“Our consorts, where are they?” Edward demanded quietly.
“La Fortune is half a mile ahead and to windward, the Carolina Merchant is two or three cables leeward on our starboard quarter.”
“How many are the prize crew?”
“Eight, sir.”
“Arms?”
“The helmsman has three pistols at his girdle. There’s a guard at his side, he’s got a blunderbuss and a brace of pistols. A couple of the others also have arms, but they’ve laid them aside on the quarterdeck while they work. There’s an arms chest and three or four cartouche boxes at the taffrail, too.”
“Who has the keys to our irons?”
“That fat bastard of a prize captain, I think he’s a bosun’s mate.”
“Are they on his person?”
“Aye, captain.”
“Come back in an hour if you can, lad.”
“Aye, sir!”
“Nightfall,” Edward said to the men around him when the boy was gone. “I doubt they intend to make Dunkirk before tomorrow morning. We’ll rise and take them in the dark.”
“We’re with you, Captain,” Noble, the mate, said, “but we need arms as well as the keys. Two or three cutlasses would be enough: we can gut these Flemings and Monsoors. By God, sir, I’ll be the first man up the ladder.” He was a stout jack tar, a man with two decades before the mast.
“And if grasshoppers had muskets, blackbirds wouldn’t eat them,” Scudamore replied slyly.
“Damn, Mr. Scudamore, I do get tired of hearing you say that!” the mate expostulated.
Scudamore grinned.
“We do have arms,” Edward said quietly. “Mr. Scudamore’s just having a little joke at your expense.”
“Sir?”
“Beneath the sail we’re sitting on, among the stores. I had the master hide them just before we were boarded. What do we have, Mr. Scudamore?”
“Two loaded fuzees, two horns, a bag of swan shot, three loaded pistols, two cartouche boxes with twenty cartridges each, five cutlasses, two boarding axes, two grenades, plus match, flint, and steel.”
“Christ! A bloody arms chest!” exclaimed the mate, too loudly.
“Whisht!” Edward ordered.
When the hour passed, the ship’s boy came to the hatch again, a great fat Frenchman, one of two among the Flemish prize crew, shouting after him.
“Sir—they intend to make Dunkirk by nightfall!” he whispered loudly.
“Damn!” Edward muttered.
We’ll have to take her in the light of day. The keys, we need the keys.
“Listen, lad, can you lure the fat man down here in half an hour? You must, for without the keys we may be lost, or at best in a stand-off until we reach Dunkirk, and there’s no way out of there for us. Tell him I want to speak with him, tell him you don’t know why. Half an hour!”
“Aye, sir, I’ll do it!”
“Are you sure, lad? If he suspects you, he’ll hang you from a yardarm if he doesn’t first flog and bugger you to death.”
“I’ll bring him, Captain, by God I will!”
“Good lad!”
When the boy was gone, Edward ordered the arms distributed, and soon they lay ready beneath the prisoners’ legs, well-enough hidden in the half-darkness of the platform in the hold. He gave each man his quarters.
“Cold steel only, unless you have no choice! I don’t want our consorts to hear musket or pistol shot! I go up first and lead my party—Noble, Bonbonous, and Studdy—aft to attack the guards and secure the arms. Mr. Scudamore will lead the rest of you forward. Again, cold steel unless you have no choice!”
Half an hour later, the prize captain appeared as the boy had promised. The lad dropped through the hatch to join his captain. The prize captain cursed at him, then shouted down at Edward, who shouted back that one of his men was wounded, that he had not noticed it at first, that this was a common thing, not to notice some wounds when first received during battle, but now it was bleeding. Could the Monsieur please come below, if not to release and treat him, at least to examine him and give them something to stanch the bleeding? The ruse was feeble, Edward realized. The prize captain might ignore them, or just send the boy below with some rags.
Not surprisingly, he told them to go bugger themselves, and if they pleased, to use their breeches to plug the man’s bleeding hole. What did women do in like circumstances? He laughed heartily at his wit.
At that moment, Edward would have killed the Frenchman if he could, then he recalled that no one was bleeding, that it was all a sham. Perhaps the man was a quite jovial fellow at home, or in time of peace.
From behind the prize captain came a few shouts. The fat man looked up, shouted something, then looked back down at the prisoners. Once more Edward pleaded with him for aid for his wounded comrade. Once more the Frenchman insulted them, telling them he would sooner piss on them than assist them.
“Votre capitaine, Monsieur, je vous demande de voir votre capitaine,” Edward replied, merely to keep the conversation, such as it was, going, in hopes of luring the man below.
“Je suis le capitaine!” the Frenchman said triumphantly, then turned around to present his ass to the prisoners, smacking his hands on it as he did. He turned back around and gestured for the boy to join him again on deck.
“Tell him to bugger himself,” Edward whispered.
The boy did better. “I’ll not fetch and be beat by you anymore, you French sow, you man-buggering garlic-eating son of a fat whore and some twig of a man with pea-sized stones and a yard not two inches long who didn’t even know what hole to put it and his sour seed in. No doubt you were born shitted from your mother’s ass and fell on your head and were fed pig snot and rat snot by your poxy mother from her shriveled poxed titties until you bloated up so big she couldn’t get you out the door...”
The Frenchman, who understood English well enough, and even if he had not would still have understood the tone, dropped with surprising speed into the hold, falling foolishly for the trap—overconfidence can be fatal to the bearer—as Edward, with a big smile for the boy’s impressive command of invective, drew his pistol and pointed it to the man’s head. But for the fact that a firearm pointed at one’s head is never funny, it would have made for an amusing scene: Edward, paired in irons at the ankles with another man, a large man towering above, and Edward speaking as if they were politely suggesting to an obnoxious guest at a dinner party that he pipe down or leave.
“Les clefs, monsieur,” Edward requested.
Cruel and obscene he might be, but the Frenchman was no coward. He raised his head to shout but squealed instead and collapsed to his knees, the ship’s boy having kicked him in the groin.
Edward and his companion prisoner stood as much as they could, and Edward swung the barrel of his pistol sideways, striking the man in the head, an awkward but far more deadly blow than with the butt. The mate and his companion-in-irons reached out and grabbed him, one of them trying to strangle him with his thumbs shoved into the thick folds of the man’s neck, the other, along with another pair of prisoners, holding him down.
All but the Frenchman and ship’s boy were jumbled and restrained by their irons. The fat man half-stood, stumbled, and was brought to his knees again. He tried to cry out but could not, and to ensure his silence one of the seamen covered his mouth and pinched his nostrils shut. The Frenchman’s throat was so fat and strong that he could not be choked completely.
It was more than a ridiculous scene: it was surreal. Men in shackles tried hold down a very large man who with one hand held his crushed stones, and with the other tried to shove his fingers into the eyes of the man trying to choke the life out of him, all as Edward hissed a whisper of, “The keys, get the fucking keys!” The mate pummeled the Frenchman, driving fists and elbows into his head until their captor began to collapse and fall slowly to his belly, giving the seaman the chance to finish choking him. A moment later the prize captain was unmoving but for a slight shifting with the sea. Amaz
ingly, he still breathed.
“Lad, aloft with you now, lookout for anyone coming!”
Immediately the boy clambered up the ladder and stuck his head out. “Captain, half are aft or aloft, half are for’ard wolding the bowsprit.”
“Good lad!” he whispered back. “Now stow yourself here! The rest of you, pull the Frenchman into the shadows, quickly now! Damn, where are the keys! Finally! Hurry now, off with our irons. Cheerily, lads, before someone looks in on us. All are ready? One... two... three!”
Edward, already up the ladder, his head just below the hatch, leaped onto the deck and ran aft, screaming like a Highlander charging the English line.
One in front, engage him first, always attack first at the man directly in front! he thought, but already he had cut the man down, all else being afterthought.
Someone leapt onto his back and knocked him to the deck. The point of Edward’s cutlass caught between two planks: the blade broke and the hilt flew from his hand. For some seconds he struggled with his enemy, not knowing how the rest of the battle went.
He stood, heaved, twisted, and fell to the deck again, his enemy beneath him and taking a hard fall. The man’s grip loosened, Edward struck with his fists, knees, and elbows. His enemy grasped at him, tearing at his waistcoat, clawing at his eyes and testicles. The man got a knee up to his chest, then shoved, knocking Edward back. Quickly Edward pushed up from the deck and drove a knee into the man’s chin, then grabbed him by the hair at the temple, flung him to the deck, and kicked him until the man spat blood from his mouth as he cried, “Bon quartier!”
Edward looked around to get his bearings, to find a weapon, anything to block the thrust of cutlass into his back. Instinctively he flinched, turned, and saw a man with a cloven skull fall to the deck.
A Fleming, one of them, not one of us, he realized after a moment.
Studdy, a stout able bodied seaman, had done this bloody service with a boarding ax.
“She’s ours, Captain! Damn me, she’s ours!” shouted Scudamore.
And so she was, and without a shot being fired. Three of the privateers were dead and four were wounded, including the prize captain below. The lookout had begged quarter and came off without a scratch. The English had lost none, nor had any wounds other than minor cuts and bruises and one broken nose. The surprise had been complete.
Edward rubbed his hands. They were bruised and sore, as were his elbows, forearms, and knees, but at least he hadn’t broken any fingers. His back felt as if it had been kicked.
Must’ve been one of the falls, he thought.
Moments later Scudamore pointed out that Edward was bleeding. It was a small wound, the point of a cutlass having caught on his left shoulder blade.
It was the flinch; the bastard did get me after all.
Scudamore quickly stuffed a rag under his shirt and coat to stanch the light bleeding.
“We’ll run, then, Captain?” asked the master after they had ensured control of the ketch, securely bound the prisoners, and tended to the wounded.
“Not before we take the privateer as a prize, and take back the merchantman too,” Edward replied more casually than he felt. La Fortune was now abeam, about a mile to windward, and the Carolina Merchant some eight hundred yards away, ahead and to leeward.
And aboard La Fortune is O’Neal, Edward reminded himself.
Scudamore smiled at his captain. “You’re not jesting, are you, sir? Captain, I’ve no doubt we could surprise the Flemings, but with the damage to our foremast and rigging there’s no chance we can weather them. And we damn sure can’t board them from the lee, sir, even if we do surprise ‘em and kill half their crew. But damn me, sir, if it’s the capture of the Dunkirker and the prize you want, then damn me, we’ll do it. We’ll need some of your buccaneer tricks—begging your pardon, sir.”
“Indeed. And we’ll show these Dunkirk privateers a few shortly.”
“Aye, Captain?”
“Aye, Mr. Scudamore. See to it that the guns are loaded, and make sure the gun crews keep their heads below the gunwale. Don’t open the ports. Load the swivels, too, and bring up and load every small arm we have on board, and I mean that, every one you can find, plus cartouche boxes and cutlasses. Bring four charges on deck for each great gun; I know it’s dangerous but we haven’t anyone to spare to fetch charges from below. Lay the grapplings on deck, and gag all the prisoners; we must have them quiet.”
“And then, sir? We’ll whistle and a wind will blow them alongside? No disrespect intended, Captain. I’m just wondering how this grasshopper is going to fuck with a blackbird that wants to eat him.”
“This grasshopper will do it with the first of two buccaneer tricks we’ll going to play, Mr. Scudamore.”
The master cocked his head slightly, smiled, raised his eyebrows, shook his head, and departed to execute Edward’s orders.
Edward removed his coat and waistcoat, to ensure he could not be recognized at a distance. The rag remained stuck to the wound in his back.
“All is as you ordered, Captain,” Mr. Scudamore soon reported.
The small crew looked on curiously.
“You’re wondering how we’ll gain the weather gage, Mr. Scudamore?”
“Aye, Captain.”
“Aye, Mr. Scudamore? Have you not other eyes? We already have the weather gage.”
The master shook his head. “Captain?”
“Look there, Mr. Scudamore, what do you see?” Edward asked, pointing, but not at the Dunkirker.
“Damn me for a fool, Captain!”
“Make the French signal for the Carolina Merchant to lie by for us—the one the privateer was so good to provide us with when he signaled to the Carolina Merchant after we were captured—and bear down upon her.”
The master, grinning from ear to ear, gave the orders.
Fifteen minutes later it was over. The King Fisher hoisted her signal, and, as the prize lay by to be hailed, the battered ketch ran alongside, hoisted her English colors, fired a broadside of partridge into her waist, put her tiller to port, and boarded. Four of the eight man prize crew were killed or wounded in the broadside, and the rest cried, more or less, “Bon quartier! Moi, j’irai au Angleterre! Bon quartier, s’il vous plait!”
Good quarter was granted. The English seamen very quickly trussed their prisoners, wounded and able alike, and put them in the hold. Just as quickly, they released and armed the dozen English merchant prisoners. Edward ordered the French colors left flying on the Carolina Merchant, and four men to carefully load and fire muskets from cover on her decks, repeatedly, over the King Fisher as she lay grappled alongside. He ordered grappling hooks and grenades readied, the pretense of a fight between the two vessels kept up, and the Carolina Merchant’s ensign rigged so it could be hoisted quickly.
La Fortune’s lookouts espied something wrong, and the privateer bore down on the grappled ships.
“She’s bearing down fast, Captain, half a mile at best,” Scudamore warned a quarter hour later. “We’re ready to play your second trick.”
The next five minutes passed tensely. With sails struck, the two grappled ships had turned up into the wind, leaving the Carolina Merchant’s starboard broadside facing the oncoming privateer. Naval and merchant seamen squatted below the merchantman’s gunwale, ready to run out her old sakers and fire a broadside of five and a quarter pound round shot topped by bags of musket balls. If all went well, La Fortune would assume the Carolina Merchant was still in French hands and, per good tactics, come alongside to reinforce her against the King Fisher.
But she would be greeted with a broadside.
“Captain, they’re suspicious, they don’t trust us, they won’t bite,” warned the master as La Fortune came into hailing distance.
“Wave at them as if we’re in distress,” Edward ordered, then, putting a speaking trumpet to his mouth, shouted, “Aidez nous! Les Anglais preparent aborder ensuite!” He wished he spoke Dutch, as if he were a Fleming, but French would do.
“Come, you French-Dutch HogenMogen hugger buggers, come alongside, board us....” muttered the master. “Damn, sir, I don’t think they’re going to board. They’ll tuck their tails and run for Dunkirk. The sham won’t take; they’re not going to board us, damn them.”
“They will, Mr. Scudamore, they will,” Edward said calmly.
“Why are you so sure, Captain?”
“Greed, Mr. Scudamore. Greed will overwhelm their good sense, they don’t want to lose their two prizes. See, here they come, they’ll be alongside to board over our decks. Stand by, easy now...”
Close came the Dunkirker. It was the traditional tactic to support a consort who had been boarded, or who needed help boarding another ship, to board alongside and enter over the consort’s decks. Although the Dunkirker’s crew numbered no more than twenty, and perhaps less, they doubtless felt secure enough to board and render assistance against a small number of enemy who had retreated to closed quarters.
“Steady,” Edward ordered. Within thirty feet came the Dunkirker, then came shouts in French and Dutch. The plan was discovered, the Flemings were putting their tiller to port, intending to clap on a wind and escape!
“Hoist our colors and fire! Grapplings! Grapplings!” shouted Edward, “Grapplings! Heave away, and fire! Fire!”
Immediately part of Edward’s crew fired a volley of small arms, while the gun crews raised the ports and fired four great guns into the Dunkirker’s waist. Two seamen heaved the grapplings, each with a fathom of chain between hook and line, under cover of the heavy smoke. The hooks caught in the enemy’s shrouds.
“Heave, heave!” shouted Edward, “You six there, lend a hand, heave, haul together now, pull, now, damn you, pull! Yo... hope! Yo... hope!”
An outrageously brave Fleming climbed his shrouds, reached beyond the grappling hook, and cut it free before being shot and falling into the sea to die.
“Heave another! Use the boat grappling!” Edward shouted. “And heave, heave, heave!”
Fortune's Whelp (Fortune's Whelp Series Book 1) Page 35