Of course there was much more to it than that, and when Jack told the tale afterwards he would give the full report, with all due embellishments: the hysterical blubbering of some galériens, the pious praying of others, the many strong hands that shot up out of the water to grip the gunwales of their skiff and were cut away by Gabriel’s sword. The officers and French Marines still clinging to the galley’s forecastle, trying to buy passage on the galleot, or failing that, to fight their way aboard, only to be beaten back by Jeronimo and Nyazi and van Hoek and the others. The banks of powder-smoke drifting by overhead, and the bodies of the drowned galériens below: pale blurred forms in strings of five, like pearls.