The King

He could hear the rattle of ramrods just before the second rank pulled their triggers and the snapping and crackling rang up and down the line. More pirates howled, with pain this time, and he saw men driven backward, thrown off their feet and back into their mates by the sledgehammer blows of.75 caliber lead ball.

'Guns!' he yelled, turning to glare at Captain Addams. And the artillery went off, rippling from the center half- battery of six-pounders out to the flanks where the converted boat-guns barked and reared on their trails.

'Well, Goddamn!' Sir Hugo spat. He'd never seen the like, not in the last war certainly, not at Gibraltar for sure. The air was so moist with humidity that when the artillery discharged, those brutal barrels not only flung out a huge cloud of spent powder and sparks, they split the air with their loads, leaving a misty trail behind.

The best one could expect from any field gun loaded with canister and grape was about five hundred yards, and one usually saw the end result, but not the passage of shot. But this time, it was as if each barrel had flung out a giant's phantas-magorical fist of roiled air that went milky as the shock wave passed through it. Like a row of shotguns, the artillery cleaved great swathes from the enemy ranks. Densely packed as they were, they went down by platoons. Before each piece, there was a mown lane of dead and dying twenty yards across and three times that deep!

'Platoon fire!' Sir Hugo roared. Now for the grim business to continue in normal fashion, to create a continuous rolling volley of fire up and down the line. No one could fire faster and with more effect than an English-trained regiment.

The pipes had been skirling out something Sir Hugo had never heard before. Now, with no need to set a marching pace, they broke into civilian strathspeys and reels. 'The Wind That Shook the Barley,' 'The Devil among the Tailors' and 'The High Road to Linton.' Hard-driving, frightening in their hurried pace, for all their gaiety, dance tunes turned to the Devil's business amid the rattling of musketry and the deeper-bellied slamming of the guns.

'They're breaking!' Major Gaunt shouted. 'They're retiring!'

'Cease fire! Load! Fix bayonets!'

'Fix… bayonets!' the officers repeated eerily, and the sudden silence was broken by the slither of steel, steel that winked and glittered in the dawn.

'The 19th will advance!'

The pipers cut off their latest reel, extemporizing themselves back into a march as the coehorn mortars began to fire. Explosively fused round-shot lofted overhead to burst in mid-air above the wavering hordes of pirates, who had just begun to screw their courage back to the sticking post, and were ready to charge once more.

It was the guns that decided the matter. Slow to roll between the company ranks, the regiment had to stay to a half-step pace even with the pipes urging them on, so that they looked as if they minced forward, but with both ranks bearing musket-stocks held close to the hip, barrels and wicked bayonets inclined forward. And for bayonet work, the sepoys had to be closer together, shoulder to shoulder, reducing their front to a bare two hundred yards.

With an unintelligible shout, the native pirates came forward to meet them once more, sure they could sweep around both flanks and encircle them this time, and chop them to bits at last.

'Reg'ment… halt!' Sir Hugo screamed. 'First rank, kneel! Cock your locks! We'll serve 'em another portion of the hottest curry they've ever tasted, by God!'

Chiswick pulled back the fire-locks of his two pistols, stuck his smallsword into the turf in front of him, and stood ready, with his nerves singing a gibbering song as that manic horde came on.

'By volley… first rank… fire!'

Twenty muskets discharged at sixty yards. Perhaps nine foe-men went down, trampled by their fellows in their rage to get at Sir Hugo's men.

'Too damned soon!' he cursed himself. 'Second rank, present! Fire!' Another eight or nine pirates were hammered backward.

Too few once more! The artillery subadar looked at him, and he waved his arm vigorously. Both boat-guns bucked and reared, slashing the front of that implacable mob with grape and canister, and finally they checked their headlong rush, shying away for a second.

'Goddamnit!' Chiswick moaned. He had shot all his bolts, and there was nothing left. Although his immediate front was cleared, there were at least a hundred foe sweeping his right flank. He fired both his pistols, and took down one man, then cast them aside and drew his sword from the earth. 'Bayonets! Charge!'

His troops went in at a rush, weapons fully extended, to be met with shields, spears and sword blades. At first, they carried all in front of them with bayonet and musket-butt. Chiswick carved a spearman's face open, reversed and ripped the belly from another to his left. Nandu gave a great scream as he was shouldered backward and stumbled under the point of a third. Chiswick hammered the edge of his blade across the foe's back; the man screamed like a rabbit with his spine cut in half, then twitched uncontrollably.

'Dahnyavahd, sahib, dahnyavahd!' Nandu shivered as Chiswick helped him to his feet. 'Achcha!'*

*'Thanks, sahib, thanks! Good!'

'Bloody young fool!' Sir Hugo grumbled. 'Captain Yorke, face right, double time and reinforce the right flank! Support the guns! Nineteenth! Charge!'

Once again, two slim ranks of musketeers had shattered pirate ambitions, and the guns had strewn the ground with howling, broken wounded. It was time to go in with cold steel, or be driven back.

'One more charge!' Choundas insisted.

'No tuan, boats!' his interpreter shouted back as the pirate chieftain raved and slobbered with wrath. 'He want go now! No good this place no more! No good fight on land!'

'He'll sail off and leave all his treasure?' Choundas sneered coldly. 'Sail off and abandon all my gifts? All the muskets and shot?'

'He say, you want, you stay and keep, tuan' the interpreter finally replied. 'He go Illana. Steal more nex' year.'

'Filthy cowards,' Choundas whispered. 'Filthy pagan brutes!' He turned on his heel and stalked off for the waiting launch, his face burning with anger at this final failure of his ally, this final proof of their utter uselessness. And with his own failure as well. He had no hope now of a raiding season. He'd seen the two regimental colors and the massed bands, all the artillery that only two one-battalion units could array. Where had the heretical English gotten so many ships to carry that many troops, and then land them on the eastern shore, where he had not expected them? Only an overt operation with the full strength of the Royal Navy could put such an expedition at sea and support it this far from India. Something had happened to force the English to take the lid of secrecy off. Had another war broken out back home of which he was unaware?

'To the ship,' he snapped at his waiting boat crew as he sat down in the stern. 'And quickly!'

'He', merde alors!' his new coxswain groaned, pointing out to sea. 'Les Anglais!'

Chapter 13

Have we the depth to stand in closer?' Hogue asked.

'And a quarter less four!' the leadsman shouted from up forward as if in answer.

'Captain's Ayscough's recollections say we do, sir,' Lewrie replied with a happy but fierce grin on his features. 'Helm down to larboard, quartermaster. Ease her up as close as she'll lie to the wind, full and by.'

'Full an' by, sir!'

'How we got this far, I don't know, sir,' Hogue enthused as they swept into the harbor in Telesto's wake. 'I was sure that was a battery on the point, but nary a peep from them did we hear.'

'Most thoroughly in the barrel, drunk as lords, I expect,' Lewrie said, clapping his hands with anticipation as he strode to the quarterdeck nettings to look down upon his gun deck. 'Mister Owen, I give you leave to open fire as you bear!'

'Thankee, sir!' Owen shouted back. 'Wait for it, lads, wait for it!'