The Captain`s Vengeance

Half a point more to windward, Jugg,' Lewrie snapped, his eyes fixed upon the black-hulled schooner. As they neared her, she turned from a dark smear in the fog to a substantial and detailed fact. He could hear firing off the larboard bows, coming almost abeam now; distinguishable pops of single muskets, the sharper crack of his Marine's Pennsylvania rifles, now and then the collective Chuff! of a volley fired all at once. They were late, the wind was perverse and fickle, his landing party might be getting knackered, and his shalope was closing too slowly to overwhelm the pirate schooner. He had no need for a telescope to see her crew scurrying to prepare to fight. She had been bows-on when they could first make her out through a thin patch of fog but was now slowly swinging to bare her starboard side, her blood-red gunwale stripe oddly bright and ominous as they let out on her kedge cable and hauled in on the spring-line on her bow cable. Lewrie could see a flamboyantly garbed figure on her quarterdeck, waving his arms and shouting.

' 'At 'd be Jerome Lanxade, sor,' Jugg grimly informed him, ' 'at pea-cocky one, yonder. Alius woz a flash bugger.'

Six gun-ports each side, my survivors said, Lewrie speculated; four- pounders or six-pounders, mixed perhaps. Our battery, God, what a joke! They had swivels and boat-guns, so short-ranged they couldn't use them 'til they were close-aboard, would have to eat one or two of Lanxade's broadsides before getting that close. He'd try to be stoic, in the best Royal Navy traditions, but the odds didn't look good!

Steer for her bows, lock bowsprits, and board her up forrud? he feverishly schemed; Haul off and cross her stern might work, too, if there 's depth enough. Mr. Pollock's borrowed shalope only drew eight feet, slightly less without a cargo. Yet if they ran aground short of the schooner, it would mean the death of them all; if they crossed her stern so slowly that they caromed off her kedge cable, they'd be just as helpless, could end up stranded close to the beach, drifting to ruin, whilst the schooner cut her cables and escaped!

And there was still no sign of Proteus!

'Ship burning beyond her, sir!' Midshipman Larkin cried.

'They did take a prize!' Lewrie exclaimed, finally reaching for his telescope. 'Damme, they've fired her!'

'With all the silver aboard her, sir?' Young Mr. Larkin yelped.

'Sonsabitches,' Lewrie gravelled, outraged that all this might be for nought, beyond justice, of course… and vengeance.

He lowered his telescope, lips gloomily pursed. That schooner beyond the black-hulled one was ablaze from end to end, wren- or mouse-sized flames scuttling along every inch of her standing or running rigging, and great clouds of smoke beginning to belch from open hatches.

'Mister Larkin,' Lewrie stolidly ordered. 'I'll have all the swivel-guns shifted to starboard, along with the grappling hooks and throwing lines. We'll board her starboard side to starboard side.'

'Oye oye, s- Aye aye, sir, mean t'say,' Mr. Larkin chirped. Whenever he was excited, which was rather often, the lad easily lapsed into a cottager's brogue.

'Mister Jugg,' Lewrie said, rounding on him. 'Pinch her up to weather, like we'd grapple to her bows. But at the last moment I want you to slew about and go alongside her near side. We'll give 'em grape and langridge, point- blank, then board her.'

'Aye, sor,' Jugg said with a firm nod of understanding.

'Ah, sah?' Andrews whispered, plucking his attention back. 'I think she's openin' her ports, sah, ready t'fire.'

'Nothing t'do but grin and bear it, hey?' Lewrie tried to jape.

'Good God A'mighty,' Andrews whispered.

Lewrie turned his attention back to the pirate schooner, just as the first of her guns exploded in a gush of powder smoke, a sharpish slamming noise, with the scream of solid shot coming…! Passing! Warbling off easterly, a clean miss!

'Bear up… bear up!' Lewrie snapped, pointing to the north. 'Duck out of their aim, Jugg… thus!'

The schooner blotted herself out of existence as four more guns fired, making a dense, drifting wall of yellow- grey powder smoke along her engaged starboard side, sulfurous and reeking. Shot howled harpy-like, and a cannon ball nipped at their shalope's larboard stern quarters, another slammed into her midships larboard bulwarks but caromed off after wrenching a large bite of timber from her with the parrot-screech of shattered wood. One screamed low over the deck, its unseen passage trailed by a tunnel of tortured air that shimmered like the uprush from a red-hot forge. The last was another clean miss!

As the spent powder smoke drifted southward, the schooner's bow swam out of the newest mist; jib-boom and bowsprit, figurehead, beak, rails, and nettings…

'Helm hard up, now!' Lewrie rasped, coughing on the guns' lees.

Jugg put the tiller as far over to starboard as it would swing, his weight, and Dempsey's weight, pressing on the bar, and the shalope began to turn.

'Stand by grapnels, Mister Larkin… stand by swivel-guns, at close range,' Lewrie called out. 'Christ!'

There the schooner was, her upper railings just a foot higher than the shalope's deck, her glossy black hull shining like a fresh-groomed stallion, so close Lewrie could almost call it spitting distance. Their shalope's thrusting jib-boom looked like it would jam right into the schooner's main-mast shrouds and pin her there helplessly, but after a long, pent breath, the jib-boom slid past by a cat's whisker, and they were sidling up to her at an angle.

'Boat-guns, swivels, and muskets… fire as you bear!' Lewrie cried, drawing his hanger and a double-barrelled Manton pistol. His men opened fire, the light 2-pounders barking lap-dog sharp, chewing chunks from the schooner's side without doing much real damage. The swivels, though, atop the cap-rail stanchions, spewed loads of musket and pistol balls nearly straight across her decks, reaping things… and people!

'Grapnels!' he snapped as their boat's single mast came level with the schooner's midships. The hooks flew, scraped, and found purchase, and muscle power on the heaving lines hauled their lighter vessel alongside, checking her way in a groaning instant. Their bow met the schooner, bumping and rasping, the stern began to swing in snugly, and there were more bumps and thuds.

All the while, Lewrie, with nothing physical to do, stared with dread at those gaping gun-ports, just waiting for them to be filled by reloaded cannon, for them to spew grape and langridge and murder every man in his crew, yet…

'Boarders! 'he, almost screamed at last! 'Away, boarders!' Up atop his own bulwarks, a long stride across to theirs, and he was hopping down to the schooner's deck, flooding with tittery, joyous relief to see that no more than one or two pirates had tended each cannon, that most of her crew had been ashore. He dashed aft, bumped and shouldered by his own hands, to claim her quarterdeck.

'Vous!' the gaudily dressed captain said, a tall and lean man with a wide but slim set of mustachios… and a sword in his hand.

'Strike, ye thievin' cut-throat!' Lewrie roared back. A burly pirate with a cutlass leaped between, shoved forward by Lanxade. The cutlass and Lewrie's hanger rang together once, twice, the pirate two-handing his sword. Lewrie binded him, brought up his Manton with his left hand, and gave him both barrels in his lower chest with the muzzles against his skin, and the man shrieked and lurched backwards like a pole-axed steer, his shirt on fire.

'Strike, damn you!' Lewrie roared again, tossing away his spent pistol, cutting the air with his sword.

'Va te faire foutre, vous sanglant cochon!''Lanxade spat, whipping his long, old-style rapier through the air as well.

'Fuck yourself.' Lewrie retorted as Lanxade sprang at him with a distracting foot- stamp and an inarticulate screech of battle rage. Their blades met, parted slithering and chiming, met edge to edge with the next slashes, both men iron-wristed, iron-willed.

'Comin', sir!' he heard his Cox'n Andrews vow.

'Hell ye will, he's mine!' Lewrie shouted.

'Son!' Boudreaux Balfa shouted in immense relief when he recognised one of the weary swimmers in the water and quickly sculled over to pick him up. Mademoiselle Charite was there, too, with Jean,