by Mark Keating
‘The luck I been telling has come to you, my boys! Miles of salt and we comes across the man who scarred your lucky captain! And took a king’s fortune from the French that should have been mine!’
He pulled his pistol, Finch’s pistol, and fired overboard. ‘Your gold now, lads! As it should have been by rights, for you’re all mine now and shares in me luck likes I promised!’
They cheered, rapped each other’s chests. Most of them had sailed with Toombs from England and had slept with the tale in their ears, but now it was true. For there was the pirate traitor himself. The gold within their round-shot’s range. Seth had spoken true. His was the luck.
Seth leapt down from the quarterdeck and kicked the nearest gun to him. ‘Load that and three with bar. The rest double-shotted. Never mind the larboard, I aims not to need it. Six men aloft with musket. Thirty rounds apiece and I’ll be counting them as they fly, mind. Any man still carrying will answer for it!’
He ran to the hatch between the masts, centre of the ship, all eyes upon him, the hatch raising him inches above them all.
‘Somebody make me some fireworks! Bottles and jars! Anything that will crack and burn, boys!’ He slapped the remaining jolly-boat between the masts. ‘Get this away over the side or it’ll cut you to ribbons else when the shot flies!’
He slung his empty pistol to the young Porto. ‘Load it. And keep it coming. I’ll not ask again.’ Then, loud as he could, deafening the bowing Porto, ‘And bring me a cutlass, boy! I’m a-cleaving to glory!’
He held out his arms to all, twisting on his heels as the ship roared and roared to his twirling form, now almost a jig, with Howell looking on between the bulging chest of Seth Toombs and the black flag ever closing yonder.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Dandon sighed to the scarfed head that handed him a short overcoat pistol and examined the lock minutely, holding its action to his ear, nodding at the satisfying clicks.
‘In rebus asperis et tenui spe fortissima quæque consillia tutissima sunt,’ he uttered to the lurching pirate, who queried instantly to a mate at his shoulder:
‘What did he call me?’
Dandon winked. ‘In grave difficulties and with little hope, the boldest measures are the safest.’ He patted the pirate’s bare shoulder, tucked the weapon into his silk belt and removed himself from the energy all around the deck.
The aprons were plucked from the gun’s vents with the wad of tallow that kept the touch-hole dry. Tompion plugs were removed, drawing yawns of relief from the mouths of the guns.
Buckets came from below filled with grenadoes and clay fire-pots to throw onto the enemy’s deck and placed amidships where all hands could get to them. The barrel of water with the already smoking linstocks rattling in its notches was planted between the guns. Watson ordered the forelocks of the hatches closed, sealing off below-deck to any man whose courage fled.
Boarding pikes were stowed beneath the bulwarks along with one sponge, worm and rammer for each pair of guns.
Devlin yelled from the quarterdeck, ‘Sling the fore and main yards! Puddings and chain! Set fighting sail!’
He watched the bosun and mate scamper to the halyards with their chains and caps to hold the rigging should it be shot away, and only then did he notice the little ship with fifteen lonely men.
Four men now at the larboard guns, no eight to spare, with Watson as gunner captain. Six men in the tops with muskets and slung bags of fireworks and crow’s feet iron spikes. The bosun and mate to handle the foresails. The final pair to wear the hats of carpenter, fire-crew, and powder-monkey as well as marksmen firing over the gunwale. Devlin took a moment to name them all silently upon his lips, promising himself to say all their names again tomorrow when he called them for their share.
He lashed the Talefan’s tiller straight. She would be steered by the fore braces for the remain of the hour. Devlin could spare no hand without a weapon in it.
Dandon let his coat drop to the deck and peeled off his waistcoat. His chest of medicines was in the cabin. Laudanum and rum were all that would matter. He was no surgeon, but there was a saw below.
He passed a look up to Devlin on the quarterdeck. Devlin caught it, winked his lopsided grin in return then called for grape for the falconet beside him and looked to leeward and the growing ship that planed over the sea to cut across his bow less than a quarter-league now.
He brought up his scope to the sloop, the misty image rocking. He swung it to the rigging and watched the clambering backs climbing ratlines, muskets slung. If he could he would keep from musket range, for that could be the end of it.
His eye fell to the fo’c’sle to meet the dazzle of his rival’s scope following his sweep.
The blinding flash seared both their eyes and the scopes were brought down with a curse. For a blink of an eye each saw half of the other’s face.
Devlin slammed the scope back in its becket. He paused, looking at its brass body rattling in its clasps, a lingering memory rattling in his head along with it. His hand slowly stretched out for the spyglass again as he turned his head back to the familiar body at the fo’c’sle only to be snapped to the deck and away from his thoughts by the sudden shout from Watson.
‘Cap’n!’ he bawled and Devlin stretched to the rail, half looking to the sloop, half to his gunner captain. Watson finished his cry with his primer in his hand, ‘She be at three. Full range. We could try her?’
Devlin stepped down the five short planks to the deck and clapped his gunner-captain’s back.
‘Don’t try, John. Do.’
Watson affirmed grimly and sent his primer down the vent to pierce the sack of powder. He walked the line and stabbed the other three guns.
The quoins were out. Muzzles high, staring up to the white sails of the sloop waiting for the sweet kiss of the smoking slow-match. The trucks squealed in anticipation as the deck rolled.
Without the need for the order the bosun, John Lawson, hauled hard to brace the topsails to yaw up and the guns saluted the sky and arced across the Mumvil’s sails as Watson swept to the touch-hole of the foremost gun.
There came the hiss of the small powder trail and men bit their lips like shy children. Watson leant to the next gun and stroked it with the linstock as the first report roared and the grey cloud veiled the deck.
The guns shrieked back like hogs at killing time then were clapped tight by their breeches and quickly soothed by the cool wet lambskin sponge shoved down their throats – just as their brothers slammed their wad and chain at the wood eight hundred yards beyond.
The wave of spent powder caked the Talefans’ nostrils like boiling tar, they could taste it on their tongues as fine as rare beef and Devlin strained through the smoke to study the first meal of his six-pounders.
Their enemy’s yards creaked, sails shivered and quaked. Some sheets waved free and a top spar fell and hung in the rigging along with two limp corpses rolling and hanging off the ratlines. A slow start but a good one.
Without celebration, other than a pat to a gun, every man hunched as he went to his work with canister and bar, expecting vengeance from the stranger’s minions at any instant.
Dandon sat on the deck under the starboard bulwark. He could see the final feet of the twin masts of the enemy rolling past from where he sat, not knowing what chaos had rained down upon their deck. His brothers seemed happy enough as they reloaded and he took that as all being well.
He shuffled to the quarter that met the cabin and waited for the return, then heard the twin soft cracks echoing from afar and the spanker exploded above him, crashed to the deck in thunderous fury and draped itself over the rail in a cloud of sawdust and salt spray.
The spent chain and bar from the Mumvil’s guns flopped to the deck out of the spanker’s yards, steaming like dumplings, as the last three of her guns fired high and shot hummed over the quarterdeck and away, taking nothing with it but prayers.
Dandon looked up. Nobody hung from the rigging. The spanker and her
sail covered the door to the cabin and John Lawson flew in front of him with a marlin spike to pluck her loose sheets from the mast, swearing like a cheated whore.
Dandon pulled himself up. Both ships had a minute’s silence due to them before their loads rammed home again and he took the time to look abroad as the crew heaved at the guns and Devlin shouted them on.
The enemy was ahead, pivoting to the Talefan’s bow. She seemed far away, beyond shouting, but now puffs issued from her rigging as the first musket fire spouted from her men amongst the ratlines – too eager, for the effort fell short, bringing up spouts of water like tossed pebbles in a pond.
The Talefan’s own sharpshooters responded with licks to their thumbs as they drew their dogheads back and blew their load to rap uselessly against the Mumvil’s freeboard, chipping her black paint white.
The six snaps brought confidence if nothing else. Two of them grinned down at Dandon, punching their fists at him as they bit off their second cartridge.
Devlin fell back to the larboard quarter bulwark, opposite Dandon, his face lost in the white smoke drifting to the stern. He knew the loss of the spanker had come too soon. Still, its death did not show upon his captain or in the limbs that had now readied the guns again.
It was clear that they had chanced upon no ordinary prize nor a fellow to share a truce with. They would share splinters and stab fire for a while before their hulls would scrape for onslaught.
Dandon would not know Devlin now. His crooked back, his creased brow, did not belong to Dandon’s world of pleasant drink and long evenings of gaming. He had become the pirate again and Dandon kept his quarter from him and his bloody work.
Watson needed no orders. He checked once with the bosun who drew the guns up again with a heave upon the braces then brushed his faint crushed powder trail and fired again as his gun crew jumped aside.
The guns had been levered right, hard against their port holes, to grab an angle to the ship almost across them now. They fired, three seconds apart, and the Talefan bucked against her reins and keeled a point windward with the recoil.
This time the whistling chains chomped their way through their foe’s rigging. After the tirade had faded and heads were raised again the yards hung at angles and cleat lines flapped free. Seth Toombs lifted himself from beneath the bulwark as he felt his ship slow.
They were closing fast now at less than six hundred yards, the sails, the breadth of his enemy, stealing his wind as he fell into Devlin’s lee, the bulk of Devlin’s ship sucking the breath from Seth’s sail.
Those aloft began to buckle as hanging wood nudged against their shoulders but the snarl upwards from the scarred face on the deck stayed their hands. They bit at the cartridges and reloaded, living now only in the brass pimple sight of their muskets and the planting of their feet in the ratlines, the whole deck of the brig before them.
They picked their target heads and fired.
Devlin ducked beneath the gunwale as the four shots hailed over the guns. The lead rattled off the iron, sparked and spat into the mast. A couple poked forever into the gangway, but no flesh was torn or head caved.
Devlin snaked up to eye his enemy’s guns. Still in, still reloading. He had a minute, maybe less. He looked up to the falconet on the quarterdeck. Watson slapped his men to action. Quoins were jammed back under the gun barrels to aim the mouths down. The hawser coil of chain gone, they loaded swiftly with shot. With a six-pound ball of iron, double-shotted, Watson would have four rounds from the pile inside the coil, enough to grind the Mumvil’s walls.
Devlin flew to the quarterdeck, leaping up the stair and shouting for Dandon to follow. Grabbing hold of the falconet he swung it to the deck opposite as Dandon appeared crouching at his side.
The quarterdeck was the most unshielded area. He was safe from the guns which would have to be levered round to front him but the marksmen had already spotted the hat and coat of a captain and were shifting their feet.
‘Dandon! Free the tiller. Hard to larboard when Watson fires. We’re bringing her round!’ He took hold of the cord to fire the flintlock falconet, raising the brass barrel to the four men entwined in the rigging who were shouldering their muskets.
‘I’ve never helmed a boat in my life, Patrick,’ Dandon appealed.
‘Just put your fat into it and push towards me!’ He yanked the cord and the gun fired its grape, flaming wad and bag into the air like fireflies, giving Dandon cover as he unhooked the tiller and freezing the horrified marksmen as they watched the dark cloud hurtling towards them.
Watson stroked his guns. Eight seconds later, as the last ball sang out, Devlin yelled to Dandon, who leant hard into the iron rod so that the Talefan instantly began to lurch to larboard. Her bow slowly swung to face the bastard as if to charge.
Seth had forgotten what hell was like. He covered himself under the starboard bulwark as the shots hammered into his world, shaking the ship like a storm wave. He looked at the black spreading stain on his right boot and the spatters around it. His foot moved fine and as he glanced skyward a splat of blood from above burnt his eye, dripping from something lost in the swathes of the main topsail.
He cursed it out of his eye, smearing his face, pulling himself up to survey his ship.
A man named Johnson, his gunner-captain, was shaking his crew up to man the minions.
The mainmast had splintered. A jagged smile cut at head height. Some yards had fell over the hatch, sheets and clew lines lay about and the stench of pitch and brimstone poisoned the air.
He yelled for Howell and ignored the volley of musket shots that picked at the deck around him. He looked to Devlin’s ship, her bowsprit now turning to face him, her yards bracing her round as if she were a spinning coin.
Howell bounded up to Seth’s side. ‘She’s coming about, Seth!’
‘Aye,’ Seth checked his pistol lock was waxed and dry. ‘He aims to cross our stern.’ Seth spoke as if he were somewhere else to where Howell stood. ‘Fetch me some water will you, Howell. And how’s the powder?’
‘One barrel of white,’ Howell gasped. ‘Ten bags ready. Grape and shot. Don’t reckon there’s any bar left.’ Howell wiped his brow and grabbed a bag of water from the loops around the mast. The Mumvil had not sailed for a running battle. Her magazine would provide a good defence but she would be down to spitting glass and nails if the day went on.
Toombs drank long of the stale warm water. Wetting his shirt cuff he washed off the streak of blood, calling to Johnson to hold his fire and not waste it on the bow of his enemy.
The Mumvil was heading away. Crawling though she was, they had put near five hundred yards between their stern and the wheeling Talefan incrementally bringing her starboard guns to bear.
A little distance would recover Seth’s men. If Devlin were to cross his stern, up close, he might as well blow his own brains out to save him the trouble.
Somehow Devlin had fired three rounds to his pitiful one. The Mumvil had one more gun to bear over the Talefan but he clearly had a rabble for a crew.
Devlin had Black Bill and Peter Sam who could spit cannon faster than they could eat. His men. Surely his men still if they could but see him.
He stomped to the flush fo’c’sle, scanning the white waters for sandbars, cautious not to run aground.
Howell traipsed after, looking up at the cracking sails and torn rigging. Three dead in the tops, that was all. It was the ships that were taking the pain, not the men.
‘What will we do, Seth?’ Howell glanced over his shoulder at Devlin now at their starboard quarter, racing to cut their stern.
Seth turned from the fo’c’sle, a face as charming as his sneer allowed.
‘Load the larboard guns. Double-shot. Helm to lee. Get our stern away and turn around. We’re going back at her. Run straight at her.’ He winked his final promise, ‘I’m going to show you something you can put on your gravestone, Howell Davis.’ Then he was moving aft, brushing ropes away from him like willow branches.
Having had the temerity to unbatten the aft hatch and go below, Hugh Harris brought up his fiddle. He plucked and stamped to the rhythm of the sea, moving along the line of the gunners and winking at them all on every downstroke of his bow-arm.
Devlin watched the Mumvil creeping away northwards. Was she fleeing? No matter. His starboard guns were primed and they would be on her stern in four more risings of the bow. The deck of the Talefan became a jolly place and the gun-crew waited for their guns to float across the three windows of the stern cabin. But the wind seemed to chill Devlin’s neck as he thought on the brown coat and the burgundy hat of the man with the spyglass that commanded the sloop running from his range.
He stepped away from the bulwark and stopped Hugh in his music. ‘Are your pistols readied, Hugh?’
Hugh lowered his bow and looked left and right at the pair of duelling pistols stuck in his belt, tied to a linen sling around his neck. ‘Aye, Cap’n. Always.’ And he went back to his fiddle. Dandon was at Devlin’s side, drawn by the hard look on his captain’s face. He had seen the look a year ago, in the stockade on The Island, before Coxon had appeared and the Shadow had not arrived and all seemed lost. Then, Devlin had slashed into a table with a sword in rising frustration, the frustration of an intelligent man thwarted. Before he could question his captain’s mood Devlin turned to him.
‘Take down the time, Dandon.’ Devlin’s eyes had a guilty look about them and he paused, glancing away and then back again as the sun caught the Mumvil’s sails like a glinting shield. He watched her as she began to heel around to larboard, turning over, showing fresh strakes shining as the sea ran off and her keel leant with bracing yards.
Needlessly some voice yelled out, ‘She’s coming about!’ and all of them watched the Mumvil turn.