Thieves Of Mercy

screamed, raked his face, slashed at his eyes with her nails, slashed him again. He shrieked, rolled away, the gun still in his hand.

Wendy pushed herself up. Molly was standing, heaving for breath. Her left arm was hanging limp, blood running down her fingers, soaking the torn sleeve of her dress. She kicked Newcomb hard in the head, kicked him again.

Wendy grabbed her good arm, pulled her back, even as she was lashing out with her foot again, shouted, “Go!” She pointed toward the gun port through which they had come. They had to get out. The ship was a death trap. Fire or bullet, they would die by one. “Go! I’m right behind!”

Molly nodded, raced for the gun port. Newcomb was sitting up, blinking sight back into his eyes, looking around, pushing himself to his feet. Wendy raced after her aunt. The smoke roiled around them. Molly put a leg out the gun port, grabbed the sill with her uninjured arm, swung herself out of the casement.

“No, no, you bitch!” Newcomb roared. He was twenty feet aft, barely visible through the smoke, on his feet, stumbling forward. Wendy backed away, ducked under the pilothouse platform. Too late, she could not get out of the gun port without him seeing her. He would shoot her dead as she tried.

Newcomb limped, cursed, staggered forward, the gun in his hand. Wendy pressed back into the shadows. Dear God, did he see me? She was cornered now, she was dead if Newcomb had seen her crawl into that narrow space.

He staggered past, heading for the gun port, following Molly, thinking perhaps that Wendy had gone first. He fired the pistol, put a bullet right through the open gun port, shouted a stream of profanities.

He reached the open port, swung a leg through, straddling the opening, peering out. He reached up and grabbed the sill and began to hoist himself through. Halfway in, halfway out, and that was when Wendy saw the shutter’s lever.

Oh God, oh God… She flew out of her hiding place, her eyes locked on the lever, her teeth clenched, waiting for the bullet. Five feet, four feet, three feet, her hands stretched out in front of her, she saw in the corner of her eye Newcomb turn, Newcomb scream, Newcomb raise the gun and fire. Felt the bullet pluck her skirt, and then her hands were on the lever and pulling.

For a second it would not budge and she heard Newcomb scream “No!” and heard the click of the hammer and saw him try to claw his way back in, and then the lever was free in her hands, no resistance. The chain flew through the hole with a wild rattling sound and the heavy shutters swung down and caught Roger New-comb half in, half out, hundreds of pounds of iron jaws swinging on a single pivot; it caught him there and held him as surely as the hand of God.

The pistol fired, the bullet thumping into the deck. Wendy twisted sideways, waiting for the next shot that would kill her, praying that Newcomb was dead.

He was not. Newcomb’s head, shoulder, and gun hand were inside the casement, his left hand and leg outside, the shutter pinning him vertically by the chest. The gun was on the deck where he had dropped it and he was flailing wildly around, his hand slamming against the shutter and grabbing at the edge and trying to pry it away. But the iron shield was built to resist the impact of solid shot at point-blank range, and there was no chance at all that he would move it.

Wendy backed away, eyes on the struggling man, just as New-comb seemed to notice her. He looked up with bulging eyes, gaping mouth. Wendy wondered if he was being slowly crushed to death, like some barbaric death sentence from another age.

His eyes met hers, and she could see they were wild with pain and fear and fury. He reached out a hand to her, fingers spread, but whether he was looking for help or hoping to get hold of her, to take her to hell with him, she could not tell.

She pressed her hands over her face, overwhelmed by the horror of the scene. She thought of picking up the gun, finishing him off, more for mercy than vengeance, but she knew she could not do that. Without rage or fear to drive her, she could not shoot a human being.

She stepped sideways, past Newcomb, five feet away, but she could not take her eyes from his, she was transfixed by those mad eyes. They were staring at her but they were seeing the face of certain death. He stretched his hand farther toward her. She sobbed, made a choking sound.

When Newcomb’s voice came, it was strangled and cracked. “Help me,” he said. A trickle of blood came out of the corner of his mouth.

“Oh, God!” Wendy cried, turned her back on the man, and fled. She ran across the deck, past the pilothouse ladder. She fell, felt the pain shoot through her arms as her damaged hands hit the deck, pushed herself right to her feet with hardly a break in her momentum. The smoke was thick and black and choking, she could hardly breathe, her eyes were streaming with tears from the acrid smoke and the horror of what she had just witnessed.

She was becoming disoriented. She stopped. Left or right? She had to get out of the casemate before the smoke overwhelmed her. She could feel her head growing light. She was getting dizzy. Her throat ached from coughing and she had no idea, left or right.

She turned right for no reason at all, other than that she had to turn in one direction. She stumbled forward, through the blackness. Her legs were shaking. She wanted to fall down. But she could see something in front of her, something moving, ghostlike in the smoke.

“Wendy! Wendy!” It was Molly, her voice like a dream. “Wendy, here!” She could see her aunt’s arms waving, her face just visible in the smoke-filled place. Wendy stumbled on, felt Molly’s hands on her, pulling her. The smoke seemed even thicker there, and she realized Molly was outside, standing on the bulwark, half in the gun port, and the smoke was getting sucked out around her.

“Come, dear, right out here!” Molly shouted, and Wendy put a leg through the gun port, grabbed the sill overhead, swung the other out. Molly leaped out of the way and Wendy slid down the side of the casement, slid just a few feet until her feet hit the top of the V-shaped bulwark. She felt herself stagger, thought she would fall, tried to recall what was below her. Then Molly’s strong hands were on her arm, pulling her, and she fell inboard, onto the foredeck inside the bulwark.

She landed in a heap and lay there, breathing the air, blessed fresh air, as the smoke rolled away overhead.

She heard Molly’s voice in her ear. “Newcomb?”

Wendy shook her head. It was a few seconds before she could speak. “Done for,” she said.

Molly let her lie still for a minute more, then said, “We have to go. It’s not safe here.” She helped Wendy to her feet, but Wendy was feeling stronger, the fresh air revitalizing her. Together they climbed over the bulwark and down into the boat, which thankfully Newcomb had tied alongside. They cast off. Wendy set the sail.

Toward the after end of the ship, another cannon discharged, blasting a column of flame over the water.

“We should land where the ship’s crew landed, over there.” Wendy pointed toward the dark shoreline.

“Wait,” Molly said. “I have to know about Newcomb.”

“He’s dead. He was caught by the shutters on the gun port.” Wendy did not describe that final, hellish scene. She tried to exorcize it from her mind, but it would not go.

“We thought he was dead before, and he lived,” Molly said with a finality in her voice that Wendy had not heard in some time. “So this time we wait, until we are certain.”

Wendy sailed the boat around the burning ironclad. Port and starboard, guns went off, the shells screaming by overhead.

At last they could see Newcomb’s arm and leg hanging out the gun port. They were not moving, and Wendy hoped that he was dead, hoped he had died quickly. For their sake she hoped he was dead. And for his, because she did not want to think of what he would be suffering if the fire were reaching him now. She did not need that on her soul.

They stood toward the shore, getting some distance from the ship, then Wendy hove the boat to, the way she had seen it done. They stayed more or less in place, watching the ship burn. Three more guns fired, and then no more. Flames were reaching out of the gun ports, licking up the side of the casement, making the outline of the ship quite visible in the dark.

Then Wendy realized that it was not so dark. The sun was coming up in the east, a thin line of gray sky on the far horizon. A new day, and they were still alive.

“Very well,” Molly said, breaking the long silence. “I am satisfied that Newcomb is dead.”

Wendy put the tiller over and the boat began to move. She headed toward shore, and in the gathering gray light