Into Uncharted Seas

by E. C. Williams

  “Where to, Sarge?” This was Befort, wiping blood from his eyes from a scalp wound.

  “Other end of the Castle! Vite, vite you slugs – we're sitting ducks here!”

  “But Sarge, I'm hit!” Lebrun, the loader, whined.

  “We're all hit, mon enfant! Now grab that tripod and follow me!”

  The team grabbed the rifle, the loader hefting the tripod, and stumbled with their awkward burdens over the rubble in the direction the Sergeant had pointed. Before they had gone far, a loud bang behind them made them drop as one to the ground; shrapnel whistled past them. Ralambo looked back in time to see the smoke from the air-burst just dispersing – right over their former position.

  “Up! Up!” shouted the NCO, and the team leaped up, shouldered the barrel and tripod, and hurried on. When they reached a site that seemed well enough protected, Ralambo said, “Set up here. Lebrun, hustle two rounds over double-quick!” Lebrun, who had bound up a shrapnel wound on his left forearm with a handkerchief, gave the Sergeant a martyred look, but ran off, bent double, without further complaint.

  “Now listen, Befort, we're gonna get off two rounds quick-fire, then immediately move again. Make 'em count!”

  “Roger that, Sarge.” Befort, ignoring a bloody scratch on his forearm, settled himself behind the gun, eye to the sight, and carefully lined up a shot. As soon as Lebrun showed up with a round and it was shoved into the breech and wired, he touched it off.

  “A hit, by God! Do it again!”

  Before Lebrun had returned with another round, he saw from the corner of his left eye a streak and then an explosion close aboard the lead dhow. He looked toward Point Mahatsinjo in time to see the cloud of smoke and dust from the back-blast of another 75 mm rifle. That must be Battery Berthe.

  He hadn't even known there was a Battery Berthe until HQ had abruptly stripped him of half his team and given him Cuccio and Lebrun in their place; a bad bargain from his viewpoint, but it meant a second battery in time for the battle. He hoped she was well dug in, and also ready to move away quickly. No one had fully realized just how obvious a giveaway the backblast was until the rifles were in action.

  The two pirate dhows had now lost almost all way, their sails luffing and fluttering. Ralambo guessed they were about to launch the boats carrying the landing force. They got off one more round – this one, unluckily, a near-miss – then hustled to break down the rifle and move it, this time out of the Castle and into the trees. As they were setting up in their new position, riflemen on either side of them scattered. “You assholes draw fire like fresh merde draws flies!” snarled an infantry sergeant.

  “You'll be kissing our asses once we've taken out half the boats for you before they even reach the surf!” retorted Ralambo. But the rifle NCO was already gone.

  Lebrun now had even further to go for the next round; they would have to move their ready supply of ammo closer to their new position.

  While they were waiting, Ralambo watched the enemy squadron. The two dhows fell off and picked up headway, revealing a mass of boats that had been launched from their offshore side. There were scores of them, packed with men. The dhows sailed on toward Point Mahatsinjo, and the boats fanned out in open order, pulling hard for the beach. To Ralambo's amazement, it appeared as if the gun dhows were abandoning their landing force to attack without covering fire. He couldn't believe they would do that – he waited for the ruse to reveal itself. But the dhows sailed on.

  Sergeant Ralambo smiled grimly to himself. This was going to be like shooting fish in a barrel.

  Then he started to counted the landing craft. It seemed impossible that two dhows, however big, could have carried so many boats – they must have been nested three deep on deck and stacked up in the holds. And each small craft was packed with fighters. The boats continued to disperse until they were heading for the beach on a wide front, in staggered files, too far apart for a single near miss to swamp two of them.

  The Sergeant extended his metaphor. That barrel was full of fish, all right, but the fish were sharks, and there were a lot of them, and every one he missed was going to leap out of the barrel and bite him.

  “Befort, pick your shots – deliberate fire. I'll spot for you.”

  The 25 mm rifle's sharp craack told him that she was in range, and now the exchange of fire between Berthe and the dhows was heavy. He said a brief prayer for their sister battery, sited as she was with very little cover, then put them out of his mind and settled grimly to the task. He had a lot of boats to sink and not much time to do it before they were landing in the surf and pouring fighters ashore.

  He saw a bright flash from the bow of one of the boats, a puff of smoke, then a moment later a sharp crack followed almost immediately by a small explosion in the Castle ruins. He then saw the same kind of fire from other boats.

  More good news: at least some of the landing craft were armed with something bigger than small arms, twenty or twenty-five millimeter. And they were clearly targeting the seventy-five and the twenty-five. No wonder the pirate commander felt free to leave the boats on their own – they had their own means of providing covering fire. A quick count showed that between half and a third of the boats were so armed. Obviously, these boats must be their primary targets, at least initially.

  Dave Schofield stared in dismay at the pirate dhow. She had abandoned her chase of the Scorpion and fallen off onto a reach, an easterly heading on the starboard tack – toward Nosy Be.

  The radioman petty officer rushed up on deck. “Enemy radio traffic just now, Skipper. Trying to decipher it.”

  “No rush on that, Ebert. I think I know what it says.”

  Landry approached Dave. “Looks like she's given up on us and decided to go help her sisters.”

  “I think she was just ordered to do that, Chief. And now we have a problem: it's just possible that she can get to Nosy Be in time to make a difference. We're supposed to keep her busy, but she's so much faster she can just sail away from the poor old Scorpion,” Dave replied. Thereby saving my life, not to mention the lives of my crew, he reflected but did not say. He pushed that thought from his mind as unworthy; the mission came first.

  But maybe they had one last ploy they could try.

  “Hey, Boats, come here.” The petty officer who served as the Scorpion's boatswain – she wasn't big enough to rate a warrant officer in this billet – hurried aft.

  “Boats, remember how the Albatros whipped up that big drifter? Could you run one up for us – real quick, like?”

  The petty officer was shaking his head before Dave finished speaking.

  “Not a chance, sir. A piece of canvas big enough to make any difference in speed would likely carry away the mast. A lateen rig just ain't stayed and balanced for topsails.”

  “What about a headsail,then? Could you manage a jib?”

  The Boatswain scratched his stubbly jaw, thinking about it. “Well, without a bowsprit we couldn't spread much of one – and there ain't no hope of jury-rigging a bowsprit at sea.”

  “Anything you can do, Viret. Every tenth of a knot counts.”

  Viret looked as if a light was dawning. “You know, sir, I think I could rig up a running bowsprit –slide that extra spar out forrard and chain it down good to the weather rail. This would spread a fair sized jib. 'Course it'd be a bitch to tack … “

  “Do it, Boats! We'll worry about tacking when we have to!” Viret rushed off on the word, shouting for the two able seamen he had chosen as mates.

  Dave turned to Landry. “Chief, get forward with the one-incher. Fire at extreme range – try to damage her rigging. We have to stop or at least slow down that pigboat before she can join her mates.”

  “Aye aye, sir. But first can I ask – what's the latest word from Nosy Be?”

  “The AEWS has the other two dhows in sight, hull down,” Dave replied grimly.

  “Come on, Petel, Souchay,” Landry said to his loader and runner. “Set her up right in the eyes of the vessel.” The two seamen heft
ed the one-incher and hustled forward. Soon afterward, Landry fired a ranging round, aiming scope set for maximum range. “Wide left!” called down the masthead lookout, who was doubling as gunfire spotter, and Landry realized he had not made enough allowance for the wind.

  The deck of the Scorpion became a hive of activity as the spare sail was roused out and Viret directed and oversaw its re-cutting into a large jib. Sail needles flashed in the sunlight as every sailor except the helmsman, the lookout, and the gun's crew – even the mids and the cook – frantically sewed on boltropes and turned in grommets. Then the extra spar was run out on the windward side, with half its length projecting forward, and chained to the rail – a “running bowsprit” that could be quickly retracted. Dave worried that the rail might not take a strong gust of wind – that the sail and spar might rip it right out of the deck. But he wouldn't worry about that now. Once it was rigged, he'd try to think of a way to secure it better.

  The jury-rigged jib was ready to raise once Viret had scaled the mast, secured a block, and reeved a halyard, while the mids attached the sheet and rigged a sheet block on the lee side. For safety's sake, a running shroud was also rigged to windward from masthead to gunwale.

  “Ready to hoist?”

  “Ready, aye, ready, Skipper.”

  “Heave way.”

  The big triangle soared up to the masthead and was sheeted in. Dave exulted as he felt a definite surge beneath his feet, a palpable increase in speed. Now if only the rig stood the strain. He gazed anxiously aloft. The windward shroud took the strain with some creaking, and the running bowsprit took up all the slack in its tie-down chain, making it clank. Dave held his breath for long moments. The rig settled down without further ado, and he felt spray on his face: the Scorpion now had a bone in her teeth.

  “Well done, Viret! Well done, Scorpions! She's holding!” The crew cheered and clapped one another on the back.

  “How's she steering?” Dave asked the helmsman.

  “A lot more lee helm, but okay, Skipper.”

  A sharp crack came from the bow. Landry had held his fire while the jury-rigging of a headsail had taken place, his aim distracted by all the bustle forward. Now he had resumed his careful, deliberate shooting. His loader gave a shout of joy: “A hit!”

  Dave hurried forward. “Where'd you hit her, Chief?” he demanded.

  “Right on the stern, looked like. An HE round. I'm alternating solid shot at the hull and HE frag at her rigging and afterdeck.”

  Dave stood by and watched as Landry deliberately squeezed off four more rounds, two of which appeared to be hits. The loader, Petel, then pulled out the empty magazine protruding from the left side of the rifle and slammed a new one into place. “First round's solid shot, Chief,” he said. Dave watched carefully as Landry squeezed off the first round in this magazine. It was hard to spot a hit with solid shot at this range, but he saw no splash. He smiled grimly as he pictured scores of Caliphate fighters, confined below to be out of the way of the deck force, as a solid one-inch round raked the vessel from stern to stem, generating a lethal cloud of splinters forward of each bulkhead it pierced. Landry fired another round, this one HE, and scored a hit squarely on the stern; they could see the shell burst clearly

  “I think you just made a mess of the captain's cabin, Chief,” Dave chuckled.

  “I hope so, Skipper.”

  The pirate captain must have become annoyed at this role reversal by the insolent single-master, and decided to put an end to the irritant. He luffed up, unmasking all three of his bronze three-inchers, now arrayed along his starboard side, and fired them in rapid succession.

  “Everybody lie down flat!” yelled Dave. A solid shot thudded into the Scorpion's hull, making her shudder and momentarily checking her way; Dave felt a sympathetic pain for his vessel, as if the shot had hit him. Another round punched a neat hole in the mainsail, and the third apparently missed. The pirate dhow was now stopped, sails luffing, allowing the Scorpion to close quickly. The battle now degenerated into a straight slugging match, one the Kerguelenian vessel, outgunned and outnumbered, could not possibly win.

  Round after three-inch round thudded into the Scorpion's hull or perforated her sails, but amazingly she had not yet suffered any casualties. There was no one left below to be hit by the hull-piercing rounds, and the entire crew lay flat on the deck except for the helmsman and the sharpshooter at the masthead. The latter had taken the lookout's place and was firing deliberately and coolly at the enemy dhow's afterdeck, where her officers presumably were. Landry was quick-firing HE fragmentation rounds at the pirate's guns, trying to suppress her fire. He succeeded momentarily several times, by killing or wounding an entire gun's crew, but in each case the enemy quickly re-manned the gun. Then, to Dave's joy, he saw that Landry's fire had dismounted the forward-most enemy gun, putting it out of action.

  The deck of the enemy dhow was now crowded with armed men. The landing force had been called up, clearly to board the Scorpion or to repel her boarders, as required. If the pirate gunners didn't succeed in sinking her first: her hold was clearly flooded, her motion was sluggish, and a glance over the side showed Dave that her freeboard had been reduced by nearly half.

  A boarding battle was clearly going to be suicide for the Scorpions, massively outnumbered as they were. Nevertheless, they had to do it. Every pirate they killed or wounded would be one fewer for the Nosy Be defense forces to deal with. Dave wished he could say good-bye to his crew, tell them he was proud of them and that it had been an honor to command them, but the constant, deafening gunfire made that impossible. Miraculously, they still had no casualties, but that was a situation that could last no longer than a few more minutes.

  In one way, the enemy's numbers were working against them for the moment. The pirate dhow's deck was so crowded with men that Landry with the one-incher firing frag, and the crew with their shotguns, now in range, found them easy targets, and were cutting great swaths through the mob, while the pirates were hampered in returning fire by their own numbers, mobbed as they were shoulder to shoulder. But the pirates would clearly have plenty of men left to deal with the Scorpions once the two vessels closed.

  One bright spot: Landry had now succeeded in silencing the remaining two pirate guns by slaughtering their crews, and the pirates had not yet gotten them back into action. But if or when they did, at this range, and if the pirates loaded with case shot, they could massacre the Scorpions before a boarding engagement could even begin.

  Now the distance between the the two vessels was narrowing quickly. It seemed to Dave that at one moment they were at extreme small-arms range and seconds later coming alongside. The Scorpion rammed the pirate dhow amidships with a tremendous shock that threw almost everyone on both vessels to the deck. All leaped up again, and the enemy tried to carry the Scorpion in a single rush, overwhelming her defenders by sheer numbers.

  But the Scorpions met the attackers as they surged over the rail with a storm of pistol and shotgun fire, and the attack faltered momentarily. Dave took advantage of this to yell, “Board! Board!”, waving his pistol and setting an example by leaping up on to the rail and down onto the enemy deck. When in doubt, attack! The Scorpions followed, yelling at the top of their lungs and firing as rapidly as they could reload. The pirates were almost all armed with their favorite weapon, one they wielded with wicked efficiency: a long knife or short sword with a curved blade and a razor-sharp edge. Allowing a pirate to get you within its reach meant death or a horrible wound. The Scorpions fired desperately to prevent that, often pressing a shotgun's muzzle to the breast of a pirate to fire just before the blade struck them down.

  The enemy's weather deck was a maze of nested small boats, six- or eight-oared, obviously for the landing on Nosy Be. These split the battle up into small contending groups of Kergs and pirates.

  Dave's senses were muddled by the noise and chaos. He fired his pistol repeatedly directly into the faces of attacking pirates. Once, his weapon snapped on an empty ch
amber just as a Caliphate fighter closed with him, swinging his sword; Dave smashed the man in the face with the butt of the pistol. The pirate, bearded and wild-eyed, was not downed by this blow but only had his swing deflected, the blade slicing through Dave's left sleeve down its length and leaving a long, bloody stripe. His adversary was drawing back his blade to decapitate Dave when one of his Scorpions – he never found out who – saved his life by firing both barrels of his shotgun over Dave's shoulder at point-blank range into the pirate's head, almost decapitating the pirate and temporarily deafening Dave to the extent that the rest of the battle seemed to him to be carried out in silence. But this messy business gave Dave the momentary respite he needed to reload his pistol, quickly shaking out the empty shells and putting in two half-moon clips.

  Dave heard the loud and distinctive craack of the one-incher off to his right, and glanced around to see Chief Landry on the deck of the pirate dhow, the weapon slung across his shoulder with a length of nine-thread line and firing from the hip. He reloaded from a canvas bandolier of clips. He was firing case shells, which made the weapon in effect a giant shotgun. Petel and Souchay, on each side of him, were guarding his flanks with shotguns.

  Landry had created a triangular zone of blood and death to his front, its apex the muzzle of the one-incher. The pirates wavered before this onslaught, then broke, dashing below decks. Dave had learned better than to believe this meant that the pirates were defeated. They would fight like demons if followed below, with the advantage of knowing the dark holds and lockers of their own vessel very well, and picking off Scorpions every time they showed themselves silhouetted against an open hatchway.

  Dave looked around. The deck of the pirate dhow was covered with blood and bodies. He counted the Scorpions he saw still on their feet, then, in shock, counted them again: fully half his men were killed or wounded.

  But twice that number of pirates were down.

  Dave had no intention of pursuing the enemy survivors below decks, where the advantage was all theirs. “Chips!” he shouted. “Fetch spikes and your hammer – nail every hatchway shut!”