Five minutes later, Smith watched as the fore-cannon was loaded with a standard iron cannonball known as round shot. Matthews struck the light and the cannon fired into the human bridge. The heavy ball of steel missed by several feet.
A spotter ran down into the forward hold. “It’s short.”
Matthew cursed. “By how much, man? Be precise!”
“Seven feet.”
Matthew nodded and quickly resealed the cannon’s touch hole with a leather thumb sheath to eliminate air from entering. “All right, men. You heard him. A small adjustment and we’re going to destroy that bridge. Let’s do it again.”
“Aye, aye, Mr. Matthews.”
Smith watched as two men hastily sponged the barrel to prevent any leftover embers from prematurely sparking the next round of gunpowder. The third man wormed the cannon – a process of running a piece of coiled iron called a worm through the barrel to remove any remnants from the previous firing – and the barrel was then sponged again.
Matthews examined the barrel carefully. He nodded, satisfied the barrel was clean of any embers. “Okay. She’s ready. Let’s do this right, this time.”
The powder monkey said, “Aye, Mr. Matthews,” and passed the heavy powder charge to the powder handler at the front of the gun.
Matthew’s gave the order, “Load.”
“Aye, Mr. Matthews,” the powder handler acknowledged, as he placed the charge in front of the bore of the gun, and the rammer slid it in until it bottomed out at the back of the barrel.
Matthews removed the leather thumb sheath from the touch hole and used the prick to test the charge was seated properly by pushing the powder prick into the touch hole and into the charge. Satisfied with the result, he yelled, "Home."
The powder monkey passed the second canon ball to the powder handler, who placed the ball in front of the barrel bore with his hand below the barrel. He glanced at the gunner.
Matthew yelled, “Load!”
The rammer said, “Aye, Mr. Matthews,” and rammed the ball with a wad of rags down the barrel until it was seated against the charge.
Matthews carefully sighted the gun. He adjusted the telemetry and height so the iron ball would fall past its previous location. Confident of the new position, he primed the gun by pouring black powder into the touch hole. “Ready.”
The gun crew covered their ears and stepped clear of the gun. Smith took an additional step backward, and blocked his ears. He watched as Mr. Matthews lit the fuse. The wooden rod with a piece of lit saltpeter glowed orange.
“Fire!” Matthews yelled, as he touched the saltpeter to the powder in the touch hole.
This time the cannonball sliced straight through its human recipients, severing one head and multiple limbs in the process. The human bridge swayed for a moment, and then the surviving members closed the gap and a new wave of attackers started to crawl along its top.
Oswald came down the gangway, into the forward gunner’s hold. “Great shot, Matthews! Let’s hit them again!”
Smith glanced at his brother. He was grinning and covered in blood as he gripped the handle of his cutlass with enthusiasm. Smith gritted his teeth as he watched the horrific sight. He’d never had the stomach for the battles, but it was obvious this was what his brother lived for. Still, if someone was going to die, he’d rather it be them instead of him.
“Smith,” Oswald looked at him. “You’d better follow me on to the deck. Some of the muskets are starting to foul. We need every hand we can get to stop them from over-running us.”
“Of course,” Smith said.
He raced up on to the deck with his loaded musket and joined the fight. Smith looked around. His eyes darting between the bow and stern, where the greatest number of attackers congregated, and pushed forward. Around him, his brother’s men were beginning to show signs of fatigue. Muskets were being loaded with the careless disregard of soldiers overwhelmed by their attackers. As a consequence, the muskets were starting to foul and fail. They were still winning, but not for much longer.
An attacker somehow reached the gunwale to the port side of the ship. Smith aimed his musket at the man’s head, and squeezed the trigger. The attacker fell back into the water, but more people continued to climb the railing. He grabbed a cutlass from the rack and sliced through their wrists, forcing them to fall back into the water.
He heard the third cannon fire. Its steel ball made a sharp whine as it sped through the air. Smith took a deep breath and held it. If the shot didn’t destroy the bridge, they would struggle to keep command of the Emerald Star for a fourth one. His eyes followed the shot. It was directly on target. This time, the human bridge parted moments before the ball struck. It dipped into the ocean, without injuring a single warrior, and sent a small plume of seawater into the air. Immediately afterwards the human bridge closed the gap and held firm – while another wave of warriors quickly climbed over the top and past the breakers.
*
Smith swallowed hard, and reloaded his musket.
Behind him, Oswald stormed down below into the gunners hold. “Same target. This time, load the grapeshot!”
Grapeshot consisted of small iron balls about three quarters of an inch in diameter, which were then packed into bags. The bags disintegrated when the powder ignited, releasing a cluster of balls in a wide shot pattern. This load was very deadly against crewmen at extremely close range, and often used to repel boarders. It was rarely used to hit a target fifty feet away.
Smith heard the loud boom of the fourth canon shot. His eyes traced the grapeshot’s trajectory as it whined through the air. This time the lethal concoction of deadly projectiles struck the middle of the human bridge.
At a guess, it killed at least thirty of the warriors in the process. It would take much longer to re-establish the human bridge this time, but Smith wasn’t so certain they’d won, and neither was his brother. The disconnected, outer section of the human bridge floundered in the water. No longer able to stabilize itself amongst the men whose feet were planted firmly in the shallow waters, the outer men started to float.
Oswald met his eyes. “One more shot and the bridge will be washed away in the breaking seas, and this all will be over!”
Smith nodded as he shot a man who started to climb the stern. “I hope that shot comes soon, because we’re not going to last much longer.”
“Don’t doubt my men.” Oswald grinned as he hacked at another boarder. “They’ll hold as long as we need them to.”
Behind him, a second boarder climbed. Smith looked at his shot pouch. It was empty. He was out of musket balls. He dropped the musket and picked up the cutlass instead. He hacked at the attacker, slicing him across his chest.
He turned and yelled, “Marcus. We need more musket shots.”
Smith didn’t hear the response. Instead he heard a loud explosion coming from the bow! Smoke erupted from the forecastle where the cannon were housed. He looked at his brother. “What the hell was that?”
Oswald shrugged. “The fore-cannon just exploded. Some fool must not have sponged the embers well enough!”
“Can we get the other cannon?”
“No. Not fast enough to make it do us any good.”
Smith glanced back at the shore. The human bridge was starting to form again. “Now what?”
Oswald growled. “Now we fight for our lives!”
“It would take a miracle to hold them off much longer.”
Oswald looked up at the sky behind. A massive storm was moving in toward them, whipping sand from the Namibian desert at them like tiny shrapnel. The once-unified human bridge appeared to disintegrate under the barrage.
“See, Smith – the Gods haven’t forsaken us!” Oswald was grinning with delight. “That wind storm is going to blow us right out to sea!”
*
The easterly wind screamed along the Namibian desert, picking up sand along with it, and sending it out to sea. The human bridge failed to form, and the warriors were scattered throughout th
e surf, which had been whipped into a turbid boiling pot of angry sea. Smith watched their arms flailing beneath the light of the crescent moon, as they struggled to keep their heads above the seawater. The few who were close to Emerald Star were now being blown further out to sea, despite their best efforts to reach the ship.
Smith carefully found another bag of shot balls, reloaded his musket and smiled. He’d beaten the odds, and survived. He searched the ship for any signs of boarders. The last thing he wanted now was to risk being killed by complacency.
His brother grinned. “I told you we’d be all right!”
“You did!” Smith embraced his brother. His eyes darted to the shore, where a dark, amorphous shadow stared back at him. “I’ll feel a lot better when we’re off this damned sandbar.”
“Any minute now. I can already feel her lifting in the swell.”
“We got lucky.”
“Yes. We did. But God knows I’ve made enough luck for myself over the years. It was time she paid me back some.”
Smith nodded. He wasn’t sure how much he deserved to be lucky, but he was none-the-less thankful for it. He climbed down below to avoid the tiny sand particles, which were cutting at him. Once there, he carefully opened the leather satchel he’d been carrying, and admired the cause of all this death. Of his entire party, only he had survived. The hideous relic stared back at him with hollowed eyes.
They teased at his conscience – was it all worth it?
Smith covered the relic with its protective cloth and placed it back inside the leather satchel, as though he could hide its accusatory eyes. A gust of wind howled as it screamed toward the Emerald Star. He felt the ship slowly list to her starboard side under the sudden pressure. He waited for it to right itself, but instead she remained slightly on her side.
The wind shrieked as it continued to thrash the portside of the ship. Smith slipped his arms through the straps of the satchel and stood up. Bracing on the side of the hull, he closed his eyes and made a silent prayer.
Please, let me survive, and I promise the man with the purple eyes won’t ever have you.
The ancient relic wasn’t in the mood for listening to his prayers. Instead, Oswald opened the deck hatch and said, “All hands on deck!”
Smith climbed up top. “What’s wrong? We have an easterly wind. Why aren’t we being blown out to sea?”
“It’s the sand!” Oswald yelled. His voice barely audible above the cry of the wind. His skin was speckled with his own blood where the sand had sliced at him. “This wind is dumping the dunes of the Namibian desert onto our deck.”
Smith felt his heart drum faster. No, it can’t be. The curse can’t be true! “What can we do?”
“We need every man to do his part to lighten the ship’s load. There are some shovels and buckets in the bilge. Those who aren’t getting rid of this damned sand, need to go below and make a human chain to remove the cannonballs and anything else that can be thrown overboard!”
“Aye, aye, Captain!”
Smith shoveled the sand from the deck. It lined the deck thinly, but the combined weight was enough to keep the Emerald Star well stuck where she lay. He struggled to breathe through the dense barrage of sand pellets. He covered his mouth with part of a small piece of cloth and kept working.
Sweat dripped from his arms as he shoveled quickly. His head pounded hard and the muscles of his arms and chest burned from the strain. He continued for as long as his body would allow, and then stopped. His feet had already become buried in the new sand. Sections of the deck which hadn’t been attacked with shovels were now knee deep in grit and the weight of it all began crushing the ship deep into the sandbar below.
Despondent with the certainty his battle was hopeless, Smith glanced at the deadly weather formation that would kill them all. It looked dark, ominous and evil to its core. Smith had spent nearly thirty years venturing into unexplored regions of the world. He’d seen every type of weather pattern known to man, but he’d never seen this. It was a once-in-a-generation meteorological event. The ferocious winds were leveling the monstrous sand dunes of the Namibian desert and dumping them out to sea.
His eyes turned to the warriors who lined the coast. They were going to win. He was going to die, but he doubted any of them would live long enough to revel in the knowledge. The storm was indiscriminate. It would kill all of them. Smith blinked, trying to see through the sand. When he opened them again, he saw an even more ghastly sight – the fiends had started to walk on water.
It was proof they were unearthly creatures. For a moment, he questioned whether or not he was still alive, and if he was now being punished in hell. He’d already accepted his fate, as impossible as it had seemed only a few hours earlier, he was going to die. But this was different. This was something evil, from the darkest unknown. Because no one walks on water.
A gust of wind knocked him onto his back. Nearby, one of the crew fell overboard, and Oswald screamed for the remaining men to keep working. Smith glanced at the fiends of his nightmare. There was something eerie and unnatural about the way they moved across the surface of the water. Like some sort of ethereal wraith, they glided above the water, and slowly stalked him.
Smith heard a man cry out for help from the sea. It was the man who’d fallen overboard. Smith clambered to the starboard railing. The crewman was standing in ankle deep water. My God! The ocean’s being swallowed by the sand! He reached down and helped pull the man back onto the deck.
Oswald had seen it, too. “Forget shoveling the sand, men. Prepare to repel boarders!”
*
Smith stared in horror as the warriors from the sand temple slowly approached. Their original numbers had been decimated, but they were still much greater than Oswald’s men, and they looked terrifying as they approached the Emerald Star. Smith followed the rest of the crew and fired his musket at the onslaught of warriors. His replenished supply of shot would outlast the weapon’s ability to continue to fire.
The first set of shots was fired and the smell of burnt sulfur and saltpeter filled the deck once more. Sand tore at their fragile skin, while the storm buried the meager light from the crescent moon. Their attackers advanced in an eerie silence, and the howling wind mocked them. Visibility was quickly reduced to nothing. The muskets rapidly failed under the sandy conditions. Flints broke, powder was spilled, and barrels became jammed with sand.
“Cutlasses and pikes out!” Oswald yelled. “This is it lads. Do or die!”
Smith rammed the butt of the musket into a boarder. The man fell backward and Smith dropped the weapon. He picked up a cutlass and swung it at the next man he saw. In the darkness, only the cries of the crew of the Emerald Star could be heard above the cold wind. He had no way of telling how many of the pirates were still alive.
It no longer mattered. They had been overrun by boarders, whose numbers and savagery would inevitably slaughter every last man. He heard his brother growl like a wounded beast. It could have been his bloodlust, or he could have been killed. Smith had no way of knowing. What he did know was there was only one place left where they might survive.
“Into the hold!” Smith yelled. “Retreat into the ship.”
He ran forward along the deck, through the darkness. One man stabbed at him with his dagger. Reflexively, Smith sliced back with his cutlass. The attacker’s gut opened up and Smith kept running. He climbed into the open hatch.
Once inside, he grabbed a pike off the rack, and pointed it upwards. If one of the boarders were to try to advance inside, he would pierce the man with the blade. He waited a few seconds for the other members of the crew. One of the attackers tried to drop down into the hold. Smith lifted the pike so it stood upwards, and the man was killed as his own weight drove the weapon through him when he landed on top of it.
Smith grabbed another pike off the rack, and waited ten seconds for more survivors, but none of the crew came. He knew he should wait longer. But how long could he keep fighting off the rest of the attackers? Swea
t filled the palms of his trembling hands, and made the pike slippery. He climbed the ladder, and looked out into the darkness. Three of the attackers ran toward him. Smith closed the hatch and locked it shut. He wondered if their daggers of fragmented obsidian would be capable of penetrating the hardwood hatch. Smith dismissed the thought. There was nothing he could do about it. He quickly slid down the ladder, and lit a lantern.
“Is there anyone else down here?” he asked.
Only silence returned.
Above, the cries of men being slaughtered had finally dwindled to nothing. Smith carried the lantern and continued to search the bowels of the Emerald Star. He was on his own. He recalled the words the man with the purple eyes had said to him about the ancient relic – He who possesses it shall rule in solitude. For that is the price of unimaginable power.
He quickly opened the leather satchel, and unwrapped the protective cloth that surrounded the golden skull. He stared at the wretched artifact. Its hollowed eyes were tormenting him – Aren’t you glad you stole me?
He wanted to throw it overboard. Get rid of the cursed thing, but the outward opening hatch was now filled with sand and unable to be opened from the inside, even if he wanted to. His eyes darted to the porthole. Maybe there was still time to open it and escape. But even if he could, where would he go? The answer came to him immediately – to his death. Anything would be better than being buried alive.
Smith kept staring out the porthole in horror. It was pitch dark outside, and the light of the lantern flickered and reflected back at him on its glass. The porthole was too small to escape through. It was barely large enough to squeeze his arm through if he tried, and nowhere near large enough to expel the golden skull.
Above, he heard the unnerving sound of fingers scratching at the deck. The people from the pyramid were trying to dig their way through the sand and the hardwood to reach him. Not him. They didn’t really care about him. He glanced at the skull. Its sinister hollowed out eyes were mocking him. You know why they’re really here, don’t you? They had come for it, and the sweet smell of its burned, blackened powder. He would gladly give it to them, if he could.
The Sam Reilly Collection Volume 3 Page 5