The Gun Ketch

by Dewey Lambdin

  The pirates did come, spurred by desperation. Without their boats they were nothing—crippled sailors, no matter how they had besmirched the noble calling of the sea. But they had to come across the bodies of their dead from the boat-guns' lashings, over whimpering and shattered wounded, so it was not a daring, neck-or-nothing charge. Blades clashed as Lewrie and his seamen met them. Some pistols popped, and white-faced men shouted in each others' faces to fan alight their flagging courage. They met and merged, and swirled in melee.

  But when bayonets jabbed, when muskets swung or butt-stroked, when boarding pikes lanced wicked points forward, and when Navy hands went into the fearsome full cutlass drill, shoulder to shoulder, there was nothing in the world that could stand before them.

  Right foot stamp, downward slash! Left foot, backward slash! Advance and balance motion, stamp and slash ... slash and advance!

  Alan crossed blades with a coppery skinned man with long and greasy hair, bare but for too-tight breeches and a flowered waistcoat and sash. His heavy cutlass rang on Alan's hanger all the way up his arm. He drew back to slash and Alan lunged low, giving him eight inches of steel in the belly! He moved right to face another foe armed with cutlass and dagger. This one Alan shot in the chest. A third came at him, a black armed with an ornate smallsword which he poked with inexpertly like a spear point.

  No swordsman, Alan noted—a slavey just out of the fields. He parried, slashed to his right, shying him. Flying cutover to reengage steel against steel, a ringing double parry to force him high to open his guard, so he could raise a foot and kick him in the balls. The man doubled over, dropping his sword, and Alan chopped down into his neck and shoulder, then trampled over him. A seaman following put a pike into the fellow's stomach to finish him off.

  "Madre de Dios!" A skinny little fellow paled as Alan advanced on him with gore sliming his threatening blade. He turned to run and the pikeman behind sprinted forward, shouldering Alan out of the way and jabbing the fellow through the kidneys.

  Lewrie drew a deep breath and pulled out another loaded pistol while he had time, his hands shaking too hard to stuff the empty one into a coat pocket He let it drop to the sand to retrieve later.

  More pirates were throwing down their weapons, those wounded and unable to fight longer, those who had given up all hope of escape. They threw themselves on their knees or curled up in fetal positions, waiting death or capture.

  John Canoe trotted past, a huge West Indian seaman who'd taken his name for the manner he'd escaped his former owners years before. He engaged one of the few pirates who still had fight in him, a man as big as himself with a thick beard. John Canoe battered the man's cutlass aside with easy strength, then ran him through to the hilt, and lifted him up off the ground to dangle and wriggle like a piked salmon, keening shrilly in terror around his bloody vomit.

  "Watch out, Canoe!" Lewrie shouted." 'Ware left!" as a black woman camp follower rose up and ran at him with a carving knife to avenge her man. Lewrie skipped to his left for a clear shot, took careful aim, and bowled the howling harpy over from a dead run with a .69 caliber ball in the chest, to skid bawling and writhing at Canoe's bare feet.

  "Ya silly wo-man! Ya who'!" Canoe cursed her as he dropped her dying man on top of her. "Heah be ya whi' mon lovah, bitch! Wot kine o' fool ya be, ya fock de ones dot whipt ya, gahh!" Then he turned to Lewrie and gave him a sudden, radiant smile. "Ah thankee berry moch, cap'um, sah!"

  Those freebooters who still hoped for escape had by then retreated into the cave at the top of the beach, and were sniping at the sailors.

  "Take cover up here, lads!" Lewrie shouted. "Behind these boxes and chests! Shoot slow and steady to keep 'em busy. Mister Odrado?"

  "Si, senhor capitan," the Portuguese bosun's mate panted, coming to his side, weary with the effort expended on killing."Round up the whole prisoners and put 'em at the base of that ledge down the beach. Tell off ten of the Aemilias to guard 'em. I want 'em searched close for weapons, mind. Don't let any more of the lads take hurt now this is almost over. The wounded may lie as they are for now. Theirs, that is. Get ours down to the boats."

  "I do it, senhor capitan."

  "Early?"

  "Aye, aye, sir," the quartermaster's mate answered. "Take three hands with muskets, just in case, and scale up the goat path yonder to the headland to signal Alacrity to cease fire," Lewrie ordered, as a broadside of five rounds warbled in short. "Canoe."

  "Aye, aye, sah."

  "Go tell Mister Parham to bring his boat-gun here so he may put shot into the cave. Tell Mister Mayhew to cover the schooner for now with round-shot. Got that?"

  "Mistah Par'um ta fetch he gun, Mistah Mayhew ta aim he gun at dot schooner wit' roun'-shot, sah. Aye, aye, I tell'm, sah!"

  "Good man! Mister Warwick?"

  "Aye, sir," the burly ship's corporal grunted. "Four men with you to search the luggers. I don't want any surprises at our backs. Then row out to the schooner and take her. Find papers if you can, to see who she belonged to."

  "Aye, aye, sir," Warwick nodded, then trotted off. Lewrie wiped his blade clean of gore and sheathed it, then took out his pocket watch. Amazingly, everything had happened in a brutal seven minutes! He turned to look down the beach. It was a horrible litter he beheld; the dead spilled like so many isolated heaps of old clothes; some wounded gasping and choking on blood, writhing or twisting in pain and clawing at their hurts. Thankfully, damned few of 'em were Navy. He recognized only three Royal Navy men he considered dead, and perhaps eight being tended by the luggers.

  Parham and his gun crew came lumbering along the hard-packed sand where the going was easier for the small but heavy two-pounder on its small-wheeled carriage. They were half dragging it, with help from Cony and his country-lad marksmen, now that they had run out of targets to snipe at.

  "Sir! Sir!" a sailor called from the firing line behind the crates of looted goods. "White flag, sir. Think they're strikin'!"

  A tall man in gaudy but bedraggled finery appeared in the cave mouth, waving a white rag spitted upon his smallsword.

  "Cease fire!" Lewrie ordered. He walked forward, up past the crates into plain view, and trudged perhaps ten more yards through the deep sands. "Do you surrender?" he asked.

  "Wanna talk, Navy," the filthy rogue in stolen silks and satins rejoined with a maddening calm. "An' who might ye be, I'm askin'?"

  "Lieutenant Alan Lewrie, Royal Navy. Captain of His Britannic Majesty's Sloop Alacrity," he snapped.

  "Compliments t'ye on a neat bit o' business this fine mornin', from meself, Billy Doyle," he said, taking off his egret-plumed hat and performing a mocking bow. "Billy 'Bones,' they names me. Capt'n Billy Bones, o' the Ancient Brotherhood, like. Aye, y'er a hellish crafty sprat, ye are, Capt'n Lewrie. Pulled it off sweet as a..."

  "Damn your blood, Doyle," Lewrie fumed. "Surrender or die."

  "Ah, that's the way ye be, hey?" Doyle simpered. "Bloody high-handed as a Protestant squire. Squire's son, are ye? Thought so, I did. Lookee here, now, squire's son. I wanna deal with ye. Ye got buckos o' mine I want back, an' the wimmen yer boys ain't knackered. Ye got me boats. Ye kin keep the bloody schooner, an' the loot, an' bad cess may it bring ye. Lots o' loot yonder, squire's son. Gold an' silver ... plate an' jools. Lashin's o' wine an' brandy. I do 'spect yer lads're thirsty, hey? They kin use some 'blunt' in the pocket, 'cause they ain't no prize money to share out over pirates, an' damn' little head money per foe, neither. You let me an' me lads go, take our boats an' steal off, an' it be all yer'n, ev'ry shillin'. An' ye sail back t'yer admiral full o' glory. An' wealth. Now, wot ye say t'that, squire's son Lewrie? Ain't that a handsome trade?"

  "Doyle, I have two boat-guns with me," Lewrie said, insulted beyond all measure but keeping a sober face. "Have you a timepiece? And just who owned it first, I'm wondering? I give you five minutes to throw down your arms and come out of that cave. Or I open fire upon you with canister and grape. I do not treat with murderers and rapists. I will not let cut-throat scum free
for any price."

  "Might change yer mind," Doyle snickered. "Niver kin tell, eh? I got somethin' else ye might like better, Navy. Lookit this, now."

  He gestured to someone deeper in the cave, and two more of his henchmen came forward, each holding a white woman in his arms, wrists cruelly bound before them. And daggers at their throats!

  "Ain't they a handsome pair o' young pieces, squire's son?" thepirate leader scoffed. "Pretty'z yer sister, I wager. Milky-skinned, they are. Soft young quim, a right set o' squire's daughters! An' I just might have 'nother brace back in the cave, mightn't I? Ye touch off yer cannon an' these're dead, an' so're the others. All that canister an' grape-shot a'splangin' an' whirrin' about in here... oh, 'tis a terror wot ye'd inflict on these poor lasses!"

  "Goddamn you!" Lewrie gasped. The women were muffled with filthy handkerchiefs over their mouths so they could not contradict Doyle's words. All they could do was implorevwith their eyes.

  "Take yer men back o' that ledge where ye come from s' clever, Navy," Doyle insisted. "Pile yer muskets this side. Leave yer cannon! Ye turn me lads loose yonder an' let 'em aboard the luggers. Then we come out an' sail away. Ye tell that cutter over there not t'fire on us as we go down-channel. I give ye me Bible-oath, no harm'll come t'these young tits, an' I'll leave 'em safe an' sound on French Cay'r West Caicos. Mebbe West Sand Spit, 'ccordin' t'me whim o' the moment, so's ye gotta rescue them 'fore ye can hunt me. An' ye still keep the loot. Now how's that for a bargain? Lookee here, I'll give ye five minute t'make up yer mind, squire's son."

  Lewrie turned on his heel and stalked back to the line of men at the crates. He looked for Cony and locked eyes with him, jerked his chin to draw him over, then turned to the aghast Parham.

  "Load with canister and grape, Mister Parham," he muttered in an outraged snarl. "Aim high for the roof of the cave, just inside the entrance, and stand ready."

  "But, sir...!"

  "I gave you an order, Midshipman Parham!"

  "Aye, aye, sir," Parham replied meekly, ready to spew.

  "Goddamme, sir," Cony whispered, looking ready to be sick as well. "Wot're we t'do, Mister Lewrie?"

  "How good a shot are you and Norton, Cony? A head shot such as took those iguanas t'other day?" Lewrie inquired.

  "Well, sir, Norton's Georgia-Loyalist. Use'ta shoot squirrel with a Pennsylvania rifle, 'e did. An' it's thirty, forty yards fer me an' the Ferguson, if we hunker down behind a crate yonder."

  "When I signal, shoot the men who hold the women. Can you?"

  "Lord, sir!" Cony shivered. "Them a'hidin' b'hint 'em an' all. Small target at forty yards, even with..." He patted the Ferguson.

  "Their throats are slit, else, Cony, Norton," Lewrie warned.

  "We kin try, sir," Norton promised, shifting uneasily.

  "We saw three captive women last night, these two and one older. We have to risk losing the third if she's still in that cave," Lewrie almost choked. "Or we let these scum go to maybe save all three!"

  "Norton's right, sir, we'll give 'er a try," Cony vowed.

  "Good! Damn' good, men, and thankee," Lewrie nodded grimly in gratitude. "Mister Odrado? Fetch me a hale prisoner up here. Bound."

  "Si, capitan," Odrado replied, puzzled. "Aye, aye."

  Lewrie strode back up the beach, farther than before, and just a bit off to one side of the mouth of the cave. He drew one of his dragoon pistols, checked the priming, and pulled it to half-cock.

  " 'Hoy, Doyle!" he shouted. "Ahoy, the cave!"

  "Ah, ye'z made up yer mind, ye have, squire's son?" Doyle japed as he appeared with his lying flag of truce on his sword once more.

  "Aye, I have," Lewrie rasped. "Doyle ... I think you're bluffing. I don't think you have any more hostages in there. And I don't think you're stupid enough to kill them, when they're the only things keeping you and your bully-bucks alive."

  "Don't ye, now?" Doyle postured gaily. "Oh, but ye're a hard'un, squire's son. Worse'n a Dublin publican t'deal with. Lookee this, hey?"

  Doyle had the women fetched out again, all three of them this time. He seized one of the younger women and put the tip of his blade to her throat, making her huge brown eyes widen in terror.

  "Ain't she a handsome wench, Navy?" he tittered, clawing at her gown to rip it away and expose her full young breasts, tear it down to her waist halfway to her bound wrists. Those shapely breasts were now clotted with scabbed cuts, purpling with bruises. "This'n here, she wuz right good sport, once she got me ideer. Pity she had t'learn the hard way. Might be sportin' agin, soon's ye scrub her up, an' put some rum in 'er. Bit dowdy, now, d'ye think?" he teased, turning her from side to side, like a man appraising a used coat. "D'ye think I'm joshin' ye, now, laddy? Wot say I cut this sweet little dug off, jus' t'prove t'ye 'tis that seryus I am."

  The blade descended to lift one breast on its razor-sharp edge. "Still, I got me five more t'offer ye, so this 'un won't be missed."

  "Bring that prisoner up, Mister Odrado," Lewrie called over his shoulder. "So help me, Doyle, you harm the girl in the slightest, and you hang before the sun is down. You show one sign you mean any harm to any of them, and I will open fire, devil take the hindmost, and God protect the innocent!"

  "Squire's son don't crave ye, girl," Doyle frowned, and spoke in her ear, making her wail with redoubled panic. But in Spanish!

  Now I have you, you bastard, Lewrie thought, wolfish with glee!

  "That Spanish I heard, Doyle?" Lewrie forced himself to laugh, "Christ, all this hanging back for fear of harm to Spanish bitches?"

  "Now, lookee here, squire's son ..." Doyle began to splutter.

  "This scum a friend of yours?" Lewrie asked as Odrado forced a prisoner to kneel in front of him. "Would you be upset if I shot him right here and now? What if I started in shooting all your men I hold, like the curs they are?"

  "She dies, damn ye!" Doyle threatened, bringing the sword-tip up below the girl's jaw, and leveling his arm at full-bent extent for a thrust. "Just t'prove I'm not bluffin'!"

  "And then you're one hostage less, Doyle. One dago bitch less! No one I'd sport charity for. I dislike dagos more than cold, boiled mutton, don't ya know! Fought too many of 'em in the war, hey?" Alan guffawed, putting an icy edge to his sarcastic laughter. He drew out the dragoon pistol and pulled the dog's-jaw back to full cock, then laid it against the kneeling scoundrel's ear.

  "I ain't foolin', squire's son!" the pirate leader snarled at him, pressing the sword's point deeper, drawing a trickle of blood, and a muffled, wheedling scream from the tormented girl.

  "Neither am I," Lewrie told him. And pulled the trigger on the pistol and shot the kneeling pirate's head apart like a melon!

  "Nombre de Dio!" Odrado croaked, crossing himself.

  "Fetch up another prisoner, Mister Odrado," Lewrie instructed, trying to keep his bile down as he turned to blow the remaining powder embers from the priming pan. "And reload that for me."

  "Jesus and Mary, ye ... !" Doyle blanched, then recovered his bluster. "I swear t'Christ, this bitch is dead!" He began to stab her through the throat. She fainted dead away.

  "Trade lives with me, will you?" Lewrie scoffed. "I kill one, you kill one, and then you run out of dago bitches a lot faster than I run out of pirates, who don't deserve better, anyway, Doyle. Now would you call that a handsome bargain, you son of a bitch?"

  "Christ, yer lunatick!" Doyle goggled, trying to hold the girl up, then letting her sag unconscious to the ground. "Ah, d' ye think I care 'bout them yonder? Keep 'em, then! Do wot ye please!"

  "I'll keep shooting them down until I run across one of your cut-throats you do give a damn about, Doyle. You do what you please with your captives. They don't signify to me!" Lewrie taunted. "You get no boats, you don't go free, and if you don't give up the women, throw down your arms and come out of there, you're dead! Now, damn your eyes!"

  The two buccaneers holding their squealing, struggling captives were just as appalled as anyone else on the beach, and peered around their prison
ers to gawk at one of their comrades shot to flinders.

  God save me, Lewrie prayed! "Now, Cony!"

  Two shots rapped out as Lewrie ducked to the side and drew one of his pistols; one light crack from the .54 caliber fusil musket, an accurate weapon for a muzzleloader, and the deeper report of a breech-loading Ferguson which, in an age where Brown Bess couldn't hit a man in the chest at sixty yards, could reach out flat and true to 200!

  One pirate gave out a high scream as he was hit in the temple, the other grunted as he was plumbed right between the eyes!

  "Abajo, senoras! " Lewrie screamed. "Down, ladies, get down!"

  The women had the sense to drop to their knees, but began to scramble and claw away from the terror, away from the cave mouth on their knees and bound wrists, scraping over the rocks despite Lewrie's pleas. "Shit! Fire, Mister Parham! Fire!"

  The boat-gun chuffed, and there was a howl over his head as the canister spread with enough wind to take off his hat. The roof of the cave sparkled and smoked just inside the entrance shelf profligate as a royal fireworks show, then the cave sang with winnings and keenings as the musket balls caromed and ricocheted inside to a satanic chorus of screams.

  Lewrie rose from his protective squat as the pirate Doyle did, took aim at the amazed man, and fired. Doyle grunted with the impact and went over backwards, lifted off his feet by the heavy ball, and dropped out of sight, but for his heels drumming on the shale.

  "Come on, lads, up and at 'em!" Lewrie called, drawing his sword. He stepped up the short slope of rock to peer inside as his men came thundering up to join him.

  There was no fight left in them, those pirates who had lived through that lead sleeting. Lewrie knelt by Doyle, who was gut-shot and going fast.

  "Jesus an' Mary, wot kind o' King's officer they givin' commissions t'now, damn ye?" Doyle panted, wincing with agony. "Yer not supposed t'..."

  "Do you surrender to me now, you bastard?" Lewrie grinned. "Devil take ye!" he groaned and sank back. "No, the Devil take you, Billy Bones," Lewrie spat. "I just wish I'd had the complete pleasure of watching you swing!"