prisoners of war. You can be certain it's not going to happen on my watch.' He glanced around the spar deck. 'There's only one problem. The ship originally carried more than four hundred men. We're a little shorthanded.'
'We'll have to make do. Can we get the old girl moving?'
'We were about to hoist sail when we stopped to pick you and your friend up. The best we can get out of it is a couple of knots. lronsides is no speedboat.'
'The main thing is that we establish even a little control of the situation. It will keep them guessing. Speed's not important. What about weapons? Any on board?'
Slade laughed and pointed to the cannon lined up on both sides of the deck. 'You're talking about a fighting ship. Take your pick, thirty-two-pounder Carronades on this deck and twenty-four-pounder long guns below. Plus a couple of Bow Chasers. More than fifty cannon total. Unfortunately, we're not allowed to carry gunpowder.'
'I was thinking about something more practical.'
'We've got boarding pikes and axes and cutlasses. There are belaying pins everywhere. They make fine blackjacks.'
Austin told the young officer to do what he could. Slade gathered his men around, introduced Austin and told the crew that the people who shot up the ship might try boarding it. He ordered every light on the ship doused and told some of the crew to get aloft. They scrambled up the rigging and onto the yards, where they loosed the topsails. The inner jib was set and the ship began to move, on her own, at a speed of about one knot.
The sail crew dropped down to the deck and hauled up the main topsail yard. The 3,500-square-foot mainsail filled with the breeze, and the mast began to squeak. The ship crept along at the speed of a fast snail. Then the outer jib was set, followed by the fore topsail. The ship tripled its speed. The movement would pose no problem for anyone trying to board, but it gave the crew a modicum of control. In the meantime, weapons were being stacked on the deck.
Slade picked up a cutlass and felt the sharp edge of the blade. 'Warfare was a personal thing back then, wasn't it?'
'Unless you know how to use that thing, this might be more practical,' Austin said, hefting a boarding pike, basically a long wooden shaft with a sharp metal spearhead on one end.
The crew split up into two parties, one for each side, and nervously kept watch. A party was dispatched to the fighting platform halfway up the main mast where Marines and sharpshooters used to rain death down on attackers. Austin paced restlessly back and forth, a belaying pin in his hand.
They didn't have to wait long. The first sign of the renewed attack was the loud rapping against the ship's side. The attackers were trying to soften them up with automatic gunfire. The bullets chipped the black and white paint, but hardly put a dent in the two-foot- thick oak hull. The doughty old ship plowed through the water, brushing off the bullets as if they were a swarm of pesky mosquitoes. Like the Barbary pirates and the British navy, the attackers learned Old lronsides was no pushover.
The attackers saw that their bullets were having no effect and stopped firing, instead switching on their spotlights, revving their motors and closing on their slow-moving target. Austin heard the boats thump against the hull. He had figured that the attackers would try to climb up the standing rigging that ran from the masts down the side of the ship like rope ladders, and when he saw a hand grab onto the bottom ledge of a gun port, Austin brought the belaying pin down on the attacker's knuckles.
There was a shriek of pain. The hand let go, and the attacker fell into the harbor with a loud splash. A face appeared on the other side of the gun port. Austin set aside the belaying pin and picked up a boarding pike. He tucked the spearhead under the man's chin. Austin was practically invisible on the darkened deck. The attacker felt the sharp point tickling his Adam's apple and froze, afraid to move.
Austin pushed the pike forward slightly, and the face disappeared. This time there was a loud thud, as the attacker fell into a boat. Seeing his gun port clear for the time being, Austin strode down the line of cannon. The ship's crewmen were using their boarding pikes with similar effect. Working in pairs, some of them tossed cannonballs over the side. Judging by the yells and crunching sounds, they were finding their mark.
Slade came running up, still wearing his cocked hat. 'Not one of those jerks has set foot on deck.' His sweaty face beamed with pride.
'Guess they're getting the point,' Austin said. A face appeared over the bulwark behind Slade. Before Austin could warn Slade, the attacker had hooked a leg over the side and was bringing his assault rifle to bear.
Austin threw the boarding pike like a Masai warrior taking on a lion. The pike struck the attacker in the chest, and he let out a cry of surprise and toppled back, his weapon firing uselessly in the air.
Austin grabbed a cutlass and leaped onto the nearest cannon, intending to cut the rigging to prevent it from being used as a ladder. As he brought the sword back, he heard someone yell:
'Starboard!'
The shout came from the fighting platform. The assault had moved around to the other side of the ship.
Two of Razov's men had climbed onto the bulwark and were unslinging their weapons, preparing to spray the defenders concentrated on the deck.
Acting on pure instinct, Austin slashed the line nearest to him, grabbed onto the loose end like Tarzan swinging through the trees and launched himself across the deck, his legs extended in front of him. The attackers looked up and saw a dark Batman-like apparition flying their way. They tried to get their guns around, but Austin's feet struck them with the full force of his weight, and they pitched over backward. Austin reached the end of his arc and swung back, then dropped onto the deck amid loud cheers from the astounded crew.
'Wow!' Slade said. 'Where did you learn that trick?'
'Watching old Errol Flynn movies in my misspent youth. Is everybody okay?'
'Couple of cuts and bruises, but Old lronsides's deck has not been violated.'
Austin grinned and clamped the sailor on the shoulder, then looked around.
'What's that?'
'Boat motors,' Slade said. They ran to the side of the ship and peered over. They could see three wakes. A cheer went up from the crew, but it faded when the boats came to a stop a few hundred feet away and the pinpoints marking muzzle fire began. But instead of aiming for the nearly impregnable sides of the ship, they were concentrating on the rigging. The sails were being shredded. Bits of rope and splinters of wood began to rain down on the deck. The observers scrambled down from their platforms.
'Those cowards!' Slade yelled. 'They can't board her, so they're going to rip her to shreds.' Tatters of sail fell on his head. 'We've got to do something!'
Austin grabbed the sailor's arms. 'You mentioned a twenty-one-gun cannon salute.'
'What? Oh, yeah, the two cannon on the foredeck. We fire them every morning and sunset. They're old breechloaders. We've jerry-rigged them to fire three-hundred-and-eighty-millimeter shells. But they shoot blanks, except for the time when someone forgot to remove a cap and we hit a police boat.'
'Our friends out there don't know they're blanks.'
'That's right.'
Austin quickly outlined his plan. Slade ran back and ordered the helmsman to steer a new course. The helmsman swung the wheel over, and the Constitution slowly came about so that its bow was pointed at the attack boats.
Slade rounded up his gun crew and they climbed down to the gun deck and hurried forward. Within moments, the forward cannon were loaded. Austin peered through the gun port and saw the attack boats lined up. They had been readying for another assault when the ship turned and came at them. With Old lronsides taking the offensive, they seemed to be confused. Austin wanted them as close together as possible. The gap was closing. The boats started to move apart.
'Now!' Austin ordered. He stepped away and covered his ears.
Slade pulled the lanyards. There was a double roar, the foredeck was enveloped in smoke and the cannons leaped back, their recoil held in check by thick cordage. The gun crew had purposely left the caps in.
The bluff worked. The attackers saw the big black ship bearing down on them behind a cloud of purple smoke, heard the twin projectiles whistle though the air and saw the geysers of water. The boats sprinted out of the way like startled jackrabbits, then headed at full throttle toward the mouth of the harbor where they disappeared in the darkness.
The cannons roared again, with blanks this time, as the ship gave chase.
