by Alex Scarrow
‘I don’t see … ahhh … ’
‘You see ’em?’
Rashim squinted into the lens, his lips silently moving. Counting.
‘Well?’ Liam shuffled impatiently. ‘Spanish?’
‘Uh … I am seeing yellow and red at the top of one mast. That’s Spanish, isn’t it?’
‘Aye. How many? Two? Three?’
Rashim lowered the spyglass. ‘Seven.’ He looked at Liam anxiously. ‘That’s … that’s too many for us to take on.’
Liam grabbed the telescope from him and made his own quick assessment. ‘I make it six. The middle one isn’t two ships … ’ He adjusted the focus. ‘It’s three-masted. Bigger than the others. It’s not a carrack.’
Tom joined them, breathless from barking at the men. Liam handed him the spyglass. ‘The ship in the middle, Tom, what is it?’
It was Tom’s turn to squint into the lens. ‘I see five fat sheep and a sheepdog.’ He lowered the glass and handed it back to Liam. ‘Two square-rigged masts, two lateen sails at the back, prominent forecastle. She’s a galleon.’
‘Is that a good or a bad thing?’ asked Rashim.
Tom grinned toothlessly. ‘It means you’ll get a chance to try out yer fancy cannonballs this morning. She’s a warship. This time around you’ll have yerself a proper fight.’
Rashim paled slightly. ‘Six to one … perhaps we might be taking on too many?’
Tom looked appalled. ‘One warship … the rest of ’em most likely’ll try and make a run for it. You bring the galleon down first, Skipper, the rest should be easy prey.’
‘There, you heard him,’ said Liam with a grin.
‘Right. Yes … well then.’ Rashim mustered his best effort at a bloodthirsty leer. It came across as an insipid grimace. ‘Action stations … or whatever the correct term is.’
Tom turned and started bellowing orders. Within a minute, every last sail was unfurled gull-wing style, the wind that morning right behind them, every square foot of linen taut and thrumming. The Pandora’s bow carved through the sea and they bore down on the galleon now no more than a mile away from them.
The Spanish warship was now altering course, a large round sweep towards them, tacking into the wind.
Liam looked at Rashim. ‘You all right? You ready for this?’
He shook his head. ‘You know me well enough. Not particularly good at confrontations. So, no … not exactly.’ He took in a deep, steadying breath. ‘But I will be fine.’
‘I’ll take charge of the boarding party.’
Rashim smiled gratefully.
As the two ships rapidly closed the distance between them, Liam was down on the main deck handpicking two dozen men and ensuring each was adequately armed. Another six men were issued with the muskets that Schwarzmann had had rifled. The day before Liam had organized a shooting contest among the crew to identify their best marksmen. The general quality of marksmanship hadn’t been particularly outstanding, but one of their new crew, a French huntsman called Pasquinel, had stood out. Liam ordered the man up to the Pandora’s crow’s-nest with specific instructions to target the galleon’s helmsman once they were close enough.
Meanwhile Rashim headed down to the gun deck to ensure Gunny and the teams of gun crew were ready. The Pandora had twelve cannons on each side. He ordered all twenty-four cannons to be loaded and ready to fire with the new elongated cannonballs: a foolish measure, since the pitch and sway of the ship might result in some of them sliding out. But Gunny knuckled his forehead and grinned at the order; these ‘miracle shots’ weren’t going to roll anywhere.
Half an hour after the first sighting, the first cannons fired. Clearly meant as a hopeful attempt to warn them off, the shots splashed harmlessly into the sea a hundred yards short of the Pandora, sending plumes of spray into the air.
Up on the afterdeck, standing beside the helmsman, Rashim waited until their ship had sailed past the diminishing foam on the water where the plumes had erupted, halving the remaining distance between them. They were now closer to the galleon than they’d been to their target pinnace a few days ago.
‘I’d say … now.’
‘Aye, Skipper.’ The helmsman spun the wheel to the right. The Pandora turned to starboard, presenting her ready-loaded port cannons towards the Spanish ship. Rashim pulled out his pistol and fired it into the air, the signal for Gunny to fire at will. A moment later a cannon roared, then a peal of one cannon after another, no more than a second between each shot, erupted down the side of the ship like a Mexican wave.
Rashim caught the blur of movement as the projectiles whistled across the water, one shot breaking up midway across. Then he saw puffs of impact. A cloud of splinters and shards erupted from the galleon’s forecastle. Another two midway along the waist of the ship. A ragged hole was torn through the middle mast’s mainsail. Two shots raced harmlessly across the low main deck, but the last shot in the volley found the most useful target. The short foremast juddered, an explosion of shards near its base, then began to sway forward and collapsed across the forecastle like a felled tree. Rashim heard a chorus of cheering coming up from the gun deck.
‘Now let them have the other side,’ cried Rashim.
‘Hard to port!’ yelled Tom.
The helmsman spun the wheel the opposite way and the Pandora leaned into the sharp turn, spinning round almost within one length of her hull, now bringing the starboard-side cannons to bear.
Even closer now, a second pealing broadside suddenly erupted: whoomp, whoomp, whoomp, whoomp … Horizontal mushroom clouds of blue smoke spat out from their side, each sonic boom punching Rashim in the chest, each shot making the whole ship vibrate and rock. More impact clouds of splinters and shards erupted from the galleon. The slender mast at the rear carrying one of the lateen sails spun off at its base and over the side, becoming a tangled drag of rope and sail in the ship’s wake.
Rashim yelped with delight. ‘Yes!’
The galleon, now hobbled, wasn’t yet prepared to give up the fight. It wallowed clumsily, slowly, as it tried to turn and present its port-side cannons for a return volley. Down on the main deck Liam and his two dozen men were excitedly cheering. But he could see what was coming. They were close enough now that the Spanish cannons, if the ship completed its turn, were going to do some damage. He looked up at Pasquinel, wanting to signal him to take a shot at the helmsman. But there was no need.
Above, from the crow’s-nest, the single crack of a musket. The French huntsman wasn’t waiting for an order. Liam saw the man at the helm double over and drop to the deck. The helm began to spin wildly, rebelling against the laboured turn they were attempting.
Jay-zus. It can’t be going this well … can it?
The galleon had lost what momentum it had and was now listlessly bobbing in the water. Once again, the Pandora began to swing round, this time to starboard, a final approaching tangent that would bring her around on the galleon’s far side, in close, close enough for them to throw hooks and board.
‘Get ready, lads!’ he shouted. The men roared a chorus of something. Might have been huzzah. Might have been a hearty, nautical, piratey a-harrrrr, he couldn’t tell.
Over the rail, now they were close enough, he could see the Spanish sailors, a scramble of men preparing themselves for the boarding action. More than that, he could see the damage their cannons had already done: jagged, frayed ends of pale wood freshly exposed, smears of bright crimson spattered across sails that now flapped uncontrolled. The prow of the Pandora was past the prow of the galleon to their right, just twenty yards of water separating them. On her forecastle Liam saw a man in a shining cuirass with long dark hair waving a sword to muster men for the fight.
This is it. Again, Liam noted that the trembling pre-fight fear that had always plagued him in the past was absent; instead, he was calm. A chilling, killer’s calm. A relief not to feel his stomach churning, to want to vomit with fear, the pressing need to empty his bowels … but really … this calm? What the he
ll does that make me – a psychopath?
‘Ready your hooks, lads!’ he shouted.
Over the rail he could see the faces of the Spanish crew armed with muskets and swords, determination etched on their powder-smudged faces. Men who may have lost the opening act of this skirmish, but were far from ready to surrender. He wondered how ready he and his own men would be to take on a close-quarters fight if the opening exchange of fire had gone the other way.
Just then the deck beneath their feet convulsed as cannons below erupted. The Pandora lurched backwards as the cannons fired a united volley instead of a stepped peal. Every man staggered to keep his footing.
Virtually point-blank. Undoubtedly devastating. The narrow space between the ships became an instant thick fog-bank of powder smoke and, out of it, sharp splinters of wood rained down on them like hail. On to the deck beside him an arm landed with a soft thud, like a joint of meat tossed carelessly from the back of a butcher’s cart.
And then the smoke began to clear.
Chapter 42
1667, the Caribbean Sea
The Pandora had been leaning to port as she’d fired her last salvo – the tail end of their sharp final turn to bring them in alongside the galleon – consequently her cannons had been angled forty-five degrees upwards. The point-blank volley had punched twelve gaping holes up, through the top side of the hull, through the main deck, shredding the rail and the men waiting behind it ready to repel them. Twelve jagged bites along the ship’s waist exposing a ribcage of decks and bulkheads.
Through the clearing coils of smoke, Liam caught sight of a charnel house of severed limbs, grotesquely mangled bodies tangled with frayed splinters of lumber.
‘ … sir?’
Liam felt his shoulder being thumped. He turned to see Old Tom, mouthing something, his voice lost against the ringing in his ears. His hearing was beginning to return.
‘The order?’ The man tried again. ‘To board, sir?’
Liam nodded. ‘Let’s GO!’
The order was passed along the rail and, with a chorus of wild yipping and howling, his men leaped up on to their bulwark, some jumping across the narrow space between the ships, some swinging across from shrouds. Liam did likewise, climbing over the rail. Two yards separated him from the ragged edge of the galleon’s splintered deck. He hopped across a void of slapping water below on to a plank of deck that flexed and creaked precariously beneath his weight. He leaped to the right, on to decking that appeared more stable, as fibres cracked and the plank cascaded down into the dark crevasse between the ships.
He could hear the fight starting somewhere to his left, but he could see nothing. The smoke was still thick and the front end of the Spanish ship was a confusing tangle of clutter. The deck was slippery with blood, a mess of debris; rigging from the collapsed mast draped a spider’s web of low throttling loops of rope and tatters of sail. He picked his way through the mess, ducking beneath the spar of a broken yardarm only to find himself thumping heads with someone coming the other way.
‘Ow!’
The other man groaned. He looked up at Liam as he rubbed his painful forehead. Both of them grinned at their mutual clumsiness, a shared second of acknowledgement that, when you can’t see a damned thing, leading the way with an outstretched hand was probably a smarter move than leading with your forehead.
‘That was stupid,’ Liam muttered.
The man seemed to understand, grinned, nodded. ‘Si … Somos burros torpes.’
The moment passed. The Spaniard, a barrel-chested man with a red cloth cap with a frayed gold-thread tassel that hung down the side of his face, produced a machete and pointed the tip towards Liam.
Liam countered with the tip of his cutlass. ‘Look … ’ he said softly, ‘why don’t we let each other pass?’
The man said something, then suddenly lunged low at Liam’s gut. Liam stepped back and parried hard, swinging his cutlass, successfully deflecting the blade, knocking it out of the man’s grasp. But he lost his footing on something loose on the deck behind him and tumbled over on to his back. The man landed on top of him, knocking the wind out of his lungs.
He felt a strong hand round his throat, squeezing so hard that he thought he could feel the cartilage of his Adam’s apple snapping, breaking, cracking. The man’s other hand was out of sight, fumbling for something, then he saw it, a small blade. Liam dropped his cutlass – useless now, too close to use the blade – and reached for the man’s wrist as he tried to lunge at Liam’s neck. The knife, a short oval-shaped blade, glinted in the space between their grimacing faces, Liam could feel its tip tickling, teasing the skin beneath his left ear as he struggled to hold it at bay.
No … no … no … no …
The Spaniard was using his weight, pushing down on the blade with his shoulder. He pursed his lips, shushing Liam, pleading with him to make this an easier death for him.
‘No … please … ’ Liam gurgled.
‘Shhhh … shhhhh … ’
Liam’s other hand was trying to prise free the man’s vice-like grip on his throat. He gave up on that and instead reached for the man’s face. He dug a thumb into his right eye, pressed hard enough that he could feel his thumbnail digging deep into the socket. The man frantically shook his head from side to side, trying to shake off Liam’s hand. And that was enough: his attention was off the blade.
Liam rocked to the right, then flung his body to the left, rolling the man over the top of him, and now he was on top. The weight transferred, now he had the upper hand. He gave up on gouging the man’s eye out and instead quickly transferred his spare hand to work the blade round until it was now pointing towards the man’s neck. Their eyes met. Liam could see the man knew what was coming.
‘Shhhh … is it?’
The tip of the blade dug into the man’s neck. So easy now to push it in all the way to the hilt. After all, this wouldn’t be his first time or his second. Or his third. Killing … too much of it and it would become an easy thing to do. Too easy. The man gurgled desperately, eyes wide with fear. Liam bared his teeth and snarled a curse. He turned the blade round and smacked the man senseless with the hard end of the hilt. He climbed off the unconscious man quickly.
Through the thinning smoke he could hear the distant ring of blades, the yipping, excited cry of his men, the pitiful moaning and crying of those hapless men caught in the broadside.
He struggled through the tangle of drooping ropes and fluttering sails and finally emerged into a clear space on the main deck to see a mere handful of the Spanish crew left, less than a dozen able-bodied men, most of them bloodied and already scored with cuts … but still making a determined effort to fight back to back. They were pushed up against the rail on the far side of the ship, defending a number of the wounded they’d managed to drag back from the carnage wrought by the cannons. Liam’s men had surrounded them and were feinting, lunging, probing like hunting dogs baiting cornered game.
Liam pushed forward. ‘Quarter! Give them quarter!’ he cried above the screams and shouts and clatter, ring and scrape of blades. His voice was lost in the cacophony. He could see familiar faces pulled into rictus grins of blood-lust, excitement, terror. Even the giant man, Kwami – so far he’d only known him as a softly spoken gentle giant – seemed caught up in the mania, wide-eyed and caterwauling as he swung a hatchet in front of him. A frightened Spanish sailor half his size was desperately parrying the blow with the stock of a broken musket.
Jay-zus.
Liam pulled the pistol from his belt, cocked it and fired it into the air. ‘Stop!’ he screamed. ‘Stop! ENOUGH!’
His men finally seemed to hear him and began to disengage and take a step back. Further along the deck, he could hear other smaller skirmishes playing out, but here, this one right in front of him, became a lull … all eyes now resting on him expectantly.
He stepped forward, his pistol tucked back in his belt. Hands held out, showing he was holding no weapons. ‘That’s it!’ he said to the Spaniard
s. ‘That’s enough!’ He looked at them, sailors most of them. Two of them were wearing cuirasses of tin-plate armour and braided tunics. Soldiers, then. But none of them seemed to be officers. None of them probably spoke a word of English.
It’s going to have to be with gestures, then.
Liam approached them slowly, then for want of any better idea, dipped his head with a salute. ‘You will be unharmed, I promise. There will be no slaughter,’ he said to the Spaniard nearest him. The man was shaking, wide-eyed, holding a rapier in the bulging knuckles of one hand.
Liam reached for his belt and the flask of drinking water there. He uncorked it, held it out to the man. ‘It’s all done, it’s finished,’ he said soothingly. ‘You’re done here. Why don’t you drop your weapons? Eh?’
The man seemed to understand his intention if not his words. Slowly he nodded. Then he released his hold on the sword and it clattered on to the deck at his feet. The other Spaniards followed suit. Liam handed him the flask then turned to his men. ‘The ship’s ours, lads.’ He sighed, took in several deep breaths. ‘The ship’s ours.’
Rashim and Liam found each other a few minutes later. They spoke across the space between both ships, the hulls bumping and creaking against each other.
‘My God, Liam!’ Rashim’s face was glistening with sweat. ‘My God, that was … that was incredible!’
Incredible? No. It was hard. There were going to be moments of it he’d want to forget. It had been savage, primal even. But at least it was done. ‘Where are the other ships?’
‘Two of them are right out there.’ Rashim pointed towards the prow of the ship. ‘They’ve dropped their sails! Not even trying to make a run for it!’
Liam craned his neck to see. Sure enough, he could make out the dark outline of their hulls a mile away. Their sails were down, untethered and flapping uselessly in the wind.
‘What about the others?’
‘Not that far.’ Rashim’s bearded face split with a smile. ‘I can chase them down!’