The Fury could no longer fire her broadsides at us, for she was too close and would have done as much damage to herself as to the Aurora. So it was hand to hand and man to man, and the blood flowed across our littered deck.
I saw Mr. Adams, as gentle a man as ever wore the king’s uniform, screaming like a madman as he discharged a pistol into the face of a man who was about to split his skull with the edge of a cutlass.
I saw Mr. Adain, he who had warned us about the Spanish advance at San Angel, go down with a fierce cut across his belly. He died in a gush of blood, clasping his innards.
I had never seen a boarding raid before. In the past the Aurora had always fired only one round at her victims, forcing them to strike their flags. Every time we had boarded without a fight.
This was different. This was men hacking away at one another like butchers slicing up a side of beef. There was none of the elegant parry and thrust I had witnessed when Captain Hunter and Uncle Patch had practiced at singlestick in the little yard behind the King’s Mercy.
The blades swung savagely back and forth, like sickles harvesting wheat. Where the edges struck, limbs flew and blood spurted in fountains. Where the sides struck, skulls split and arms snapped. The noise, the howling and growling and screaming, battered against my ears. The only mercy was that the musket fire had stopped, for the sharpshooters had no time to reload.
Mr. Warburton stood at the edge of the quarterdeck, swinging his giant sword back and forth. Pirates were trying to come up the stairs and take control of the whipstaff. But to do that they’d have to get past the towering helmsman, and that wasn’t likely to happen.
“Not my station!” Mr. Warburton roared, smashing another pirate on the top of the head so that he fell like a sack of wet flour. “Nobody barges onto my station!”
Then I heard it again. That silver meaty thunk that meant another grappling hook had gone home. I looked over to where it had landed. It dug into the splitting railing wood, gouging in as it was dragged tight. A cry of triumph came up from below. Mr. Warburton was busy tossing another pirate off the deck, so I gathered all my courage, crept over to the railing, and looked over the side. Sure enough, three pirates were swarming up the side, daggers tight in their teeth. They grinned around the steel at me. I tried to pull the hook free, but it was in too deep and the weight of the pirates kept pulling it ever deeper. Then I could have sworn I heard a voice snap, “Is that the only idea you can come up with, you great mooncalf?” And suddenly it wasn’t.
I yanked out the gully Uncle Patch had thrust upon me, and I hacked at the rope. The blade was marvelously sharp and sliced through the hemp braids like a razor. The first pirate was almost upon me, his hand reaching out, his eyes wide as he realized what I was doing. The rope parted, and he and his two companions fell tumbling back into the water. I felt right proud of myself.
Then Mr. Warburton fell on me.
All the breath went out of me in a whoosh and I thought that I had been crushed to death. It took me precious moments to recover myself and push the valiant helmsman off me. He rolled over onto his back, and I saw the great oozing bruise on the side of his head that had brought him down. Something had clipped him right fair. Quickly I checked his eyes and pulse as Uncle Patch had taught me. He was alive but not going anywhere. Grasping my gully, I rushed to what was left of the railing and looked down onto the deck below.
The battle still raged, but I saw a weariness about it now. The fighters had spent their initial fury and now bashed at one another with a mechanical viciousness that was even more frightening than their previous rage. And then I noticed who was battling away at the foot of the ladder, and I almost cried out in horror.
Uncle Patch and Shark stood toe-to-toe and slashed away at each other with their cutlasses. There was no retreating back and forth. They stood their ground, neither giving an inch as they hacked and blocked, each straining to get past the other’s guard. My uncle had thrown off his coat. His shirt, never the cleanest, was now stiff with blood and sweat. His copper-red hair had come loose from its ribbon and flew all over his head like a lion’s mane. And even from where I was high above him, I could hear him swearing under his breath. At least I assumed he was swearing. During the battle he had switched from English to Gaelic.
Shark was also sweating, the heavy beads sheeting off his body and dripping off his shaved head. He was so slick with it, his spiraling blue tattoos seemed to actually twist and squirm around on his arms and chest. Unlike Uncle Patch, Shark didn’t say a word. He just swung away at his opponent and grinned.
It was a cold, white grin with too many pointed teeth.
Slowly—and still muttering away in the language of his father’s fathers—Uncle Patch began to force Shark back toward the cabin door beneath me. Soon the pirate would be right up against the wood. Then suddenly Shark began to laugh. It was a wild, ugly laugh that cut through all the battle noise like a barracuda through a school of fat fish. A second later I saw what Shark saw: a pirate with a spent musket rearing up behind Uncle Patch. With a roundhouse swing, he brought the useless weapon around and smashed my uncle on the side of his head. Uncle Patch went down like a poleaxed steer. Now I did cry out, for the pirate again raised the shattered musket like a club and prepared to open Uncle Patch’s skull like a ripe melon.
And there was nothing I could do about it!
Then a pistol roared, and the pirate arched his back as his chest sent out a gush of blood. The force of the blast threw him stumbling across my uncle and into Shark. The pirate chief roared in rage as the body of his own man slammed him back into the wall. They were barely down before the dead body was hurled to one side and Shark was staggering back to his feet.
“Careful, boy,” he snarled. “Ye keep that up and someone’s liable t’ get hurt.”
Captain Hunter tossed aside the pistol with which he had saved my uncle’s life, and drew his cutlass. “Oh, I can almost guarantee someone is. It is Shark, is it not?”
“Last time I clapped eyes on ye,” rumbled Shark, “ye creased my skull with a pistol ball.”
“Too bad my aim was off.”
“That mouth is gonna get you killed, boyo—right now!” And Shark launched himself over the living and the dead, his heavy cutlass already swinging down for a killing blow.
Captain Hunter got his own blade up just in time to parry Shark’s thrust, and then they were at each other. Their cutlasses rang like broken bells every time they struck. This was no head-to-head like Shark and Uncle Patch. They were back and forth across the deck, leaping and thrusting and cutting. Never a word they said to each other as they went at it like wolves over a dead deer.
Slowly the fighting around them began to stop as both sides became aware of the great battle going on. Now the two men were in the middle of a great circle on the Aurora’s main deck. It was almost like some battle of old Irish warriors out of the stories my mother used to tell me, as much dance and stamina as swordplay and skill. Captain Hunter smiled grimly as he worked, but Shark grinned, teeth visible from ear to ear.
Finally the tip of the captain’s cutlass sliced through the skin and muscle on Shark’s chest. Blood began to pour forth, gushing over his tattoos, almost obscuring them. He laughed and leaped forward, spraying blood and sweat everywhere, and drove the point of his blade into Captain Hunter’s left shoulder. The captain fell back from the pain, and in that instant Shark, with a great wide sweep of his blade, sent the captain’s cutlass flying from his hand.
“You’re mine, boyo!” Shark laughed as he drew back for the killing stroke. Captain Hunter dropped to one knee, his injured left arm hanging limp. But his right arm swung down and came back with a dagger he had in his boot. The swing continued under the gleaming cutlass and slammed in below Shark’s tattooed breastbone. The pirate looked down at the hilt in the center of his chest and then at Captain Hunter, who was painfully climbing to his feet.
“My aim is better now, Shark.”
Then Shark began to grin ag
ain and the red blood gushed from between his clenched teeth. “Your ship’s wrecked. Crew’s wrecked. Name’s wrecked. Compliments o’ Cap’n Steele, laddie, compliments o’ …” His eyes rolled up into his head and he pitched forward, stark dead, onto the deck.
For a moment, the only thing I could hear was Captain Hunter’s labored breathing. Then he did the most amazing thing. He reached down, grabbed the dead pirate by his belt and shoulder, and with a grunt of effort heaved the body up over his head.
“Shark is dead! Shark is dead!” he shouted, and threw the compact body over the side of the Aurora. I heard it crash into one of the longboats.
Nothing happened for another second, but then a wailing cry came up from the pirate invaders. “Shark is dead!” And suddenly they were breaking for the remaining longboats, all the fight gone out of them. It was a total rout. Our men harried them every step of the way, and many of our foes died before the longboats began to pull away.
Mr. Jeffers and his crew rolled out one of the guns and commenced firing as fast as they could. I saw another of the longboats shatter, hurling its desperate crew into the air and into the sea.
As for me, I flew down the ladder two steps at a time until I finally reached my uncle. He lay in an untidy heap on the deck, deadly pale, but to my joy he was still breathing. Blood flowed from a huge lump above his left temple. I tore the sleeve off his grimy shirt—it was ruined anyway—and began to use it to dress his wound.
“Have a care,” mumbled a groggy voice. “That was my favorite white shirt.”
“Forget the shirt.” I worked feverishly trying to stop the blood from flowing.
“Ye have the delicate touch of a blacksmith, ye daft lad! Who told ye that ye were any kind o’ surgeon?”
“’Twas yourself, ye fool!” I shouted at him, tears streaming down my face. “Now, shut up and let me save your useless life!”
“There’s others worse hurt,” he whispered, and then mercifully for both of us, he passed out.
When I had finished, I looked around from where I knelt over my unconscious uncle on the deck. All around lay the dead and wounded.
Nearby Captain Hunter stood looking dazed…. “Mr. Adams.”
“Aye, sir?”
“Get some men with axes and cut the Fury loose. Then we can tend to our own.”
“Should we search her first, Cap’n?” Mr. Adams was swaying back and forth but his voice was steady.
“I doubt there’s anyone alive left aboard, but—”
Then a loud crash burst from the captured sloop. A furious pounding came from somewhere aboard her. Quick as a flash, a crewman leaped over the side and onto the Fury With a few well-timed swings of an ax, he burst open the door to the cabin.
And out of the doorway lumbered the enraged figure of John Barrel, his wooden leg thumping loudly on the deck. “My sloop! What have the bloody dogs done to me poor, poor sloop?”
Bloody Work
OUR CREWMEN knocked open the hatches on the Fury’s deck, and through them men rushed, blinking and staring about fiercely. One of them pointed to Barrel and yelled, “What’s a-do, John? Be we prisoners o’ these men or partners?”
“Belay your gab, Baulk,” Captain Barrel shot back. “D’ye see chains on your ankles?” He shot a glance at the Aurora. “Cap’n Hunter’s took back the Fury for us from Shark’s men!”
I was trying to count. Eight, nine … was that all? With Captain Barrel, that meant only ten men of the Fury’s crew of forty or so were accounted for. But I had no time to reflect on that. Uncle Patch was calling for me. He had staggered to his feet, pulling himself up by a dangling line, and he was thundering, “Davy! Confound you, we must get to the sick berth! We’ll have our hands full soon enough!”
I ran to him and he threw an arm over my shoulder. I have said that my uncle was tall and broad-shouldered. He was also most awkwardly heavy, and now he smelled strongly of gunpowder and sweat. We all but tumbled down to the sick berth, where he stood steadying himself with a hand against a bulkhead. He ripped my improvised bandage off. “Take a quick look at this,” he growled, bending his head and holding his long red hair clenched in one hand. “Do I need stitches?”
I lifted a lantern. An ugly lump was swelling just behind his temple, and it had a split in it and was still oozing blood. But by now I knew wounds well enough. “Stitches later, but for now a compress will do,” I said. “Sit and I’ll prepare one.”
“The devil you will,” he said shortly. “There’s no time, for I hear them coming already with that heavy tread of those bearing the hurt. I rely on you, Davy.”
Our first patient was white from the loss of blood, and a jet of it spurted from a wound on his upper left arm with every pulse of his heart. “Artery,” my uncle said. “Pressure on it, Davy!”
A year earlier, I would have been too squeamish to plunge my finger into the wound, find the artery, and compress it, but habit had made that nothing to me. Beneath my finger I could feel the steady throbbing. Uncle Patch fetched a needle already threaded with fine catgut. “So,” he said. “Higher. Yes, I see. A clean cut, saints be praised. Hold him still!”
With darting movements almost quicker than I could follow, Uncle Patch sewed the two ends of the artery together, made sure the mended place was not leaking, and then sewed up the wound, swaying slightly. Already two or three more wounded were waiting for us. “See which needs to be next,” ordered my uncle, tottering on his feet.
The wounded were backing up. “Is Mr. Grice unhurt?” Uncle Patch asked one of the sailors.
“Aye, sir, sound an’ whole,” the man answered.
“Then get him down here at once. Davy, can you stitch this man up?”
That was something I had never done before. My uncle handed me a curved needle and in a few words told me how to take the stitches. “He has passed out, so he should give you no trouble,” he said. “Now put that man up here.”
We had only the one operating table, but it was broad enough for two to lie abreast, or rather head to foot, for that was the way the second man was placed there. He had an ugly fracture of the ribs, with bone piercing through the flesh.
I had time just for a glance as I passed the needle through living flesh, drawing together the lips of the wound as I had seen my uncle do. I fear my stitches were not as neat as his, or as fast, but at last I had put seventeen in and pulled the wound together. “Done!” I said.
“Good enough.” My uncle turned to the sailors. “Get this man into a hammock and let’s have the one with the bloodied head next. Lively!”
Before long, Uncle Patch had to kneel on the deck, so dizzy was he with his own hurt, but old Phineas Grice, the sailmaker, could stitch as well as he and had sewn up his shipmates before this. He and I shared the table. The hardest patients were those who were least hurt, for they were conscious of the pain. Mr. Grice took these.
Even with the three of us working, it took hours. At last my uncle was tending to the last patient, Mr. Vickery, a stoic old gray-haired buccaneer, setting his broken leg and plucking some painful but not lethal splinters from his thigh. “All done?” Uncle Patch asked in a dazed voice. “All the conscious men have had their rum?”
No, they had not, for I had been kept too busy working on them. But I ran to fetch it and used the better part of a bottle pouring the tots for our survivors. The injured had spilled out of the sick berth. Their hammocks hung as far forward as the foot of the foremast. I almost wondered if we had enough sailors left on two feet to sail the Aurora.
With a hand clapped to his head, Uncle Patch spoke to every conscious man, offering encouragement, a kind word, an awkward joke or two. Then he and I went back to the compartment we shared, and he sank groaning into a chair. “Bandage this for me now,” he said, pointing to the wound behind his head.
I wound the bandage around, padding the great lump that now showed all the way through his coppery red hair. “Done,” I told him.
He looked up at me. “Look into my eyes,” he
said. “Are my pupils of equal size?”
I stared hard into his green eyes, undecided for a time whether the left was the smallest bit larger than the right. But that was a trick of the lantern light. “They are,” I said at last.
“Bring the lantern close and see if they get smaller at the same rate.” I shone the light into his face, and he winced. “Saint Joseph, but that sends lances into my brain!”
“They look the same,” I said, shading the lantern.
“Good. Then I have no bleeding in the brain, let us hope. Davy, be a good lad and fetch me a small glass of brandy, for I’m shaking like a man with the palsy.”
I brought it, and he tossed it off in three gulps. Then he held out his hand. “Help me up, now, and onto the deck. Let us see what’s what up there.”
He had to lean on me even more heavily going up than he had coming down, but we emerged at last. The crew had cleaned up the deck, to a point. “Mr. Adams,” my uncle croaked feebly. “What of the day?”
“Are you all right, sir?” Mr. Adams asked, his beefy English face showing his shock.
Uncle Patch waved his concern away. “I shall do. How many dead?”
Mr. Adams looked around. “Twenty-seven of the enemy that I counted. Barrel’s men heaved all the pirates over the rail without so much as a byyour-leave.”
“We killed twenty-seven of them?” I asked, startled.
Mr. Adams lowered his voice. “‘Twas twentyseven they heaved overboard. I have my suspicions that not all were dead.”
I was staring at a long row of white forms, like mummies stretched out on the deck. These were our men—ten, eleven, a round dozen of them, dead and sewn up into their hammocks.
Heart of Steele Page 7
