Fortune's Whelp (Fortune's Whelp Series Book 1)

by Benerson Little

The English ketch sheered larboard and starboard once each, giving the Dunkirker two small broadsides. Thankfully, the enemy had no bow chase guns, nor ports for them, and bore the brunt of the King Fisher’s chain and bar shot. It cut up the Dunkirker’s fore course and some of her rigging, and flung splinters—jagged chunks and rapier-like slivers of them—across her deck to flay and pierce the flesh of men.

  But it would not be long before the Dunkirker ranged from the King Fisher’s wake. Edward had no idea of the damage to the Dunkirker’s crew, but three of the English crew were wounded already from French musket-fire.

  “He’s furling his spritsail and bringing the yard along the bowsprit!” shouted the lookout aloft.

  “Mr. Scudamore, do the same! We don’t dare board him, but we can worry him a bit by making him think we might!”

  Through his spying glass Edward inspected the enemy: several seamen were busy lashing her sprit-yard alongside the bowsprit, and boarders were massing on the forecastle.

  “He intends to weather and board us, Mr. Scudamore,” Edward said. “When he steers from our wake, put your helm to starboard and we’ll clap on a wind and weather him. If we gain any distance on him, we’ll tack again and again until we’re back on the English coast.”

  As Edward anticipated, the Dunkirker began to bear windward from the King Fisher’s wake, doubtless to shoot abreast of the ketch, fire a broadside, then bear in to board.

  “Stand by your helm, wait for my order,” Edward shouted to the helmsmen. Then, to Scudamore, “Keep the musketeers and gun crews below the rails; he might put a broadside in us when we change course. Wait, wait, here he goes... Now!”

  The King Fisher turned hard to starboard to come on a bowline. But instead of following immediately, as Edward had hoped the Dunkirker would, the enemy kept to her course in spite of the ground she would lose. When her broadside came abreast of the ketch’s stern, the Dunkirker fired across her larboard quarter: six four pounders, a small broadside by any standard, but almost thrice the King Fisher’s weight of metal.

  And by ill-Fortune it shot the ketch’s mizzen-topmast by the board.

  Edward cursed under his breath, then shouted, “Cut all clear away! Now, before she can board us!”

  The Dunkirker came on a bowline and, with the King Fisher’s sails aback and her mizzen topmast and sail in the water, was easily able to regain the ground she had lost, not to mention the weather gage. Soon the Dunkirker would present her starboard broadside again.

  Shit-fire, piss, and damnation in general! Edward fumed. Damned ill-Fortune!

  A second broadside came as the Dunkirker gained the weather gage, this one of partridge, mitraille the French called it, on top of round shot, a deadly vomit that struck the ketch’s starboard quarter, killing one seaman and wounding two others.

  The Dunkirker bore in toward the King Fisher’s larboard beam, surely to board.

  “We’re clear, Captain!” shouted the bosun.

  “I need steerage way, Mr. Scudamore!”

  But even with the wreckage now cut away, there was no chance the King Fisher could avoid being boarded. Edward ordered the ketch brought as close to the wind as possible in order to bring her broadside to bear.

  “Fire!” he ordered, and the ketch’s tiny larboard broadside sent hot metal amidst the boarders massed at the enemy bow. “Reload! Double shot the larboard guns, quickly now, partridge on top! Fire only on my command! Cutlasses and pistols to the crew! I need three grenadiers with as many grenades as we have, amidships! Musketeers and swivels, keep up your fire, clear their decks!” Edward ordered, sword in hand, as he ran from stern to bow and back again, exhorting the crew. “At the helm! When I shout the order to port your helm, I want you to put it to starboard, as hard as you can, so we turn port, not starboard—do you understand? You must not hesitate! Mr. Scudamore, I need two seamen with grapplings and lashings amidships, we’ve little time!”

  The Dunkirker edged in toward the King Fisher, musket and swivel fire now forcing nearly everyone below the rails.

  Easy, easy, not yet, not yet... Edward thought.

  Then, “Port your helm!” he shouted.

  And as ordered, the helmsmen put the tiller to starboard, turning the ketch to port and ninety degrees to the Dunkirker’s bow.

  The vessels struck together, the Dunkirker’s bowsprit piercing the ketch’s main shrouds.

  “Fire!” Edward shouted. “Grenades, clear their decks!”

  The King Fisher’s three small guns sent a pair of iron shot apiece, plus lead musket balls and burning wads, upon the sides and deck of the Dunkirker. Her musketeers fired into the open deck, and the grenadiers lobbed iron grenades. The two seamen flung their grappling hooks, hauled them taut, and belayed them, then, braving enemy fire, quickly lashed the bowsprit to the shrouds. Bullets and shrapnel flew about both decks, killing one of the lashers, as confusion, noise, smoke, fear, and violence reigned.

  The Dunkirker was in a terrible position, the worst of any who wished to board. She was exposed to the King Fisher’s guns but could fire none of hers in return. If she tried to enter her boarders, she had to do so over her bow and bowsprit, where only one or two could board at a time—near suicide.

  But to survive, her commander had to do something, and boarding was now the only course. His crew had sought shelter behind gun carriages, the riding bitts and windlass in the bow, and behind the steerage bulkhead where some of his men fired from loopholes.

  A fusillade of lead and a small hail of grenades flew about the King’s Fisher’s deck as the Flemmingsand French prepared to board. Ears rang and teeth jarred from the shattering detonations, and men fell dead and wounded. One grenade fired a cartridge box, which in turn fired a cannon cartridge, burning three nearby seamen and filling the air with even more smoke. Amidst this choking fog the enemy crew, all armed with pistol and cutlass, swarmed across their bowsprit.

  “Shoot them down, lads!” Edward shouted, drawing a pistol and firing. He shoved it back under his sash and belt, drew another, and cocked it with the heel of his sword hand. “Grenades! More grenades, hurl them upon their foc’s’l!”

  One his own grenadiers was shot down, his grenade landing at Edward’s feet, its fuse burning. Edward, a small voice in his head shouting, O Shit! O Shit! O Shit!, dropped his backsword, grabbed the grenade, and hurled it among the Flemings and French massed at Dunkirker’s bow. As he bent over to pick up his backsword, he found an enemy suddenly over him, a purple-faced obscenity with a sword, dripping sweat onto Edward’s face and snapping a misfiring pistol at his head. From his low position, Edward thrust quickly into the man’s belly, then with the pistol in his left hand shot another boarder in the face.

  All around him was nearly the worst sort of fight, on open decks at sea. Only fighting below deck in the darkness could make it worse. Otherwise, there was nothing like it in the world, not even the worst of close battles against fortifications could compare with the ruthless savagery of such a battle. All around him men shot, cleaved, and clawed at each other, survival by violence now the driving instinct.

  Several of Edward’s crew were armed with half-pikes which did good service, keeping the Flemings at bay. With his backsword Edward cut powerfully at another of the enemy, already pierced by a pike and trying to pull himself up the shaft in order to bury his cutlass into the English seaman who had wounded him. Edward swung a hard, tight outside cut and buried his backsword in the enemy seaman’s skull just above the ear. By the time the Scotsman had pulled his sword loose, he found himself grappling with another Fleming, but only briefly, as the corsair was stabbed in the back by an Englishman with a half-pike.

  By now there was a pile of dead and wounded at the main shrouds, and the Flemings gave up their attempt at boarding. From cover they fired at their English enemy, and the English fire back in return. Edward unloaded his remaining pistols at the enemy, then quickly drew cartridges from his cartouche box and reloaded.

  “The great guns!” Edward shou
ted, “Continue to load and fire, destroy their men! We must not let them board again!”

  For an hour this battle from cover raged, Edward’s crew now having the advantage. Twice the Dunkirk captain tried to rally his men to board again, and twice those who tried were shot down.

  Several of the Dunkirker’s guns were now dismounted, or their carriages so shattered that they were of no use. Her crew lay in bloody heaps on the deck, a score and a half by Edward’s quick estimate. He felt certain that if he ordered the King Fisher to cut loose, she could batter the corsair at will and compel her enemy to strike. He would not risk his remaining men—only half were not yet dead or incapacitated by wounds—in boarding the Dunkirker, and if he remained here in a battle of attrition he might soon have too few men to repel another boarding attempt.

  “Loose the grapplings and cut away the lashings!” Edward ordered, “And be ready to give a broadside as soon as we’re free!”

  Immediately the bosun and a seaman loosed the grapplings and with boarding axes cut the lashings away. The King Fisher began to drift clear.

  “We’re fouled!” shouted the bosun as the enemy’s bowsprit caught in a backstay.

  “Cut away the backstay if you must!” Edward shouted. The bosun had already anticipated him, but too late: the main-topmast suddenly went by the board, breaking the bosun’s arm and knocking a seaman into the water.

  “Cut all clear away! Fire your guns when clear!” Edward shouted.

  We still have a chance, he thought, we can force them to strike, we’ll have their ship, and for now we still have sails and a rudder to work with. We might even take back that English merchantman if we can jury-rig a topmast.

  Once more clear of fallen mast and sail, the King Fisher put a broadside into the Dunkirker, and then two more, in return receiving only one badly aimed broadside of two guns.

  Edward put the speaking trumpet to his mouth and raised his backsword. “Strike amain, Monsieur le capitaine! Amène! Amain for the King of England!” Edward repeated the request in mangled Dutch.

  But the Dunkirker would not strike. Edward did not understand it: her rigging was in tatters and her crew so beaten that they could not prevail, even given the ketch’s condition.

  Edward glanced around him, and suddenly understood why her captain would not strike, an understanding punctuated by a shower of water and splinters from the Dunkirker’s slightly better-aimed broadside this time.

  Half a mile away was a black ship, Dutch-built but flying French colors, with as many as fifty guns. Edward immediately recognized her. With his own crew and rigging shattered, there was but one thing he could do.

  “Mr. Scudamore, strike our ancient and lay us by.”

  The master, bloodied and battered, left scarlet footprints as he hauled down the colors at the staff at the stern, as the bosun, in spite of his broken arm, directed the management of the sails.

  On the deck nearby was the lookout, shot from aloft, and if not shot quite dead, then killed by the fall. His jaw jutted at an odd angle. Edward wondered why it was that such things stood out in battle; he wondered that amidst fear and fight such details were noticed at all. Even had the lookout survived to warn them, even had Edward himself not been so preoccupied that he failed to espy an approaching enemy, there was still little they could have done to escape the ship under whose guns they now lay.

  Edward cast his sword to the deck and looked at the shattered privateer. There was little cheering among the enemy crew. One lone seaman, a Frenchman by his accent, shouted, “Bougres!” and “Fuckeurs!”

  Edward surveyed his crew, and over the business of the young man acting as surgeon’s mate. The day was suddenly quiet but for the moans of the wounded, whose blood mixed with that of the dead and ran freely from the scuppers of both vessels.

  Chapter 27

  Women, wind, and Fortune, are given to change.

  —Spanish proverb, 17th and 18th centuries

  For much of the day, four vessels lay by in the trough of the sea.

  Other sail were sighted, but no rescue in the form of English or Dutch cruiser appeared, although there should have been many such at sea. All of the wounded—English, and others of the British and Irish islands, Flemish, French, two or three Scandinavians and Africans, along with a solitary Venetian—were carried aboard the captured English merchantman, named Carolina Merchant, while the rigging of the two battered combatants was spliced and knotted enough to enable them to sail into Dunkirk.

  The fourteen among Edward’s crew who had not been killed or seriously wounded were stripped of most of their clothing and of all of their accouterments and other belongings, and divided between the corsair, called La Fortune, and the King Fisher.

  The black ship was La Tulipe Noir, a Dutch prize of fifty guns, but pierced for fifty-six, now serving as a French privateer with a crew of equal parts Frenchmen and Flemings. Her captain was French, and Edward recognized her as the corsair from which he and the Peregrinator had narrowly escaped off Kinsale. It was aboard this dark ship that Edward, after being stripped of most of his clothing, no matter that he was the captain, was carried and brought before the French commander on his quarterdeck. Up close, the dark ship did not seem supernatural, nor her commander a demon, as his dreams had once implied.

  As Edward was brought aboard, he was startled to see Michael O’Neal, clearly plucked from the sea and little changed in the years since he had last seen him. He was uninjured, having miraculously escaped three guns’ worth of round shot and musket balls. Michael surveyed Edward with an air of superiority. No words passed between then, and two armed seamen escorted Edward to the quarterdeck.

  “A valiant action, Monsieur,” said the French captain with a bow and in excellent but heavily-accented English. “I am Capitaine Roland Rimbaud, at your service.” The French commander was as tall as Edward, maybe a bit taller, slightly heavier, and quite self-assured in the very French manner. “I welcome you aboard La Tulipe Noir of fifty guns, formerly the Prins Friso of the United Provinces, at present a commissioned corsaire of France. She was captured in ‘94 by the comte de Forbin and has proved, I think, more profitable to the French.”

  “Monsieur,” Edward replied with a bow. Somehow it came across as a dignified act, in spite of his being barefoot and dressed only in shirt and breeches. “I am Captain Edward MacNaughton, commanding the King Fisher of His Majesty’s Royal Navy. I ask that my crew be treated respectfully and according to the laws of war, that their wounds be cared for, that our surgeon’s mate be permitted to assist in treating them, and that the dead be given a proper burial.”

  “This will be done, assuredly. Capitaine Sauret of La Fortune is an honorable man, but alas, sorely wounded. I have asked him to return your clothing to you, Monsieur, but I cannot compel him to do so, although I am certain he will not object. Given his valor, I will not accept that you surrendered to me, but to him. You will remain his prisoner, and your vessel his prize. May I send word to him that I have your parole of honor not to try to lead your men in an escape? Then you would have the freedom of the deck and the comforts you deserve after such a valiant effort.”

  “No, Capitaine, not while I’m at sea,” Edward replied.

  “I understand. Perhaps in Dunkerque you will consider ransom or parole?”

  “In Dunkirk, assuredly.”

  “Très bien. I hear also that we have almost met before, off Quinsael of Ireland. Were not you the capitaine of the small fregatte galère?”

  “Only a passenger.”

  “You had nothing to do with her escape?”

  “I suggested a strategy, I commanded the guns.”

  “Then my compliments again, Monsieur,” said the French captain, and bowed once more. Edward returned the bow, guessing that the information about the rencontre off Ireland had probably come from O’Neal. Edward had expected to meet his quarry here in the great cabin, and was disappointed he did not. The French captain poured him a cup of wine.

  “To Fortune, Mo
nsieur.”

  “To Fortune,” Edward replied. He raised his cup to the French commander, then drank. “The man plucked from the water, O’Neal I believe his name is, he’s aboard your ship,” Edward said, after relishing the excellent wine. “And I believe you may know him already. I’m certain I know him.”

  The Frenchman drank, then smiled thinly before he spoke. “Capitaine, you know well I cannot discuss such matters with you, even if you claim to know the man who has been plucked from the fishes of the sea. You had reason to pursue him, therefore I have reason to protect him.”

  “Of course. Your reply is sufficient confirmation.”

  “As you please. Unfortunately, I must return you now to your captors. I and my crew have duty elsewhere. Even more unfortunately, unless I have your parole, I will strongly recommend to Capitaine Sauret that you be kept in irons until you arrive in Dunkerque, given the valor you and your crew have most recently demonstrated, not to mention your reputation as a flibustier in the New World.”

  “I understand,” Edward said, setting the empty wine cup on the bittacle nearby.

  “Au revoir, Capitaine MacNaughton.”

  “Indeed, Captain Rimbaud: until we meet again.”

  And so well shall, Edward thought, for two famous meetings always imply a third.

  French seamen rowed the Scotsman back to the King Fisher, one of them keeping a wary eye on him, and a blunderbuss pointed at him.

  Flibustier, they whispered. Forban anglais! Gardez vous!

  Edward and five of his crew were shackled in pairs at the ankle in the after hold of the shattered ketch, and sat uncomfortably atop an old sail covering the vessel’s stores, with only four and a half feet of headroom. The younger of the ship’s boys—the other, of thirteen years, had been killed in the action, to Edward’s great dismay—was aboard, and had been given the freedom of the vessel. The prize captain did not consider him a threat, and so put him to work doing menial labor.

  As opportunity presented after the vessels got underway again, the ship’s boy, with a confident look of stout resolve over hidden fear, came to the open main hatch above to keep the prisoners apprised in whispers. The prize crew was busy keeping watch and making repairs.