toppled backward onto the gun deck. Methodically, he then shot the three closest men and they sprawled on the deck around Billingsly. The other crew, who’d arrived with the officer, fled into the waist. Silva pointed the Colt at the Company warden and grinned hugely, his single eye gleaming. Smoke was beginning to coil up out of the ship and there was a growing panic.
“Well, Mr. Billingsly! Just you an’ me!” He gestured with the pistol. “’S a wonder you didn’t fiddle around with this thing, learn how it works. A fella like you coulda used it-at a time like this!” He laughed.
“Just do it!” Billingsly shouted. “Do you mean to mock me to death? Shoot! I swear I will kill you and all your pathetic friends! I’ll hang that precious princess of yours, damn you!”
Silva’s grin vanished and something akin to… regret crossed his face. “I already have killed you, you stupid, measly son of a goat! And at least you deserve killin’. You know, I was kinda groggy at the time, but seems I remember ol’ Spanky yellin’ somethin’ about you not knowin’ who you was monkeyin’ with.” He shrugged. “Now you do.”
With that, Silva slid down the rope to the waiting boat below. “Cast off!” he said. “Out oars! Get us the hell outta here!”
“They’ll fire on us!” Brassey shouted.
“No, they won’t. Row.”
Rajendra gave Silva a strange look. “Do as he says. All together!”
“I want this ship turned in pursuit of that boat this instant!” Billingsly shouted.
“There’s no steam!” returned Ajax ’s first lieutenant. “Someone has wrecked the emergency valve! We’ll have to let the boiler go completely cold before we can fix it!”
“Then make sail! I want that boat! Where’s Truelove? Has anyone seen him?”
“No, sir. We have almost extinguished the fire in the orlop passageway. It is very strange. The fire was deliberately set, but also set in such a way as to make it difficult for us to reach the magazine! With all those flames that close… it makes me shudder to think!”
Billingsly’s eyes went wide. “Has anyone inspected the magazine yet?”
“No, sir. It is locked, would you believe it? Locked!”
“Quickly! Who has a key?”
The executive officer was taken aback, both by the line of questioning and by Billingsly’s intensity. “Why, Captain Rajendra, that traitor, would have one.”
“Who else?”
“Only the master gunner.”
Billingsly covered his face with his hand. “Get axes! Every man who will fit in that passageway this instant, with axes! You must chop a way into the magazine! There isn’t an instant to lose!”
The officer raced off and Billingsly turned to face in the direction the boat had pulled away. It was invisible in the darkness, but he knew they would be watching. Probably that fool Rajendra had no idea, but Silva would be watching… and waiting. As he’d said, Billingsly was a man with few regrets, but one nagging little minor regret- letting the hostages live as long as he had-suddenly lunged to the very top of his list.
Truelove managed to open one eye but the other was swollen shut. For several moments he couldn’t figure out where he was, why he was there, or why he was so uncomfortable. Slowly it all returned to him. Unsportsmanlike! He would have chuckled if he didn’t hurt so badly and if something painfully large and well secured wasn’t stuffed in his mouth. He’d been in the business long enough to appreciate the work of a professional, even at his own expense. Sometimes, given the nature of that brilliant fool Billingsly and the treacherous cause they served, Truelove couldn’t help but appreciate a fellow professional, especially when it came at his expense. He’d been at it too long and he’d grown jaded. He did like the money, but his heart just wasn’t much in it anymore. Another thought would have made him laugh. He’d told his adversary his swordsmanship was work while Truelove’s own was play. It suddenly occurred to him that, though that may be true, Silva’s… “professionalism” was still play, while his own had become work. Such irony.
He could barely move his head, but with his one good eye, he gazed around the compartment. Two dead men. A lot of blood. Wait! He was back in the magazine itself! There were no muskets, just barrels of powder secured all around. If I’m in the magazine, where is that flickering light coming from? He looked up, but couldn’t quite see. After much wriggling, he managed to force his head back just far enough.
Oh, bravo! he said to himself as the charred rope parted and the burning rum bottle dropped.
The current ran swiftly here and the men and women in the launch had rowed for their lives. All knew Ajax might turn at any moment and chase them down, but a couple of those on the boat suspected there might be further reason for gaining distance while they could. Ajax ’s own momentum and the prevailing wind kept her pointed east, while the current carried the launch and its occupants west-northwest. Therefore, they’d gained almost two miles’ distance from the ship when the night suddenly lit with a blinding flash that drew all their stares.
The entire aft half of Ajax erupted amid a yellow-red ball of fire, scattering masts, beams, yards, timbers, shards of burning rope and drifting canvas far across the sea. There was little steam left in her boiler, but a great steamy plume shot skyward when seawater touched the hot iron. Another similar blast demolished the forward part of the ship when the other magazine went. The bowsprit was launched entirely out of view like an enormous javelin. Ajax ’s death took only seconds, but to those in the distant boat, it seemed to last much longer. The rolling, staccato, thunderous punch of the blast finally reached them with a physical jolt, and for what felt like whole minutes, flaming debris, blocks, an entire gun and carriage, bodies-or parts of bodies-rained down to splash amid the already vanishing flames.
“My ship,” murmured Rajendra.
“My God, Silva, what have you done?” Sandra whispered.
Dennis stood up in the boat and glared around at the dozen or so survivors. “Why is it ever’ time somethin’ like this happens, it’s ‘Lawsy me, what’s ol’ Silva done now’? I’m sick an’ tired of it, hear! Might give a fella the benefit o’ the doubt now an’ again!”
“Did you… do something… that might have destroyed that ship?” Rebecca asked quietly.
Dennis looked harshly at her for a moment, then glanced at his feet. “Well… what if I did? What were we gonna do? Row off from ’em? That wadn’t ever gonna work, not after Rajendra and his bunch decided they wanted to come with us! Sneakin’ off ourselves was one thing. They wouldn’ta noticed us gone till they came to feed us the next day, and we woulda had a lot of ocean to hide in.” He glared at the men from Ajax again. “A ship’s captain, engineer, carpenter-an’ who knows what else-disappear in the middle of a distraction like was necessary to get so many off, somebody’s gonna take notice! Somebody did!”
Rajendra stood too, slightly jostling the boat. “You… murdering filth! You murder my ship and all her crew and then have the nerve to say you did it because of us? Because we came with you? How would you have escaped without our help-without the help of some of the men you killed this night who had to stay behind?”
“It wadn’t your ship no more, genius!” Silva bellowed. He was fed up. “You were in the same fix we were. Don’t you dare stand there an’ act all sancti-fidious at me when you wouldn’t even rear up on your hind legs an’ try to take your ship back! When you blew Cap’n Lelaa’s ship outa the water with all her people on it! You coulda saved your ship then, if you’d pulled your pistol an’ shot Billingsly square betwixt the eyes! That prob’ly woulda been the end of it right there, because whatever else you are, or your crew was, you were the goddamn captain! Instead, you said, ‘Yes, sir! You’re the boss!’ an’ killed two hundred of our folks! Then you slunk around whinin’ how it wadn’t your fault!”
Silva looked at Sandra, knowing she, at least, would believe his next words. “I had me a little plan to get us off the ship. Mighta worked. We mighta got off without killin’ hardly anybody”-he shrugged-“or I mighta still blown up your ship. That was always plan B. When I heard your plan, I figgered it ’ud be easier-an’ safer-for us an’ the princess. But only if I dusted off plan B an’ made it part o’ plan A! Well, the plans worked, yours an’ mine, an’ here we are. I’m sorry if I killed some good fellas, but I ain’t that damn sorry.” He pointed at the pistol on Rajendra’s belt. “You can try to shoot me now, an’ maybe that’ll prove you ain’t as yellow as I think you are, but I’ll kill you an’ you’ll just be dead instead o’ helpin’ out now, when your princess needs you. Or you can prove you weren’t never yellow at all-just confused an’ a little scared, in a fix you hadn’t come upon before. I’ve heard that happens to folks. You can prove that by bein’ a good captain for what’s left of your crew, an’ by helpin’ Larry an’ Captain Lelaa-if she’ll have you-navigate our way to the boosum o’ Larry’s lovin’ home.”
Slowly, Rajendra sat. Some of what Silva had said must have struck a chord, because he lowered his eyes
