To Honor We Call You: A Florida Action Adventure Novel (Scott Jarvis Private Investigator Book 9)

by Scott Cook

  The two ships suddenly came together with a resounding boom and low squeal of wood on wood. Kate leapt up onto the railing of the Corvette, bawling at the top of her lungs, “Come on! Come on! Castle’s to me!”

  She felt rather than saw her men leaping up and onto the corvette’s deck behind her. She could hear the brig’s sails flapping behind her and without even looking, felt the vessel veer away. Another tremendous crash as the Indefatigable, impelled by the mass of the Résoudre, drifted to leeward and impacted with the corvette, the enormous crash shaking the smaller ship’s fabric all the way from truck to keelson.

  The damage on the main deck, also the corvette’s gun deck was horrifying. Scores of dead men lay sprawled from the taffrail to the headrails. No less than half a dozen guns were dismounted, two of these on the ship’s disengaged side. Of the remaining six of the larboard battery, however, full gun crews still worked them. More men ranged along the decks with muskets and more were jostling each other at the main and fore hatches to get on deck.

  A horde of men…

  They saw Kate and her pitiful band of eighteen and at least three times as many, not counting the men working the twelve pounders, turned and rushed aft toward them.

  Chaos descended and all was bedlam. Men roared, pistols snapped and metal clashed against metal. Kate had her own two double barreled Manton’s and without even knowing how it’d gotten into her left hand, she fired the first barrel, bringing down a pikeman who was rushing for her. Another snap and a second man went down. She let the empty pistol fall to the deck and fumbled the second from her belt even as she pressed forward, driving into the fray with her blade.

  More than one Frenchman’s eyes went wide when they realized that the tall man coming for them with a ferocious roar in his throat and fighting madness in his eyes was in fact a six foot tall woman. That single delay and hesitation spelled the end for no less than six men in less than thirty-seconds. Somewhere in the back of her mind, Kate felt a surge of satisfaction at that.

  It was short-lived, however. For in spite of their good beginning and surprise, the Castles were grossly overmatched in numbers. Dozens upon dozens of men swarmed the decks and came for them. Yet Kate and her men pushed forward, wading into the French and driving them back. For although they had numbers on their side, they were also too tightly packed and unable to maneuver effectively.

  Thrust and thrust… and thrust! Now parry… now thrust again! A blade whooshing through the air, beat it aside and ram the point of her sword home! Punching, kicking and stabbing… the shouts of her men and the French… yowls and shrieks of pain all flowing into one roaring cacophony that must fill the entire universe and shred the very fabric of sanity! Again and again and again with the prodigious strength of a lunatic driving her arms!

  More pistols snapped, and axe blade swung her way and Kate used the flat of her sword to push the handle up and away, the impetus of her parry forcing the blade around and directly into the shoulder of the wielder’s mate. The man’s shoulder yawned open as if it were a hideous bloody mouth parting to shriek in a high pitched wail of agony as the man fell, dragging yet another Frog down with him.

  Suddenly, Danvers was at her side with a blunderbuss in his hands. Where he’d come from and where he’d gotten the weapon she couldn’t imagine. Yet when the odd weapon belched out with fire and smoke and a handful of Frenchmen were swept off their feet, she was grateful.

  And now Pitney was at her side, firing a pistol in his left hand and swinging the rammer from one of the French guns in his other. The reedy young man’s face was a mask of fury so unlike his usual cheerfulness that Kate almost didn’t recognize him. Especially when he lunged forward into two oncoming men and began beating at their heads and shoulders with terrifying ferocity.

  Kate found herself face to face with another man, a dark and mustachioed Frenchman with a wide body and a sneer who went for her with a boarding pike leveled at her belly. Rather than trying to dodge or back up, Kate moved into the strike, twisting her body around so that the head of the pike only grazed the fleshy part of her hip even as she gripped the shaft and heaved it sideways. With her right hand she brought the pummel of her sword straight into the man’s face in a hard backhanded thrust that exploded his nose in a gush of blood. It was an awkward move and both of them went down in a heap.

  Even as Kate and the man struggled, mostly her struggling out from beneath him, she felt men leap over her. A strong hand came down and yanked the burly man back by the hair. Kate shoved with her legs and speared the man in the belly with her blade, pushing herself back to her feet in the process.

  “Mum!” Came the voice of William Barret, foretopman starboard watch. “Is you well? Your britches…”

  Kate felt a dull pain in her left hip and glanced down just long enough to see that the pike had opened a small wound there. A quick touch revealed that it was only a graze. More damage had been done to the fabric than her skin. A little blood on her leg and on the tips of her fingers was all.

  “Just a scratch, Billy Barret! Thankye!”

  She turned her attention back to the fighting, finally jerking her second Manton from her belt. Danvers’ blunderbuss had opened a lane on the starboard side of the deck and he and six men were rushing forward in an attempt to encircle the pack of men still trying to push Kate’s own men back to the stern.

  Why weren’t there more men, however? The numbers were nearly even now and Kate thought that there should be a hundred men on this deck. Where were they all? Below…?

  No, they’d gone over to the Indi, of course!

  This urged her on with even more zeal. She roared and shrieked and bawled out for her men to push forward. The fierceness of her push and the added terror of seven men suddenly on their flank seemed to do the work for Kate’s party. The Frenchmen suddenly lost their appetite for fighting and tried to run, turning and leaping for the nearest hatchway, bowling over each other and the gun crews who were so hard pressed they couldn’t’ work their pieces!

  It wouldn’t last long however. Soon, the French would rally on deck if not below. On top of that, Kate had to keep those gun crews from firing their pieces at point blank range directly into the British ship. Although perhaps this wasn’t as much of a concern now that a mixed group of French and British sailors were now going at each other aboard the Indefatigable with shocking violence.

  Kate took a precious second to glance around. She could see her brig, heading away just as she ordered now nearly a mile off. Something else caught her eye forward as well. Two towering masts appeared near the bows and the corvette was jolted again as another vessel crashed into her. Before Kate’s mind could process what she was seeing, a dozen mostly black sailors began to pour over the starboard railing near the fore chains. Pallier, Rakes and their men had decided that they’d had enough of taking potshots and wanted to get into the fray in a far more personal way.

  This final surge broke the last of the French resistance. What men still remained on deck threw down their arms and threw up their hands, calling out in French and English that they surrendered.

  “Où est votre capitaine… votre officier?” Kate shouted to the French, asking for their captain or officer.

  A burly man in a bottle green coat stepped forward from the group of Frenchmen. He was perhaps forty and wore a ridiculous round hat over a rounder head. In English he said, “I am the first mate, Monsieur…”

  Such a comic look of befuddlement crossed his porcine features that Kate had to laugh, “Yes, Monsieur, I’m a woman. Captain Catherine Cook of the brig Whitby Castle at your service. Do you surrender, sir?”

  “I… I surrender, Mademoiselle,” he finally said, more stunned than anything. He tentatively reached out and offered his sword, which Kate took and handed to Danvers.

  “Monsieur, order all of your men on deck here,” Kate ordered. “Danvers, once they’re all here, you and your six men disarm them and load two of the after guns with grape and point them inboard, you hea
r me now? We’re not done here, yet!”

  “But Cap’n!” Danvers protested quietly but urgently. “I’m you’re coxswain, I should be with ye’.”

  Kate clapped him on the shoulder, “Agreed, but you’re also a man I can trust to see to this prize. We’ve still got work to do over yonder. Oh, and get those Goddamned French colors hauled down at once!”

  Danvers frowned but nodded and knuckled his forehead, “Aye, mum… aye.”

  Pitney appeared next to her then, handing her both of her pistols, “I collected these and reloaded them for ye, mum.”

  Kate grinned, “Thank ye’ kindly, Pitney. What a fellow you are… all right, lads! Captain Pellew needs a hand… who’s with me?”

  A lusty roar from the black and white sailors alike. Kate turned her attention to the big frigate. For the moment, it appeared that Pellew’s crew was holding their own. Most of the hand to hand fighting was taking place on the gangways between the quarterdeck and focs’l. Although it was hard to tell, as the deck was above her head. However, she saw an opportunity to go aboard with little resistance.

  “Pallier? Pallier, where—“

  “Here, mum!” the burly ex-slave said, raising his cutlass high from a few yards forward.

  “Take your men and board the frigate forward and I’ll go aft,” Kate shouted. “Beat down any resistance you find and then we continue onto the French frigate if we can! Leave Rakes and one other man here to assist Danvers! Now let’s at em’ again!”

  A cheer went up and Kate bounded onto the rail and leapt for the Indefatigable’s mizzen chains.

  Now that the three ships had come together and men were mingling on his deck, Pellew found solace in the fact that no one was firing guns any longer. It was small solace, as between the two French ships the privateers were able to assemble a boarding party as large as his own crew. They were certainly privateer’s men, as there were no French naval uniforms and neither ship flew a commissioning pennant.

  Even so, they were fierce and determined and it would be nip and tuck for quite some time. Pellew himself was still pinned to the quarterdeck. He, Albury and Atley the gunner and more than a dozen seamen were holding the deck, spending much of their time beating back sorties from the gangways and the ladders. Down on the gun deck, Braiscirtle and his men were toe to toe with a horde of Frenchmen. John Curtis, his tall, burly third lieutenant and Albert Canning, the senior midshipmen held the focs’l along with a party of their men. Between, on the gangways, the French and British sailors grappled for position. Mostly the French, however, as the majority of the Indi’s crew had been manning the guns and there were more in the rigging and tops. No less than two dozen of his marines were in all three tops, sending their fire aboard both French ships in order to keep their men in their tops from raining deadly volleys of lead down on the frigate’s deck.

  Pellew had seen the brig fire into the French frigate and the corvette and then range alongside. Yet he’d been too occupied to pay much attention to what was going on to starboard. Now, though, when he heard a cheer rise from the corvette, he glanced over to see that a party of French stood in the center of the deck huddled around the main mast. Two guns were being trained round to point at them and the tricolor at the mizzen peak was being hauled down! To his astonishment, two parties of sailors were rushing aboard his ship at the fore and mizzen chains. Perhaps two dozen men in all.

  The men shouted out a mixture of curses and phrases such as: “Special delivery from King George!” and “Stuff this up your ass, Johny Crappaud!”

  Pellew was surprised to see the tall lean captain of the brig leap up and over his quarterdeck railing followed by a dozen men. It took several long seconds for the captain to realize that the lean man wasn’t in fact a man at all. It was, to his astonishment, a young woman. A woman wearing what could pass for a Royal Navy officer’s uniform from afar. Up close, though, the uniform didn’t completely mask her shapely figure. It certainly didn’t hide the fact that her long brown hair, tied into a sailor’s queue, framed a lovely face with two lovely but fierce blue eyes.

  “Captain Pellew, sir!” She called, saluting. “Captain Catherine Cook of the brig Whitby Castle at your service, sir.”

  Pellew stared, his mouth hanging open, “Captain? Cook, you say…? Uhm…”

  “I know it’s unusual, sir,” Kate rushed on. “A very long story. James Cook was my grandfather. His son, James, was my father.”

  Pellew blinked, shut his mouth and got himself under control. A desperate fight was still raging around them, after all.

  “Glad to have you, Miss Cook,” Pellew said, extending a hand.

  Kate shook it with a strong grip and smiled, “A very great honor to meet you, Sir Edward… French corvette is secure. I left a party aboard with loaded guns. What can my men and I do, sir?”

  Pellew noticed the hand-sized blood stain on the woman’s left hip just below the hem of her now torn and bloody coat. He had to struggle to maintain his composure and force down his surprise, “We have things in hand here, at least for the time being. I’d be obliged, Miss Cook… Captain… did you and your two parties continue on to the frigate and support us from their flanks! Are you certain that you…”

  “Aye, aye, sir!” Kate said. “I’m of your way of thinking entirely!”

  Pellew was more surprised still when the young woman turned forward, cupped her hands over her mouth… being careful to arrange her sword just so… and shouted in a very respectable quarterdeck roar, ordering: “Vengeances! On to the frog frigate, you hear me there! Come on lads!”

  This last she bawled at the men clustered around her and all of them raced across the deck and leapt for the Frenchman, musket and pistol fire be damned. One of her men was thrown back just as he mounted the quarterdeck larboard bulwark, his chest a bloody mess. Pellew once again had to marvel at how this young woman who couldn’t yet be twenty, could lead and inspire these men to follow her into such peril with no second thought.

  A Cook indeed, He mused and turned his focus back to his own immediate concerns.

  At that particular moment, these consisted of bringing his hanger to bear on a pair of privateers who were attempting to run his first officer through the belly. With a rapid forehand and a deadly backhanded thrust, however, he forever disabused them of that or any other notion.

  Like the corvette, the French frigate was manned only by a skeleton crew. The French had risked it all on a single throw of the dice. They knew that by sending a horde of men onto the British man o’war, they’d occupy the English and wouldn’t need much in the way of a defense. They hadn’t counted on the two smaller ships coming into the fight, however.

  Although the number of men aboard the frigate was but a fraction of the total compliment, it was still twice that of Kate’s own boarding party. The resistance was fierce and the fighting brutal, bloody and chaotic.

  However, as most of the men were on the gun deck, clearing the quarterdeck, spar deck and focs’l took only seconds. Kate knew that they must take the gun deck as well, as this was where the majority of the remaining French crew were huddled, out of the line of musket fire and ready to swarm up on deck or even out through open gun ports and across to the Indefatigable.

  There was nothing for it. Kate led the way down the starboard quarterdeck ladder, her two Manton’ pistols in her hands. Half her party went down the larboard at the same time as Pallier and his party split themselves and descended the focs’l ladders into the waist.

  The French came at them with gusto. Kate’s two pistols barked out their four rounds in quick succession and were once again discarded. The shots had cleared the ladder and she leapt halfway down, her sword arcing toward the first unfortunate privateer who thought to lead a charge upward.

  Kate’s strong swing and the weight of her body hurtling downward drove the blade of her sword into the man’s shoulder with such force that his own sword arm was cleaved from his body, a fountain of gore rising and covering them both in a horrid red mis
t.

  “Come on! Come on!” she rasped, her voice now hoarse from shouting and inhaling powder smoke. “Rendre! Rendre, goddamn you!”

  She was calling for her men to push forward while calling for the French to surrender. They by God would, too, if she had anything to say about it… and she most certainly did!

  With the ship cleared for action, her gun deck was one long and wide-open space from the blown out stern windows to the focs’l. All partitions and furnishings had been removed from the captain’s cabin. The mess tables were hoisted up and lashed to the overhead. There was nothing save the trunks of the lower masts to break up the long lane of guns, scuttlebutts, sponge tubs, tubs of match, shot garlands and other implements for the men to have room to work their pieces.

  Unfortunately, when a ship was raked, as this one had been, this cleared deck meant there was little to obstruct the flight of shot as it carried forward through the entire length of a ship. Even as she fought, Kate could appreciate the devastation that even her half dozen six pounders and two carronades had wrought. Although admittedly, the big British frigate’s own fire had done the majority of the damage.

  There were two engaged gun ports beaten into one. In front of those ports lay two twelve-pound cannon on their sides. One of her six-pound balls had embedded itself into the lower mizzen mast, now becoming part of the structure. Splinters were strewn about seemingly everywhere along with the blood of the bodies still heaped around their guns. Unlike British ships, who’s gun deck inner ports, walls and sometimes decks were deliberately painted blood-red… done so to reduce the horror of the results of battle… as the men couldn’t’ see as much of their and their mate’s blood against the paint… the privateer’s cheerful light colored bulkheads and decks were now liberally splashed with gallons of human gore. Several Carling posts were smashed and more than one twenty-four pound shot could be seen on deck or buried in a deck beam.