Chapter 13

Have we the depth to stand in closer?” Hogue asked.

“And a quarter less four!” the leadsman shouted from up forward as if in answer.

“Captain’s Ayscough’s recollections say we do, sir,” Lewrie replied with a happy but fierce grin on his features. “Helm down to larboard, quartermaster. Ease her up as close as she’ll lie to the wind, full and by.”

“Full an’ by, sir!”

“How we got this far, I don’t know, sir,” Hogue enthused as they swept into the harbor in Telesto’s wake. “I was sure that was a battery on the point, but nary a peep from them did we hear.”

“Most thoroughly in the barrel, drunk as lords, I expect,” Lewrie said, clapping his hands with anticipation as he strode to the quarterdeck nettings to look down upon his gun deck. “Mister Owen, I give you leave to open fire as you bear!”

“Thankee, sir!” Owen shouted back. “Wait for it, lads, wait for it!”

Culverin could work her way much closer to the beach than any of the other vessels, where her short-ranged but heavy car-ronades had the advantage. There was a mushrooming pillar of smoke coming from beyond the native settlement. He could see a coehorn mortar shell burst in mid-air, most excellently fused, against the rim of sunrise on the horizon over the trees. And on that wide beach was a gunner’s fondest dreams— stationary targets drawn up with their prows resting on the sand, their guns pointing inland and useless! At least twenty blood-red praos abandoned by their crews engaged against the troops on the far side of the little town.

Telesto opened fire first, followed by Lady Charlotte. Sand flew into the air as eighteen- and twelve-pounder balls struck the shore. Boats twitched and thrashed as they were hit, their sterns leaping out of the water to fall back downward and flail the shallow waters like a beaver’s slap. Masts and paddles went spinning in confusion, and hulls split open as they were flayed with iron.

“Two cables, sir!” Owen shouted. “ ‘Ere we go, then! Number one gun ... fire!”

Lewrie stood amazed as the flower of smoke and flame gushing from the muzzle expanded into an opening blossom larger than any he had ever witnessed, the air torn apart with weapons’ song, and the twenty-four-pounder ball’s progress marked by a misty trail of shock and turbulence as if they were firing combustible carcasses. The ball hit a prao on the beach, square on the stern-posts, ripped right through the light wood and flung a shower of broken timbers and laced-together planking into the air. There was a sudden, screeching rrawwrrkk! as the ball rivened her from stern to stem, to topple her in ruin.

“Huzzah, lads, do us another!” Lewrie cheered his gunners as they took aim with the rest of the starboard battery. “Quartermaster, luff us up a mite. Slow our progress to give the gunner more time to aim.”

Smoky, belching crashes as the carronades spewed out their loads, thin dirty trails of roiled air emerging from the sudden mists of burned powder and then the slamming screech of ravaged wood ashore as another prao, then a third, leaped like frightened birds at being touched with iron, screaming their rrawwrrkk, rrawwrrkk! as if in their death-agonies.

“Carry on, Mister Owen,” Lewrie said, picking up a telescope for a better view. In the distance, he could see villagers running one direction, pirates in their gaudier clothing falling back into the village and down to the beach to save what they could of their ships, to fall in irregular clots of terror as iron shattered and keened in clouds of sharp shards and splintered wood.

He directed his glass forward to see Telesto take Poisson D’Or under fire. The French ship had cut or slipped her cables, abandoning her anchors, and was getting underway, even as several ship’s boats thrashed oars in her wake to catch her up.

“By God, I do believe that’s our bastard Choundas in one of those boats!” Lewrie crowed aloud. “Can’t even fight from your ship this time, can you, you pervert? Have to let some more of your people do your dying for you, you poxy whoreson Frog?”

Poisson D’Or had gotten her jibs and stays’ls set, her spanker over the stern hoisted, and had let fall her tops’Is, but they were a-cock-bill and not yet fully braced round to draw the wind. She was not yet under full control, but her larboard gunports flew open in unison, and muzzles emerged. She would fight it out.

And right in Telesto’s wake sailed Lady Charlotte, paying off the wind a little as if in trepidation of getting too close, but her guns crashed out a solid broadside, and the sea around Poisson D’Or erupted in feathers of spray, and several balls hit her low, “twixt wind and water.”

A hefty explosion drew Lewrie’s attention back to the task at hand. A ball had hit one of the praos on her foredeck where her guns were seated, igniting a powder store, which had blown up in a great dark bulb of smoke and flame. The prao had disintegrated and was cascading down in smoldering chunks onto two other boats to either side, setting them alight and scattering the pirates around them.

“A guinea for that gunner, Mister Owen, my word on it!” Alan vowed.

“And a quarter less five!” the leadsman called out over the roar of the battle.

“Damme, sir, we could get inshore even closer!” Hogue shouted. “We’re dead astern of Poisson D’Or’s anchorage. Deep water, sir!”

“Luff up again, quartermaster. Pinch us closer inshore!” Alan commanded. “Mister Owen, load your next broadside with canister and grape-shot! Put an iron hail on the beach and skin the bastards!”

Culverin rounded up into the wind, ghosting almost to a stop with her sails shivering and thrashing, until the leadsman found only three fathoms of water. The quartermaster put his tiller over to the windward side to fill the sails with wind, and she heeled hard for a moment before riding back upright. They were now only a single cable off the beach, two hundred yards, just as the central part of the village came abeam. Pirates were falling back in disorder through the town, massing on the beach and heaving to launch their boats for an escape.

Alan could almost hear the sudden fatalistic sighs, the groans of alarm, as they saw the trim little ketch with her guns run out and the muzzles staring them between the eyes.

“As you bear ... fire!” Lewrie called.

Five carronades lurched inboard on their recoil slides. Five crashing bellows of noise, stink and shudders. Five great blooms of smoke towered over her sides and drifted away to leeward through her sails. Five fists of God struck the beach, hewing away everything they touched, taking down the bamboo log palisade behind the beach, scything the palms above the high-tide line, lashing the thatched rooves. But most particularly, flailing the sand into a bloody cloud and scattering Lanun Rovers, bowling them over like nine-pins. And when the smoke cleared, the beach had been abandoned by the living, with only the broken dead and whimpering wounded remaining.

“Merciful God in Heaven!” Murray whispered in awe at what they had wrought. “Bloody ...”

“And again, Mister Owen!” Lewrie bade. “Grape and canister!”

The next broadside only thrashed at the heels of the pirates, who fled that threat of death, back into the palisaded village for shelter, bold sea-rovers too afraid to save their ships.

“They’re afire up yonder, sir,” Murray pointed.

Lewrie raised his glass and looked toward the eastern end of the harbor. Praos were burning there, smudging the dawn with greasy coils of smoke and ruddy flame. “I see soldiers on the beach there!” he rejoiced. “Mister Owen, direct your fire upon the village walls and clear the way for the troops!”

“Aye, sir!”

“And a half, two!” the leadsman warned.

“I believe we may haul our wind a point or two for now, men,” Lewrie told his helmsman. The long sweep of the tiller was put over to starboard, and the bows swung off the wind. Deck crew flung themselves onto the belaying pins to free the sheets and ease the set of the sails to draw more wind.

And Culverin slid to a stop.

“One fathom and a quarter!” the leadsman called out, much too late.

“Well, shit!” Lewrie fumed, turning red with embarrassment at running solidly aground, right in the midst of a battle. Of all the places to choose from, he’d staggered right onto an uncharted sandbar!

“Uhm, she struck mighty easy-like, sir.” Murray frowned, his mouth working hard. “Prob’ly didn’t do no damage t’ her quickwork. Her gripe an’ her cut-water is solid enough, and she’s a tough old lady, she is, sir. Rat-run bottom, too. Ahh ... er, that is, fer when the tide goes out, sir.”

“Ah,” Lewrie sighed, wishing it was possible to die of mortification. “Hmm. Yes. The tide. Bloody hell!”

“Aye, sir,” Murray commiserated, taking a pace away.

“Well, damn my eyes!” Lewrie sighed heavily, one hand on his hip and gazing up at the masthead for clues. “Look, have ‘Chips’ go below and sound the forepeak to see if there’s any leakage. A hand that’s a good swimmer over the bows to see how hard she’s ... stuck! And boat crews into the launch and cutter to see if we may tow out the stream or kedge anchor and work her off. Before we’re left high and bloody dry ‘til supper-time.”

“Aye, sir!” Murray replied, knuckling his brow.

“Damn all hard luck, sir,” Hogue told him.

“I feel like such a goose-brained ... twit!” Lewrie confessed.

“Happens to the best, I’m told, sir,” Hogue added, though he had to work at keeping a straight face.

There was a shattering explosion just at that moment, which spun them about in their tracks. Something had set fire to Cuddalore, anchored farther to the east—perhaps a few die-hards from the prize crew Choundas had put aboard to safeguard her from being plundered by his allies. She had just gone up in a titanic blast as her magazines burst, ripping her into a plume of fragments.

Farther east, and out in deeper waters, Poisson D’Or was still fighting, with Telesto close aboard on her left beam as they fell off the wind to the north for the chain of tiny islets that guarded this harbor from the opposite Monsoons. Lady Charlotte had continued on easterly as she could, to cross the French ship’s stern and rake her before turning north as well on the far side, to lay Poisson D’Or in a savage cross-fire.

‘To think that but for a moment of stupidity, we could be a part of that!” Lewrie said with a bitter growl. “God, what a glorious fight they’re having. And we’ve missed it!”

“Grand seats, though, sir,” Hogue replied cheerfully. “Right in the stalls, as it were, to witness it.”

Owen came up the starboard ladder to the quarterdeck and gave a cough to let them know he was there. “ ‘Scuse me, sir, but I’ve flat run outa targets, sir. No more o’ those pirates t’ be seen, an’ half the village knocked down s’ far, sir. Want me t’ keep on?”

“No, Mister Owen. Continue to fire with one gun only, and I wish to have your other gunners for boat crews. We have to kedge off before the tide runs out too much.”

“Aye, sir.”

“Sir!” Murray called. “Those boats yonder! From Poison Door, sir! Tryin’ t’ land on the beach!”

Lewrie seized his glass and climbed up on the shore-side bulwark to peer at the two longboats being rowed ashore.

“Choundas!” Lewrie howled with frustration. “Can we lay a gun on him? He’ll get away into the jungle, else!”

“Er, nossir,” Owen almost moaned, wringing his grimy hands in frustration. “He’s outa our gun-arcs, ‘less we had a fo’c’sle chase-gun. An’ it don’t look like he’ll put it anywhere close t’ our poor range!”

“He’ll get away at last!” Lewrie snorted in disbelief. All of their labors and suffering for nothing . . . again! “Mister Hogue!”

“Sir?”

“Take charge of the ship, sir,” Lewrie exclaimed. “Keep Mister Murray and Mister Owen with you, and defend her should the pirates try to get off the beach and take her now she’s aground. Use your artillery over our heads should we run into trouble on the beach. Are the boat crews assembled? Good. Arm them. Muskets, a pistol each and a cutlass. Cony, fetch my case of pistols!”

The cutter had eight oarsmen, a bow-man and Cony as coxswain. The launch had a total of eight men aboard. Instead of a kedge anchor lowered into the stern-sheets, or one of the stern cables, the men were surprised to receive arms.

“Row for the beach!” Lewrie snapped, “Row like the Devil was at your heels. I want yon bastard!”

They cast off and put their backs to it, digging in deep with their oar-blades and grunting with the exertion, Lewrie’s cutter in the lead. He stood in the bows, loading his pistols.

“Not straight for the beach, Cony. Take us east up the coast for a ways before cutting in. Closer to them before we ground.”

“Aye, sir,” Cony replied, angling the tiller-bar under his arm to steer them more slant-wise across the lapping wavelets.

* * * *

Choundas looked up from gazing at the bottom-boards of his boat with a bleak expression. The eastern palisade of the village was yet being defended, but he could see most of the pirates streaming off for safety, south through the longest wall and over the rice-paddies into the jungle. The remaining praos on the strand were on fire, damaged or under the guns of the ketch-rigged gun-boat. There would have been no safety aboard Cuddalore, minus her topmasts and rigging, so after picking up his tiny watch party from her, he had set her on fire, so the “biftecs” would not have the satisfaction of recapturing her.

“She’s aground, I think,” he said to no one, turning to look at the saucy little ketch. “And a dropping tide.”

No means of escape there, either, even if his small party could take her.

Coehorn mortar shells were bursting farther inland, over those rice-paddies, and he could hear the muffled popping and crackling of musketry in a steady, rolling platoon-fire. They would have to run that deadly gauntlet across the paddy dykes to escape. And from the continual, thin screaming they could barely hear, that way was being turned into a killing-ground.

Choundas swiveled aft to look at his beautiful ship. Poisson D’Or, one of the finest thirty-two-gunned frigates that had ever swum, was almost hull-down up the fringe of islets, wreathed in a mushroom cloud of gunpowder, with two of her masts gone. As thinly manned as she was, after losing La Malouine and his best hands, she was putting up a marvelous fight, but she was going to lose. It was fated.

And he wasn’t aboard to lead the fight in her, when she was battling for her life, as a captain, as an officer of the French Navy should be! No, he had waited too long, trying to put some spine into that churlish native chieftain. Who could have expected the damned English to land their troops on the east side of the island and march overland through all that trackless jungle, and then attack him from the west with their ships? Only the insane would beat against the wind and attack from leeward, when the best approach would have been to ghost into harbor with a following wind, with the rising sun at their backs to ruin his gunners’ aim. Everything had gone wrong!

“What shall we do now, sir?” one of his surviving garde de la marines asked him in a soft whisper close to his ear. Choundas lifted his face to gaze at him. Nineteen years old, the equivalent of an English midshipman, an officer-in-training.

Choundas wondered just what sort of lesson Valmette was learning today.

“Steer for the beach, timonier” Choundas instructed his new cox’n. “Land us west of the land fighting, but out of range of those guns on the ketch. This side of the eastern palisade. We shall take a path through the village, go out its western side, and get into the jungle away from the ‘biftecs’ artillery. Then strike down the western coast and find a decent seagoing boat. A prao, perhaps.”

“Two boats setting out from the ketch, sir,” Valmette warned. “To kedge her off? Could we take her?”

‘Too few of us,” Choundas snapped, having already counted heads and discounted their chances. “And their boats are no better than ours for deep ocean.”

Choundas took a second look. Small as his party was, he had more men, well-armed men, than what appeared in the English boats.

“Hostages, perhaps, mes amis!” Choundas brightened. “For safe passage out of here. Timonier, steer to meet them in the shallows. Men, ready your muskets! I want prisoners. An officer if we can.”

“They’re turning to meet us shy of the beach,” Lewrie told his boat crew. “We’re going to have a fight on our hands, lad. A devil of a fight! Load muskets and pistols, and lay your swords to hand.”

Lewrie looked back at Culverin. There was not one gun barrel that could be cranked around in its port to lay on the French. Even if they could have pointed, the range was too great. He looked back to the shore, to the eastern end of the beach where the boats were on fire; it would appear that his father’s regiment had been held up in their advance. There would be no aid from that quarter, either.

I could meet ‘em gunnel to gunnel, he thought, but one peek over the side canceled that thought. The water may have been clear as gin but there was the niggling little matter of his not being able to swim, and boats were sure to be capsized if they meleed like miniature frigates! The water was so clear it was impossible to judge its depth but for the faint sunrise shadow of his hull on the bottom-sand, and he judged that to be over his head, perhaps a full fathom still.

“Cony, put your tiller over hard a’larboard,” he ordered.

“We beach and meet them with the boats for cover and steadier aim.”

“Aye, sir,” Cony parroted, and shoved the tiller bar over. The second boat in his wake followed suit a moment later.

“We’ll be the stone fortress, he’ll be the enemy squadron, men,” Lewrie told both boat crews to cover his queasy fear of being drowned. “Once ashore, get down below the gunnels and we’ll skin ‘em. And if they want to come to us, then be-damned to ‘em, I say! Save your pistols for when they get close.”

The French boats changed course once more, and the oarsmen laid almost flat on their thwarts to drive faster, once they saw their plan for a miniature naval engagement was for nought.

“Row! Row! Get us ashore, quickly now!” Lewrie urged his hands. The French were aimed right for him, trying to be upon them even before they could jump over the gunwales or get the oars shipped! Musketeers lay in the bows of the French boats, and one or two tried shots at long range. A stroke oar aft by Cony shrieked and fell back among his mates, upsetting the furious stroke, his neck shattered by a ball.

“Toss yer oars!” Cony yelped as the surf heaved them forward on a limp wave. The cutter lurched and slithered with a wet hiss as her keel ran onto the sand.

“Damn the oars!” Lewrie shouted. “Over the side and make ready!” The bow man leaped shin-deep into water and started to drag the bows farther up the beach, while the oarsmen let go of their oars and took up their weapons. The bow man was hit,-flung backward with a grunt of ruptured lungs, which encouraged them to make haste and slither over the off-side gunwale instead of standing and leaping out with a care to staying erect and dry.

Muskets were popping, and bits of the cutter were flying into the air as ball splintered the wood. Lewrie had gone sprawling once over the side, and when he raised his head, there was the lead boat not ten yards off, ready to ground almost alongside!

“Cock your locks ... take aim ... fire!” he shouted as he drew his first pistol. Six muskets spat out a thin volley. The seventh had soaked priming and only squibbed with a dull phutt! But three French oarsmen had been hit as they stowed their oars and took up weapons from the bottom boards. The second French boat, the one with Choundas aboard, was landing ten yards farther up the beach. Lewrie drew back the lock of his pistol and took aim at a French musketman. He pulled the trigger and his weapon squibbed.

“Well, damme!” he spat, tossing the useless pistol aside and drawing its mate. By then, his target was kneeling out of side on the far side, his arm appearing as he rammed down a fresh load. He popped back up and Lewrie fired. This time, the weapon gave out a sharp bark and the Frenchman fell back with a shrill scream as the top of his head was blown off. “Fire at will!”

His second boat grounded, and the musketmen came running for shelter behind his cutter as four muskets fired. The French sailors were returning fire at a suicidal range.

“Cony, our crew. Steel!” Lewrie snapped. “Witty, give ‘em a volley and then join me!”

He drew his hanger as the last of the French weapons popped. “Boarders! Away boarders!”

He went round the bows of his boat and ran straight for them.

Pistols were going off. A Frenchman leaped up with a musket to confront him, but was shot down. Another spun about in his tracks and fell into the surf with a great splash. And then Lewrie was upon his first man. Two-handed, he slashed upward, forcing the man’s long musket barrel high, stamping forward with his left foot to get inside the reverse swing of that hard metal-plated butt as it came for his skull, only pummeling his shoulder. A quick downward slash that left him kneeling, and his foe was howling with pain, his belly laid open from left nipple to right hip.

A cutlass came probing from his dying foe’s right, tangled in the man’s flailing arms, and Lewrie drew back and thrust, taking this enemy in the stomach. Lewrie sprang erect, pushing himself forward to stay close, so Choundas’ musketeers could not take a shot at the melee and pick out Englishmen to kill. He was met by a flaxen blonde sailor who was trying to decide if he wanted to finish ramming home a charge in his musket or drop it and draw his cutlass. Lewrie towered over him and cut downward through shoulder and collar bone, bringing a huge gout of blood that shot into the air like a fountain.

There was a volley of musketry, and two of Lewrie’s hands went down as they clambered over the boat to get at the Frenchmen. From higher up the beach, there was an answering volley. Choundas had gotten his crew organized and they fired.

Able seaman Witty had taken his hands out to the right flank where they could get a clear shot.

“Pistols, Witty, then charge!” Lewrie howled. “Come on, men! At ‘em, Culverins!” Without looking to see how many hands remained he waved his sword and ran for the second French boat.

Choundas waved his men on, too, so no more shots could be fired at his own hands. Those who had fled from the first boat found nerve to turn and join the charge as their gallant captain led them.

They met in the shallows between the boats, up to their knees in water with the light surf surging up to their crotches, and their feet sinking into the swirling sands as the waves lapped in and drew back. Witty’s hands were coming in from the shore side, forcing the fight into deeper water. Pistols were popping, and a feather of spray from a near-miss leaped up between Lewrie and the young Frenchman he faced off with.

He’s a gentleman, Lewrie thought, seeing the fineness of the young man’s smallsword. They crossed blades, and Lewrie was sure of the man’s background. He had a good wrist and arm, and quick nerves, meeting a direct attack with a prime movement, going to a high guard over his head at fifth to fend Lewrie off, then swinging under his blade to second before launching a thrust of his own. Lewrie let his left hand go and counter-thrust at the young man’s lower sword arm, which was blocked by a marvelously well-executed circular parry to spiral Lewrie’s point wide to the left. But Lewrie drew back out of range, two-handing his hanger again, and cut over from left to right, dragging the officer’s blade back up to a high fifth position. As he did so, he waded forward to get inside the man’s guard, feinting a thrust. The young man’s reflexes, learned in an elegant sword-master’s salon, made him step back, and he tripped over his own feet, bouyed free of the sand momentarily by the surf. As he came back up, spouting and blowing, flinging stinging salt from bis eyes, Lewrie overhanded a thrust down like stabbing at some fish and speared the young man through the side of the neck. With a gasp of surprise, the man sank once more with bright arterial blood looping and trailing in the sea.

“Vous!” Choundas screamed, beating his breast and striding easily through the surf toward Alan. “Timonier a mois, I think ‘e slay ze wrong man in zat alley! En garde! I eat your brains and shit in your skull!”

Lewrie waded shoreward to meet him, to avoid the clumsy fate of the younger officer, sword held at third, waiting for Choundas’ first move. It was like an explosion!

Choundas had no grace, no elegance to his swordplay, coming from a rougher school. With howls he was upon Alan with his smallsword swinging like a cutlass. Blades rang, not in beat, but with the rasp of a farrier’s hammer, and the shock sang up Lewrie’s arm like a bell’s echo with each blow. Try as he would to thrust and counter-thrust, to slash with the point and cut over from defensive guards to direct or even indirect cuts, Choundas was always there, quick as lightning, all attack and very little defense of his own.

Lewrie was forced to give ground, half a step at a time, and the sea swirled higher up his body. From the ankles to his shins to his knees, then to mid-calf.

Captain Osmonde warned me I’d meet a truly dangerous man if I kept this up, Lewrie frowned, recalling the Marine officer aboard his first ship, the one who had taught him the true rough and tumble of steel, and guided him through his first adult duel on Antigua.

Choundas was pressing forward, both of them up to their waists in salt water and being buffeted by the incoming surf. Lewrie swung down and left to ward off a chest cut, felt a leg reach out to tangle with his to bring him down and stumbled right and away, into shallow water. Choundas’ sword came arcing up out of the water glistening in the dawn light with water droplets, and he met it high left, the beat of steel on steel forcing his own blade back to touch his left cheek!

A shoulder lunging forward, and Lewrie stumbled again, reaching back with his left hand to steady himself. Falling sideways into the surf, with Choundas splashing forward to tower over him, and a wicked razor-honed blade descending in a powerful two-handed overhead strike!

He got his hanger up to parry at fifth, got his left hand under his hip and swept out with his legs. Cut directly down and forward under the off-balanced Frenchman’s blade to clash with the hand-guard!

Choundas reeled back, almost going down himself. Lewrie came up soaking wet with his left leg under him and thrust with all of his might to leap like a porpoise with sword arm extended as rigid as a pike-staff. And missed!

His sword’s point went over Choundas’ left shoulder as the man ducked. Their bodies slammed together, and Choundas was going over backward, but he hefted Alan high enough over his shoulder to heave him a few feet away, to splash into water deep as his waist!

Drowning! Lewrie’s mind screamed as he tried to get his feet under him, tried to fight the rush and shove of another wave. Tried to find a breath of air for lungs thumped empty by Choundas’ body!

Lewrie lurched erect, coughing on the water he’d taken in, his eyes burning with salt and his hair streaming down his face.

Choundas! The final thrust! DEATH!

Arm across his chest to defend, sword point held low at prime, the blade pointing down as the thrust came for his throat. A sting on his left hip as the smallsword’s point bit him, and he was going over backward again, and could feel Choundas’ feet near to his own!

He kicked with his right foot as he landed on his left hand and knee. The heel of his shoe took Choundas in the nutmegs, making him hiss like a serpent! Choundas bent over with the sudden agony, and Lewrie came up with all he had left.

Bright steel and sterling silver came sweeping up from the sea bottom, under Choundas’ guard, under his upraised sword drawn back for a killing hack. Salt water streamed in a glittering arc as the hanger swept upward. Choundas flinched back to avoid it.

Lewrie could feel the shock in his wrist, up his arm, as his sword made contact, flicking point-low to point-high following the angle of the razor-sharp edge as he straightened his wrist and turned it. And Choundas was falling backward, his sword hand to his face!

A wave of surf surged high as Alan’s shoulders as he got to his knees following that stroke, and Choundas was tumbling about in the water, rolling and tumbling shoreward like a piece of flotsam.

“Don’t tell me I actually killed the bastard!” Lewrie gasped in surprise, retching saliva and salt water as he rose to his feet and shuffled onto the beach, sword ready at fourth slightly across his body should Choundas be shamming.

But there was red in the water, pink on the man’s shirt.

And when Choundas managed at last to crawl ashore on hands and knees, his sword forgotten, he was screaming. Screaming and writhing like a worm in hot ashes, moaning and whimpering pitifully between his screams and patting his face. Rolling over and over, twitching like a serpent.

“Strike, you bastard!” Lewrie hissed, prodding that body with the tip of his sword. Choundas kicked out with his left leg and hit Lewrie painfully on the kneecap, and without thought, Lewrie slashed down hard into the back of Choundas’ left calf, which raised another howl of pain and set him rolling and thrashing again.

“Sir!” someone was yelling. “Sir, we done fer ‘em, sir! They struck, sir!”

Lewrie stepped back from Choundas and looked up to see Cony coming toward him, limping from a sword-cut across the outside of his thigh, and blood matted in his sweaty blonde hair.

The beach was littered with dead and wounded, and the most of them French, Lewrie was happy to observe. The rest were sitting in a fearful knot, covered by his men’s weapons.

“You failed!” Lewrie crowed at Choundas. “You failed at everything you tried, you bloody murdering bastard! We beat you, understand me?”

“Alan, what’s all the shouting about?”

“Hey?” he said, swiveling to see Captain Chiswick coming down the beach, leading two spaced ranks of his troops. His hat was gone, his sword was slimed with blood and he winced with each step, but he was whole. “Bloody Hell, where did you spring from? Took you long enough.”

“Were you impatient for my arrival, dear Alan?” Chiswick said with a rasp of gunpowder in his throat. “Had to clear this damned eastern palisade first. Had a busy morning, have you?”

“Tolerably busy, yes,” Lewrie replied. Now that the fight was over, now that they were safe in the hands of the sepoys of the 19^th Native Infantry, he could allow his usual weakness to creep over him as he loosed the awful tension of mortal combat. A moment later and it was all he could do to stand.

“Much hurt?” Chiswick inquired anxiously after wiping his sword clean and sheathing it to come to his side.

“Pinked in the hip,” Lewrie allowed, sinking down on his haunches to let Cony undo his breeches and take a look at it.

“Not deep, sir,” Cony assured him as he laved it in the sailor’s universal nostrum, fresh seawater. “T’ain’t bleedin’ much, neither, so ‘e didn’t get ya nowhere vital. Make ya stiff fer awhiles, sir. Could I ‘ave yer breeches, sir, I could bind it Er if ya got a clean handkerchief in yer pocket, sir, I could fother a bandage over’n it fer now.”

“The bandage, Cony,” Lewrie said with a shaky laugh. “Damned if I want to go back aboard bare-arsed.”

Chiswick dug into his tailcoat pocket and offered a small silver flask, which Alan drank from gratefully. “Urn, a lovely brandy you have there, Burge. I was half-expecting some of that corn whiskey I remember from Yorktown. Are those bloody pirates beaten yet?”

“Slaughtered like rabbits,” Chiswick assured him with a harsh laugh, which made Lewrie look up at his face. There was something odd about Chiswick now. Some new-found brutality he hadn’t had when they’d put him ashore the night before.

“And how did your regiment fare?”

“Main well,” Chiswick replied, shrugging and taking a sip of brandy himself. “I got my light company in a hellish predicament. Shot my bolt a bit too soon and had to melee with the bayonet. But the boat-guns cleared the way for us, and your father sent reinforcements to our flank. We lost about fifty dead and wounded, it looks like. Fourteen of them from my company, I’m sad to say.”

“Sorry to hear that.”

“Aye, they were damned good lads,” Chiswick added, nodding and getting to his feet. They could hear the pipes skirling as the regiment took the village at last, and the guns fell silent. They could also hear the braying of Lt. Col. Sir Hugo St. George Willoughby as he issued some new command and laughed at something that amused him.

“Seems I’m still blessed with a father,” Lewrie smirked.

“Here, what’s the matter with this bugger?” Chiswick demanded, toeing Choundas in the ribs, which brought on another bout of howls. “Hmm, hamstrung neat as any Indian’d do a straying slave. He’ll be a ‘Mister Hop-kins’ from now on, if I’m any judge. Don’t take on so, you bloody bastard. You’ll hang before it heals!”

Chiswick used his foot to roll Choundas over.

“My word!” Chiswick gulped.

“Kill me!” Choundas pleaded in a harsh whisper. “Kill me!”

“Our captum done fer ‘em, sir,” one of the sailors boasted.

Choundas had taken the hanger’s edge across his lips, and the hard steel had knocked out several teeth—knocked them out, or cut them out, for the upper gums were laid open on the right jaw. The right cheek was pared back to show the chipped bone beneath, and the nose was hanging free on the right side. Choundas’ right eye teared blood from the slice that had chopped it in half like a grape. And a ragged patch of eyebrow and forehead hung open, matted and gory with clotted blood and sand.

“Well ain’t you the pretty young buck, now, Captain Beau-Nasty?” Chiswick drawled, once he had gotten over his shock. “I say, Alan, you do bloody nice carving when you’ve a mind. Remind me to have you for supper next time we have roast beef!”

“Kill me!” Choundas croaked. “Messieurs, je implore...!” Chiswick drew a pistol and checked the priming. “No!” Lewrie shouted, reaching up to put a hand on Chiswick’s wrist. “Leave him the way he is. Let him live with it.”

“Yes, I suppose Mister Twigg’d prefer a hanging at that,” Burgess sighed, putting the pistol back into his waistband.

“I think he’d prefer M’seur Choundas go back to France as he is,” Lewrie replied. “As a warning. An example of failure. Of what the next bastard’ll get should they dare cross our hawse in future!”

“Well,” Chiswick nodded, seeing the wry sense to it, “s’pose he could always do himself in later.”

“My dear Burgess,” Lewrie chuckled, “the way this poor wretch’s luck is going, he’d probably miss with a pistol to his skull! Failure has a way of staying with you, don’t ye know.” There was a dull boom that sounded across the harbor, making them turn to look seaward. A cloud of smoke wreathed Culverin as she sat higher and dryer as the tide ran out. But coming into the bay was a frigate.

“Almighty God!” Lewrie snapped, getting to his feet and doing up his breeches. “Cony, get the hands back to the boats. We have to defend our ship!”

“Flag, sir,” Cony said instead. “T’ain’t Frogs, sir.” “What are they?” Chiswick asked.

“Well, Goddamn, I do believe it’s a Spanish ship of war!” Alan blurted as the white-and-gold flag curled out lazily.

“Bet they’re going to be mightily displeased with us,” Chiswick prophesied. “Poaching in their private preserve and all.”

“Back to the ship, anyway. Burge, I trust I’ll see you later. After Captain Ayscough and Mister Twigg talk their way out of this.”

“Think you they can, Alan?”

“Burgess, Twigg is half a politician,” Lewrie replied, smiling. “He can talk his way out of anything!”