'To board us!' Weed snapped, going so far as to seize Wigmore by his sopping-wet lapels, wishing he could go for his throat instead, and who needed this job and why had he ever signed on this bloody Ark? 'Up close, alongside, d'ye see! Hard enough to do in a storm, already. We have nets to catch your acrobats, do they slip and fall. We could rig them along the starboard side for boarding nets, to slow them down! I know your people have guns, swords, knives, and such, besides our pikes, cutlasses, and muskets. I dasn't trust our rusty old artillery with a full powder charge and solid shot, but I can load 'em light, with scrap iron and langridge. Man-ki\m stuff, lit off right into their Froggy teeth, man! The bears? The lion? Bloody bows and arrows? Your knife-thrower, your fire-eater and his oils? Free the God-damn' baboons if…!'
'You wish Fransooski man killed, Kapitan Veed?' a harsh voice at their elbows rasped, and there was Arslan Durschenko, so loaded down in weaponry that he had trouble standing, his precious rifled jaegers, and at least a full dozen of his long-barreled rifled pistols jammed in any pocket, sash, or belt handy, strapped over with powder horns, cartouche pouches, and accoutrements from his days as an expert marksman, before a flash in a pan had seared out his right eye. 'Fransooski not lay one hand on my Eudoxia, yob tvoyemat. I fight the sikkim siyns. Other men, girls, they shoot, too, if you do not. I die Cossack!' he boasted with a free hand pounding his chest. 'Not prisoner, and not poor! Rodney!' he called over his shoulder, and up limped little Rodney, swathed in his bandages, which turned eerie blue whenever a bolt of lightning struck. 'Malyenki Chorn malcheek… little Black boy, is bolshoi shot and he kill many Fransooski, too! Almos' good as me, yob tvoyemat.'
'Ain' no boy, Mistah,' Rodney soberly corrected, though without much anger. 'I'z a Ord'nary Sea-man in th' Royal Navy, an' a free man. An' I is a damn' good shot, e'en wif muskets. Somebody he'p me upta th' mizen top, an' gimme somebody t'load fo' me, an' I keeps 'em on de hop. Gimme a half-dozen muskets an' I kill as many French as ya wants, sah.'
Rodney took a look around as another series of lightning bolts played about them, and raised his unwounded arm to point at the struggling 64-gun Jamaica. 'We keeps on a bit mo', dat sixty-fo' be up wit' us, lookin' fo' a fight, an' dat French'un might take a big skeer, Cap'm. Might sheer offa us,' he opined with a shrug, and a wince from the pain that cost him. 'Be wot my Cap'm Lewrie'd do, count on it.'
'The lad's right, Mister Wigmore,' Capt. Weed cried, more than ready to grasp even the slimmest straw of hope. 'Get guns, everyone!'
'Not go up mast,' Arslan Durschenko told Rodney. 'Little man he shoot from… poop, da} High enough, and he cannot climb, kanyeshna. I shoot here, close, where I still can see. Eudoxia… nyet!' Arslan exclaimed, to see his daughter on the deck with sheaf's of arrows, and her recurved horn bow. 'I forbid! Dohadeetyeh, go away, you!'
'God helpink them who help selves, Poppa,' Eudoxia serenely said, wearing a stiff but brave smile, giving her father a fatalistic shrug. 'Fransooski peesas no have me, over dead body, da? Neeksgda! Never! You die Cossack, Poppa, I die Cossack! Urrah!' she whooped.
'Bootyeh zdarovi, kraseeva doch, ' Durschenko said with a hitch in his voice, and stroked her rain-wet cheek. 'I bless you, beautiful daughter. Ya lyubeet tiy. I love you. And, I am proud.'
'Ya lyubeet tiy, Poppa,' Eudoxia more-sombrely replied, tears welling in her eyes. 'Dosvidanya.'
'Arr, fook h'it,' Wigmore weakly griped. 'Mad as 'atters, th' 'ole lot o' ye. H'ever'body, h'arm yerselves, th' law's comin'! I'll go b'low an' git me pistols. Mind now… ye git me robbed an' ruined, an' I'll haint h'ever' last one o' ye t'yer dyin' days!'
'Keep on with double-shot, Mister Catterall!' Lewrie howled to the waist, and the guns. 'Keep on hullin' her!' To the four helmsmen manning the double wheel spokes, he added, 'Pinch up a'weather, lads. Another half-point to weather. Crowd up to her to shorten the range!'
He paced, feeling every rumbling, squealing movement of the gun-carriages as they were run out, the shock and buffeting muzzle blasts from each fired gun, and the rapid horse-clopping of gun-truck wheels over the main deck planks, sanded that morning to a pristine paleness, but now rapidly turning smutty grey. Each piece that slammed against the extreme lengths of the breeching ropes, he felt that, too, and he could hear the groan of iron ring-bolts in the bulwarks and decks crying out as tons of artillery slammed back, some of them now so hot that they leaped a foot off the deck before stuttering back down in recoil.
Twenty years in 'King's Coat,' most of that at sea, and Lewrie could sense the rush of the hull, its staggers, reels, and heel through his toes-could wince, too, at each crashing arrival of round shot from the French guns, and was staggered whenever a high-elevated shot chewed large pieces from the larboard bulwarks and gangway. Staggered, too, by shot that missed completely, and went screaming low over the deck, the French guns unable to be cocked up high enough to dismast his frigate. It was only on a lucky up-roll, when the French warship wallowed to nearly level decks, that bar-shot, chain-shot, or expanding star-shot could punch ragged holes in Proteus's sails, or carry away a stay or brace. Frustrated, the French were changing over to solid shot, accepting the unfairness of fighting hull-to-hull as the British Navy did, and attempting to out-shoot and smash up Proteus in like manner.
It was a bit too dangerous to remain by the gnawed-up bulwarks, so Lewrie sidled over to amidships, and paced between the binnacle and helm to the hammock nettings overlooking the ship's frenetically busy waist. Six- pounder quarterdeck guns barked, spewing both round-shot and bags of grapeshot or musket balls as the range decreased, despite the Frenchman altering course to weather a bit to keep away. Twenty-four-pounder carronades belched with titanic roars from fully-charged muzzles, hurling double-shotted loads from their stubby muzzles, then came slamming back on their greased wooden pressure slides.
Lightning flickered, so fast that sweaty gunners were frozen in a jittery series of tableaus as they thumb-stalled the vents, swabbed hot barrels, inserted the flannel powder charges, and rammed them home, once removed from the wood or leather cannisters that the youngest and quickest lads, the powder monkeys, brought in scampers from the magazine. Balls were snatched up from the shot-garlands, gun- captains no longer concerned with perfect roundness or freedom from rust or scales, just load! A solid thump from a flexible rope ramrod to seat them, a quick shove to tamp down wet wadding, perhaps a final chore by a ram-merman to seat a sack of grapeshot, musket balls, or langridge, atop ball, and it was time to pulley-haul, again.
Up to the port sills, an overhaul of the run-out tackle and the breeching ropes, then a leap for the train-tackle, maybe the employment of crow-levers and handspikes to shift the whole gun and carriage just a bit to left or right. Some fiddling with the elevating quoin block under the heavy breech to make sure that the piece pointed true at the blackness of the enemy's hull, as low as possible, and a leap away from the gun, feet well clear of tackle and ring- bolts on the deck, lest the men lose their feet as if scythed away, the gun-captain off to one side with his left arm high to show ready, right hand grasping the trigger line to the cocked flint striker, the priming powder in the touch- hole, and… BLAM! to begin it all over, again, quick as panting, and bare-chested, men could serve their brutal pieces.
Fuck proper aim, at this range, fuck drill and showiness; just fire, load, and keep firing, no matter what was happening around them.
A hard strike, low on the waterline it felt like, with Proteus shuddering as if gut- punched, and almost a human groan forced from her timbers. Another slamming hit, and more larboard bulwark went flying in tatters, a yard's length of oak turned into arm-long, prickly splinters like gigantic, well-chewed toothpicks that whirred and fluttered with the sound of frantic birds' wings, some lashing and spearing men's bodies as they went, and raising a chorus of disbelieving screams.
