THE GUN KETCH

gained another long musket-shot, about sixty yards, to an outthrust of rocky ledge. To go around it would mean exposing themselves to the camp. They found a narrow crevice that took them up top, then crawled on their bellies through sharp-edged grasses and coarse bushes until they could see.

It wasn't a fish camp, Lewrie thought, feeling a flush of relief fill him. There were the two luggers that had escaped him, along with another pair, larger and two-masted, anchored very close inshore to the beach. And on the beach below him were a brace of longboats with their bows jammed snug on the land. The longboats were royal barges compared to the scrofulous condition of the luggers, obviously taken from some earlier prize of theirs; perhaps from two different prizes, since their paint-schemes did not match.

There was cooking smoke coming from the mouth of the nearest cave under the bluff, several more smaller fires burning in a circle beyond the boats. There were crates and chests scattered about for rude furniture, several more piled up and covered with scrap canvas near the mouth of the cave, more still piled on the lower beach.

And just offshore, anchored fore-and-aft parallel to shore was a two-masted schooner of about sixty feet overall, on which lanterns burned at helm and forecastle.

The people on the beach got Alan's attention next. They were a gaudy crew, dressed 'Beau-Nasty' in checked shirts, opulent satin waistcoats, sashes around the waists Spanish hidalgo-style, in either breeches without stockings, or slop-trousers. They wore neckerchiefs bound about their heads like gunners would to protect their hearing, or in tricornes or straw hats; each affecting a highly individualistic and rakehell sense of fashion.

And they went armed.

Swaggering, they were, under the weight of pistols stuck into their waistbands or sashes; cutlasses or swords at their hips. Some muskets stood propped against crates of loot, and there were enough weapons in sight to equip a half-battalion of light troops.

'There's the wimmen, sir,' Cony pointed out.

Spanish-looking in the firelights' flickering glows, or black and sheened with sweat. They were swilling rum, wine or brandy with as much gusto as the men, their finery obviously looted goods, too.

They lay there and watched the piratical band roister for half an hour, carefully counting heads, trying to pick out leaders who sat apart more quiet than the others. They watched fights and brawling, among both the men and the women. They watched men take women off to the cave, or up the beach beyond the light.

'Prisoners, sir,' Cony mouthed almost silent, tugging at Alan's shirt sleeve. 'Them wimmen yonder. Back by them covered crates.'

Lewrie pulled out his telescope and brought it forward inch at a time, careful that the lens did not reflect firelight. He studied the party of women by the pile of loot. Slaves, some of them, and some white-skinned and bedraggled-free women and their maids, he speculated? As he lay in the hide, watching, one of the men he thought of as a leader went to the women, staggering drunk, and reached down to pull one to him. She began to scream and plead, only her loudest and most inarticulate cries reaching them. Brutally, he backhanded her into silence, then dragged her back down the beach to the circle of fires to throw her down, peel off his breeches, and fall atop her, to the exultant cheering of his band. And once he had slaked his lust with her, three more sprang forward like inferior wolves to savage her.'They'll kill them wimmen oncet they're done with 'em, Mister Lewrie!' Cony whispered, mortified by the sights he had seen without being able to lift a finger to help. 'Jesus, God a'mercy!'

'Might have been saving 'em for tonight,' Lewrie nodded. 'If they sail on the morrow, they'll want no witnesses left alive. See, those goods piled close to the beach? So they may begin loading the schooner and the biggest luggers. If we'd waited, we'd have lost them. Let's get back to the boats. It lacks two hours 'til dawn.'

Cony went, unwillingly. And it was only once they were back on the beach, with the horrifying sights and sounds of pitiless rape put behind them, that he trusted himself to speak.

'Wisht there was ought we could do for 'em, sir, tonight, that is,' he whispered plaintively. 'Dawn might be too late t'save 'em.'

'I want you on that ledge at dawn, Cony,' Lewrie told him. 'I want you and my fusil, and the Ferguson rifle up there, in good hands. Pick your likely country lads. And gut-shoot anyone that lays a hand on 'em, or even glares in their direction. That suit you, Cony?'

'Aye, sir, it sure t'God does!'

Chapter 7

The dawn smelled of crushed foliage and trampled flowers, overlaying mud and mangrove marsh. Of damp sand and beach burrowers, the fish-scale aroma of the coast most landlubbers mistook for sea-air. The true sea-air smell came on the whispering Trades, the baked salt and iodine tang of ocean deeps, borne by winds ceaselessly stirring from across thousands of miles of brine. Damp clamminess was stripped away by the breezes, even as they brought the balmy warmth of a humid sunrise, bedewing the steel in his hand. Lewrie's nostrils drank in the smells, almost quivering like a beast's, much as his limbs trembled in anticipation, stiff with a too-short and troubled nap, as they made their stealthy approach-march.

Damme; but this is a daft business-and a bloody one, Alan thought, keyed up, rumpled and miserable. But don't this morning beat all for handsome!

An hundred sunrises could pass unremarked. But take up arms, and the risk of dying before breakfast, and even a winter rain could be sweet, its bitter, soaking chill savored because one was still alive to suffer it before the madness set in.

He turned to study his men. There were thirty from Alacrity, half of her adult crewmen, and twenty hands off Aemilia, almost half of her crew, too. They yawned and scratched, flexed their fingers on their weapons nervously, eyes shifting as squint-a-pipes as a bag of nails at every rustle in the bushes, every sea-bird's cry, or soft lap of the inlet's surf on the beach. Armed to the teeth, they were, with cutlasses, clasp knives, long boarding pikes, good Brown Bess.75 caliber muskets, wicked needle-sharp offset bayonets jammed in the waistbands of their slop-trousers; as desperate a crew of cut-throats as the pirates, to look at them, laden down with clumsy Sea Pattern pistols for each man in addition, with all the powder flasks, bullet pouches and cartouche boxes hung about them as they plodded and scuffled, strung out in a long single file below the rising ridge of crumbling rock, half buried in the greenery for cover.

'Just 'round this outcrop, seventy yards or so,' Lewrie grunted, calling a halt at last. 'Mister Parham, your boat-gun at the foot of the shelf. Mister Mayhew, your two-pounder atop the shelf with Cony and his marksmen. Grape, canister or langridge at first, and keep 'em away from their boats as I bade you. Right. The rest of you lads, I want you ready to rush out and form a skirmish line from Mister Parham's gun to the beach.'

There was a faint rustle in the air, and Lewrie pulled out his watch to check the time, which made him nod grimly. The rustle became a sizzling swoosh of roiled air, then a quavery moan. Alacrity's guns had just opened fire a mile-and-a-half away, shooting almost blind at the bluffs. Fowles' first ranging shot was on the way.

There was a thunderclap so close it seemed it went off in his pocket as the bluff to the north above the sea caves was struck. The iron ball exploded in a bright yellow flash of sparks, metallic shards, and shale, starting a small avalanche of gravel.And the sunrise echoed with the soft Fumm-umm of an unseen gun.

'Now where are you, you silly bastard?' Lewrie fretted, turning to look for Aemilia across the channel. Once she found her proper position, even her puny four-pounders could rake the beach, and the anchored vessels, across the quarter-mile strait. He was relieved to see a bowsprit protrude from behind the low foliage, and the first starkly pale tan panels of her jibs stood out against the dark green and dun.

Another round-shot droned in from the reefs, fired at maximum elevation with the quoin block removed from below the barrel's butt, and this struck short of the bluffs to raise a great pillar of foam in the inlet, about half a cable short of the anchored schooner.

The pirates were up, now, stirring and circling in hungover and bleary-eyed confusion. Some lay still, too comatose from rum or their excessive indulgences to be wakened. Women camp followers screamed or cursed in a