by Noah Harris
“I don’t understand,” Thomas said as he shook his head. “I thought Fanny liked women.”
“She does, but like most women, she wants something else, too. Something another woman can’t give her.”
Thomas thought for a moment and then stopped dead in his tracks.
“You don’t mean…”
The marksman shrugged and gave him a little smile. “Why not?”
Thomas grinned. This ship never ceased to amaze him. He put a hand on Bill Husk’s shoulder. “Well, I guess congratulations are in order.”
“Not yet, I don’t think, but they will be soon.”
“How did a man such as you find your way on such a ship? Most of your kind hate us.”
The marksman’s face clouded over for a moment. “As did I, for a time. When I first signed on to a ship I was just a young lad and served as a cabin boy. Unfortunately, I got the wrong captain. My duties went beyond what any lad of that age should be asked to do.”
Thomas felt a queasy sensation in his stomach. “I am so sorry.”
“I got even. I endured it for a year and then could endure it no more. One night when we were in port, sharing a room at an inn, I murdered him in his sleep, took his money, and ran off. I turned pirate. I was still young and small, but the others soon learned to steer clear of me. I had to kill more than one man to get respect—and to get a good night’s sleep. After a few men died in such a manner, the rest learned their lesson.”
Thomas’s eyes widened. “Bill the Boy. You’re Bill the Boy. You were famous when I was growing up. All the lads spoke of your exploits.”
Bill Musk gave him a grin. “The youngest pirate on the Seven Seas. Yes, that was me. But I am a boy no longer.”
“How could you stand to live in our midst after what happened to you?”
“I learned that most of your kind are not like that, and so I made my peace with you. The Manhunter is one of the most successful ships in the Caribbean, thus it made sense to sign on. I reasoned that one never finds women to bed on board a ship in any case, so what difference would it make? Never did I suspect that this was the only ship I’d ever sail with where I would get a regular lover. It’s my home now.”
Thomas suddenly felt a great tenderness for this deadly man. “When I discovered that stowaway, I saw you pointed your gun at the captain.”
Bill Husk nodded sadly. “I misjudged him. When that boy tumbled out of the crate and Captain Seawolf stood above him, I saw my old captain again. But of course, Captain Seawolf did the right thing. I was wrong to think that he wouldn’t. He is an honorable man in his own way, like you are and Radbert. There are few others on this ship of which I would say the same. Men and women like us must stick together.”
They shook hands, and Thomas knew that he had made a true ally and a friend.
When he returned to the sleeping quarters, Radbert grumbled sleepily, “What took you so long?”
“Don’t worry, I didn’t stop to sample the wares, but what I did discover defies description. Come here, my love. Hold me tonight.”
“Your love?” Radbert whispered. That old hesitation was back. Thomas bit his lip.
“Yes,” Thomas insisted.
Radbert did not reply, but he held Thomas close all through the stormy night. Thomas wanted him to say more, much more, but he knew that he would have to be satisfied with only his embrace.
The next day dawned gray and stormy. A needling rain slanted down, stinging the faces of the men on deck. The Manhunter rose and dove over high, rolling waves. Thomas gave a quick looked around. The visibility was poor, but he did not see either ship.
Seamus came up to him, grinning. “That’s right. It looks like we gave them the slip.”
“Good! Now we can get back to business. And how is your wound, my friend? You and Hiro seemed healed enough last night.”
Seamus laughed. “So we were! You should have joined us. You have been too distant of late.”
“Aye, it’s true. That will change. I’m beginning to love this ship, or at least some parts of it.”
“Sail to port!”
Everyone turned. A dark blot loomed out of the rain, approaching quickly. It took on shape, and Thomas to his terror recognized his old ship the Virtue. She had the wind to her back and was running straight for them.
“To battle stations!” Captain Seawolf roared. “Man the guns. Prepare for boarders!”
Men rushed in all directions, grabbing their weapons. Maggie sprang up from below decks, calling on her gun crews to remove the tarpaulins from their pieces and load them. Thomas wondered if any guns, big or small, would fire in this rain. Thomas kept his own musket wrapped in an oil cloth. It was loaded but not yet primed. He wasn’t sure how he’d be able to do that without water spoiling the powder.
Fanny hurried by. She, too, carried her musket wrapped in a waterproof cloth. She also wore a brace of throwing daggers. Thomas stopped her.
“Shouldn’t you stay below? This is too dangerous! Think of your—”
Fanny elbowed him in the gut. “Get out of my way, you stupid man!”
As he recovered from the pain, he saw Bill Husk scampering like a monkey up the rigging to his position in the crow’s nest. Thomas shrugged and took his place along the railing with the other men.
The Virtue swooped in for a broadside. Thomas saw she had changed her sails to maximize speed over stability, and the way she danced over the waves confirmed his suspicion that she carried no cargo.
Thomas also saw six new cannons along her starboard, and no doubt a matching six on her port side.
Captain Stone’s voice carried over the waves to him, a defiant, enraged cry cutting through the rising storm. “Thomas Treadwell, I have come for you! You will not escape me, you filthy catamite. You and the rest of your sinful crew will die this day!”
Thomas felt his heart go cold. He could see his old captain, a tall proud figure silhouetted in the gloom. He stood on the foredeck, waving a sword over his head. His old shipmates prepared their guns.
No, not his old shipmates. None of them knew gunnery. Captain Stone had brought aboard specialists. His brother in the Royal Navy had no doubt scoured the ports for experienced gunners.
Thomas glanced around the sea. Where was that ship of the line? If she came upon them, they really would be dead.
“Prepare for hell, you miserable sinner!” Captain Stone shouted.
“See you there, bitch!” Maggie called back. “Give them a broadside, boys! Fire!”
Maggie timed it perfectly, judging the relative movement of the two ships in the waves with her usual precision. All six cannons hit. One struck the cabin in the foredeck, shattering its thin walls. Another snipped of some of the rigging. The remaining four thumped into the hull, two of them punching holes in it. The holes were well above the water line, but in these heavy seas, they’d soon begin shipping water. Some men would have to bail rather than fight.
Then came the Virtue’s turn.
Captain Stone’s order to fire came as a mad shriek across the waves. All six cannons burst in unison. Everyone hit the deck. The sternmost cannon on the Manhunter took a direct hit, shattering with a spray of wood, metal, and parts of men. Thomas felt another cannonball whoosh close overhead, and the deck shook from the impact of more hits.
When Thomas rose, he saw the Virtue coming along side, her crew preparing grappling hooks. The wind and rain picked up. Maggie’s crews held tarpaulins over their guns as they reloaded. The enemy gun crews were doing the same. As he had suspected, they were just as good as Maggie’s, no doubt former Royal Navy or veterans from foreign navies.
“Hurry up, you cocksuckers!” Maggie shouted. “Fire at will!”
Two of the Manhunter’s guns went off immediately, sending grapeshot at the Virtue. One shot went high and, besides fraying some rigging, did no damage.
The other was dead on. It tore through the men on deck, sweeping away a gun crew and several other men besides.
The three
remaining guns on the Manhunter fired in rapid succession, tearing more holes in the enemy lines. The men aboard the Virtue were cowering. But not the five remaining gun crews. They stood at their pieces, as cool as if they were on drill.
The first gun fired at the same time as the last of the Manhunter’s. A grisly hole opened up in the pirate crew, a broad crimson smear and chunks of flesh appearing in its place.
The other four guns went off one after another. More men fell. Roaring Randy, the first mate, screamed as a lead ball took off his right arm at the elbow. Another ball punctured the railing right above where Thomas had hidden, sending painful slivers into his shoulder. More grapeshot tore at the foresail.
Cursing, Thomas threw the oilcloth aside and primed his musket. He rose, aimed for Captain Stone, who still stood defiantly on the foredeck, and fired.
The man did not fall.
Other pirates began to shoot as well, pouring a hail of small arms fire into the approaching ship. One man swinging a grappling hook threw up his hands and fell back. Two or three more did the same, but the rain was stronger now, and many muskets did not fire at all. A few muzzle flares from the Virtue responded in kind, but they, too, had trouble with the rain.
Thomas had three pistols, all loaded and primed. As the grappling hooks clunked against the railing and the men of the Virtue hauled them in like a big fish, he prepared to fire them at point blank range.
He never got a chance.
A huge wave heaved up the two ships and slammed them together with a crash. Every man on both vessels toppled over. In the blur of motion as he hit the deck, Thomas thought he saw a man fall out of the Virtue’s crow’s nest. He hoped Bill Husk had managed to hold on.
The waves passed, and the two ships fell into a trough. Thomas heard the ropes holding them together snap.
By the time he was on his feet, the Virtue was barely within rifle range. Through the rain, he saw her helmsman steering towards the Manhunter again and her gun crews frantically reloading.
“Get to work, damn you!” Maggie cried out.
But the seas were too heavy, and the rain too hard. Only two crews got their pieces loaded before the Virtue closed again, and only one went off. The other sputtered, the powder refusing to catch.
The crew of the cannon that did fire misjudged their aim, and instead of cutting down more of the enemy, the grapeshot merely punched a few holes in the bottom of the Virtue’s mainsail.
The enemy gunners had similar luck. Two guns fired. One missed completely, and the other slammed into the foremast. It was grapeshot, too. Otherwise, the mast would have snapped like a twig. Instead it only chewed up the wood, sending splinters flying, wounding two of the pirates standing nearby.
Then the ships banged their hulls together once more. Everyone was braced for it this time, but even so, the impact took some off their feet.
“I’ll kill you if it’s the last thing I do!” Captain Stone shrieked over the rising wind.
“I’ll gut you and feed you to the sharks, you son of a bitch!” Thomas called back. He fired a pistol at him, but a sudden swell made his aim high. “I can see your face now. What an ugly creature I made you. Now your face matches your spirit!”
“Damn you to hell!” Captain Stone roared. He fired a musket, which splintered the railing next to Thomas.
Thomas fired his next pistol—or tried to, because the powder didn’t catch. Cursing, he drew his final pistol and fired. Nothing.
The storm was truly upon them now, and the ships rose and plunged over the heaving sea, banging into one another as the men of the Virtue tried to toss their grappling hooks over. Most missed, and the hooks splashed into the water between the ships. The two or three that did reach the Manhunter got cut by the pirates or snapped off as the rolling seas pulled the ships apart. Shots were rare from either side. No one could keep their powder dry.
Until Maggie pulled a miracle out of her hat.
Personally loading and aiming one of her cannons, she fired a solid shot right at the Virtue’s mainmast. It was a direct hit. The mast cracked, groaned like an old man in pain, and with a grind and a squeal, tipped over. Its base gave way and fell with a crash onto the deck.
The pirates cheered. Thomas wiped the rain from his eyes and tried to spot Captain Stone.
He was nowhere to be seen. Several men lay pinned under that vast mast, dead or dying, crushed like ants. Had the captain been one of them?
A dark figure rose up, brandishing a sword, and pointed straight at him.
“I am not done yet, you whore of the Devil! Come here if you dare,” Captain Stone said.
“I’m coming, you ugly bastard,” Thomas shouted. “Lads, let’s get them. Grappling hooks! Helmsman, steer us in!”
“You are not in charge in battle,” Captain Seawolf bellowed, a trickle of blood running down his face. His head had taken on more angular features and sprouted bristly hair all around. His red coat was filled to bursting, and the long fingers that gripped his cutlass ended in claws.
“They’re decimated, damn you,” Thomas shouted back. “Crippled. Let’s get them!”
The captain looked at his first mate, who was groaning on deck as Doctor Hartencourt applied a tourniquet to his spurting stump, and then back at the ship.
“All right, let’s—”
“Sail to stern! It’s the ship of the line!”
The call made everyone turn. A man screamed in terror. Out of the rain and the wind and the waves came the huge warship, the Union Jack snapping in the gale.
“Hard around!” Captain Seawolf shouted. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
The two forward guns of the navy ship fired. The balls whooshed over the deck and splashed in the sea in front of them. Maggie hurried to the stern. There was only one small cannon there, but it was already loaded and ready. Within seconds, she aimed and fired. The underweight solid shot bounced right off the navy ship’s thick oaken hull.
The rigging crew rushed as the navy ship closed in. Thomas saw the figurehead, a roaring lion, and knew the ship. It was the Atlantic Lion, one of the best vessels in the Royal Navy, veteran of a dozen sea battles against the navies of the other great powers, captained by Thaddeus Stone, Temperance Stone’s elder brother.
The Atlantic Lion closed in on the Manhunter, her sails already getting the full effect of the wind while the Manhunter’s had been trimmed because of the storm. The pirate ship did not have time to get away, and it did not have time to turn and give her a broadside before she received a deadly one of her own.
So, the helmsman did the only thing he could do—he swung the ship’s wheel hard to port and cut across the path of the Virtue.
The two wind-tossed ships converged. The Atlantic Lion held her fire, not wanting to hit the allied vessel.
Thomas hoped and prayed they would be able to cut clear across the Virtue’s path and get safe on the other side of her, but the seas were too rough, the Virtue too swift. It was obvious for a full ten seconds before they collided that they would hit each other, and with the hard wind and the Manhunter’s bulk, there was no time to steer clear.
Nevertheless, the helmsman of the Virtue turned hard to port and tried to veer off.
It probably saved both ships, but it wasn’t enough.
The two hulking vessels slammed into one another at an acute angle. Everyone standing on both ships, no matter how hard they gripped onto a railing or a mast or a cannon, got thrown off his or her feet. Thomas heard two sickening thuds nearby as a pair of pirates who had ascended the rigging fell to their deaths on the hard wooden deck.
A terrible scraping sound tore at his eardrums as the Manhunter ground past the Virtue.
And then she was away. The rest of the rigging crew recovered their balance and unfurled the sails. The Atlantic Lion turned, trying to get around her sister vessel for a good shot. The Virtue, with its mainmast felled, could not get out of the way or even turn enough to launch a broadside. The two ships faded into the storm behind, sl
owly melding with the rain until their shadows were blotted out.
Then the crew of the Manhunter had only the storm to deal with.
By this time, it had picked up to full force. Captain Seawolf ordered the rigging crew to keep the sails fully unfurled for an hour to gain as much distance as they could, a dangerous maneuver during a storm even for an undamaged ship, and this one was sorely wounded. Some of the rigging snapped, forcing the crew to take in a couple of the smaller sails. Plus, there were several small leaks on the port side thanks to battering against the Virtue. Thomas and a team went down and bailed frantically as another team heated up tar and tried to caulk the seams.
Meanwhile, Doctor Hartencourt had gone on deck. Thomas knew he’d have to go from man to man, saving some, covering others up, and bandaging those too weak to bandage themselves.
It was a nightmarish day. For hours, they labored. They bailed and tarred, fixed sails and cauterized wounds, and by the end of twelve hours, the seas had calmed, the rain had become soft, and the low clouds no longer scowled black and ominous.
The navigator chose a zigzag path, worried the two ships would appear again. Like the previous night, all unnecessary lamps were kept unlit. Wounded and dying men lay groaning in near darkness. Their uninjured shipmates lay listless, exhausted from fighting the storm and fixing the ship.
Now came the worst time for Thomas. During the battle and what had come after he had been too busy to feel anything but fear and determination. He had no time to think. Now that he had nothing to do, guilt washed over him like a tsunami. It was his fault those men had died; his fault Roaring Randy was now roaring in horror at the sight of his severed arm. It was his fault the ship was battered and splintered and half the crew carried at least some wound.
And yet not one man or woman gave him a hard look. Not a single pirate in that crew blamed him for what had happened. Only he blamed himself.
Why hadn’t he killed Captain Stone when he had gotten the chance? He had wanted to make him suffer, like Thomas had suffered for so long. He had wanted that cruel captain to be denied the objects of his lust, like Thomas had been so limited for all his adult life. And he had done so. He had turned Temperance Stone into a madman, a seething shell of his former self.
