The King

The second boat to the left had her foredeck cleared by a hit, guns and men flying as the heavy twenty-four- pounder ball shattered amongst the barrels. Her mast came down and some powder cartridge bags went off with a great burst of dirty yellow smoke and flame. She came to a dead stop and began to sag down off the wind toward the western shore, right into Lady Charlotte's guns.

'Well, damn them,' Lewrie spat. The other four praos were now bearing off under human power, their paddles or oars slashing the sea as they fled east, out of range of the car-ronades that had smashed up their leaders' boats like a giant's fist.

Lewrie turned to look seaward once more. The battery on the point had sunk one prao, but it looked like at least four would get out through the channel. And the two surviving pirate boats to the east were working their way along the line of the breakers in shallow water beyond the reach of even the high battery's guns. Which was where the four that had challenged him were going.

'Mister Murray?'

'Sir?'

'They're going to get away from us if we sit here,' Lewrie said, feeling grim about it and more than willing, if given any kind of excuse, to let them do so. But it was his duty. 'Fix buoys to the anchor cables and prepare to let slip. We'll pursue them.'

'Aye, sir,' Murray said with a sharp intake of breath.

'Mister Hogue! Secure your guns for a while. We shall hoist sail, let slip the cables and get underway.'

'Thank God for a simple rig,' Lewrie said scant minutes later. It would have taken a square-rigger half an hour to hoist sail, but little Culverin could simply hoist her jibs and gaff-sails, haul in on the sheets to angle those sails to the wind at the proper angle and she was moving ahead and under control. It made him wonder if a way could be found to rig a larger warship so simply, even if it took four masts instead of three. A fore-and-aft rigged ship with a deep, full-run keel for a good grip on the water so she could go to windward like a witch, with no courses… well, maybe a forecourse to lift the bows, and nothing higher-mounted than large tops'Is. Armed with carronades for the most part, with a few long-ranged muzzle-loaders amidships for…

'Course, sir?'

'The mind can do the oddest things at the worst moments,' Lewrie murmured, laughing at himself. He might not be alive half an hour from now if he took Culverin into that desperate pack of bloody- handed murderers now intent on escape, and even more dangerous than before. And here he was speculating on naval architecture!

'Close-hauled on the larboard tack for the harbor,' Lewrie said. 'We'll have to tack east or end up running aground, but that'll give us a chance to fire into those boats running along the reef line.'

Culverin could point high, but the wind was solidly out of the sou'east, and the best she could do was a little west of due south to approach the harbor entrance on a long board. Leadsmen swung chains to sound the depth ahead of her as she clawed her way seaward.

'And a half, two!'

'Helm alee! Off fores'l sheets!'

Culverin tacked across the eye of the wind, onto a short board back to a heading of about 1 point, about 11 degrees, north of east. But she had gotten close enough to threaten those fleeing praos along the reef line inside the breakers.

'Ready, sir!' Hogue called to him. 'I make it about two cables.'

'Try your eye, Mister Hogue!' Lewrie nodded. 'Blaze away!'

The guns on the starboard side came reeling inboard one at a time. The heavy balls, fired at maximum elevation and laid so close to the edge of the port-sills they almost singed the wood, failed to hit. They landed short, raising great feathery plumes of water into the air. But the praos checked their frantic pace and paid off the breaker line, stymied by fear.

'Hands to the sheets! Ready to come about? Helm alee!' Alan commanded. He did not want to get too far to the east inside their harbor, for that would put him too close to the reefs to be able to tack to windward to reverse course. To wear ship downwind would lose him every inch of ground he had gained south for the entrance channel.

'Now we shall try our luck against yonder bastards.'

'Jesus!' Murray yelped, ducking into a half-crouch as a solid shot moaned overhead. 'Where'd they get such heavy iron, sir?'

'That was our battery on the hillside above the fort, Murray,' Lewrie commented, standing erect from his own crouch. 'I pray those gunners know what they're about with that heated shot.'

'Didn't miss our masts by a boat-length, sir,' Murray carped as Culverin sailed right through the ring-shaped splash of the spent shot half a minute later. 'An' they haven't got the range for very much longer. Cain't we signal 'em t' stop, sir?' 'Ah… uhm, I'm afraid that's one signal we didn't discuss, Murray,' Lewrie confessed, suffering another qualm at all he had not considered once again, and feeling the lack of prior planning acutely. 'We shall have to trust to their good judgment.'

'Good judgment from soldiers!' Murray gaped with a sour look.

'Ready the larboard battery, Mister Hogue! Fire as you bear!'

'And a half three!' the leadsman chanted.

'As you bear… fire!' Hogue screamed, his voice cracking.

Now the larboard guns lurched back on their recoil slides and a harsh, stinging cloud of powder blossomed forth, checked at the bulwarks by the winds and wafted back over them, blanking out the world for a minute. When the smoke cleared, the hands cheered at the sight of a pirate boat that was rocking keel-up about two hundred yards away, with survivors struggling and wailing about her.

'And a half, two!'

'Ready to come about!' Lewrie called. 'Helm's alee!'

One more close-hauled short board on the starboard tack to the east, perhaps the last they could make as they neared the harbor entrance and the line of breakers. The next larboard tack would take them through the main channel and out to sea. Hogue let loose with a broadside from the starboard guns, once more hitting nothing, but the pirates trapped in the lagoon were too rattled to notice, and shied off again.

Back on the larboard tack. Breakers growling and fuming. The battery on the point firing at a boat ahead of them and straddling it with two shot-splashes, hitting it amidships with the third ball and shattering it so quickly that it jack-knifed like a paper boat, broke in two and went under.

'Two more hands to the tiller, Murray!' Lewrie snapped. 'Stand by to pinch her up as we cross the bar.'

There was more depth in the channel this time of day as tidal flooding rushed into the harbor, softening the shock. But Culverin could still broach on that deceptively calm-looking swell if she hit it wrong.

Culverin rose, soaring up on the swell, with a line of spume racing down past her sides, her bow cocking up for the skies.

'Helm down!' Lewrie shouted. 'Luff up square to the wave!'

Four men threw their sinewy strength to the tiller to keep it from lashing to either side or throwing them overboard. Culverin lay on the tip of the swell, sails luffing and thundering, then began to fall as the wave left her behind, bow dipping until it looked as if she'd bury her bowsprit into the trough and keep on sliding down into the depths. She then began to gather speed after being checked in her slide.

'Helm up and give us way, close-hauled!'

It was like rowing a boat across the surf line without going arse-over-tit or being rolled like a stranded whale. Culverin paid off and her sails filled with wind as a second swell gathered her up out of the trough where they could find air, thundering and flapping, then taking shape once more with a series of loud boomings.

'Hold her no more than a point west of south, quartermaster!' Lewrie turned to say. Culverin soared upward once more, almost forcing him to his knees in her hurry to ascend to heaven, but she was halfway out of the wicked harbor entrance now. Even with her hellish tendency to go to leeward like a wood- chip, they would clear the western shoals under the point if they could only make this course good. To have to tack while fighting those entrance bar swells would be disastrous!

'Two fathom!' the starboard leadsman howled.