Seaflower

Corbeau's ashore!'

Kydd snatched a look over his shoulder. Corbeau was untouched, motionless on the course she had taken. She had misjudged the offshore reefs and her deeper keel had become firmly wedged among the coral heads.

Seaflower curved round, but Corbeau lay unmoving.

'God be praised — we get t' live another day!' muttered a voice.

An angry shout sounded from above. Merrick had passed the seizing on the upper length of the stay, and was demanding the rest to be hauled up to him. They had the luxury of dowsing sail while the operation was completed, Corbeau a diminishing image in the distance. The jury stay rigged, they could then beat a dignified retreat.

'Ready about,' ordered Farrell. 'We finish the job,' he said firmly. They carefully returned on a track that kept the bow of the schooner towards them. He hailed Stirk. 'Grape.'

Seaflower shortened sail to glide in within a hundred yards, then put up the helm and let go the stream anchor forward and kedge anchor aft. They came to a standstill, but were now in a position to adjust cables to aim her entire broadside to bear on the unprotected length of the big schooner.

With terrible deliberation Stirk went from one gun to the next, sighting carefully and touching off an unstoppable blast of man-killing grape-shot into the hapless vessel. It took until the third gun before activity was seen in the Corbeau — they were launching their longboat.

'That will do, Stirk,' Farrell called. Kydd was struck with Farrell's humanity in allowing the enemy to abandon ship without unnecessary killing, and felt ashamed of his own blood-lust.

'Give y' joy on y'r prize, sir!' Jarman said, with considerable respect.

'Renzi!' Seaflower's captain ordered. 'The longboat — do ye take possession of our prize.'

Grinning, Kydd watched Renzi climb into the longboat with his crew, but they were only half-way across when the first wisps of smoke arose. The boat's crew lay on their oars and watched blue smoke bursting into flame as tarry ropes caught, spreading the consuming blaze to the upper rigging. A crackling, bursting firestorm turned the schooner into an inferno, the shape of her hull only just perceptible in the flames. The climax came when first her foremast and then her main crashed down in a gout of sparks and the rapidly charring ruin forlornly settled to the reef. Corbeau's crew watched silently, lined along the shoreline. They were still there when Seaflower brought her longboat aboard and sailed away.

 

'Barbados?' asked Jarman. They had been cut about; it stood to reason they refit.

The beady eyes of Snead, the carpenter's mate, announced his presence on deck. 'Sir,' he said, touching his shapeless felt hat, 'we've taken a ball in midships, an' takin' in water.' The clinker build of Seaflower's hull was proving its worth - the strake where the ball had entered would need replacing but the rest were sound.

'How bad?' Farrell asked.

'Can swim a-whiles,' said Snead, *but she can't take a blow.'

'Dockyard,' said Merrick.

Snead looked at him and nodded.

Jarman turned to Farrell. 'Antego,' he said, without hesitation.

'Antigua — a couple of days only, thank the Lord,' said Farrell, but Kydd flinched. Of all places ...