The Gun Ketch

by Dewey Lambdin

  "Should we not keep an eye on them for now, sir?" Coltrop asked. "Send for troops from Fort George Cay? Surely, it's their..."

  "If they are pirates, Mister Coltrop, they saw you, sure as I'mstanding here, and they're considering whether they should stay or run. We cannot take the time to send for troops and let them escape. I'll begrudge not a single wasted hour ... not a single wasted minute!"

  "Aye, aye, sir."

  "Sir, it's my place of honour!" Ballard protested as the boats were led around to the entry ports, as the armourer's files and stone rasped to put brutally sharp edges on steel blades and points. "How else are lieutenants to rise, if they go in their captain's shadow?"

  "With the shore party away, Alacrity'll be short-handed, Mister Ballard. I need you aboard to run her as Bristol-fashion as a 1st Rate," Lewrie smiled. "And keep her off those shoals."

  "Once one makes captain, sir, it's time to let a younger man be one's goat," Ballard rejoined, not backing down an inch. "Let the junior officers make a name for themselves, or a muck of it. Is it that you see me making a muck of it, sir?"

  "I have the utmost confidence in you, Mister Ballard," Lewrie , said. " 'Tis Coltrop I don't put faith in. I scare him. You don't. And if I have to tow his damned cutter inshore to get him in place, I'll do it. I'll scout him an anchorage for dawn during the night. And then be there to give him strict orders to take that anchorage or suffer the consequences. You have a copy of my orders to him in yours. If he fails ... should I fall and this expedition fails, you must see to it that he pays the price for not supporting me. I'd rather be the one to risk my life on such a slender thread as that idle fop, than risk yours ... Arthur."

  "I see... I think, sir," Ballard surrendered at last.

  "Growl you may, but go you must," Lewrie laughed, clapping him on the shoulder in parting. "Old Navy proverb. Might be the Thirty-Seventh Article of War, hey, right after 'The Captain's Cloak'?"

  There were only thirty-six Articles of War; the last gave a blanket power to a captain's lone decision for anything not covered by the specifics of the other thirty-five—the Captain's Cloak.

  "The very best of fortune go with you, sir," Ballard said.

  "And enjoy your temporary command, sir."

  Chapter 6

  It was slow going, rowing or poling in the darkness. First to run through the boisterous shoals two miles above Highas Cay, safely hidden by the night. Then to grope about close under the foreshore of the low islet that screened Bottle Creek from the sea. Inshore, the Caicos were rife with mosquitoes and biting flies, and once out of the Trades and into the marshy-smelling mangroves along the beach, they were almost eaten alive.

  Aemilia followed, sounding her way through a two-fathom pass. She threaded her way into Bottle Creek, behind that inner, second isle to screen her from view, and Alan found an anchorage for her, sounding with a short lead line and counting the marks in it by feel, until he had her a spot where the bottom was ten feet, or would be at high tide. The cutter's light four-pounders would not make much real impression on the pirate camp from that range, but it might put the fear of God in them.

  Then they completed their voyage, snaking out of Bottle Creek south along the shore of North Caicos, staying to the western side of the possible escape channel to avoid detection, and went a mile below the suspected position before turning to cross the narrow strait.

  "I kin smell 'em, sir," Cony said, his poacher's senses alert. "Wood smoke. An' cookin'. Goat, more'n like. Mayhap fish stew on the boil, too, sir. Right savory, iff n ya don't mind my sayin'."

  "There, sir!" one of the hands poling up forrud whispered. "I think I see fires. Like they wuz usin' one o' them caves t'cook in."

  Once on the eastern shore, they poled back north in water just a bit deeper than their shallow-draught keels, about four feet, until the coast bent back nor'west past the mouth of a tiny inlet.

  Half a mile, little more to go, Lewrie decided. And hard sand all the way to the point. We're on foot the rest of the way."Put into the inlet, men," Lewrie ordered in a harsh mutter. "Leave the boats. No one is to show a light, no one is to load his musket or pistol until I return and tell you to. Not a sound, now. Mister Parham, Mister Mayhew. You and the bosun's mate are in charge until Cony and I return."

  Taking only edged weapons, Lewrie and Cony set out up the hard sand of the beach for a ways, then moved into the deeper, softer sand above the tideline toward the sheltering sea grapes and stunted low bushes. A ledge of rock began to rise at their right hand as they progressed, and climbed higher and higher in irregular slabs as they neared the suspect camp. Soon, they were creeping along its base for concealment as it rose above their heads.

  "This'll climb all the way to the sea bluffs," Lewrie muttered. "I don't think there's a way up it."

  "Too crumbly, sir," Cony agreed in a whisper. "Limestone an' ole coral. Cut ya t'ribbons iff n ya tried it in the dark, it would."

  "Listen!" Lewrie cautioned, kneeling down lower.

  There were sounds of shouting, of laughter. And of music that came to them under the rush of the night winds and the continual sound of foliage stirring. And then there was a womanly scream.

  "Wimmen!" Cony hissed close to Lewrie's ear. "Might be a party they's 'avin'. Might they be fishermen after all, sir?"

  Lewrie laid a finger to his lips and took a deep breath to make his limbs obey him. He half stood, and placed one tentative foot in front of the other, his grasp sweaty on the hilt of his hanger. With tremulous caution, they gained another long musket-shot, about sixty yards, to an outthrust of rocky ledge. To go around it would mean exposing themselves to the camp. They found a narrow crevice that took them up top, then crawled on their bellies through sharp-edged grasses and coarse bushes until they could see.

  It wasn't a fish camp, Lewrie thought, feeling a flush of relief fill him. There were the two luggers that had escaped him, along with another pair, larger and two-masted, anchored very close inshore to the beach. And on the beach below him were a brace of longboats with their bows jammed snug on the land. The longboats were royal barges compared to the scrofulous condition of the luggers, obviously taken from some earlier prize of theirs; perhaps from two different prizes, since their paint-schemes did not match.

  There was cooking smoke coming from the mouth of the nearest cave under the bluff, several more smaller fires burning in a circle beyond the boats. There were crates and chests scattered about for rude furniture, several more piled up and covered with scrap canvas near the mouth of the cave, more still piled on the lower beach.

  And just offshore, anchored fore-and-aft parallel to shore was a two-masted schooner of about sixty feet overall, on which lanterns burned at helm and forecastle.

  The people on the beach got Alan's attention next. They were a gaudy crew, dressed "Beau-Nasty" in checked shirts, opulent satin waistcoats, sashes around the waists Spanish hidalgo-style, in either breeches without stockings, or slop-trousers. They wore neckerchiefs bound about their heads like gunners would to protect their hearing, or in tricornes or straw hats; each affecting a highly individualistic and rakehell sense of fashion.

  And they went armed.

  Swaggering, they were, under the weight of pistols stuck into their waistbands or sashes; cutlasses or swords at their hips. Some muskets stood propped against crates of loot, and there were enough weapons in sight to equip a half-battalion of light troops.

  "There's the wimmen, sir," Cony pointed out.

  Spanish-looking in the firelights' flickering glows, or black and sheened with sweat. They were swilling rum, wine or brandy with as much gusto as the men, their finery obviously looted goods, too.

  They lay there and watched the piratical band roister for half an hour, carefully counting heads, trying to pick out leaders who sat apart more quiet than the others. They watched fights and brawling, among both the men and the women. They watched men take women off to the cave, or up the beach beyond the light.

  "Prisoners, sir," Cony mou
thed almost silent, tugging at Alan's shirt sleeve. "Them wimmen yonder. Back by them covered crates."

  Lewrie pulled out his telescope and brought it forward inch at a time, careful that the lens did not reflect firelight. He studied the party of women by the pile of loot. Slaves, some of them, and some white-skinned and bedraggled—free women and their maids, he speculated? As he lay in the hide, watching, one of the men he thought of as a leader went to the women, staggering drunk, and reached down to pull one to him. She began to scream and plead, only her loudest and most inarticulate cries reaching them. Brutally, he backhanded her into silence, then dragged her back down the beach to the circle of fires to throw her down, peel off his breeches, and fall atop her, to the exultant cheering of his band. And once he had slaked his lust with her, three more sprang forward like inferior wolves to savage her."They'll kill them wimmen oncet they're done with 'em, Mister Lewrie!" Cony whispered, mortified by the sights he had seen without being able to lift a finger to help. "Jesus, God a'mercy!"

  "Might have been saving 'em for tonight," Lewrie nodded. "If they sail on the morrow, they'll want no witnesses left alive. See, those goods piled close to the beach? So they may begin loading the schooner and the biggest luggers. If we'd waited, we'd have lost them. Let's get back to the boats. It lacks two hours 'til dawn."

  Cony went, unwillingly. And it was only once they were back on the beach, with the horrifying sights and sounds of pitiless rape put behind them, that he trusted himself to speak.

  "Wisht there was ought we could do for 'em, sir, tonight, that is," he whispered plaintively. "Dawn might be too late t'save 'em."

  "I want you on that ledge at dawn, Cony," Lewrie told him. "I want you and my fusil, and the Ferguson rifle up there, in good hands. Pick your likely country lads. And gut-shoot anyone that lays a hand on 'em, or even glares in their direction. That suit you, Cony?"

  "Aye, sir, it sure t'God does!"

  Chapter 7

  The dawn smelled of crushed foliage and trampled flowers, overlaying mud and mangrove marsh. Of damp sand and beach burrowers, the fish-scale aroma of the coast most landlubbers mistook for sea-air. The true sea-air smell came on the whispering Trades, the baked salt and iodine tang of ocean deeps, borne by winds ceaselessly stirring from across thousands of miles of brine. Damp clamminess was stripped away by the breezes, even as they brought the balmy warmth of a humid sunrise, bedewing the steel in his hand. Lewrie's nostrils drank in the smells, almost quivering like a beast's, much as his limbs trembled in anticipation, stiff with a too-short and troubled nap, as they made their stealthy approach-march.

  Damme; but this is a daft business—and a bloody one, Alan thought, keyed up, rumpled and miserable. But don't this morning beat all for handsome!

  An hundred sunrises could pass unremarked. But take up arms, and the risk of dying before breakfast, and even a winter rain could be sweet, its bitter, soaking chill savored because one was still alive to suffer it before the madness set in.

  He turned to study his men. There were thirty from Alacrity, half of her adult crewmen, and twenty hands off Aemilia, almost half of her crew, too. They yawned and scratched, flexed their fingers on their weapons nervously, eyes shifting as squint-a-pipes as a bag of nails at every rustle in the bushes, every sea-bird's cry, or soft lap of the inlet's surf on the beach. Armed to the teeth, they were, with cutlasses, clasp knives, long boarding pikes, good Brown Bess .75 caliber muskets, wicked needle-sharp offset bayonets jammed in the waistbands of their slop-trousers; as desperate a crew of cut-throats as the pirates, to look at them, laden down with clumsy Sea Pattern pistols for each man in addition, with all the powder flasks, bullet pouches and cartouche boxes hung about them as they plodded and scuffled, strung out in a long single file below the rising ridge of crumbling rock, half buried in the greenery for cover.

  "Just 'round this outcrop, seventy yards or so," Lewrie grunted, calling a halt at last. "Mister Parham, your boat-gun at the foot of the shelf. Mister Mayhew, your two-pounder atop the shelf with Cony and his marksmen. Grape, canister or langridge at first, and keep 'em away from their boats as I bade you. Right. The rest of you lads, I want you ready to rush out and form a skirmish line from Mister Parham's gun to the beach."

  There was a faint rustle in the air, and Lewrie pulled out his watch to check the time, which made him nod grimly. The rustle became a sizzling swoosh of roiled air, then a quavery moan. Alacrity's guns had just opened fire a mile-and-a-half away, shooting almost blind at the bluffs. Fowles' first ranging shot was on the way.

  There was a thunderclap so close it seemed it went off in his pocket as the bluff to the north above the sea caves was struck. The iron ball exploded in a bright yellow flash of sparks, metallic shards, and shale, starting a small avalanche of gravel.And the sunrise echoed with the soft Fumm-umm of an unseen gun.

  "Now where are you, you silly bastard?" Lewrie fretted, turning to look for Aemilia across the channel. Once she found her proper position, even her puny four-pounders could rake the beach, and the anchored vessels, across the quarter-mile strait. He was relieved to see a bowsprit protrude from behind the low foliage, and the first starkly pale tan panels of her jibs stood out against the dark green and dun.

  Another round-shot droned in from the reefs, fired at maximum elevation with the quoin block removed from below the barrel's butt, and this struck short of the bluffs to raise a great pillar of foam in the inlet, about half a cable short of the anchored schooner.

  The pirates were up, now, stirring and circling in hungover and bleary-eyed confusion. Some lay still, too comatose from rum or their excessive indulgences to be wakened. Women camp followers screamed or cursed in a cacophony of dialects and languages. Orders were shouted that for the moment went unheeded. They mostly dashed to the piles of weapons, drew swords to brandish against just what they did not yet know, stampeded first toward their boats, then back to the shelter of the piles of goods, or the bluff and the dry-cave entrance, as a ball moaned overhead to bury itself in the sand.

  "Come on, Coltrop, come on!" Lewrie hissed to speed the cutter as she made her entrance as slow as a one-legged dowager trying to go up a flight of stairs. Aemilia was turned bows-on now, rounding the first western tip of the islet, her gaff mains'l winged out alee and her commissioning pendant streaming as long as she was. "Oh, bloody hell!"

  Coltrop had run her aground on a sand bar! She canted over a little to leeward and came to a stop, slowly pivoting on her bows to show her starboard side, far short of the near tip of the islet where her guns would be in good range.

  "I warned him that channel was tighter'n virgin's quim!" Alan raged. The bottom was hard sand, though, so he might yet get her off it, if he tried ... but no!

  Coltrop fired from where he was, the two four-pounders in her starboard battery coughing out round-shot at the schooner. They hit short and ricocheted once, almost rocked her as the ripple patterns expanded, but the range was too great to do any harm to her, or the beach.

  There was no help for him, then. Lewrie and his party of fifty were on their own, with six men tied up in serving the boat-guns. Up against sixty or seventy alert and armed pirates!

  "Mister Parham, shift your aim for the thickest throng yonder. Open fire," he ordered, hoping to cut the odds down, niceties bedamned.

  "There are women among them, sir!" Parham protested, shocked.

  "Cut-throats' whores, Mister Parham, cut-throats themselves, if they get their hands on you. Shift aim and fire! Mister Mayhew? Canister, up there! Volley into the next-biggest batch." Mayhew's face appeared over the lip of the rocky shelf for a moment, turned pale as he gulped, then withdrew.

  "Anyone with a weapon, you are to kill," Lewrie told his hands. "And I mean anyone."

  The boat-gun gave out a chuffing bark, a Rrrupp! of anger that startled a cloud of sea birds which had fled Aemilia's rude disturbance of their morning back out into mid-channel. A moment later, Mayhew's gun on the ledge barked as well, both explosions echoing and re
-echoing along the rocky bluffs.

  Two spreading shot-gun blasts of tightly packed canister flayed the sands, creating twin dust clouds. Shrieks of alarm, cries of pain erupted, as pirates and their fell women who had clumped together for mutual comfort in the face of danger were scythed down from behind, too intent on Aemilia, or the artillery fire from seaward.

  "Skirmish line!" Lewrie shouted, stepping out in front. "Form line! Cock your locks! Level! Fire!"

  Trigger mechanisms clacked, flints flew forward to scrape on frizzens' filelike rasps, pans ignited with tinny, high cracks, and Brown Bess spat out a sputtering ripple of musketry to raise even more screams, more terror, confusion and agony. And more pirates down.

  Lewrie strode out in front as his men hastily reloaded, sword in hand, in the coat, cocked hat with dog's vane and gold lace, of a Sea Officer.

  "In the King's name!" he bellowed in a quarter-deck voice. "I order you to lay down your arms, put up your hands, and surrender!"

  Even the cries of the wounded ceased for a long, startled moment. Several of the nearest buccaneers did drop their weapons, while others further on ran about like headless chickens seeking an escape.

  Then a musket shot sang past his ears like a fat bee, and some desperado shouted with derision. They knew they would hang iftaken, and some would rather go game, be slain, than face the noose. "Take 'em, lads! Them or us!"

  "Mister Parham, fire!" Lewrie yelled, stepping back as several more shots rang out defiance. "They had their chance!"

  The boat-guns lashed out again. Lewrie's muskets came back up, and locks were cocked. The barrels leveled. And fired.

  "At 'em, Alacrities!" Lewrie called, waving his sword over his head to spur them on, and drawing his first of four pistols. "Come on! Take the boats!"

  They surged forward at a shambling trot in the deep sand, going for the luggers first to deprive the raiders of an escape by water, to the beached longboats where they could kneel and fire. "Aemilias, take cover and shoot! Alacrities, with me!" You want to escape, he thought grimly—want your boats, hey? Then come and take 'em from us, you bastards!