"At 'em, Telestos!" He yelled. A French sailor came at him with a pike leveled like a charging cavalry lancer. A quick move to parry from left and below, pushing that wicked pike-head away to his right and past his shoulder, then a riposting thrust at the belly.
The Frenchman screamed almost in his ear, a foot of Gill's best English steel in his entrails, lost his grip on the pike, and dropped away like a spilled sack of meal, almost dragging Lewrie with him as his ravaged stomach muscles tried to clench around the blade. Alan had to plant a foot on the man's chest and thighs to drag his sword back out, bringing forth the slithering horrors contained within.
Dark faces with swarthy mustaches and whiskers came raving on La Malouine's, gangway. Chiswick's sepoys, less practiced at boarding and slower to cross over. Now that the seamen had cleared them some room, they were trotting forward and aft, bayonets fixed, and their havildars shouting encouragement.
"Mam, maro ghanda Fransisi!"*
*"Kill, kill the dirty French!"
Percival and McTaggart were headed forward with a large pack of seamen, teetering their way over the boat-tier beams to get to the larboard side as well. Alan spun about and led his men aft. Where it came from, he had no idea, but there was now some light on deck, enough to see the party of Frenchmen rushing to defend their quarterdeck. It was disconcerting to see Marcel Monnot in their lead, the sailor he'd spoken to on the docks one morning. But Monnot had a cutlass in his hand, and he began hacking away at an English sailor.
Lewrie let his hanger dangle from the wrist-strap, pulled out his first dragoon pistol and pulled it back to full cock. Stepping forward with his men, he took aim and let fly. The fight with Monnot swirled out of his aim, but another Frenchman was struck by the ball in the chest, plumping a sudden burst of scarlet on his white shirt front and dropping him out of sight. He drew his second pistol and shot a hulking French seaman right in the face, who gave a great howl and flipped over backward, making a gap for more English sailors to dash forward and crowd the French back. Cutlasses sang and whished in the air, ringing steel on steel. Pikeheads and bayonet points stabbed out in short thrusts.
Then there was Monnot again, leaping back into action and hewing a sailor down, pushing forward and leading more of his hands with him against everything.
"Vous!" he exclaimed, spotting Lewrie. "Espece de salaud!"
"Strike, Monnot! Throw down your sword! It's over!"
"Va te faire foutre!" Monnot cried, throwing himself forward.
Lewrie jerked his wrist and brought his sword into his palm, leading with a thrust that Monnot beat aside, but the speed of it made him drop back a pace. Alan stamped forward, countering a hard counterswing of Monnot's cutlass blade. They were too hemmed in by struggling bodies to do anything more than beat at each other vertically after that. Bayonets stabbed on either side, and Frenchmen were dying, going down as the sepoys loaned their strength to shove their foes backward and upward to the quarterdeck, beginning to thin them out enough for Lewrie to have more fighting room.
It was disconcerting to fight a man he knew, even slightly. He had nothing against Monnot personally, so it felt less like a duel. A stranger he could have crossed swords with gladly. But it was his life to not kill him. Monnot was monstrously strong. A bit unskilled with a more gentlemanly smallsword, perhaps, but ruthlessly competent with a cutlass, his wrist hard as an iron anvil.
Monnot fetched up against the ladder that led to the quarterdeck, last of his men still standing on the gangway, and he howled in glee as he swung his sword in the full cutlass drill. There!
An opening, as Monnot swung backhanded, fumbled backward to take a step up the ladder, still facing his foes. Lewrie leaped for him, raising his sword to block a further swing, but ramming the lion-headed pommel of his sword into Monnot's mouth!
The man stumbled onto his back, one hand grasping at the rope balustrade of the ladder, thrusting with his cutlass, a thrust which Lewrie parried off low, and then he was inside Monnot's guard with a backward slash of that superbly strong and razor-honed hanger across the man's belly and chest.
Monnot howled again, reaching upward to take Lewrie's throat in one hand, drawing his cutlass back with the other. Alan started turning purple as he reached out to take Monnot's sword-arm wrist in his hand and hold off a killing blow, drawing his hanger back behind his knee to turn it upward, and thrust the point into the Frenchman's jaws. Up through throat skin, through the tongue, into the sinuses and the brain! Monnot grunted and twisted like a piked fish, bumping down the steps of the quarterdeck ladder one at a time, dragging Alan with him with one hand yet gripping his throat in a final, inhuman spasming strength!
Sailors and soldiers dashed past them while Alan was dragged to his knees, gasping for air and watching the world go dim, until at last Monnot's heels began to drum on the deck, and his hands lost all strength. His eyes flared once more with anger, then rolled up into his head and glazed over unblinking. Alan rocked back onto his heels and gulped great lungfuls of air, massaging his throat with one hand and tugging his sword free with the other. He felt like shooting the man, just to make sure he was dead, not shamming until he'd stepped over him to ascend to the quarterdeck, then strike him from behind!
He settled for a slash across Monnot's throat as he sprang up and rushed aft, getting away from the brute as quick as he was able.
"Jesus Christ!" he muttered, once he'd gained the deck. No wonder it was light enough to see! La Malouine was on fire! After lights-out aboard any ship, it was the officers aft who could keep a lantern or two burning past nine p.m., and their gunfire must have overturned a lamp, killed a gun-captain who had dropped his smoldering slow-match onto something flammable. Smoke drifted and curled from between the deck planks. Pounded tar to waterproof the joins was running slick and hot, sticking to his shoes. One corner of the poop deck farther aft already showed gaps through which tiny flames licked. He turned to see if Telesto was safe, and saw no sign of fire. But amidships, in La Malouine's waist, there was a bright red glow under the tarred canvas that covered the midships cargo hatches and companion-way hatches. Even as he watched, the tarred canvas took fire with a sullen whoomp and disappeared in a sooty shower, and long, licking flames leaped aloft with a roar like a bellows had been applied to a forge!
"Back to the ship!" Choate was yelling, waving their men back to Telesto with his sword. "Move, lads, if you don't want to burn!"
There was no greater fear for a sailor than fire aboard ship.
Once it got a good hold on the dry timbers, the tarred ropes, greased running rigging and canvas sails, a fire was almost impossible to extinguish. In the blink of an eye, a ship could flash into a ruddy horror, roasting her crew, who would be fearful to abandon her until the last minute, for most sailors could not swim.
"Back!" Alan yelled. "Back aboard our ship, stir yourselves!"
They were lucky to make it, for the small crew that had stayed aboard Telesto were chopping and sawing at the grapnel ropes even before everyone could reach the rails to prepare themselves for the leap.
It was a panic. Sepoys crowded the rails, their eyes rolling in fear, ready to abandon their weapons in their haste to flee. Chiswick was raving back and forth, shouting at them in Hindee and pushing muskets back into their hands, arranging a party of some of his largest men to literally throw some of the Others across to Telesto's bulwarks, to be caught by seamen.
La Malouine was keening as the flames began to roar in earnest, the sound a soaked river rock makes when placed in a camp-fire. Men wounded and unable to move were screaming and gibbering in terror.
"Damnit!" Alan sighed, sheathing his sword. He picked among the bodies, searching for his own. The dead he could do nothing for, but there were surely some English wounded that simply could not be left behind to suffer.
"Oh, God, sir!" Archibald, the condom-maker, keened shrill as a frightened child as he lay on the gangway with blood soaking his leg. "Help meeeee!!!"
"I'm here, Archib
ald, Let's go!"
He got him to his feet, an arm around him, and half-dragged him to the rail, yelling for help. Hodge, the topman, came swarming over to them with a free line, and quickly whipped a loop in it. They got Archibald seated in it and let it swing. Even if he bashed his head in on their ship's hull, he was away. Cony returned with it as they began to search.
"Telestos!" Lewrie called, almost choking on the stink of burning cargo below decks. Singed tea leaves swirled around him like a plague of locusts. "Hoy, Telestos! Sing out and we'll save you!"
A gut-shot French seaman raised an imploring hand from the deck, terror in his eyes. They passed him by. He was not one of theirs. Hodge drew a heavy belaying pin from the railing and did the man the favor of knocking him senseless so he'd know less about his immolation.
"Don't think they's any more of our'n, Mister Lewrie!" Cony said, tugging at his sleeve.
"Lewrie, leave it!" Ayscough called from their ship. "Leave it or die over there! I can't keep station on her any longer!"
Flames were shooting up the main-mast now, furled sails bursting alight, standing and running rigging covered with tiny shoots of fire like some expensive holiday illumination.
"Good enough for me," Lewrie responded, climbing over the rails.
They threw them lines, and they swung across, suspended from gant-line blocks and yard-tackles. Lewrie thrust out his legs to take the shock of impact, but it knocked the wind out of him anyway. He dangled for a moment against the hull by the gunports until someone reached over and grabbed him by the collar to haul him up.
He landed in a heap on the larboard gangway, almost getting trampled by sail-trimmers as they heaved on the yard braces to get the ship underway. He could barely hear the shouted commands over the roar of the fire aboard La Malouine.
"Ya awright, sir?" Cony asked, helping him to his feet, and disentangling him from the gant-line block and three-part loops of line. "Christ, wot a mess!"
When he had a chance to look back at their foe, once Telesto was far enough to leeward that she wouldn't catch fire herself, he could see that the French ship was alight from taff-rail to the tip of her bow-sprit. Her upper yards were raining down in chunks like dripping embers. No matter that they were heavy, they were almost floating against the fierce, roaring up-draft of the fires. Now and again, there was a bright, blue-white flash and dull thud as a powder cartridge burst, or a loaded gun took light. Sparks would fly against a yellow-white cloud of powder, making La Malouine look even more like carnival fireworks.
Men dribbled from her, too. Men whose clothing, whose very flesh had caught fire, and swarmed staggering and blind in unspeakable agony, swathed from head to toe in greedy, gnawing flames like animated torches. They keened and howled, reeled and dropped out of sight. Or tumbled over the bulwarks of their ship to raise great splashes in the water alongside, where only a greasy smoke and a circle of foam marked their passing.
They dropped into the water beside others who floundered and thrashed in the glowing amber water, thrashing clumsily for any bit of flotsam to support them before they drowned. Pleas for help went unnoticed, cries to God went unheard, amidst all the screaming and wailing, amidst the crackle and roar of the flames.
La Malouine had had four ship's boats, all nestled on the tiers that spanned the waist between the gangways over the upper deck, and three of them now roasted like unattended steaks on a grill. The fourth was in the water, one side charred black and half sunk, reeking with smoke. Half a dozen men clung to her, and two sat on her after-most thwart, fighting the others to prevent them climbing in and swamping her. There was one large, grid-worked hatch cover in the water, and more men clung to the sides, while others who could swim splashed in its direction. Out of La Malouine's crew of roughly one-hundred-fifty men, not thirty could be discovered alive now.
"Oh, Christ, sir, look!" Cony shuddered.
Dark, triangular fins cut the glassy, illuminated red-and-amber waters. Sharks! Lewrie winced with a sudden cold chill as a fin went underwater just behind a struggling man. That man suddenly shot out of the ocean as if he'd been tossed by a bull, screaming louder than he could have thought possible from anyone's throat, setting off more panic among the survivors. Pale white fish bellies rolled with him as they seized upon his flesh, bit and shook like bulldogs to tear off huge chunks of living meat! More fins darted in from nowhere, summoned God knew how from the depths. More men thrashed and wailed as they were taken. The survivors who had been clustered around the half-sunk boat swarmed up on it in a wave, climbing over each other in their haste, as the boat rolled on its beam ends and capsized.
There was no time to put boats down. Telesto's crew lifted up their own curved, grid-work hatch-covers and tossed them in as Ayscough had her steered through the thickest pack of Frenchmen. The tail-ends of halyards, lifts and braces were slung over so that those that could might reach them and climb to safety, and life.
But it was futile. Three French sailors who could swim climbed aboard, shaking in terror. Perhaps three more made it to the floats. By the time Telesto had sailed on past, wore ship and came back into the area, there was no sign of living men around the overturned boat, and not seven altogether on all the floating hatch-covers, girded round entirely by circling fins and face-down bodies that one by one were taken under. There had to be a thousand sharks by then around La Malouine, striking at anything whether it moved or not-paddles, broken oars, charred flotsam or discarded clothing-it made no difference to them.
La Malouine burned for two hours before she went under, still a spark on the horizon by the time Telesto found her cutter and took her back aboard. She finally winked out around two in the morning, about the time Mr. Twigg finished interrogating the shattered remnants of her people.
Chapter 3
I should think we've done rather well so far," Mr. Twigg said somewhat smugly as they held durbar, or conference, ashore at Bencoolen on Sumatra. They'd run into port before a punishing South China Sea taifun that had loomed up above the Johore Straits, and Telesto had been lucky to make a safe harbor before the full fury had broken upon them. The storm had passed, ravaging the settlement, but sparing the well-anchored ships. In its aftermath, a crushing humidity had settled in, along with steady rain and choking heat, and not a breath of breeze. If Bencoolen had been the arse-hole of the world before, the taifun had done nothing by way of improvement.
"And what is to be done with our French prisoners, sir?" Captain Ayscough inquired as he poured himself another healthful mug of lemon-water and brandy. "The men don't much care for having them around, you know, pitiable as they are."
"Perhaps it'd be a kindness to leave them here at Bencoolen," Twigg said with an idle wave of his hand. "A passing French ship may take them eventually. Them that survived, that is."
They'd picked up ten terrified Frenchmen. Some had been bitten by sharks, and their wounds turned septic immediately, and the gangrene killed them. Not five lived now, and two of those were in precarious health. Lewrie suspected Twigg's penchant for cruel interrogation may have hastened the departure of some of those from life.
"Leaving them here in Bencoolen is no kindness, sir," Lt. Col. Sir Hugo Willoughby granted. Alan's father had grown even older since he'd last laid eyes on him: his hair thinner and greyer, his face more care-lined and leathery. "Hasn't been much of a kindness for my battalion, either, let me assure you."
"You agreed it would place your troops closer to the action, I might remind you, Sir Hugo," Twigg said, frowning. The vilely hot weather had not improved anyone's tempers, but it was almost too hot and humid to argue. "As for the Frogs, I care less if all the buggers succumb. No real loss, is it, though I would wish for one or two to survive to bear the tale back to Paris. The effect would have been welcome."
"And do you feel that same impartiality to my men, sir?" Sir Hugo snapped.
"Sir Hugo," Twigg drawled. "Colonel Willoughby. Unlike my utter lack of sympathy for piratical Frenchmen, I feel most strongly and d
eeply for the plight of the men of the 19th Native Infantry. And I assure you, I shall be most happy to extricate them from this hellish stew at the earliest opportunity. That moment has almost arrived, sir, but you must bear the deplorable conditions here for only a few more months. Soon, I promise you."
"It had best be soon, sir," Sir Hugo replied evenly, controlling his own temper with remarkable restraint, as Lewrie could attest. "We arrived in mid-February with a grenadier company, eight line companies, one and a half light companies, and the full artillery detachment. And now, with Captain Chiswick and his half-company returned to me, I may only field eight. Eight, sir! Allow me to protest most vigorously that if this battalion is not removed to a more healthful climate, I won't have a platoon of men available to you by autumn! I demand of you, if you have any estimate of when we may depart this reeking cesspit, pray inform us of it."
"I quite understand, Sir Hugo," Twigg replied, on the edge of an explosion of his own temper, no matter how much the weather might dampen his fuses. 'Two months. Three months at the most, weather permitting, and you shall be out of here, at sea and in action."
That created a stir of interest among the army officers seated behind Sir Hugo, and among the naval officers as well.
"You see, sirs," Twigg continued calmly, getting a smug look on his face. "I know where this fellow Guillaume Choundas is. And where he shall be in a few months' time." Twigg looked about the damp and gloomy room, a wood and thatch imposture of a proper building, letting the stirring and chattering of their excitement swell and recede like a breaking wave of adulation before continuing.
"Shaken as the French survivors were, it was fairly simple to play upon their fears, catch them out when they were at their weakest," Twigg explained. "Have we a good chart of the South China Seas, Captain Ayscough? Could it be hung where all could see it? Good."
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