelf and grabbed the axe. He began to hew at the door, with tremendous methodical blows, gathering his body together and then flinging the axehead into the wood with all the strength in his body. Another axeman arrived, elbowed Bush aside, and started to hack at the door as well, but he was neither as accomplished nor as powerful. The thunder of their blows resounded in the angle. The ironbarred wicket in the door opened, with a gleam of steel beyond the bars. Bush pointed his pistol and fired. Silk’s axe drove clean through the door, and he wrenched the blade free; then, changing his aim, he began to swing the axe in a horizontal arc at the middle part of the door. Three mighty blows and he paused to direct the other axeman where to strike. Silk struck again and again; then he put down the axe, set his fingers in the jagged hole that had opened, his foot against the door, and with one frightful muscletearing effort he rent away a whole section of the door. There was a beam across the gap he had opened; Silk’s axe crashed on to it and through it—and again. With a hoarse shout Silk plunged, axe in hand, through the jagged hole.
“Come along, men!” yelled Bush, at the top of his lungs, and plunged through after him.
This was the open courtyard of the fort. Bush stumbled over a dead man and looked up to see a group of men before him, in their shirts, or naked; coffeecoloured faces with long disordered moustaches; men with cutlasses and pistols. Silk flung himself upon them like a maniac, the axe swinging. A Spaniard fell under the axe; Bush saw a severed finger fall to the ground as the axe crashed through the Spaniard’s ineffectual guard. Pistols banged and smoke eddied about as Bush rushed forward too. There were other men swarming after him. Bush’s sword clashed against a cutlass and then the group turned and fled. Bush swung with his sword at a naked shoulder fleeing before him, and saw a red wound open in the flesh and heard the man scream. The man he was pursuing vanished somewhere, like a wraith, and Bush, hurrying on to find other enemies, met a redcoated marine, hatless, his hair wild and his eyes blazing, yelling like a fiend. Bush actually had to parry the bayonetthrust the marine made at him.
“Steady, you fool!” shouted Bush, only conscious after the words had passed his lips that they were spoken at the top of his voice.
There was a hint of recognition in the marine’s mad eyes, and he turned aside, his bayonet at the charge, and rushed on. There were other marines in the background; they must have made their way in through the embrasures. They were all yelling, all drunk with fighting. And here was another rush of seamen, swarming down from the ramparts they had scaled. On the far side there were wooden buildings; his men were swarming round them and shots and screams were echoing from them. Those must be the barracks and storehouses, and the garrison must have fled there for shelter from the fury of the stormers.
Whiting appeared, his scarlet tunic filthy, his sword dangling from his wrist. His eyes were bleary and cloudy.
“Call ‘em off,” said Bush, grasping at his own sanity with a desperate effort.
It took Whiting a moment to recognise him and to understand the order.
“Yes, sir,” he said.
A fresh flood of seamen came pouring into view beyond the buildings; Hornblower’s division had found its way into the fort on the far side, evidently. Bush looked round him and called to a group of his own men who appeared at that moment.