saw the fruits of three years so endangered. They raced back to their boats even faster than they had charged up the beach.
The Buzzard stood in the bows of his, prancing and gesticulating so that he threatened to upset her balance. 'Let me get my hands on the pox-ridden swine. I'll rip out their windpipes, I'll split their stinking-' At that moment he recognized Hal's head at the stern of the leading fire ship lit by the full glare of the swirling flames, and his voice rose a full octave. 'It's Franky's brat, by God! I'll have him!
I'll roast his liver in his own fire!' he shrieked, then lapsed into crimson- faced, inarticulate rage and hacked at the air with his claymore to spur his crew to greater speed.
Hal was only a dozen yards now from the Gull's tall side, and found fresh strength in his exhausted legs. TireIlessly Aboli swam on, using a powerful frog-kick that pushed back the water in a swirling wake behind him.
With the Buzzard's longboat bearing down swiftly upon them, they covered the last few yards and Hal felt the fire ship bows thump heavily into the Gulls stern timbers. The push of the tide pinned her there, swinging her broadside so that the flames were fanned by the rising morning breeze to lick up along the Gulls side, scorching and blackening the timbers.
'Latch onto her!' bellowed the Buzzard. 'Get a line on her and tow her off!' His oarsmen shot straight in towards the fire ship but, as they felt the full heat blooming out to meet them, they quailed. In the bows the Buzzard threw up his hands to cover his face, and his red beard crisped and singed. 'Back off!' he roared. 'Or we'll fry.' He looked at his coxswain. 'Give me the anchor! I'll grapple her, and we'll tow her off.'
Hal was on the point of diving and swimming under water out of the circle of heat but he heard Cumbrae's order. The painter still trailed around his legs, and he groped beneath the surface for the end, clenching it between his feet. Then he sank below the water and swam under the fire ship hull, coming up in the narrow gap between it and the Gull.
The Gull's rudder stock broke the surface and, spitting lagoon water from his mouth, Hal threw a loop of the painter around the pintle. His face felt as though it were blistering as the heat beat down upon his head with hammer strokes, but he hitched the flaming craft securely to the Gull's stern.
Then he dived again and came up next to Aboli. 'To the beach!' he gasped. 'Before the fire reaches the Gull's powder store.'
Both struck out overarm, and Hal saw the longboat, close by, almost close enough to touch, but the Buzzard had lost all interest in them. He was whirling the small anchor around his head, and as Hal watched he hurled it out over the burning vessel, hooking onto her.
'Lie back on your oars!' he shouted at his crew. 'Tow her off.' The boatmen went to it with all their strength, but immediately the fire ship came up short on the mooring line Hal had tied, and their blades beat the water vainly. She would not tow, and now the planking of the Gull's side was smouldering ominously.
Fire was the terror of all seamen. The ship was built of combustibles and stuffed with explosives, wood and pitch, canvas and hemp, tallow, spice barrels and gunpowder. The faces of the longboat's crew were contorted with terror. Even the Buzzard was wild- eyed in the firelight as he looked up and saw the other two fireships drifting remorselessly upon him. 'Stop those others!' he pointed with his claymore. 'Turn them away!' Then he turned his attention back to the burning vessel moored to the Gull.
By now Hal and Aboli were fifty yards away, swimming for the beach, but Hal rolled onto his back to watch and trod water. He saw at once that the Buzzard's efforts to tow away the fire ship had failed.
Now he rowed around to the Gull's bows and scrambled up onto her deck. As his crew followed him he roared, 'Buckets! Get a bucket chain going. Pumps! Ten men on the pumps. Spray the flames!' They scurried to obey, but the fire was spreading swiftly, eating into the stern and dancing along the gunwale, reaching up hungrily towards the furled sails on their outstretched yards.
One of the Gull's longboats had grappled Ned's fire shiP and, with frantically beating oars, was dragging it clear. Another was trying to get a line on Big Daniel's fire shiP but the flames forced them to keep their distance. Each time they succeeded in hooking on, Daniel swam round and cut the rope with a stroke of his knife. The men in the longboat who carried muskets and pistols were firing wildly at his bobbing head, but though the balls kicked up spray all around him, he seemed invulnerable.
Aboli had swum on ahead, and now Hal rolled onto his belly and followed him 'back to the beach. Together they raced up the white sand, and into the shot-shattered forest. Sir Francis was still in the gun pit where they had left him, but he had gathered around him a scratch crew of the Resolution's survivors- They were reloading the big gun as Hal ran up to him and shouted, 'What do you want me to do?' Come find more of the men. 'Take Aboli with You to Load another culverin.
Bring the Gull under fire. Sir Francis did not look up from the gun, and Hal ran back among the trees. He found half a dozen men, and he and Aboli kicked and dragged them out of the holes and bushes where they were cowering, and led them back to the silenced battery.
In the few short minutes it had taken him to gather the gm crew the scene out on the lagoon had changed completely.. Daniel had guided his fire ship up to the Gull's side and had secured her there. Her flames were adding to the confusion and panic on board the frigate.
Now he was swimming back to the beach. He had seized two of his men, who could not swim, and was dragging them through the water.
The Gull's crew had snared Ned's fire ship they had lines on it and were dragging it clear. Ned and his three fellows had abandoned it, and were also floundering back towards the shore. But, even as Hal watched, one gave up and slipped below the surface.
The sight of the drowning spurred Hal's anger. he poured a handful of powder into the culverin's touch hole as Aboli used an iron marlin spike to train the barrel around. It bellowed deafeningly, and Hal's men shouted with delight as the full charge of grape smashed into the longboat towing Ned's abandoned craft. It disintegrated at the blast, and the men packed into her were hurled into the lagoon. They splashed about, screaming for aid and trying to clamber into another longboat nearby, but it was already overcrowded and the men in her tried to beat off the frantic seamen with their oars. Some, though, managed to get a hold on the gunwale, and yelling and fighting among themselves, they caused the longboat to list heavily, until suddenly she capsized. The water around the burning hulks was filled with wreckage and the heads of struggling swimmers.
Hal was concentrating on reloading, and when he looked up again, he saw that some of the men in the water had reached the Gull and were climbing the rope ladders to the deck.
The Buzzard had at last got his pumps working. Twenty men were bobbing up and down like monks at prayer as they threw their weight on the handles, and white jets of water were spurting from the nozzles of the canvas hoses, aimed at the base of the flames, which were now spreading over the Gull's stern.
Hal's next shot shattered the wooden rail on the GulPs larboard side, and went on to sweep through the gang serving the bow pump. Four were snatched away, as though by an invisible set of claws, their blood splattering the others beside them on the handles. The jet of water from the hose shrivelled away.
'More men here!' Cumbrae's voice resounded across the lagoon, as he sent others to take the places of the dead. At once the jet of water was revived, but it made little impression on the leaping flames that now engulfed the Gull's stern.
Big Daniel reached the shore, and dropped the two men he had rescued on the sand. He ran up into the trees, and Hal shouted, 'Take command of one of the guns. Load with grape and aim at her decks. Keep them from fighting the fire.'
Big Daniel grinned at Hal with black teeth and knuckled his forehead. 'We'll play his lordship a pretty tune to dance to,' he promised.
The crew of the Resolution, who had been demoralized by the Gull's sneak attack, now began to take heart again at the swing in fortunes. One or two more emerged from where they had been skulking in the forest. Then, as the fire started to crash from the beach batteries and thump into the Gull's hull, the others grew bold and rushed back to serve the guns.
Soon a sheet of flame and smoke was tearing from out of the trees across the water. Flames had reached the Gull's mizzen-yards and were taking hold in the furled sails.
Hal saw the Buzzard striding through the smoke, lit by the flames of his burning ship, an axe in his hand. He stood over the anchor rope where it was drawn tightly through its fair lead and, with one gigantic swing he cut it free.
Immediately the ship began to drift across the wind. He raised his head and bellowed an order to his seamen, who were clambering up the shrouds.
They shook out the main sail and the ship responded quickly. As she caught the rising breeze, the flames poured outwards, and the fire-fighters were able to run forward and direct the water from the hoses onto the base of the fire.
She towed the two fireships for a short distance, but when the lines that secured them burned through, the Gull left them as she headed slowly down the channel.
Along the beach the culver ins continued to pour salvo after salvo into her but, as she drew out of range, the battery fell silent. Still streaming smoke and orange flame behind her, the Gull headed for the open sea. Then, as she entered the channel between the heads
