Slowly the ships came closer together as English seamen heaved and fired, Edward exhorting one of the laggard merchant seamen with the back of a cutlass. The whitish smoke of gunpowder burned eyes, clouded vision, and, along with fear, parched mouths.
But the smell! It was to Edward glorious, something between acrid and sweet, a reminder of actions past.
The vessels closed on each other. The impulse to cower was overwhelmed by the nearness of death, by the urge to survive, by the need to stand by one’s shipmates. Some of the Flemings were retreating to closed quarters, while a handful remained on deck to wield half-pikes and pistols against the English enemy.
At five feet, Edward shouted, “Grenades!” At three feet, “Board! Board!”
Cutlass in hand, Edward leapt from the cathead across the small chasm, slipped on the Dunkirker’s gunwale, and just barely caught himself with his left arm before he fell between the ships.
He pulled hard to haul himself up, saw an enemy above him, bloodied but alive and ready to shove a boarding pike into his throat. Edward held onto the rail with his left hand and thrust with his cutlass, but could not reach this enemy, who lurched back out of instinct. His feet slipped on a wale as he tried again to haul himself up while defending himself. If he dropped into the sea he would probably drown or be pressed to a pulp of muscle, bone, and brain between the ships, and if he remained there he would certainly be crushed as the ships came together soon.
Others among his crew leaped aboard the privateer, but the Fleming with the half-pike was still there, poised to kill the Scotsman. Edward was going to die, he knew it; he had been here before, close to death, and each time as his mind recognized the nearness of the void, he found himself calmly noting that he was yet still alive, his heart pounded, his palms sweat, and his asshole puckered tight. Worst of all, perhaps, he worried that he might look the coward hiding at the rail. He had to haul himself up! He did not realize he had been hanging at the gunwale for only three seconds.
With a great effort he hove himself up and over, and rose to engage the man who faced him. But the Fleming was gone, dead, his head cloven asunder by a boarding ax, almost identical to another Fleming’s head aboard the King Fisher earlier. Edward raced toward one of his seamen in peril, and saved him with a powerful back stroke to the neck of the enemy about to cut him down. A small geyser of scarlet sprayed from the dying man’s wound. Edward turned to see if anyone were at his back, parried a cut but missed his riposte, redoubled, parried a counter-cut with his pistol, and, with the aid of an English seaman who had just come up, cut his adversary down.
The decks were soon cleared of living Flemings and Frenchmen, but for two who cried quarter. The rest had retreated to closed quarters at the quarterdeck bulkhead. Edward took cover with his boarders behind the deck guns and bitts.
“Grenades—do we have anymore?” Edward shouted.
His crew and the some of the merchant seamen fired at the bulkhead loopholes, and the Flemings fired back from them.
“None, Captain!”
“Then check the guns, find one that’s loaded, or load one if necessary. We’ll turn it on the bulkhead!”
And so they did, aiming a four pounder at the bulkhead and calling on the enemy crew to surrender. They wisely complied immediately.
It was over.
An hour later, having set the enemy crew who were not too seriously wounded adrift in a boat with bread, water, oar, compass, and sail, and after tending to the wounded, knotting and splicing the rigging, and then dividing the English seamen among the three vessels and seeing to their armament and defenses, Edward finally paused for a moment to look at the sky and sea around him.
Was it worth it? he wondered.
More than half of his crew were wounded or killed, but not one of them had abandoned his duty, none had surrendered, until they had no choice. Nor, for that matter, had any of the Flemings and Frenchmen.
The die was cast, I did what I must, the crew what they must, and this time we were victorious, thanks to courage, seamanship, and, damn her, Fortune. And after all, there will be prize money.
Edward was tired, too tired even to grow angry when he discovered that Michael O’Neal could not be found among the living or the dead; somewhere in the battle the Irishman had yet again escaped. One of two boats towed astern was missing. The man had the luck of the Irish and the devil’s instinct for survival.
The Scotsman breathed deeply of the salt air and pondered on an infinity of nothing. At this moment he didn’t give a damn about philosophies or persons, nor what part they had played to bring him to this place.
Here, amidst land, sea, and sky, halfway between England, Flanders, and hell, the three battered, bloodied vessels worked board and board against each other as Edward rubbed a gunpowder-blackened liniment of brandy and butter into his bruised and swollen hands.
Here, once more among the honest and faithful, away from the backstabbing intrigues of landsmen, his hands and soul felt clean again.
Chapter 28
That there were severall Reports in the Country, some saying she was a Privateer, others a Buckaneer,or that she had Landed some of the Assassinators…
—Farmer Glover, in his letter the 25th of June, 1696
The wind and sea were fair for France, and it was not long before Michael O’Neal sailed southeast into Calais, a letter of credit from Captain Rimbaud in his pocket.
He had considered remaining aboard La Tulipe Noir, but she had affairs elsewhere, and the Irishman’s business would be better served in Dunkirk anyway, thus he had boarded La Fortune—and only narrowly escaped by boat as the ship’s crew were beaten down and demanded good quarter.
That bastard MacNaughton! thought the Irishman, but he admitted that the Scotsman had a feline way of landing on his feet.
In Calais he slept for day, drank and whored for several, slept another, then decided it was time to seek a means of returning to Ireland, but not before considering at length whether he should remain in France and enter the service of Louis or James.
He took horse to Dunkirk where, after conferring with several privateer captains who had news of England and Ireland, he decided to wait a few weeks while the hue and cry of assassination died down.
While he rested, he bought a small Biscayan boat, extraordinarily seaworthy and serviceable, and found passage aboard a Dunkirk corsair with plans to cruise along the north coasts of Scotland and Ireland, the route of merchantmen trying to avoid privateers hovering to the south. He paid the captain to tow the Biscayan and put him off close to Irish shores in St. George’s Channel, in the meantime serving as a gunner’s mate, for which he was well-qualified.
Foul weather and an English frigate kept Michael from landing on the east coast. Two weeks later he was able to set sail in his Biscayan just off the northeast coast of Ireland, but storm once more spoiled his plans and left him a league off Dunfanaghy on the north of Ireland, his Biscayan dismasted and leaking. He cursed Fortune and wondered if she had finally abandoned him.
But no, he grinned in desperation, the sea shall not have me. Manannan I am, the sea god who walks upon the waters.
And there, but a mile in the offing and sailing toward him, was a sloop of about fifty tons, a coastal trader perhaps, or a privateer. The former was no threat, and the latter, of whatever nation, he could talk himself past, and besides, he had no cargo and little money to steal. He waved a shirt as the vessel came close. For a moment he thought the sloop might pass him by, but the small vessel lay by a half a cable’s length away and hailed him in English.
“Ahoy the boat!” came a shout across the water, its accent English, of the West Country.
The sloop had been long at sea, and Michael counted some twenty seafaring men on her deck, far more than necessary for her fifty tons and four small guns. Her lines and rig looked American, of New England perhaps, and he thought the vessel too small to be a privateer in these waters, although she might have passed for one in the English Channel or th
e Caribbean.
“Michael O’Sullivan, sailing from Derry to Galway with a small cargo, now lost to the sea! Who are you and whence do you hail!” he replied with a shout.
“The Sea Flower, Captain Bridgeman, trading in brasiletta wood from Providence Island in the Caribbees!”
“Permission to come aboard?”
“Come aboard, aye!”
Michael rowed his small craft alongside, passed the bowline to a seaman leaning over the gunwale, and clambered agilely aboard. He smelled slow match, and noticed that a swivel gun on the gunwale had been prepared just in case.
A rough looking man armed with a brace of pistols, James Warren, he said his name was, began the interrogation. Nearby stood two other seamen with cutlass and pistol each.
“You’re an Irishman, then?”
“I am, and proud of it.”
“That’s a Biscayer,” Warren said, nodding aft at Michael’s boat, now towed astern.
“It is.”
“You’re no fisherman.”
“Not today.”
“Nor a merchant trader, no matter what you say, nor even a smuggler unless you’ve coin hidden about you,” said Warren.
“As I said, I lost my cargo at sea.”
A man Michael took to be the captain by his mood of quiet authority stood silently behind Warren. With him was a woman, the only one aboard, or at least the only one on deck.
“You’ve a familiar look about you, though I don’t know you,” Warren continued.
“And you as well.”
“You know these waters?”
Michael ignored Warren and addressed the man behind him. “Not as well as I know the southeast, but I know them well enough. You’re the captain, I think.”
The man smiled. “I’m Captain Bridgeman. What port is that?” he asked, pointing.
“Sheephaven Bay. The great headland to the west is Horn Head. Dunfanaghy bay and town are about a league to the southwest inside the great bay.”
“Dunfanaghy, you’re certain?”
“Dunfanaghy.”
“If you needed a small port on this coast, for wood, water, and few enough questions, where would you go?”
“Dunfanaghy is good enough,” Michael said, and, gambling, continued: “It’s small, so small you won’t find it on many charts, but still large enough for your needs. It’s a market town under the patronage of the Stewarts at Ards. You’ll have at least two days to be rid of your sloop and be away before anyone can begin serious inquiries. You can buy horses and take the road for Dublin or to Donaghedy. I suggest the latter, for you can make an easy crossing, wind and sea permitting, to Scotland or England. Dublin is more dangerous, too many questions will be asked.”
Bridgeman’s eyes narrowed, then he turned away and spoke to several men whose demeanor Michael knew well. He returned shortly.
“Will you pilot us into Dunfanaghy? I don’t want a local pilot, not if you can help us.”
“For a price—some of the gold and silver you carry. You’re surely some of Every’s men,” Michael speculated boldly. He raised a hand. “I bear you no ill will, understand, but a score of men aboard a sloop from an island that’s nothing more than a haven for men of the roving trade leaves little room for doubt. In fact, Captain Bridgeman, I’ll warrant you’re Captain Every himself.”
Word of the pirate’s recent exploits—his capture of one of the Great Mogul’s rich ships, his gang rape of the women aboard, his murder of prisoners and brutality toward those he did not kill—was spoken of in every seaport in Europe.
“I was once of your trade and have as much reason to come quietly ashore in Ireland as you,” Michael added.
Every scowled, then grinned. He held up his hand to stop Warren as he stepped forward, pistol raised.
“You know us, then. You’re a bold man, considering we could leave you here floating as fish bait. You’re smart, too, maybe just a bit too smart.”
“I’ve an Irishman’s luck and will wash ashore soon enough with the wind still in me.”
“If we leave it in you,” Every said, unblinking.
Michael stared him down.
“Ha, you are damn bold one,” Every guffawed. “How much, then?”
“Forty guineas.”
“Call it pounds and that’s the price on the head of a thief—if convicted. It’s too much.”
“It’s my price to pilot you safely and then see you off safely. I can guide you—I’m Irish, you’re not. They’ll be more suspicious of you than me, no matter that some are Presbyters and I a son of the Holy Mother Church. I’ve traded here—”
“By stealth, I warrant.”
“Which means I know my bearings here. I know where the hidden shoals lie.”
Every shook his head. “It’s too much; these men will never agree. If you and I agree to five shillings to a piece-of-eight, that’s one hundred sixty of them—eight from each man, too much. The won’t see the value in your services, they’ll say we should pilot ourselves and make our own way without your help. We’ve made it this far, and we’ve an Irishman or two among us.”
“Half, then, but no less. I doubt your Irishmen know the north as I do.”
“It’s still too much, but I think our situation will bear it. Pardon me for a moment, Mr.—what did you call yourself? Sullivan?”
“O’Sullivan.”
“Aye, and I’m Bridgeman.”
Every made the proposal to the crew. A few grumbled, but all agreed to pay four pieces-of-eight or its equivalent to Michael.
“I prefer Spanish coin, or English, Dutch, or French, no money not passible in this kingdom—none of your rupees or sequins,” he told Every.
“You don’t want to be taken for one of us, is that it?”
“I’ve my own tracks to cover.”
“Well enough. Hungry?”
“Thirsty.”
“We’ve rum. Come.”
Michael piloted the Sea Flower to anchor at Dunfanaghy Bay in County Donegal near the end June, 1696, without incident. The local population, as he predicted, was suspicious of the sloop and looked askance as the crew unladed bags of coin, some twenty thousand pounds worth by Michael’s estimate, without declaring it. He had no doubt that the town would soon be full of the King’s officers. For two days he acted an agent or factor between the pirates and the locals. After he set many of the former on their way, he sold the Biscayer and set out to find or steal a good horse.
“Hold there, Irishman!” Every called.
“Aye?” Michael asked, his hand on a small pistol in his pocket, as Every, Warren, and the woman—Mrs. Adams, wife of Every’s quartermaster, Henry Adams—approached. Warren was leading three local garrons.
“You’ll be off, now?”
“Aye.”
“Where?”
“It’s my own business.”
“We’ll pay you to guide us to Donaghedy.”
“I‘ve given you directions, and didn’t you say you’ve more business here?”
“I’ve already signed the sloop over to Joseph Faroe who sailed with us. He’ll sail her back to America.”
“You want me to guide all three of you?”
“All three.”
“And Henry Adams, husband of the lady here?”
“Is traveling separately for security.”
“Indeed.”
“You don’t like questions, we don’t like questions either, Irishman.”
“You’re right, Captain, ah, Bridgeman, your affairs are none of my business. So, assuming we agree to terms, you must get rid of these nags,” he said.
“We paid ten pound apiece!” Warren expostulated.
“They’re not worth forty shillings, and you’ll have the High Sheriff upon you for paying so much. Only a thief with the hue and cry just behind him would’ve agreed to such terms. We’ve not been in Dunfanaghy but two days and already the rumor’s about that your crew are buccaneers, privateers, or even assassinators who tried to kill the king. I’ll find more ho
rses and not raise eyebrows about them. We need to get moving; I’ve no mind to be taken as a pirate or assassinator and hanged for crimes I haven’t committed.”
“I warrant you’ve committed your share, Irishman,” said Every with a dark grin.
“Then let me be hanged for them, not yours.”
“Your price?”
“Forty pounds to Donaghedy.”
“Yet again, too much,” Every said.
“You just paid thirty for nags hardly worth two pounds apiece, and some of you are losing more than that on their exchange of silver for gold, just because it’s easier to carry. You can afford my price.”
Warren snorted. “You’re nothing more than a damned pirate like us.”
“You’d rather pay the jailor to keep you well until the hangman turns you off and leaves you tarred and sun-drying in the breeze?”
Every laughed. “It’ll be no hangman for me, Irishman: I’m Henry Bridgeman, honest seaman leaving the billows behind in order to keep a tavern. But we’ll pay, we’ll pay—and if you betray us, we’ll kill you. I’m a man of my word, Irishman.”
Michael led the way over the muddy Irish roads, soon procuring four good horses in trade for the garrons, plus three more pounds apiece, telling the horse jobber a tale of having bought the nags from some suspicious English seamen in a hurry to be rid of them.
The remainder of the journey to Dunfanaghy went with nary a suspect eye laid upon them, in spite of posted broadsides advertising a reward for the seizure and apprehension of Henry Every and other such “Nottorious Rogues.” Michael won another forty pounds at dice from the two pirates en route, and upon arrival in Donaghedy advised them to make the crossing to Scotland as quickly as possible. After a brief scuffle and standoff between Michael and Warren on one side, and Captain Every-Bridgeman and Mrs. Adams on the other, caused by a lusty misunderstanding over the woman, the two parties separated.
Michael and Warren set off by sea aboard a hired fisherboat, first to Cork, where the latter landed, then to areas outlying Kinsale. Here Michael intended first to find his brother, who had been serving aboard a French privateer out of Saint Malo and to whom he had written to request he return to Ireland, then to gather his men and make sure Molly was still safe. Vitally, he must discover if he had been betrayed in Ireland as well.
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