The King

set fire to Cuddalore, anchored farther to the east-perhaps a few die-hards from the prize crew Choundas had put aboard to safeguard her from being plundered by his allies. She had just gone up in a titanic blast as her magazines burst, ripping her into a plume of fragments.

Farther east, and out in deeper waters, Poisson D'Or was still fighting, with Telesto close aboard on her left beam as they fell off the wind to the north for the chain of tiny islets that guarded this harbor from the opposite Monsoons. Lady Charlotte had continued on easterly as she could, to cross the French ship's stern and rake her before turning north as well on the far side, to lay Poisson D'Or in a savage cross-fire.

'To think that but for a moment of stupidity, we could be a part of that!' Lewrie said with a bitter growl. 'God, what a glorious fight they're having. And we've missed it!'

'Grand seats, though, sir,' Hogue replied cheerfully. 'Right in the stalls, as it were, to witness it.'

Owen came up the starboard ladder to the quarterdeck and gave a cough to let them know he was there. ' 'Scuse me, sir, but I've flat run outa targets, sir. No more o' those pirates t' be seen, an' half the village knocked down s' far, sir. Want me t' keep on?'

'No, Mister Owen. Continue to fire with one gun only, and I wish to have your other gunners for boat crews. We have to kedge off before the tide runs out too much.'

'Aye, sir.'

'Sir!' Murray called. 'Those boats yonder! From Poison Door, sir! Tryin' t' land on the beach!'

Lewrie seized his glass and climbed up on the shore-side bulwark to peer at the two longboats being rowed ashore.

'Choundas!' Lewrie howled with frustration. 'Can we lay a gun on him? He'll get away into the jungle, else!'

'Er, nossir,' Owen almost moaned, wringing his grimy hands in frustration. 'He's outa our gun-arcs, 'less we had a fo'c'sle chase-gun. An' it don't look like he'll put it anywhere close t' our poor range!'

'He'll get away at last!' Lewrie snorted in disbelief. All of their labors and suffering for nothing… again! 'Mister Hogue!'

'Sir?'

'Take charge of the ship, sir,' Lewrie exclaimed. 'Keep Mister Murray and Mister Owen with you, and defend her should the pirates try to get off the beach and take her now she's aground. Use your artillery over our heads should we run into trouble on the beach. Are the boat crews assembled? Good. Arm them. Muskets, a pistol each and a cutlass. Cony, fetch my case of pistols!'

The cutter had eight oarsmen, a bow-man and Cony as coxswain. The launch had a total of eight men aboard. Instead of a kedge anchor lowered into the stern-sheets, or one of the stern cables, the men were surprised to receive arms.

'Row for the beach!' Lewrie snapped, 'Row like the Devil was at your heels. I want yon bastard!'

They cast off and put their backs to it, digging in deep with their oar-blades and grunting with the exertion, Lewrie's cutter in the lead. He stood in the bows, loading his pistols.

'Not straight for the beach, Cony. Take us east up the coast for a ways before cutting in. Closer to them before we ground.'

'Aye, sir,' Cony replied, angling the tiller-bar under his arm to steer them more slant-wise across the lapping wavelets.

* * *

Choundas looked up from gazing at the bottom-boards of his boat with a bleak expression. The eastern palisade of the village was yet being defended, but he could see most of the pirates streaming off for safety, south through the longest wall and over the rice-paddies into the jungle. The remaining praos on the strand were on fire, damaged or under the guns of the ketch-rigged gun-boat. There would have been no safety aboard Cuddalore, minus her topmasts and rigging, so after picking up his tiny watch party from her, he had set her on fire, so the 'biftecs' would not have the satisfaction of recapturing her.

'She's aground, I think,' he said to no one, turning to look at the saucy little ketch. 'And a dropping tide.'

No means of escape there, either, even if his small party could take her.

Coehorn mortar shells were bursting farther inland, over those rice-paddies, and he could hear the muffled popping and crackling of musketry in a steady, rolling platoon-fire. They would have to run that deadly gauntlet across the paddy dykes to escape. And from the continual, thin screaming they could barely hear, that way was being turned into a killing-ground.

Choundas swiveled aft to look at his beautiful ship. Poisson D'Or, one of the finest thirty-two-gunned frigates that had ever swum, was almost hull-down up the fringe of islets, wreathed in a mushroom cloud of gunpowder, with two of her masts gone. As thinly manned as she was, after losing La Malouine and his best hands, she was putting up a marvelous fight, but she was going to lose. It was fated.

And he wasn't aboard to lead the fight in her, when she was battling for her life, as a captain, as an officer of the French Navy should be! No, he had waited too long, trying to put some spine into that churlish native chieftain. Who could have expected the damned English to land their troops on the east side of the island and march overland through all that trackless jungle, and then attack him from the west with their ships? Only the insane would beat against the wind and attack from leeward, when the best approach would have been to ghost into harbor with a following wind, with the rising sun at their backs to ruin his gunners' aim. Everything had gone wrong!

'What shall we do now, sir?' one of his surviving garde de la marines asked him in a soft whisper close to his ear. Choundas lifted his face to gaze at him. Nineteen years old, the equivalent of an English midshipman, an officer-in-training.

Choundas wondered just what sort of lesson Valmette was learning today.

'Steer for the beach, timonier' Choundas instructed his new cox'n. 'Land us west of the land fighting, but out of range of those guns on the ketch. This side of the eastern palisade. We shall take a path through the village, go out its western side, and get into the jungle away from the 'biftecs' artillery. Then strike down the western coast and find a decent seagoing boat. A prao, perhaps.'

'Two boats setting out from the ketch, sir,' Valmette warned. 'To kedge her off? Could we take her?'

'Too few of us,' Choundas snapped, having already counted heads and discounted their chances. 'And their boats are no better than ours for deep ocean.'

Choundas took a second look. Small as his party was, he had more men, well-armed men, than what appeared in the English boats.

'Hostages, perhaps, mes amis!' Choundas brightened. 'For safe passage out of here. Timonier, steer to meet them in the shallows. Men, ready your muskets! I want prisoners. An officer if we can.'

'They're turning to meet us shy of the beach,' Lewrie told his boat crew. 'We're going to have a fight on our hands, lad. A devil of a fight! Load muskets and pistols, and lay your swords to hand.'

Lewrie looked back at Culverin. There was not one gun barrel that could be cranked around in its port to lay on the French. Even if they could have pointed, the range was too great. He looked back to the shore, to the eastern end of the beach where the boats were on fire; it would appear that his father's regiment had been held up in their advance. There would be no aid from that quarter, either.

I could meet 'em gunnel to gunnel, he thought, but one peek over the side canceled that thought. The water may have been clear as gin but there was the niggling little matter of his not being able to swim, and boats were sure to be capsized if they meleed like miniature frigates! The water was so clear it was impossible to judge its depth but for the faint sunrise shadow of his hull on the bottom-sand, and he judged that to be over his head, perhaps a full fathom still.

'Cony, put your tiller over hard a'larboard,' he ordered.

'We beach and meet them with the boats for cover and steadier aim.'

'Aye, sir,' Cony parroted, and shoved the tiller bar over. The second boat in his wake followed suit a moment