The King's Privateer

by Dewey Lambdin

  “I count at least twelve, perhaps fifteen sail,” Lewrie muttered. “It could be a fishing fleet, but I doubt it. They look like praos with their one square-sail flying. If they come up over the horizon, and don’t pass on by, they’re coming here.”

  “The Lanun Rovers!” Sir Hugo spat. “Come to meet with Choundas.”

  “Come to the Spratlys for whatever purpose they have, yes.”

  “Pray God they enter harbor,” Sir Hugo snickered, shaking Alan’s resting telescope. “With your batteries, your ship and my guns and my troops waiting ashore, we could make it damned hot for ’em.”

  “Well, let me tell you, we’ve tangled with praos before last autumn,” Alan replied. “Hold still, would you please, sir? Each one carries nearly an hundred pirates. Not much in the way of artillery, but we have to be looking at … well, closer to fifteen boats now, so that could be a force of over fifteen hundred men.”

  “The more the merrier,” Sir Hugo shrugged, waving the resting telescope tube about the sky, forcing Lewrie to close it and give up. “A bloody check here could ruin this fellow Choundas.”

  “How the devil do you come by that?” Alan asked.

  “When you slap your invited guests in the face, they don’t invite you to their house for supper any longer, now do they, lad?” Sir Hugo boomed.

  “Then we’d better make sure we leave a few to carry word back to their lairs, should we not?” Alan said, getting the drift. Choundas would not know of this until he tried to meet up with his native allies. And they just might do the English the favor of cutting the man’s heart out for spite.

  “I wonder if those pirates yonder know the difference between a French and an English flag?” Sir Hugo speculated, humming some song to himself.

  “Whether they do or not, sir, I do believe you’re going to get a practical test of this battery of yours before the day’s out.”

  Chapter 8

  By God, what a fearsome sight, Lewrie thought, pacing his tiny quarterdeck as the Mindanao pirates from the Illana Lagoon came into the harbor. No matter the surprises they’d discover once they got in range, no matter the number of artillery pieces ready to lash every inch of the bay, or the troops waiting with loaded muskets and fixed bayonets to receive them, they were a terrifying spectacle.

  Eighteen large ocean-going praos, crammed with warriors, all experts with their wicked curved swords and krees knives, with artillery and muskets. Warriors used to raiding cruises that the unfortunate Mr. Wythy said lasted up to three years. No shore in all of Asia was safe from their depredations, no native troops could stand against them if such troops stood between them and plunder.

  “Cheer ’em, boys!” Lewrie shouted with a grin plastered on his phyz. “They’re your bloody allies, damn their black souls! They’re going to help you take ships and make you rich!”

  “Christ a’mighty,” Hoolahan whispered, crossing himself as he stood by his carronade. “But they’s a passel o’ the fuckers, sor.”

  “Not a one of ’em half the man you are, Hoolahan,” Lewrie assured him with a clap on the shoulder as he paced along down from the quarterdeck to the waist of the ship where the artillery waited, ready to fire when the word was given. “Got your swivel charges ready for ’em, Spears?”

  “Oh, aye, sir!”

  “Good lad. Now wave your hat and cheer ’em!”

  The blood-red praos breasted easily over the harbor bar through the disturbed breaker-water and spread out, furling their single sails at long last after a long passage. They might have stopped off on the coast of Borneo, dangerous as that was even for them among the headhunters, and done the last three hundred miles to Spratly. Most of the men in the boats stood and waved back, brandishing swords, muskets or older match-locks like Hindoo jezails, whooping fit to bust. They had livestock with them, crammed in any-old-how. And slaves to do the rowing at the long paddles. Yes, they must have replenished on Borneo, Alan decided, to have that much food aboard.

  And it appeared they’d come prepared for a long stay. Every prao was piled high below her rowing benches with bamboo logs and palm leaves with which to make huts.

  Lewrie made his way back to the quarterdeck, watching the pirate fleet advance in a ragged band, making for the beach. Steering a course for Culverin, and for Lady Charlotte. Lady Charlotte wore the French merchant flag on her stern, and her spanker gaff had been given a stuns’l boom lashed to its inside end, to make it look like the older lateen that the pirates would expect to see on Sicard’s La Malouine. Culverin, too, flew an extemporized French ensign painted on one of Lewrie’s bed sheets.

  “Oh, Christ, don’t beach your damned ship there!” Hogue prayed as three praos angled for the inviting strand on the western peninsula. There were troops there, hidden in the rocks at the crest, with some light artillery to support them. Unlike newer naval guns, those were fired with powder-filled goose quills or tin ignition tubes to ignite the powder charges in the barrels, and that required a burning length of slow-match to touch the quills or tubes off. Slow-matches which were now lit and smouldering, giving off tiny trails of smoke. If a pirate spotted that before the ambush could be sprung, they’d have a battle-royal on their hands. And the troops could not hope for total cover in the rocks. Let someone walk up the beach a few yards, and the game would be over!

  There were thousands of the buggers, just as he had surmised, and even with modern weaponry, Sir Hugo’s troops could be overwhelmed. The two ships could be swamped with fanatically enraged pirates with no hope of aid from shore.

  “Come on, you buggers!” Lewrie muttered. “Go on and beach your silly arses by the fort, where the goodies are waiting!” The plan was to wait, wait until most of the pirates had beached or anchored their boats at the fort. Canvas-covered piles of what looked to be trade goods sat out in the open, delectably available. Once between Lady Charlotte and Culverin ’s guns, and the fire-power available ashore, the trap would be sprung. Sir Hugo had enough men to cover the north shore around the fort, and part of the western headland, only able to spare a half-company to reinforce the heavy battery on the point. If the pirates tumbled to it earlier, it would be a near thing as to who would get the worst of it.

  Praos drifted by to bow and stern, some coming very close in as they passed. It was much like being in the middle of a pack of hungry sharks.

  “I think this bastard wants t’ come aboard, sir!” Murray said, pointing to one prao that was rounding up below the entry port. “Do we let ’em, sir?”

  “Christ!” Lewrie hissed. Hard as the battle to take the island had been on his nerves, it couldn’t hold a candle to this. There was a person of some rank among the pirate band standing on the rails of his boat, waving and shouting, demanding entry. “Ashore!” Lewrie said, pointing in that direction. “Ashore, hey? You … go … there! No come here!” He was all but wiggling his bottom, trying to get the gist of his message across. One pirate’s eyes over the bulwarks to see loaded cannon and crews at the ready, and they’d swarm Culverin like a hive of disturbed bees!

  “He don’t sound too happy about it, sir,” Murray warned. The pirate, clad in a cloth-of-gold turban, green silk skirt, jewels and weapons, was gesticulating and swearing to beat the band, upset that his will was being defied, that his august personage was being waved off instead of catered to.

  “Oh, God, look sir!” Hogue yelped.

  Those three praos had beached themselves on the western shore and their crews were disembarking, stretching and bending to loosen muscles kept taut at sea, and were spreading out in a dense pack over the peninsula’s beach.

  “Stand by with those grenadoes, Mister Hogue,” Lewrie warned. “Well, if you want to come up, who am I to stop you, you little bastard?” he relented, waving and bowing for the pirate to scamper up. “All hands, stand ready! Ready to hoist the proper colors!”

  The pirate took on a smug look, having gotten his way with the infidels at last, and began to step up to the main-mast chains. The rail of the prao was not
so far below Culverin’s bulwarks.

  “Most of ’em past us?” Lewrie asked, going to the starboard gangway to greet his unwelcome visitor.

  “About half, looks like, sir,” Hogue shuddered, like to faint with anxiety. “Only ’bout half, so far.”

  “Best we’ll do, then,” Lewrie sighed, his own nerves twittering like a dropped harpsichord. He stood and waited for his visitor, a smile on his face. The pirate stepped up on the bulwarks and frowned when he saw what waited him. He opened his mouth to yell.

  Lewrie drew his hanger and lunged. He put the point in just around the navel and sank an unhealthy foot of steel into the man’s belly. Before he even had time to shout or draw breath, he was over the side, tumbling back into the water between the ships!

  “Grenadoes!” Lewrie screamed. “Open your ports and open fire! Get English colors aloft!”

  The signal for the opening of the battle. Even as the pirates were beginning to realize their captain was dead and starting to howl with rage, empty wine bottles went over the side, with wicks burning.

  Some were filled with whale oil, some with gunpowder and cut up scrap-iron bits. When they shattered, they burst into flames among the densely packed pirates, among their galley-slaves at the rowing benches. Those that did not shatter, those wrapped about with cloth to protect them, exploded as their fuses burned out and reached the powder. They caused more panic than casualties, but it didn’t do the pirates’ nerves any good.

  And then the ports were open, and the carronades were firing. The light two-pounder swivel guns were spewing lethal loads of canister or grape-shot down into the boats closest alongside, scything howling pirates down in mid-cry. Praos farther off rocked and came apart at the touch of solid shot, spilling their crews into the water.

  Once the prao alongside was fended off and allowed to drift shoreward, on fire and already sinking, Lewrie ran back to the after deck where Cony waited with his personal weapons. He took the time to see Lady Charlotte blazing away with her remaining heavier long-barreled twelve-pounders, ringed with boats. The shore beyond her was almost lost in the crackle of musketry and the clouds of gunpowder produced by the infantrymen, and the firing of the light artillery. There was a blast of smoke high up the hill, as the first of the hidden battery up there fired, and a great feather of spray sprang into being next to a pirate boat farther off.

  Lewrie went to the rail with the Ferguson rifle he had obtained at Yorktown and began picking off those pirates who seemed to be leading in the nearest boats. Cony was himself a fair shot as well, and he used a .65 caliber fusil to snipe at helmsmen and gunners.

  “Aft!” Lewrie shouted. “Hands aft! Get a swivel-gun here!”

  There was a prao out there, not two hundred yards off, that was being turned with its oarsmen, aiming its two fo’c’slemounted guns at Culverin’s unprotected stern!

  Hands came running, bearing the weight of one of the portable swivels, dropping the long spike on the base of its mount into one of the holes along the taffrail as Lewrie fired again. Bullets sang in the air as pirates let fly with muskets at impossible ranges, only a few being able to reach him.

  Lewrie sat down on the flag lockers to one side of the tiller-head, braced himself on the railing and aimed for the foredeck of the prao. He pulled the fire-lock of the Ferguson back to full cock and bent to sight on one of the gunners. Holding a little high for drop at that range, he let his breath out and pulled the trigger. There was a respectable bang as the piece discharged, a whoosh of burned powder in his face from the pan.

  But he had struck his man! At nearly two hundred yards. There were only two weapons in the world that could fire that far: the American Kentucky rifle, and the Ferguson. And the Ferguson was a proper military piece. He cranked the lever under the stock one turn, dropping the screw-breech out of the way, pulled the dog’s-jaws back to half-cock and bit the end off a cartouche, priming the pan with some of the powder inside. Rammed the rest into the rear of the rifle’s breech, screwed the breech shut with one turn of the lever, full-cocked the weapon once more and aimed.

  Another shot, and another pirate down with a ball through his back! And then another, and another, and the pirates began to shrink away from their guns. No one could kill at that range that quickly!

  The swivel-gun went off. Spears had aimed just as carefully, and put a solid two-pound shot into the pirates’ forecastle, where it shattered and crazed the air with savage shards of itself, flinging pirates right and left. That was one vessel that had lost interest in trying to rake Culverin up the stern.

  “Make it hot for ’em, Spears,” Lewrie ordered, getting to his feet.

  “Bow, sir!” Hogue was shouting and waving for Lewrie to join him. And off Lewrie went, racing forward up the narrow path between the guns on the main deck, to the fo’c’sle to face another hazard. Here, he found a prao almost under their jibboom, with a horde of raving pirates ready to board.

  “Grenadoes here! Swivel-gun with canister!” Lewrie snapped, taking a deep breath to steady his aim. He loosed a shot from his Ferguson, splattering the leader’s brains on his minions, then dropped the rifle and pulled his pistols. A shot from the right weapon, then a shot from the left, while Cony lit fuses atop wine bottles and got them ready to hurl.

  “For God’s sake, Cony, get rid of those damned things!”

  “Don’t wan’ these buggers a’throwin’ ’em back, sir!” his man replied, tossing one to soar end-over-end, quickly followed by a second. Two explosions and the whining of broken glass, bent nails and musket balls, quickly followed by wails of alarm. Then Cony was up and throwing the flammable variety, which he had purposely lit and set aside so they would be going nicely when he needed them. These burst with softer whoomps as they shattered and the whale oil splashed on the boat and its fell crew and took light, turning the wails into impassioned screams.

  The swivel-gun lit off, scattering death almost within touching distance, and pirates melted away from their own forecastle to shrink back amidships. Muskets banged, and the swivel-gun man by Lewrie’s side screamed as he was flung backward as if hammered with a heavy sledge.

  Lewrie bent to pick up the dropped canister bag. He tilted the long barrel straight up, dropped it down without taking time to ram it firmly home and stuck the sharp end of a linstock into the vent to puncture the powder charge in its flannel sleeve. He had to bend to the deck once more to retrieve the fallen sailor’s goose-quills and slow-match. More shots sounded, and musket balls flailed the air over his head, thudding into the fore part of Culverin’s bows like hammer blows.

  Cony was still heaving away with grenadoes, ducking and weaving through a sleet-storm of lead. More sailors were coming forward to return fire with their Brown Bess muskets.

  Lewrie blew on the slow-match, stood up behind the swivel-gun and aimed at the thickest part of the throng. He touched off the quill and the world was blotted out for a second or two by the dense blast of powder smoke. When it cleared, there were no more pirates on their feet anywhere aboard the prao except a few stunned survivors in the sternposts, who were cut down with musket fire even as they stood there stupefied.

  “Cony, do you take charge of the fo’c’sle and keep ’em off us!” Lewrie shouted in his ear before gathering up his rifle, dropped pistols, and moving back amidships to reload where it wasn’t so dangerous.

  Carronades to either beam were firing every few seconds. The swivels along either bulwark were blasting away, as were the ones aft. Lady Charlotte, he could see, had cleared the waters around her with her high-velocity guns, and Lewrie could spot the half-sunken wrecks of at least three praos. No prao would venture within range of his own carronades, for once hit, they were shattered like tea cups by the heavy shot. Culverin’ s guns had done for three more of them already.

  Lewrie regained the quarterdeck, puffing and blowing to get his wind back, and to get a sense of the battle from the higher vantage point.

  The battery on the point was blasting away steadily,
one gun at a time of the three, firing on pirate boats that were making their way for the harbor entrance. The ambush had been badly sprung before every victim was in the killing zone. At least ten boats were off on their way to escape.

  Those three that had landed on the peninsula were still there, their crews just falling back in disorder from a charge against the troops on the crest. He could see red-coated soldiery rising from the rocks and beginning to advance in two lines with their bayonets winking in the sun. And all the while, their light guns were spraying canister and grape-shot into the pirate band.

  Ashore by the main encampment, it was impossible to tell what was going on for all the smoke, but he thought he could espy at least four praos grounded on the beach, one of them well alight and pouring out greasy black smoke. There were three more boats that had sailed for the far eastern headland, and were mucking about in a quandary of doubt: flee for the harbor entrance against those guns on the point, rejoin the fight ashore or tackle the ships again?

  A glowing ember dashed from the rising pillar of smoke ashore, soared in a sinking arc and struck one of the praos, making her shake like a kicked kitten. Within half a minute, the boat was aflame and her crew abandoning her! If it accomplished nothing else this day, his father’s heated-shot battery had proved its worth!

  “There, sir!” Hogue shouted as some praos came reeling out of the smoke from the shore, bent on escape.

  “Larboard battery, load and stand by!” Lewrie shouted through his brass speaking-trumpet. “We clear aft, Spears?”

  “Aye, sir, fer now!” the man shouted back as he reloaded the now-hot swivel-gun for another shot.

  “Clear forward, Cony?” he asked.

  “Fairly well, sir!” Cony said with a fierce smile.