important,' he protested.
'I will find the strength.' Zelda slipped petticoats over her head, one after another, five in all, each fluttering with ribbons.
Katinka came from behind the screen and raised her arms. Zelda lowered the blue silk dress over them and drew it down over the petticoats. Then she knelt and carefully tucked up the skirts on one side to reveal the petticoats beneath, and the slim ankles clad in white silk stockings. It was the very latest fashion. The Governor watched her, entranced. If only the other parts of your body were as big and busy as your eyeballs, Katinka thought derisively, as she turned to the long mirror and pirouetted before it.
Then she screamed wildly and clutched her bosom as, from the deck directly above them, there came the sudden deafening roar of gunfire. The Governor screamed as shrilly and flung himself from the bench onto the Oriental carpets that covered the deck.
'Through the lens of the telescope Sir Courtney read the name off her gilded transom. 'The Standvastigheid. the Resolution.' He lowered the glass and grunted, 'A name which we will soon put to the test!'
As he spoke a long bright plume of smoke spurted from the ship's upper deck, and a few seconds later the boom of the cannon carried across the wind. Half a cable's length ahead of their bows, the heavy ball plunged into the sea, making a tall white fountain. They could hear drums beating urgently in the other ship, and the gun ports in her lower decks swung open. Long barrels prodded out.
'I marvel that he waited so long to give us a warning shot,' Sir Francis drawled. He closed the telescope, and looked up at the sails. 'Put up your helm, Master Ned, and lay us under his stern.' The display of false colours had won them enough time to duck in under the menace of the galleon's crushing broadside.
Sir Francis turned to the carpenter, who stood ready at the stern rail with a boarding axe in his hands. 'Cut her loose!' he ordered.
The man raised the axe above his head and swung it down. With a crunch the blade sliced into the timber of the stern rail, the drogue line parted with a whiplash crack and, free of her restraint, the Lady Edwina bounded forward, then heeled as Ned put up the helm.
Sir Francis's manservant, Oliver, came running with the red-quartered cloak and plumed cavalier hat. Sir Francis donned them swiftly and bellowed at the masthead, 'Down with the colours of the Republic and let's see those of England!' The crew cheered wildly as the Union flag streamed out on the wind.
They came boiling up from below decks, like ants from a broken nest, and lined the bulwarks, roaring defiance at the huge vessel that towered over them. The Dutchman's decks and rigging swarmed with frantic activity.
The cannon in the galleon's ports were training around, but few could cover the caravel as she came flying down on the wind, screened by the Dutchman's own high counter.
A ragged broadside thundered out across the narrowing gap but most of the shot fell wide by hundreds of yards or howled harmlessly overhead. Hal ducked as the blast of a passing shot lifted the cap from his head and sent it sailing away on the wind. A neat round hole had appeared miraculously in the sail six feet above him. He flicked his long hair out of his face, and peered down at the galleon.
The small company of Dutch officers on the quarterdeck were in disarray. Some were in shirtsleeves, and one was stuffing his night-shirt into his breeches as he came up the companion- ladder.
One officer caught his eye in the throng: a tall man in a steel helmet with a van Dyck beard was rallying a company of musketeers on the foredeck. He wore the gold-embroidered sash of a colonel over his shoulder, and from the way he gave his orders and the alacrity with which his men responded seemed a man to watch, one who might prove a dangerous foe.
Now at his bidding the men ran aft, each carrying a murderer, one of the small guns especially used for repelling boarders. There were slots in the galleon's stern rail into which the iron pin of the murderer would fit, allowing the deadly little weapon to be traversed and aimed at the decks of an enemy ship as it came alongside. When they had boarded the Heerlycke Nacht Hal had seen the execution the murderer could wreak at close range. It was more of a threat than the rest of the galleon's battery.
He swivelled the falconet, and blew on the slow-match in his hand.
To reach the stern the file of Dutch musketeers must climb the ladder from the quarterdeck to the poop. He aimed at the head of the ladder as the gap between the two ships closed swiftly; The Dutch colonel was first up the ladder, sword in hand, his gilded helmet sparkling bravely in the sunlight. Hal let him cross the deck at a run, and waited for his men to follow him up.
The first musketeer tripped at the head of the ladder and sprawled on the deck, dropping his murderer as he fell. Those following were bunched up behind him, unable to pass for the moment that it took him to recover and regain his feet. Hal peered over the crude sights of the falconet at the little knot of men. He pressed the burning tip of the match to the pan, and held his aim deliberately as the powder flared. The falconet jumped and bellowed and, as the smoke cleared he saw that five of the musketeers were down, three torn to shreds by the blast, the others screaming and splashing their blood on the white deck.
Hal felt breathless with shock as he looked down at the carnage. He had never before killed a man, and his stomach heaved with sudden nausea. This was not the same as shattering a water cask. For a moment he thought he might vomit.
The Dutch colonel at the stern rail looked up at him. He lifted his sword and pointed it at Hal's face. He shouted something up at Hal, but the wind and the continuous roll of gunfire obliterated his words. But Hal knew that he had made a mortal enemy.
This knowledge steadied him. There was no time to reload the falconer, it had done its work. He knew that that single shot had saved the lives of many of his own men. He had caught the Dutch musketeers before they could set up their murderers to scythe down the boarders. He knew he should be proud, but he was not. He was afraid of the Dutch colonel.
Hal reached for the longbow. He had to stand tall to draw it. He aimed his first arrow down at the colonel. He drew to full reach, but the Dutchman was no longer looking at him: he was commanding the survivors of his company to their positions at the galleon's stern rail.
His back was turned to Hal.
Hal held off a fraction, allowing for the wind and the ship's movement. He loosed the arrow and watched it flash away, curling as the wind caught it. For a moment he thought it would find its mark in the colonel's broad back, but the wind thwarted it. It missed by a hand's breadth and thudded into the deck timbers where it stood quivering. The Dutchman glanced up at him, scorn curling his spiked moustaches. He made no attempt to seek cover, but turned back to his men.
Hal reached frantically for another arrow, but at that instant the two ships came together, and he was almost catapulted over the rim of the crow's nest.
There was a grinding, crackling uproar, timbers burst, and the windows in the galleon's stern galleries shattered at the collision. Hal looked down and saw Aboli in the bows, a black colossus as he swung a boarding grapnel around his head in long swooping revolutions then hurled it upwards, the line snaking out behind.
The iron hook skidded across the poop deck, but when Aboli jerked it back it lodged firmly in the galleon's stern rail. One of the Dutch crew ran across and lifted an axe to cut it free. Hal drew the fl etchings of another arrow to his lips and loosed. This time his judgement of the windage was perfect and the arrowhead buried itself in the man's throat. He dropped the axe and clutched at the shaft as he staggered backwards and collapsed.
Aboli had seized another grapnel and sent that up onto the galleon's stern. It was followed by a score of others, from the other boatswains. In moments the two vessels were bound to each other by a spider's web of manila lines, too numerous for the galleon's defenders to sever though they scampered along the gunwale with hatchets and cutlasses.
The Lady Edwina had not fired her culver ins Sir Francis had held his broadside for the time when it would be most needed. The shot could do little damage to the galleon's massive planking, and it was far from his plans to mortally injure the prize. But now, with the two ships locked together, the moment had come.
'Gunners!' Sir Francis brandished his sword over his head to attract their attention. They stood over their pieces, smoking slow-match in hand, watching him. 'Now!' he roared, and slashed his blade downwards.
The line of culver ins thundered in a single hellish chorus. Their muzzles were pressed hard against the galleon's stern, and the carved, gilded woodwork disintegrated in a cloud of smoke, flying white splinters and shards of stained glass from the windows.
It was the signal. No command could be heard in the uproar, no gesture seen in the dense fog that billowed over the locked vessels, but a wild chorus of warlike yells rose from the smoke and the Lady Edwina's crew poured up into the galleon.
They boarded in a pack through the stern gallery, like ferrets into a rabbit warren, climbing with the nimbleness of apes and swarming over the gunwale, screened from the Dutch gunners by the rolling cloud of smoke. Others ran out along the Lady Edwina's yards and dropped onto the galleon's decks. ' Franky and St. George!' Their war-cries came up to Hal at the masthead. He saw only three or four shot down by the murderers at the stern before the
