by Wilbur Smith
The fighting raged back and forth across the main deck, but the combined crews of the two schooners outnumbered that of the larger Arcturus and slowly they began to wrest the upper hand. Mansur sought | out Cornish and the two locked blades. Mansur tried to drive him back across the deck, and pin him against the shrouds. But Ruby Cornish was
a wily old dog sailor. He came back at Mansur hard and fast, and they circled each other.
Dorian killed a man with a quick thrust, then looked around for Guy. He was not certain what he would do if he found him. Perhaps, deep in his heart, he longed for a battlefield reconciliation. He could not see him in the ruck of fighting men, but he realized that the battle was swinging in their favour. The crew of the Arcturus were giving up the fight. He saw two throw aside their weapons and, quick as rabbits, scuttle down the nearest hatchway. When a crew ran below decks they were beaten.
"In God's Name the battle is ours," he exhorted the men around him. "Have at them!" His voice filled them with fresh strength and they threw themselves at the enemy. Dorian looked for Mansur, and saw him on the far side of the deck. He was heavily engaged with Cornish. There was blood on his robe but Dorian hoped that it was not his own. Then he saw Ruby Cornish break off, and run back to attempt to rally his fleeing men. Mansur was too exhausted to follow him and rested on his sword. In the light of the battle lanterns, sweat shone on his face and his chest heaved with the effort of breathing. Dorian shouted across the deck to him, "What happened to Guy? Where is my brother? Have you seen him?"
"No, Father," Mansur shouted back hoarsely. "He must have run below with the rest of them."
"We have them beaten," Dorian cried. "It will take one last charge, and the Arcturus is ours. Come on!"
The men around him gave a ragged cheer and started forward, but then they came up short again as Guy Courtney's high-pitched yell cut through the hubbub of the battle. He stood at the rail of the poop deck. In one hand he carried a burning length of slow-match and on the other shoulder he balanced a keg of black powder. The bung had been knocked from the keg and a thick trail of powder poured from it to the deck at his feet.
"This powder trail runs to the ship's main powder magazine," he shouted. Though he spoke in English his meaning was clear to every Arab seaman aboard. The fighting ceased and all stared at him, aghast. A deathly silence fell over the Arcturus's deck.
1 will strike this ship, and blow up every one of you with it," Guy screamed, and lifted the smoking, spluttering slow-match high. "As God is my witness, I shall do it."
"Guy!" Dorian shouted up at him, "I am your brother, Dorian Courtney!"
"I know it well!" Guy yelled back, and there was a bitter, hard edge to his voice. "Verity has confessed her deceit and complicity to me. That will not save you."
"No, Guy!" Dorian cried. "You must not do it."
"There is naught you can say to dissuade me," Guy shouted back, and hurled the powder keg down on to the deck at his feet. It burst open. Gunpowder spilled across the deck. Slowly he brought down the flaring slow-match and a wail of fear went up from the crowded main deck. One of the men from the Revenge turned and raced back to the ship's side. He sprang across the narrow gap, to the illusory safety of the deck of his own ship.
His example was infectious. They fled back to the smaller ships. As soon as they were aboard they hacked with their swords at the grappling lines that held them bound to the doomed Arcturus.
Only Kumrah, Batula and a few other staunch sailors stood their ground beside Dorian and Mansur.
"It's a ruse! He will not do it," Dorian told them. "Follow me!" But as he ran to the foot of the ladder that led up to the poop deck, Guy Courtney hurled the slow-match into the powder trail. In a dense, hissing tail of smoke the gunpowder ignited and ran back swiftly along the deck until it reached the open hatchway and shot down into the interior of the ship.
The pluck of even the stalwart captains and their officers deserted them, and they turned and ran. The last of the grappling lines were parting, popping like cotton threads. In a moment the two smaller ships would be free of the Arcturus and drift away into the night.
"Even if it is a ruse, we shall still be stranded here," Mansur called to his father. There were hostile sailors all around them. Their predicament would prove fatal.
"Not a moment to lose," Dorian shouted back. "Run for it, Mansur."
Both of them turned and leaped across to the decks of their own ships, just as the last grappling lines parted and the hulls drifted apart. On the poop deck Guy Courtney stood alone. The powder smoke swirled in clouds around him, giving him a satanical appearance. The sparks of burning powder and debris took hold in the rigging and ran up the shrouds.
The first cannon salvo had jarred the timbers of the hull and startled Verity awake. The Arcturus had come to battle stations so silently that in her barred cabin she had not realized what was happening on deck until this moment. She scrambled from her bunk and turned up the wick on the lantern that hung on gimbals from the deck above. She reached for her clothing and pulled on a cotton shirt and the breeches she preferred to skirts and petticoats when she needed freedom of movement.
She was busy with her boots when the hull heeled sharply to the next broadside of cannon. She ran to the door of her cabin and beat upon it with her fists. "Let me out!" she screamed. "Open this door!" But there was no one to hear her.
She picked up the heavy silver candelabrum from the table and tried to break open the door panels so that she could reach the locking bar on the outside, but the sturdy teak timbers resisted her efforts. She was forced to give up and retreat to the far side of her cabin. She opened the porthole and peered out. She knew that escape by this route was hopeless. She had considered it many times during the weeks of her captivity. The surface of the sea creamed by close below her face, and it was six feet to the rail of the deck above her. She gazed out into the night and tried to follow the battle by the flare and flicker of gunfire. She caught glimpses of the other ship that was engaging them, and recognized it at once as the Revenge. She could see no sign of Mansur's ship.
She winced every time the cannon salvos roared out from the deck above her cabin, or when an enemy ball crashed into their hull. The battle seemed to rage interminably, and her senses were dulled by the uproar. The stench of burnt powder permeated her cabin like some dreadful incense burned to the god Mars, and she coughed in its acrid fumes.
Then, suddenly, she saw another dark apparition appear silently out of the darkness, another ship.
The Sprite!" she whispered, and her heart bounded. Mansur's ship! She had thought never to see it again. Then it began to fire upon them, and she was so excited that she felt no fear at all. One after another the iron round-shot smashed into the Arcturus, and each time she shuddered to the strike.
then, abruptly, Verity was flung to the deck as a ball ripped through the bulkhead beside her doorway, and the cabin was filled with smoke
and wood-dust. When it cleared she saw that the door had been shot away. She jumped to her feet, clambered through the wreckage and forced her way out into the open passageway. She heard the hand-to hand fighting on the deck above her as the crew of the Sprite boarded the ship over her port rail. The shouts and cries mingled with the clash of steel blades and the report of pistols and muskets. She looked about her for a weapon but there was nothing. Then she saw that her father's door stood open. She knew he kept his pistols in the drawer of his desk, and hurried to it.
Now she stood directly below the skylight, and her father's voice carried clearly through the opening: "This powder trail runs to the ship's main powder magazine," he shouted. A deathly silence fell over the Arcturus's deck, and Verity froze. "I will strike this ship, and blow up every one of you with it," her father screamed again. "As God is my witness, I shall do it."
"Guy!" Verity recognized the voice that answered him. "I am your brother, Dorian Courtney!"
"I know it well!" Guy yelled back. "Verity has confessed her deceit and
complicity to me. That will not save you."
"No, Guy!" Dorian cried. "You must not do it."
"There is naught you can say to dissuade me," Guy shouted back.
Verity listened to no more. She dashed out into the passage and immediately saw the thick trail of black powder running down the treads of the companionway and along the passage to the lower deck and the magazine.
"He is telling the truth," she cried aloud. "He truly means to strike the ship." She acted without hesitation. She seized one of the fire buckets that stood at the foot of the companionway. The ship's wooden hull was a mortal fire hazard, and the buckets filled with seawater were placed at every convenient point whenever the ship went into battle. Verity sloshed the water across the powder trail, washing a wide gap in it.
She was only just in time. With a sizzling rush the flames came shooting down the companionway, then checked in a cloud of blue smoke as they reached the gap she had made. She jumped upon them, stamping on the smouldering grains. Then she seized another bucket of seawater and emptied it over them. She made sure she had doused every spark before she ran up the ladder to the quarterdeck.
"Father! This is madness!" Verity cried, as she stepped out of the smoke behind him.
"I ordered you to remain in your cabin." He rounded on her. "You disobeyed me."
"If I had not, you would have blown me and yourself to glory," she shrieked at him, almost beside herself with terror at how close they had been to death.
He saw how her clothing was scorched and blackened and sodden with seawater. "You treacherous, evil woman," he screamed. "You have gone over completely to my enemies."
He struck her full in the face with a clenched fist, and sent her reeling across the deck until she crashed into the bulwark. She stared at him in horror and outrage. Since childhood she had been accustomed to the beatings with his riding crop across her legs and buttocks when she displeased him, but only twice before had he struck her with his fist. She knew in that moment that she could never let it happen again. That had been the third and last time. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and glanced at the thick smear of blood from her torn lips. Then she turned her head and looked down on to the deck of the Sprite below her.
The last grappling lines that held the two ships together parted and the Sprite's sails filled with the night breeze. She began to bear away. Her deck was a shambles of shot damage, some of her crew were wounded, others scurrying to their gun stations, and still more were jumping back into her from the taller side of the Arcturus as the gap between them widened.
Then she saw Mansur below her on the deck of the Sprite and, despite her injuries and her father's rage, her heart hammered wildly against her ribs. During all the time since they had parted, she had tried to subdue her feelings for him. She had had no expectation of ever laying eyes upon him again, and thought she had succeeded in putting him out of her mind. But now, when she saw him again, handsome and tall in the light thrown by the burning rigging, she remembered the secrets he had imparted to her and the protestation of his feelings for her, and she could deny him no longer.
In the same moment he looked up and recognized her. She saw his astonishment give way immediately to grim determination. He leaped across the deck of the Sprite to the wheel and shoved aside the helmsman. He seized the spokes and spun it in a blur back the opposite way. The Sprite's turn away to port checked and then she answered her rudder, turning back slowly. Once more her bows collided heavily against the Arcturus's mid-section, but she did not rebound for Mansur held the wheel over. She began to drag down the side of the larger vessel.
Mansur shouted up at her, "Jump, Verity! Come to me!" For a long moment she remained frozen, and then it was almost too late. "Verity, in God's Name, you cannot deny me. I love you. Jump!"
She hesitated no longer. She came up on her feet as quick as a cat, and sprang to the top of the bulwark, balancing there for an instant with her arms outspread. Guy realized what she was about, and ran across the poop to her.
"I forbid it!" he screamed, and snatched at her leg, but she kicked away his hand. He grabbed a fistful of her shirt, and she tried to pull free, but he clung on stubbornly. As they struggled, Mansur left the wheel and ran to the Sprite's side. He was directly below her, holding his arms wide in invitation.
"Jump!" he called. "I will catch you."
She flung herself out over the ship's side. Her father did not release his grip, and her shirt ripped, leaving him holding a handful of cloth. Verity dropped into Mansur's arms and her weight bore him to his knees, but he straightened and, for a moment, held her tightly to his chest. Then he set her on her feet and dragged her to safety. The crew's bundled hammocks had been piled along the bulwark as some protection from splinters and musket balls, and Mansur pushed her down behind this barricade. Then he ran back to the wheel and spun it the opposite way.
The two ships drew apart swiftly. The Revenge had also disentangled herself, and was under sail. The Arcturus was still ablaze, but Mansur saw Ruby Cornish striding down her deck, taking charge of the salvage. His men were swarming out of the hatchways again. Within minutes they had brought down the flaming canvas and doused it with seawater from the pumps.
With her guns reloaded and run out, the Arcturus turned in pursuit of the Sprite once more, but her rigging was heavily damaged and Cornish had not had time to bring up new canvas from the sail lockers ; and bend it on to the bare, scorched yards. The Arcturus made slow progress through the water and both the Sprite and the Revenge drew away from her.
Then, as swiftly as it had risen, the night wind died away. Almost as if they had anticipated the dawn, the clouds opened and allowed the paling stars to shine through. A hush descended on the ocean, the roiling surface seemed to freeze into a sheet of polished ice. All three of the battered ships slowed, then came to a gradual standstill. Even in the faint light of the stars they were within sight of each other, becalmed, swinging slowly and aimlessly on the silent currents beneath that glassy surface. However, the Sprite and the Revenge were out of hail of each other, so Dorian and Mansur were unable to confer and decide their next course of action.
"Let the men eat their breakfast as they work, but we must repair our
damage swiftly. This calm will not last long." Mansur saw the work put in hand, then went to find Verity. She stood alone by the ship's side, staring across at the dim shape of the Arcturus, but she turned to him at once.
"You came," he said.
"Because you called," she replied softly, and held out her hand to him. He took it, and was surprised by how cool and smooth her skin was, how narrow and supple her hand.
"There is so much I want to tell you."
"We will have a lifetime for that," she said, 'but let me savour this first moment to the full." They looked into each other's eyes.
"You are beautiful," he said.
"I am not. But my heart sings to hear you say it."
"I would kiss you."
"But you cannot," she answered. "Not under the eyes of your crew. They would not approve."
"Fortunately, we will have a lifetime for that also."
"And I will rejoice in every minute of it."
The dawn broke and the first shafts of sunlight beamed through the gaps in the thunderheads and turned the waters of the ocean to glowing amethyst. It played full upon the three ships. They lay motionless, like toys on a village pond. The sea was glassy smooth, its surface marred only by the skittering flight of the flying fish and the swirls of the great silver and gold tuna that pursued them.