against hull.
'Wait for it… almost there!' the First Mate shouted, again.
'Heu!' a harsh voice came down to them on the noisy wind, from the foe. ' Void le frigate Vesuve, a Marine Francais! 'Eave to, z'ere, et surrendre. Vous not, ve fire on vous, comprendre?'
'We cannot heave-to in this weather, you no-sailor, you!' Capt. Weed could be heard shouting back through a speaking-trumpet. 'We must keep a way on, downwind. Comprendre?'
'Surrendre, vite vite!' came the harsh answer as the Vesuve continued to close. 'Take in votre voiles… you damn' sails!' And, in seeming obedience, some free sailors began to clew up tops'ls, as the French frigate shuffled down within mere yards of them. And, the gun-ports were still shut! French sailors at bow, stern, and amidships on her bulwarks appeared with heaving lines and grapnels to bind the two ships together.
'We're all gonna die, damn yer blood!' Daniel Wigmore said from chattering jaws, snuffled, and wiped his nose on his coat sleeve.
'Aw, you lived too long, anyway, you old fraud,' Weed told him. ' Jamaica 's but five miles off, and coming hard. Who knows? With any luck at all, you'll live, and reap a year's free advertisements from this. Wait for it…!'
'Thousands o' th' buggers, though…'
'Hundreds, anyways,' Capt. Weed professionally noted; he'd had his own start in the Royal Navy during the American Revolution. 'And, I do think I see half her crew or better still below her gangways, on her starboard guns, and such. They mean to send a fair-sized boarding party to us, yet keep enough men in-hand to stall Jamaica whilst they make off with us. This just might work, after all!'
The heavy grapnels flew, biting into Festival's timbers as the Vesuve came to within hand-shaking distance.
'Now, by God!' Capt. Weed howled. 'Now! Up, and repel boarders! Gunners… fire!'
French sailors were leaping across the empty air between ships, howling in glee, or swinging in piratical fashion on freed lines, but were countered by the acrobats' and aerialists' nets hung from the tips of the yardarms, pinning themselves against them like flies glued to a spider's web, and their victory cries turned ugly and harsh.
But, then the muskets began to bark and flash, as pistols were emptied right in their faces, as cutlasses and small-swords and sabres were thrust into the bellies of those clambering upon the nets… as the puny old cast-off artillery pieces, double-shotted with scrap metal, musket balls, and grape, erupted, quoins fully out and aimed up high to scythe the French frigate's bulwarks and gangway. Rusty swivel-guns in the tops yapped, pointing down at acute angles at the gangway, as well, and French sailors were suddenly screaming in pain and terror as they were plucked from the rails, caught in mid-swing, and dropped in the foaming mill-race between the hulls, to be crushed or drowned!
'Tarakans!' Whoosh. 'Nasyekomayehs!' Whoosh. 'Peesas!' Whoosh. 'Cockroaches! Insects! Pricks.'' Eudoxia Durschenko shrilly hallooed, each curse a punctuation to a loosed arrow. 'Chyepooha!' Whoosh, and that for rubbish! as another broad- point hunting arrow skewered a well-dressed man, with a fore-and-aft bicorne hat and a costly sword, who'd gained Festival's bulwark and was chopping at the nets. He screamed as he looked down to the doom buried deep in his chest, eyes widened by utter astonishment that he'd be slain by such an ancient thing, just before he tottered backwards and disappeared between the grinding hulls!
'Snova, girl!' her father bellowed. 'Again, and again!'
'Bast'rd, yew mine!' Rodney swore as he took careful aim from behind the poop deck's bulwarks, alongside the clowns firing one of the swivel-guns. His target was an older man, maybe a petty officer, who was shoving French sailors forward. The musket shoved him in his good shoulder as he fired, and that petty officer died so quick he didn't even have time to clap a hand to his chest, where a.75-calibre ball smashed his heart, and fell off the gangway to sprawl atop one of the cannon. The clowns, in full white-face-their war-paint, they said!- whooped over his accuracy as they charged their rail-mounted shot-gun for another round. 'Got you, yeah!' Rodney cheered, too, as he tossed the musket to the rear, and flapped his right hand to demand a fresh weapon from the little blond acrobat girl who was loading for him. This weapon was one of Durschenko's Pennsylvania rifles, like the ones that he and Proteus's Marine marksmen used from the tops in action, and he smiled an evil little smile as he brought it forward, over his injured left forearm for a rest, and drew the dog' s-jaws back to full cock. There, on the quarterdeck! That was an officer, for sure, he reckoned, all bellow, gilt-and-beshit. 'You mine, butt fuckah!'
Lashed together, hulls grinding paint, tar, and linseed oil off, the French were but briefly daunted. The unexpected check was like a red flag waved at a bull, enflaming their blood lust. Swords chopped through nets, slashing suspending ropes, and parts of the netting came down at last, allowing a small flood of boarders to gain footing along Festival'?, gangway.
' Vaya con Dios, amigos, ' Jose whispered as he removed muzzles from his bears, and cuffed them hard on their snouts to enrage them. 'Go, hasta luego, ninos! Eat Frenchmen!' he directed, pointing, then shoving them in the right direction. Fredo and Paulo might not have been all that hungry, or all that enraged, either, perhaps imagined a time free of their constricting muzzles was a time to play. Whatever they made of it, the pair of brothers, usually as gentle as baa-lambs as Jose had promised, made a distinct impression on the French sailors who had gained the gangway as they loped towards them on all fours with their mouths open, their fangs flickering in the back-flashes of the lightning, and their claws skittering rather loudly on the oak planks!
It didn't help that Jose, in his second role as knife-thrower, was whickering butcher-knives at the French as he ran behind his bears, and shrieking curses, aiming to hit for a change, not outline the girl who spun on his large wooden wheel with near-misses!
'Ilya, mean old son of bitch,' Arslan Durschenko cooed into one ear of his lone adult lion after he had led him up from his cage down in the upper hold. 'Ya lyubeet tiy, syegda. Lovink you, always, even if you no damn' good. Chase there, da? Want head for bitink? There, Ilya, there Sweet meat, Fransooski bastards!'
The lion whuffed at the din of combat, of clashing swords, and howling men, his mane shivering at every discharge of musket or pistol. Ilya was old, as old as poor, dead Vanya, and he had never had what one might call a sweet disposition. His rheumy eyes lit up with an ancient joy, though, and, free for once of a controlling leash and collar after Durschenko removed it and gave him an encouraging slap on his rump, the lion just had to do what a lion had to do. He leaped from the weather deck to the gangway with the spryness of a young male, huge hind paws not even having to scrabble at its edge, found himself a victim on the gangway, and rose up to drape his front paws on a man's shoulders, his gaping, fang-filled mouth inches from his nose as he let out a roar!
Thankfully for Festival's crew, Ilya's first choice was French, though nothing about lions was gilt-edged guaranteed. The French tar shrieked, sword clattering to the deck in terror, and fainted away, a good thing for him, for Ilya didn't think that was very much fun, nor was it even tasty, so he rose up again and began slapping those plate-sized, sharp-taloned paws about to right and left, this time draping himself on the sole remaining trio of Frenchmen who hadn't been swatted into bloody tatters, and took himself a lovely mouthful of face!
'Stay th' Divil away f'um me, ye bastards!' Paddy was shouting, musket emptied into one man, pistol emptied into another, then used as a club to shatter a third's skull. His boarding pike had been lost in a Frenchman's belly, a man who had joined his shipmates in the sluice between the hulls, and he was now reduced to whirling his cutlass like a frantic St. Catherine's Wheel, and he was holding off two sword-armed enemies by creating a steel fan in front of him, but his arms were now growing lead-heavy and weak. 'I don't wanna die,
