with both hands. The recoil is vicious. Aim at the middle of the body, then you'll have more chance of hitting something.'
Her face turned white, and for a moment he thought she was going to be sick.
'I'm sorry about this,' he said lamely. 'I'd no idea it would happen, or that it would happen this early.'
She was pale, but in control. 'Perhaps the other boat isn't following for a reason,' she said gamely. 'Perhaps it's just a coincidence.'
'I'd hoped so, for a while. But the other boat is faster than us, designed for speed in fact. No one spends longer at sea than they have to, even in high summer. She's holding back, using only half her sail. If she'd other business, she'd be about it by now and long out of our sight. Sorry.'
It was nearly dark now, and if the other vessel was an enemy it would be loosening out the remainder of its sails, surging through the heavy swell to catch up, the sound of her bow pushing through the water lost in the wider noise of the sea. The enemy vessel reminded Gresham of a hawk, gliding silently through the air, the fat thrush in its sights. The Anna ploughed contentedly on, dipping into the waves and then rising in an easy steady motion. She was no greyhound, but she was still a sturdy, long-legged creature, gobbling up the miles.
Timing. It was all about timing. He placed himself casually on the quarterdeck, as any grand noble might do on board what was in effect his private yacht. He noted a thin sheen of sweat over the sailing master's face, despite the rapidly increasing chill of the evening, and felt the change that came over his body when he knew he faced action. He fixed the enemy sails — they had become the enemy now, guilty until proved innocent — with his eye, and measured the distance. How long for her to catch up?
So many variables! There was her speed, which he could only estimate: in open sea, there was a tidal drag for or against each boat which affected speed. An hour. That was his guess. An hour between the moment when he lost sight of the shadowing sails in the dark and the moment when the other vessel could be expected to be alongside.
The sailing master was looking at him now, worriedly. Owners did not pace the deck when light had gone, and there was nothing to see except for the occasional flash of white as a wave broke.
It was time.
Mannion appeared on the main deck, a flagon in his hand. He was swaying slightly, and not with the buck and heave of the deck. He looked up at the main mast, where Lowbrow was still crouched in the crow's nest. Mannion hailed him, clearly to offer him a drink, and made for the stays, starting to climb the mast.
'Stupid bugger!' said the sailing master, at the wheel. He looked at Gresham. 'If that man o' yours falls in, he's a dead 'un. We'll never find him in this dark.' Rather ominous thick cloud covered the moon and stars. This on its own had interested Gresham. Without the stars there was no aid to navigation except an ancient compass. A ship within sight of the shore should have hove-to, put out a sea anchor, strove to remain where it was until dawn showed it its path again. Yet the sailing master had made no effort to halt the Anna. Perhaps he knew by intuition where they were. Or perhaps a moving vessel would cloak the sound of another vessel coming alongside, homing in on their stern light. And why was the sailing master handling the helm? Traditionally on a reduced night watch, he would give the orders, and a seaman would take charge of the wheel.
Gresham decided to play the aristocrat.
'Serve him right!' he said grandly, and with a laugh. 'Drowning'll teach him not to get drunk at sea!' It was a comment that could have come very easily from numerous of the chinless wonders who spent their time pomping around Court.
Gresham retreated to the stern rail, directly behind the wheel. The sailing master's attention was distracted by the sight of Mannion, apparently clumsily climbing into the crow's nest, despite the protestations of Lowbrow which were whipped away by the wind before they could properly reach the deck. Mannion was half in and half out of the vantage point when he raised the flagon he still clutched in his hand in what appeared to be a salute. Except the salute turned into something else as he brought the flagon crashing down on the skull of the look-out. The man collapsed forward, hanging half in and half out of the wooden structure, arms dangling faintly ludicrously.
If they had known for certain that the look-out had been bought by an unidentified enemy, Mannion would simply have hurled him overboard and left the sea to do its job. But what if this was a false alarm? Were their suspicions worth the life of a possibly innocent man? Gresham had reckoned not, so Mannion tied the fiercest of gags round the unconscious man's mouth, and produced twine firstly to bind his hands, then his arms to his side and finally his feet. Finally he bound him to the mast, so it looked as if he were still on duty. One thing was certain. If the Anna sank tonight, she would be taking its erstwhile look-out along with her.
The sailing master looked aghast as the blow struck, and started as if to move from the wheel when his sailor's instinct told him what happened to sailing vessels whose helmsman suddenly left their station; the wheel and the helm as a result swinging wildly in the wind. Still grappling the wheel, he turned with open mouth to remonstrate with Gresham when suddenly more stars than there were in the sky exploded in his head, and he fell unconscious. Gresham pocketed the short wooden club and grabbed the helm, the Anna already having started to swing head to wind. Jack appeared as from nowhere, and dragged the sailing master to one side, binding him as effectively as Mannion had done the look-out. Then he came to the wheel, taking it over with a nod from Gresham.
There were flittering shadows on the deck now, moving quietly with shoes removed so as not to wake the rest of the crew sleeping in the forecastle. The extra chests that had been brought from The House were opened, some of their contents removed. This was the tricky part. The Anna's guns were not on her lower decks, firing through ports cut into the hull. They were rather on the upper deck, firing through the guardrail. The result was that their snouts barely projected over the side, but under any normal circumstances they would still have been rolled back to muzzle load. Yet even these light brass guns would send noise and shuddering pounding through the hull if they were rolled back on their wheeled mountings, and if that did not wake the crew and the master nothing would.
Could they load the guns without rolling them back? The men had assured Gresham they could. It was devilishly difficult, though. They were under half sail, and a ship moving through the sea under sail is never a steady platform. One man had to lean out over the bulwark and push the powder charge down to the end of the barrel using a shortened rammer. A second man held onto his legs for all he was worth. The charges brought from The House, were in the finest of linen bags. The loader had to ram a metal spike down the touch hole of the gun, piercing the linen and exposing the powder. He would then pour a charge of powder down the touch hole. He could then light the powder directly with a slow fuse, or use the new-fangled flint-and-wheel mechanism on the gun to fire it. In the meantime, the loader had taken the ball, and rammed that down the barrel as well, while leaning out over the side. Except in this case, it was not a ball the loader was ramming down the barrel, but another, more coarsely bound package — grapeshot: loose, sharp pieces of metal, lethal at short range to any crowded deck. While Mannion and three of the men sweated to load the cannon, Gresham and Dick loaded the swivel guns. Here again convention was being denied. Just as the main deck cannon were for ball, so the swivel guns were for grape. Yet Gresham was opening packages from The House that contained not one but two small cannon balls, linked by chain. Chain shot. Designed to wrap itself round masts, bringing them crashing down. There was some satisfaction for Gresham in the recognition that these had been part of the original stores he had brought to the Anna for this journey. The first thing he had done when he had bought the ship was to have ball and grape cast for her cannon. Many did not bother. You could fire almost anything out of the mouth of cannon, including balls far too small for its bore. If you did, you simply increased to ludicrous proportions windage, the effect the air had on a cannon ball that was not perfectly round, or the ball ricocheted round the inside of the barrel as it was fired to the vast detriment of any capacity to aim it.
They were hampered by the need to load on both sides. If the enemy came, which side of the Anna would they come alongside? There was no way of knowing. In three quarters of an hour it was finished.
Gresham remembered to ask Mannion to go down and brief Jane on what was happening. He then had a sudden feeling of panic. Would she fire through the door and kill him?
They had shifted the allocation of men in the light of what they were expecting. Jack had taken the helm, even putting on the sailing master's stupid little woollen cap that had covered his blond hair, and trying to shrink himself in size. Gresham and Dick crouched behind the bulwark, two pistols each in their belts, both clutching boat axes with a cutting blade on one end and a sharp spike on the other. Gresham had his sword, despite the extraordinary ability of the sword and scabbard to get between the legs and trip up the owner. Mannion and the others huddled under the lee of the quarterdeck. A slow match in a tub of sand was burning between each of their
