‘Load!’
A flannel cartridge was passed up from the magazine, slipped into the muzzle and rammed home.
‘Run out!’
The gun crew hauled on the ropes to push the muzzle out through the gun port.
‘Prime!’
A friction tube was inserted into the breech. There was no need to aim. The captain of the gun grasped the wooden toggle on the lanyard. Everyone else backed away. ‘Ready!’
The gunner glanced at Killigrew, who nodded once.
‘Fire!’
The captain of the gun jerked back the toggle. The gun boomed deafeningly and spewed a great plume of pale grey smoke from its muzzle.
‘Are they heaving to?’ Killigrew called to the look-out at the masthead.
‘No, sir… they’re changing course, veering to port!’
‘Running for the reefs,’ snorted Killigrew. ‘Range?’
‘’Bout a thousand yards, sir.’
‘Right. We’ll fire a shot across their bows. Round shot if you please, Guns.’
‘Sponge!’
The barrel was wormed and sponged to clear the bore of any smouldering remains from the previous charge while one man went to fetch the next cartridge, along with a sixty-eight-pound round shot. The gun was loaded, primed once more and run out again.
‘Point!’ ordered the gunner. The captain of the gun lined up the bow-chaser until it pointed to a spot perhaps fifty yards ahead of the junk, to let its crew know they were within range. The Tisiphone was well out of range of the junk’s archaic cannon.
‘Elevate!’
The gun crew lifted the breech from the carriage and the number two of the gun crew slid the wedge back as far as it would go, to give the gun maximum elevation. ‘Down!’ he called.
‘Ready!’ said the captain of the gun.
The gunner waited until the pitching of the deck reached its zenith, and fired just before the gun was lined up with where he wanted the ball to fire. The gun boomed and shot back on its carriage. The shot screeched through the air and threw up a huge white plume close enough to the junk to drench the men standing on deck.
‘Capital shooting, Guns,’ called Killigrew. ‘Any sign of them heaving to?’ he called up to the look-out.
‘No, sir! They… they’re putting out sweeps, sir!’
Killigrew could see that for himself as the crew of the junk lowered the large oars into the water, trying to give themselves that extra burst of speed they needed to carry them to safety.
‘They’ve got sand, I’ll say that for ’em,’ opined the gunner.
‘That’s because they know we’ll hang every last one of the jackals if we catch them,’ said Killigrew. These men had murdered the crew of the clipper and he intended to see to it that those who were not killed in this fight would be hanged for their crimes. ‘Reload.’
‘Aye, aye, sir. Chain shot?’ Chain shot to dismast them, slow them down enough to overhaul them before they reached the reefs, and then get in close and pummel them into submission with round shot.
Killigrew was about to nod his acquiescence when he changed his mind. ‘No, damn it. A shell. We’ll blow the bastards out of the water.’ If they could destroy this junk with one shot, they might still have time to catch the second junk.
‘Aye, aye, sir!’
As the gun crew reloaded the bow-chaser, Killigrew studied the foe through a telescope. He could see them sweating at the sweeps, two men to an oar, pulling for their very lives. He knew the back-breaking agony of that kind of work over an extended period, and could have felt sorry for them if they had not been pirates, the scum of the seas. He had met Chinese the last time he had been in these waters and bore the race no ill will. He had been taught to treat all men as individuals, regardless of race, colour or creed. Indeed, of all the races he had encountered he had a particular fondness for the Chinese, with their fine art, cheerful nature and impeccable manners. But these men were criminals according to the Manchu Code as much as in British law. He would take as many alive as he could, to stand trial in Hong Kong as justice demanded, but he would not lose a wink of sleep over any that he had to kill in the process.
‘Ready!’ the captain of the gun announced.
Killigrew heard him, but was still searching the deck of the junk with the telescope, looking for the pirate chief who commanded her; perhaps wondering what kind of a man his adversary was. Not that it mattered: in a few seconds he would go to join the great majority…
‘Shall I give the order to fire, sir?’ prompted the gunner.
Killigrew was about to say ‘yes’ when he saw her.
She was pinioned between two burly pilongs – burly for Chinese, at least – on the high poop deck, and stood out by virtue of her emerald-green sari with gold brocade trimmings. Killigrew had not seen her until now and could only presume that she had been brought up from below that instant. A third pilong held a cutlass at her throat; to judge from his finery – a white silk tunic, pyjamy trousers and a crimson sash – he was the lao-pan, as the captains of pirate junks were known. He gazed straight back at Killigrew, grinning malevolently, as though he could see the lieutenant without the aid of a telescope, even at that distance.
‘Hold your fire!’ snapped Killigrew.
‘Sir?’
‘You heard me plain enough, Guns.’ Killigrew turned the telescope to where the breakers which crashed over the reefs of the Paracels could now be seen less than a mile ahead of the junk. They only had a few more minutes to catch the junk before it reached safety.
‘What’s keeping you, Second?’ Robertson’s voice, amplified by his speaking trumpet – not that it was ever in need of amplification – boomed from the quarterdeck.
Killigrew snapped the telescope shut, tucked it under his arms, cupped his hands around his mouth to reply, and then thought better of it. Instead he jogged briskly down the deck to where Robertson and Hartcliffe stood, and saluted smartly.
‘Sir, it looks as if there’s a hostage on board that junk. An Indian woman.’
‘These pirates have doxies of all colours on board their boats,’ Robertson snapped back. ‘I don’t care to make war on women any more than you do, Mr Killigrew, but I can’t let a pilong junk get away just because there’s a woman on board.’
‘I agree, sir. But this one’s a hostage, I’m certain of it. One of the pilongs is holding a cutlass to her throat.’
‘A bluff.’
‘I don’t think so, sir.’
Robertson sighed. ‘Very well, Killigrew. So there’s a hostage on board. What do you want me to do about it? Let them get away?’
‘No, sir. With your permission I’d like to take the first cutter, along with twenty men and try to board her.’
‘Have you ever boarded a hostile vessel before, Mr Killigrew?’
‘On occasion.’ Killigrew and Robertson had been acquainted for just the few months since they had sailed from Portsmouth so the commander only really knew his Second Lieutenant by Rear-Admiral Napier’s recommendation. Corsair galleys, pilong junks, Malay prahus, slave ships – Killigrew had boarded them all. But it never got any easier; if anything, the opposite. Once you had boarded a hostile vessel and thrown yourself on to a deck swarming with men intent on slaughtering you, you knew that it was only good joss that kept you alive in the confusion of the bloody hand-to-hand combat, and each new experience only reinforced that knowledge as you saw more and more shipmates felled by blows which might just as easily have felled yourself.
‘Then you’ll know it’s a damned tricky business. Not all of you will come back. How many of my men do you want me to risk, just to save one woman?’
‘There’s a difference, sir. All of the men are volunteers. They knew what they were signing up for when they joined us. That woman’s an innocent; a passenger from the clipper, I’d guess.’
Robertson sighed. ‘Very well. But we’ll do it my way, Mr Killigrew. Lord Hartcliffe will take the first cutter with thirty men. The marines will stay on
board to give covering fire as we pull alongside, keeping back enough to stop the cutter from being swamped by our wash…’
‘With all due respect, sir, Killigrew’s much better at this sort of thing than I am,’ protested Hartcliffe.
‘Pipe down, First. I haven’t finished yet. You’ll take the junk from the starboard side. Mr Killigrew will be in the second cutter with twenty men and approach the junk from port. They won’t be able to keep up as heavy a fire if we attack them from both sides at once: they’ll have to divide their forces. Well, don’t just stand about like a couple of farts in a thunderstorm! Look lively, there!’
‘Aye, aye, sir!’ Killigrew ordered the boatswain to pick out the men for the boats – it was no good asking for volunteers: every man on board would step forward, if only to avoid accusations of cowardice from his shipmates – and went below to his cabin. He primed and loaded one of his six-barrelled ‘pepperbox’ revolving pistols, attached it to his belt with the hook on the butt designed for that purpose, and fastened on his cutlass and scabbard.
By the time he re-emerged on deck the hands the boatswain had chosen to man the cutters were ready with their own weapons; a motley array of muskets, pistols, hatchets and cutlasses. Most of the crew were old hands who had served on the Tisiphone before, on her previous commission with the West Africa Squadron. They had rushed to sign on again when they had heard that Commander Standish would no longer be captain. What they thought of Robertson, Killigrew had not yet divined; but then, he had not made his own mind up about the new captain.
Senior amongst the ratings in the second cutter’s crew was Petty Officer Olaf Ågård, one of the Tisiphone's quartermasters: a tall, blond giant who had been serving in the Royal Navy for so long he had lost all trace of his native Swedish accent. Next to him, and in sharp physical contrast, was Able Seaman Wes Molineaux. Bare-footed and stripped to the waist beneath the tropical sun, with a single gold ring through one ear, Molineaux looked more like a corsair of the Barbary Coast than a seaman of the Royal Navy. His complexion was as dark as roasted Arabica coffee beans, the features beneath his shaven head Nubian. He was not tall, but he had the broad shoulders and wiry physique of a true sailor. When he balled his fists on his hips and stood with arms akimbo to throw back his head and laugh his deep, fruity chuckle in some response to a ship-mate’s jest, he put Killigrew in mind of the Djinn of the Lamp: to hear was to obey, but only a fool would forget what a dangerous spirit he aspired to command.
The Tisiphone overhauled the junk to starboard. Hartcliffe and his men climbed into the first cutter on the starboard side of the sloop; on the port side, closest to the junk, Killigrew and his men got into the second. The engine was stopped and as the sloop slowed in the water the second cutter was lowered from the davits. As soon as Killigrew judged the Tisiphone’s headway to be negligible enough, he ordered the falls to be let go, and ten of the hands grasped the oars, the other ten readying their muskets.
‘Shove off!’ Killigrew ordered from the prow of the cutter.
The boat was pushed out from the Tisiphone’s side, well clear of the port-side paddle-wheel. ‘Out oars!’ ordered Ågård. The oars were eased into the rowlocks; the fenders were taken in. ‘Give way together!’
Taking their stroke from the starboard after-oar, the oarsmen began to pull towards the junk. They were now close enough to see the breakers crashing over the reef with the naked eye, even from the height of the cutter. The boat soon gathered way as the oarsmen pulled mightily. The pilongs at the junk’s sweeps would be growing weary by now, while the men in the cutter were rested and fit. The boat passed the Tisiphone’s prow and a moment later the first cutter emerged on the other side. Killigrew saw Hartcliffe in the bow and waved to him, before turning his attention on the junk.
‘Pace yourselves,’ he told the oarsmen. The junk might just be a few hundred yards ahead, but the cutters only had a knot or two’s advantage and it might yet be a long chase. With Ågård at the tiller, the second cutter moved out across the junk’s stern to overhaul it from port. To starboard, the first cutter paced them.
The junk’s stern was ornamented with intricate Chinese carvings, and brightly painted to look like the face of a highly stylised grinning demon. When both boats were within a hundred yards of the junk, one of the demon’s eyes swung up to reveal a gun port behind.
Ågård saw it too. ‘Should we take evasive action, sir?’ he called as the muzzle of a small bronze cannon – shaped like the mouth of a dragon – protruded.
Killigrew shook his head. ‘Belay that, Mr Ågård. There’s one thing you can say for Chinese gunnery: their shots fall everywhere except where they’re aimed.’
The dragon’s mouth belched smoke and flames, and the shot screeched over their heads to plunge into the water about fifty yards abaft. Ågård grinned, relieved that Killigrew’s cool-headedness had once again proved well founded. Killigrew looked more confident than he felt: for a first shot, it had come a damned sight closer than he had expected. Unlike many pilongs, who might be fishermen or traders fallen on hard times, these knew their business.
The long barrels of gingalls – outsize Chinese matchlocks firing balls more than an inch in diameter – emerged through other ports, or were levelled over the bulwark on the junk’s high poop. They fired in a ragged volley. Most of the shots went wide, kicking up frighteningly large spurts of water on all sides of the two boats. One of them smashed a large piece of wood from the upper strake of the second cutter’s gunwales, and one of the oarsmen cried out.
‘Anyone hurt?’ demanded Killigrew.
‘It’s Dando, sir,’ said Ågård.
‘I’m all right,’ the seaman said quickly. ‘Just splinters, that be all.’
They enjoyed a few seconds’ respite while the pilongs reloaded their gingalls. The long-barrelled matchlocks required two men to operate them and were slow and cumbersome, although if the half-pound balls found their target they could deliver a maiming wound. In the meantime the two boats crept closer and closer to the junk, while the Tisiphone crept by on the far side of the first cutter. The reefs were less than half a mile away now; the sloop would have to veer off if they did not catch the junk soon, or else risk ripping her keel out on the submerged rocks.
The gingalls fired again as soon as they were reloaded, even more sporadically than before. One of the men in the second cutter gasped and Killigrew glanced over his shoulder in time to see him slump with a great chunk torn out of his shoulder.
Seaman Molineaux levelled his musket. ‘Belay that!’ snapped Killigrew. ‘Don’t waste a shot.’
‘I can get one from here, sir,’ the seaman retorted truculently.
‘I don’t care. We’ll need to make every shot tell when we get closer.’
Another shot from the cannon behind the demon’s eye sent up a great plume of water only a few yards to starboard, and the men in the cutter were drenched with spray. They could only hope that the powder in their firearms had not got wet.
Then Killigrew heard the sergeant of the Tisiphone’s marines give the order to fire, and a smart volley crashed from the sloop’s tops and bulwarks. Screams and cries sounded from the junk. Two men in the first cutter were hit by gingalls, one of them screaming in pain, and another man was wounded in the second. The narrower the gap became, the more the pilongs’ fire told.
Killigrew’s heart pounded. This was the worst time, waiting to grapple the enemy. Once they were on board there would be no time to be afraid, everything would happen too quickly; but until then all he could do was crouch in the cutter’s bow and wait, while the gingall balls whistled past his head.
‘Come on, my buckoes!’ he yelled above the rattle of musketry. ‘Just a few more yards… one last effort…’
The cannon behind the demon’s eye boomed again, this time smattering the water between the two cutters with small shot. The second cutter’s prow was level with the junk’s stern, then past it. They were close against the junk’s side, so close the oars almost
scraped the hull on one side while becoming entangled with the sweeps on the other. Killigrew snatched up a hatchet, grabbed one of the sweeps with his left hand and hacked at it. Molineaux whirled a grappling iron above his head and flung it over the junk’s bulwark, just forward of the raised stern. He pulled it tight before a pilong could snatch it up and fling it clear. Another grappling iron fell into place beside it.
‘In bows!’ ordered Killigrew. The rowers shipped their oars as the boat was pulled against the junk’s side. A figure appeared on the poop deck above them, an iron shot held above his head in both hands, poised to fling it down and through the cutter’s bottom boards. Killigrew flung the hatchet. It whirled over and over and embedded itself in the pilong’s chest. He staggered back and dropped the heavy shot on his own head. Molineaux fired his musket and a pilong who had been aiming his gingall at Killigrew fell back with the top of his head missing.
There was no time for the lieutenant to thank Molineaux for saving his life. The cutter bumped against the side of the junk and two of the seamen made the ropes fast to cleats. Killigrew balanced on the cutter’s gunwale while Ågård and the others covered him with their muskets. He had done this kind of thing enough times to know that hesitation could be fatal. Without pausing even for breath, he leaped for the junk’s bulwarks.
Chapter 2
Lao-Pan
A pilong appeared at the bulwark above Killigrew with a sword raised above his head, ready to bring it down against his hand. A musket boomed in the cutter behind him and blood splashed across the man’s tunic.
Killigrew pulled himself up and found he was staring into the barrel of an antiquated swivel gun, aimed by a grinning pilong, with the fuse burning in the touchhole. Holding on to the bulwark with one hand, his feet braced against the junk’s side, Killigrew slapped the swivel gun’s muzzle forcefully with his palm. The gun spun round and the barrel cracked against the side of the pilong’s head. His eyes rolled up in his skull and he fell to the deck. A moment later the gun boomed and swept part of the deck with lead pellets.
Killigrew and the Golden Dragon Page 2