The Gun Ketch

by Dewey Lambdin

  So Ballard paced, and the sun rose in the sky as the schooner stood out from the islands, seeming as if to pass ahead of the trading ship in all innocence, and Sarah and Jane kept her course, and her somnolent lack of notice.

  "Schooner's crossin' ahead, fine on the bows, an' two mile off!"

  "He'll haul his wind, keeping the wind gauge, and fall down upon our starboard side," Ballard announced as he paused in his pacing near the wheel. "See, he tacks, as if he's cleared ahead of us."

  "Soon, sir?" Parham inquired, all but wriggling like a puppy on his first hunt in excitement "Time for Quarters, sir?"

  "Calmly, Mister Parham, calmly. You are never to show fear or excitement to the people," Ballard instructed. "They're steadier for your being steady."

  "Aye, aye, sir," Parham grimaced, as if his bladder were full, and Ballard were detaining him from dashing forrud to the "head."

  "Hmm," Arthur Ballard sighed, peering at the schooner, which was then a point or two off their starboard bows, sailing off sou'easterly, close-hauled. "I should think now, Mister Parham. Beat to Quarters. But keep them down and out of sight. Lieutenant Pomeroy? Your men To Arms, if you please! On the gun deck, still. Stay away from the gangways until they're close-aboard!"

  "Bearin' up, sir!" the lookout announced. "He's tackin' 'cross the wind to the starboard tack!"

  "About three-quarters of a mile off the starboard bows," Ballard muttered. "Very nicely done! Even better than wearing off the wind to fall down on us and round up alongside on the same course. Saves sparing hands on the sheets and braces to continually adjust on a rounding course to come close-aboard us, do you see, Mister Parham? That means more men free to serve his guns, and make up a boarding party."

  "I see, sir."

  "And all settled down and ready for it when it comes," Ballard went on with his praise. "One may learn a lesson or two, even from a pirate."

  Once tacked to a parallel course with Sarah and Jane, the schooner hauled her wind almost at once and began to fall down on them fast, giving them little warning, and pinning their ship between threatened gunfire and the jagged teeth of the coral reefs to south and west. If they chose to loose sail and run, they couldnot find enough sea-room for an escape, nor could they tack and flee sou'east as long as their foe lay off their starboard bows.

  "Panic party, Mister Odrado!" Ballard shouted. Designated men ran to the shrouds to scale them, as if going aloft to cast off reefs and make sail. Others rushed to the gangways for the braces to their squaresails to adjust their angle for a new course, and more speed.

  "Hands at Quarters, sir," Early, the quartermaster's mate, said. "Guns run out to the portsills, an' port lashings cast off. Swivels loaded, tompions out, an' manned. Larboard gun crews shifted to starboard, an' that Lieutenant Pomeroy is ready to mount his men on the starboard gangway."

  "Very well, Mister Early," Ballard nodded quickly, then smirked just a trifle. "I wonder, Mister Early. Do you think they will run up the 'Jolly Roger'? Or is such a convention out of date these days?"

  "Well, I don' know, sir, it..." Early began, then paused. "Ah, that's a little joke, isn't it, Mister Ballard, sir?"

  "Aye, Mister Early," Ballard said with a sober face. "But a feeble joke. Away with you, now, and stand ready."

  The schooner was sidling up to them quickly, closing the range to about a cable. She was as gaudy as a Spanish royal galley, tricked out with gold leaf on bow and stern, down her upper bulwark rails, and around her entry ports. There had to be at least seventy men in her crew, making Ballard wonder how they got out of each other's way when working the ship. He could espy a larboard battery of five nine-pounder cannon, and at least half a dozen swivel guns on either beam.

  "Let's not look too easy," Ballard called. "Mister Woods? Do you fire the forrud chase guns! Make it look clumsy!"

  One six-pounder fired, raising a splash near the enemy's bows. A moment later, the schooner fired in reply.

  "Everybody, down!" Ballard called, though he kept his feet, and his calm composure as the heavy balls droned in. Sarah and Jane leapt and cried in protest as round-shot tore through her thin scantlings and bulged the bulwarks inwards. Bagged salt thumped and tumbled, and some bags burst apart, spilling white crystals about like snow.

  "Ahoy, there!" came a call from across the narrowing channel between them. "Strike yer colours, cut yer braces an' sheets, and let-fly-all, or I'll let ya have another broadside! Gimme no resistance, and you'll still be alive when this is over! Show me fight, though..."

  "Let-fly-all, Mister Odrado!" Ballard shouted, putting a panicky edge to his voice, then turned to shout to the pirate schooner with his brass speaking trumpet. "Hold your fire, for God's sake! We'll strike to you! Mercy, in the name of God! Hold your fire!"

  The American flag came tumbling down to trail astern as its halyard was cut, and the sails began to luff and thunder in disarray.

  "Now, sir?" Parham insisted.

  "Not yet, Mister Parham," Ballard said. "Calmly, now, remember? We'll do it the way our captain said he served a French privateer during the late war. Close enough to smell 'em, first! But do you extend to Lieutenant Pomeroy my compliments, and tell him it's time he posted his men on the starboard gangway, below the bulwarks, and be ready to volley at close range."

  "Aye, aye, sir!" Parham replied, dashing off in haste, in spite of Ballard's cautions.

  The schooner was now a quarter-cable off, not fifty yards away, and almost at decent musket-shot Her boarding party was already up on the bulwarks, with lift-lines and parrel lines dangling so they could swing over to board once they got hull to hull. Others poised at bow and stern with grappling irons.

  And she fired another, lying, broadside!

  Sarah and Jane was shaken hard. Ballard could hear her timbers wail as they were shattered below, hear scantlings and bulwarks starred open with ragged holes as round-shot ripped into her. But the bags of salt kept deadly wood splinters from flying to scythe her crew down.

  "Close pistol-shot," Ballard muttered, smiling thinly at last "Open your ports! As you bear, fire!"

  Double-shotted guns erupted in smoke and flames! Chain-shot to take rigging down, the halves of the balls flying apart as they left the muzzles and whining through the short space between them, linked with chain that made them whirl like birds' wings. Canister on top of that, bags crammed with musket balls that spread out like gigantic shotgun pellets in a cloud of deadly lead. All aimed at the upper bulwarks, all designed to take down people, instead of rigging.

  "Marines!" Ballard screamed as the smoke ragged away enough to see what was what. "Swivels!"

  The panic parties that had gone aloft fired swivels down onto the schooner's decks; more canister-shot to erase the pirates about the wheel, on the schooner's quarter-deck, forecastle, and rails.

  "Cock your locks!" Pomeroy shouted. "Level! By volley,fire!"

  The schooner's decks were about six feet below Sarah and Jane, so pirates trying to find a hiding place anywhere but close upto the larboard bulwarks were wide-open to the shattering volley of musketry. There was a concerted groan of terror at the sight of those muskets, then screams as the volley rattled out like a short roll on a drum.

  "Grapnels away!" Ballard shouted, drawing his sword. "Boarders! Remember, we want prisoners! Away, boarders!"

  Seamen and Marines went over the side as the hulls crashed into each other. Grapnels flew and lodged deep in wood as both vessels rebounded and threatened to part. Upwind as she was, though, the schooner could not slip away, pressed to Sarah and Jane by the Trades. The boarding party surged over the schooner's decks; meeting light resistance, and beating that aside quickly. These pirates were used to having their own way by dint of terror and confusion. Few of them were used to a hard fight against disciplined opponents, so the survivors threw up their hands and dropped their weapons, while their comrades lay bloody and still, or shrieking with pain.

  "Not much to 'em, hey, sir?" Pomeroy sniffed, disgusted that he hadn't eve
n had a chance to bloody his sword. "My lads didn't even get up a good sweat!"

  "Make sure they've no hidden weapons, and herd them forrud, if you please, Lieutenant Pomeroy," Ballard said, sheathing his own blade. "And I'll have those survivors from the afterguard brought here."

  "Aye, sir."

  Half a dozen men were brought to him by the Marines at bayonet or cutlass point, and were forced to kneel, hands already bound behind their backs.

  "Now, who is captain of this vessel?" Ballard inquired. "Well, speak up! Where's the dog in charge of you?"

  " 'E's dead, zur," a surly little fellow replied in a grunt. "How convenient," Ballard simpered. "What was his name?"

  "Anastario Ruiz," another volunteered, in a painful whimper. "And the mates?"

  "Oh, they be dead, too, zur," the little fellow added, speaking from a mouth almost devoid of teeth. He had the gall to smirk.

  "Dear God," Ballard said, drawing a pistol. He had simply been appalled by what Lewrie had done at Conch Bar. But he had to admit it had been effective. "Tell you men what I'm going to do. I am going to start shooting you, one at a time, until I get some answers. For your information, I am from His Majesty's Sloop Alacrity. Does that name ring a bell, hey? The same as did for Billy 'Bones' Doyle, down in the Caicos last year?"

  "Ye cain't be, she's s'posed t'be posted t'Cat Island," one of the younger survivors exploded, almost indignantly. "She ain't got no Marines, so..."

  He shut his mouth and gulped as Ballard cocked the pistol, and laid it against his temple.

  "The Marines are from Whippet," Ballard said coldly. "Remember Whippet, from Walker's Cay? And no, we are not supposed to be here! But we are, by God, and if one of you doesn't start talking this very instant, then God save you!"

  "Oh God, sweet Jesus, holy Saviour!" the threatened sailor wept, all but fouling himself in sudden terror. "Don't, sir, please! Don't shoot me like yer cap'n done Ramirez! I know ya, sir, yer that Ballard feller! They say yer meek an' mild, a true Christian, sir, an' a true Christian'd not, sir!"

  "Stop yer snivelin'!" the surly one warned. "Die game, damn ye!"

  "At the count of three, lad, I send you to Hell for your sins," Ballard assured him. "Want to die game for this bastard? One... two..."

  "Jesus, no, don't do it, I'll tell ya, I'll tell ya!" the young man screamed as he fell to the deck to writhe and wriggle away from his compatriots." 'E's Laidlaw, 'e's first mate, 'e knows! Christ, I wuz just aboard a year, sir, I don't know much, please don't shoot me when I tells ya I don't know somethin', please!"

  "The man who tells me all will live to see the sunset," Ballard promised them. "And, if he testifies in court, he doesn't hang. The ones who don't cooperate with me ..." Ballard paused dramatically as the thought came to him, and he smiled as he concluded, "the ones who don't tell me the truth, who don't lay it all out for us, I'll give to my captain, 'Ram-Cat' Lewrie. He doesn't like pirates much, ya know."

  Several of them turned quite pale at that threat. Throats went dry, and they gulped saliva to ease themselves, before they began to bay a chorus of expostulation in noisy competition with each other.

  Guineaman and another of Finney's ships waiting at Walker's Cay; his agent Runyon ashore, serving up free rum to all to keep them hot; Nassau whores at bargain prices for those with money; cargoes piled up waiting to be smuggled into ports all across the Caribbean; Finney, yes, it was Finney, it was always 'Calico Jack' Finney!

  "Mister Parham, Mister Early, Mister Woods," Ballard beckoned to bis more literate fellows who had good handwriting skills."Dry work for us, I fear. We'll separate those that sound eager to talk, and get it all down on paper, with their signatures or marks made against their confessions, before we rejoin Alacrity. Mister Odrado? Do you go into Sarah and Jane and get her underway, out to sea. Soon as we have this vessel squared away, we'll follow you."

  And, to the amazement of all who were familiar with the taciturn first officer, Arthur Ballard actually cackled out loud with glee!

  Chapter 8

  Whippet and Alacrity fell upon the anchorage just at the break of dawn the next morning. Sou'west down Walker's Cay Channel, east through the upper passage above the shoal; Whippet taking position to block the southern pass this time, much closer to the island, and Alacrity given the task of scouring the moored vessels, after she had landed Lieutenant Pomeroy and his Marines in the twenty-one-foot-deep oval tongue of water to the east between Walker's Cay and Grand Cay. With most of the ships' boats used, they landed on the eastern tip in the dark, after a two-mile row in from the hasty anchorage, and a slow march down the three-quarter-mile length of the isle to take the camp unawares from an unexpected quarter.

  "There's Guineaman," Lewrie spat. "Anyone know the other ship?"

  "By those white upper bulwarks, I'd say she must be the Dublin Lass, sir," Sailing Master Fellows opined. "Seen her in Nassau. One of Finney's ships, for certain, sir. I know that house flag."

  "Better and better, Mister Fellows!" Lewrie exulted, rubbing his hands together. "No schooners present which might escape us into shoal-water this time, we did for her yesterday. And most of their boats on the beach, not gathered 'round the anchored ships."

  "Bulk of their crews ashore, most like, still roistering, sir," Ballard commented. "Or sleeping it off."

  "Well, here's a rough awakening, then," Lewrie grinned. "Mister Fowles, we'll close yon farthest ship, the Guineaman. Ready the starboard battery!"

  "Hullo, they're up and awake, some of them, sir," Ballard warned. "On Dublin Lass. There's a gun port opening!"

  "Mister Fowles, stand ready! We'll rake this one in passing!"

  "Ready, sir!" Fowles shouted back, after fussing over his gun-captain's aim, with a tug or two at the quoin blocks to suit himself about the proper elevation.

  "As you bear, fire!"

  The range was half a cable—100 yards—as they grazed past the anchored, and sleeping, ship. The threatening gun port was open, but all they could see poised over the grim black muzzle of a cannon behind the port was the white face of some poor wretch who had opened it so he could spew his load of rum and supper over the side, who took one look in his misery, made his mouth a perfect O, and went parchment pale as the artillery blasted him away.

  Dublin Lass shuddered as six-pounder balls ripped into her, punching clear through her thin planking, shattering timbers and deck beams, making her leap and froth a hull-shaped, spreading ripple around her as she rose and dropped back into the still waters of the harbour.

  "Serve her another, Mister Fowles! In the guts, this time!" Alan demanded. "Sink her!"

  As Alacrity cruised by Dublin Lass, her guns rapped out again, quoin blocks inserted and barrels aimed low, to riven her water-line, and the trim little three-masted ship heeled over with each crashing round-shot, rocking as ragged gashes were shot through her scantlings, then rolling back to starboard so those holes could suck and froth with sea-water. The few crewmen left aboard as an anchor party came running up from below, where they'd been napping, to find their ship sinking beneath their feet!

  "I can see the Marines ashore, sir!" Midshipman Mayhew shouted. "There're red coats among the sheds on the far side of the camp!"

  "Angle's gone, sir! Guns won't bear in the ports!" Fowles reported at last.

  "Cease fire, Mister Fowles. Wait for the Guineaman," Lewrie ordered. "Mark that, gentlemen. Dublin Lass opened her gun portsto fire into a King's Ship, to take arms against the Royal Navy. Think you that's another compelling proof of piracy?" He smiled.

  "Well, more like to puke on us, sir," Ballard whispered at his side. "Compelling, none the less, I suppose. If contempt counts."

  "It'll sound good in testimony," Lewrie scowled. "And damme if I'll give Finney and his captains one chance to wriggle out this time!"

  Once clear of the Dublin Lass, Alacrity faced the open waters between the two anchored ships for a minute or two, so they could see what was happening on the beach. Pirates and merchant crews were all runni
ng in terror from the dripping bayonets of the Marines, some few trying to make a fight of it with muskets and pistols.

  The morning erupted in heavy gunfire once more as Whippet came even with the tortured Dublin Lass astern of them, and gave her broadsides with her nine-pounders. Rigging and spars, upper masts and yards, came tumbling down in ruin to churn thd water alongside, and Dublin Lass canted over even farther until her starboard railings were in the sea. She bubbled and groaned as she filled and began to go down.

  "Chase gun forrud, Mister Fowles!" Lewrie shouted. "Wake those buggers up yonder!"

  The starboard chase gun on the forecastle, one of the portable two-pounders, barked as sharp as a terrier. Its light ball hit Guineaman astern, shattering the ladder from quarter-deck to poop, barely making her judder. Men could be seen, though, running up from below, waking from their swaying hammocks on the upper decks where it was cooler, to the waist of the ship.

  "By God, I mink they're going to man their guns!" Fellows gaped. "That Captain Malone must be desperate as hell, sir!"

  "He mounts twelve-pounders, sir," Ballard intoned. "If you recall."

  "Warm work in the next few minutes, then," Lewrie sighed as he steeled himself for a slaughter on his own decks. "Mister Fellows, is there depth enough on Guineaman's larboard side for us?"

  "God only knows, sir," Fellows muttered, eyeing the ship which was anchored bows-on to them. "I doubt he'd be anchored that close up to shoals, though. Anyone see a kedge anchor from her stern? If she were swinging on just her best bower to wind and tide..."