Chapter 8

By God, what a fearsome sight, Lewrie thought, pacing his tiny quarterdeck as the Mindanao pirates from the Illana Lagoon came into the harbor. No matter the surprises they’d discover once they got in range, no matter the number of artillery pieces ready to lash every inch of the bay, or the troops waiting with loaded muskets and fixed bayonets to receive them, they were a terrifying spectacle.

Eighteen large ocean-going praos, crammed with warriors, all experts with their wicked curved swords and krees knives, with artillery and muskets. Warriors used to raiding cruises that the unfortunate Mr. Wythy said lasted up to three years. No shore in all of Asia was safe from their depredations, no native troops could stand against them if such troops stood between them and plunder.

“Cheer ‘em, boys!” Lewrie shouted with a grin plastered on his phyz. “They’re your bloody allies, damn their black souls! They’re going to help you take ships and make you rich!”

“Christ a’mighty,” Hoolahan whispered, crossing himself as he stood by his carronade. “But they’s a passel o’ the fuckers, sor.”

“Not a one of ‘em half the man you are, Hoolahan,” Lewrie assured him with a clap on the shoulder as he paced along down from the quarterdeck to the waist of the ship where the artillery waited, ready to fire when the word was given. “Got your swivel charges ready for ‘em, Spears?”

“Oh, aye, sir!”

“Good lad. Now wave your hat and cheer ‘em!”

The blood-red praos breasted easily over the harbor bar through the disturbed breaker-water and spread out, furling their single sails at long last after a long passage. They might have stopped off on the coast of Borneo, dangerous as that was even for them among the headhunters, and done the last three hundred miles to Spratly. Most of the men in the boats stood and waved back, brandishing swords, muskets or older matchlocks like Hindoo jezails, whooping fit to bust. They had livestock with them, crammed in any-old-how. And slaves to do the rowing at the long paddles. Yes, they must have replenished on Borneo, Alan decided, to have that much food aboard.

And it appeared they’d come prepared for a long stay. Every prao was piled high below her rowing benches with bamboo logs and palm leaves with which to make huts.

Lewrie made his way back to the quarterdeck, watching the pirate fleet advance in a ragged band, making for the beach. Steering a course for Culverin, and for Lady Charlotte. Lady Charlotte wore the French merchant flag on her stern, and her spanker gaff had been given a stuns’l boom lashed to its inside end, to make it look like the older lateen that the pirates would expect to see on Sicard’s La Malouine. Culverin, too, flew an extemporized French ensign painted on one of Lewrie’s bed sheets.

“Oh, Christ, don’t beach your damned ship there!” Hogue prayed as three praos angled for the inviting strand on the western peninsula. There were troops there, hidden in the rocks at the crest, with some light artillery to support them. Unlike newer naval guns, those were fired with powder-filled goose quills or tin ignition tubes to ignite the powder charges in the barrels, and that required a burning length of slow-match to touch the quills or tubes off. Slow-matches which were now lit and smouldering, giving off tiny trails of smoke. If a pirate spotted that before the ambush could be sprung, they’d have a battle-royal on their hands. And the troops could not hope for total cover in the rocks. Let someone walk up the beach a few yards, and the game would be over!

There were thousands of the buggers, just as he had surmised, and even with modern weaponry, Sir Hugo’s troops could be overwhelmed. The two ships could be swamped with fanatically enraged pirates with no hope of aid from shore.

“Come on, you buggers!” Lewrie muttered. “Go on and beach your silly arses by the fort, where the goodies are waiting!” The plan was to wait, wait until most of the pirates had beached or anchored their boats at the fort. Canvas-covered piles of what looked to be trade goods sat out in the open, delectably available. Once between Lady Charlotte and Culve-rin’s guns, and the fire-power available ashore, the trap would be sprung. Sir Hugo had enough men to cover the north shore around the fort, and part of the western headland, only able to spare a half-company to reinforce the heavy battery on the point. If the pirates tumbled to it earlier, it would be a near thing as to who would get the worst of it.

Praos drifted by to bow and stern, some coming very close in as they passed. It was much like being in the middle of a pack of hungry sharks.

“I think this bastard wants t’ come aboard, sir!” Murray said, pointing to one prao that was rounding up below the entry port. “Do we let ‘em, sir?”

“Christ!” Lewrie hissed. Hard as the battle to take the island had been on his nerves, it couldn’t hold a candle to this. There was a person of some rank among the pirate band standing on the rails of his boat, waving and shouting, demanding entry. “Ashore!” Lewrie said, pointing in that direction. “Ashore, hey? You ... go ... there! No come here!” He was all but wiggling his bottom, trying to get the gist of his message across. One pirate’s eyes over the bulwarks to see loaded cannon and crews at the ready, and they’d swarm Culverin like a hive of disturbed bees!

“He don’t sound too happy about it, sir,” Murray warned. The pirate, clad in a cloth-of-gold turban, green silk skirt, jewels and weapons, was gesticulating and swearing to beat the band, upset that his will was being defied, that his august personage was being waved off instead of catered to.

“Oh, God, look sir!” Hogue yelped.

Those three praos had beached themselves on the western shore and their crews were disembarking, stretching and bending to loosen muscles kept taut at sea, and were spreading out in a dense pack over the peninsula’s beach.

“Stand by with those grenadoes, Mister Hogue,” Lewrie warned. “Well, if you want to come up, who am I to stop you, you little bastard?” he relented, waving and bowing for the pirate to scamper up. “All hands, stand ready! Ready to hoist the proper colors!”

The pirate took on a smug look, having gotten his way with the infidels at last, and began to step up to the main-mast chains. The rail of the prao was not so far below Culverin’s bulwarks.

“Most of ‘em past us?” Lewrie asked, going to the starboard gangway to greet his unwelcome visitor.

“About half, looks like, sir,” Hogue shuddered, like to faint with anxiety. “Only ‘bout half, so far.”

“Best we’ll do, then,” Lewrie sighed, his own nerves twittering like a dropped harpsichord. He stood and waited for his visitor, a smile on his face. The pirate stepped up on the bulwarks and frowned when he saw what waited him. He opened his mouth to yell.

Lewrie drew his hanger and lunged. He put the point in just around the navel and sank an unhealthy foot of steel into the man’s belly. Before he even had time to shout or draw breath, he was over the side, tumbling back into the water between the ships!

“Grenadoes!” Lewrie screamed. “Open your ports and open fire! Get English colors aloft!”

The signal for the opening of the battle. Even as the pirates were beginning to realize their captain was dead and starting to howl with rage, empty wine bottles went over the side, with wicks burning.

Some were filled with whale oil, some with gunpowder and cut up scrap-iron bits. When they shattered, they burst into flames among the densely packed pirates, among their galley-slaves at the rowing benches. Those that did not shatter, those wrapped about with cloth to protect them, exploded as their fuses burned out and reached the powder. They caused more panic than casualties, but it didn’t do the pirates’ nerves any good.

And then the ports were open, and the carronades were firing. The light two-pounder swivel guns were spewing lethal loads of canister or grape-shot down into the boats closest alongside, scything howling pirates down in mid-cry. Praos farther off rocked and came apart at the touch of solid shot, spilling their crews into the water.

Once the prao alongside was fended off and allowed to drift shoreward, on fire and already sinking, Lewrie ran back to the after deck where Cony waited with his personal weapons. He took the time to see Lady Charlotte blazing away with her remaining heavier long-barreled twelve-pounders, ringed with boats. The shore beyond her was almost lost in the crackle of musketry and the clouds of gunpowder produced by the infantrymen, and the firing of the light artillery. There was a blast of smoke high up the hill, as the first of the hidden battery up there fired, and a great feather of spray sprang into being next to a pirate boat farther off.

Lewrie went to the rail with the Ferguson rifle he had obtained at Yorktown and began picking off those pirates who seemed to be leading in the nearest boats. Cony was himself a fair shot as well, and he used a .65 caliber fusil to snipe at helmsmen and gunners.

“Aft!” Lewrie shouted. “Hands aft! Get a swivel-gun here!”

There was a prao out there, not two hundred yards off, that was being turned with its oarsmen, aiming its two fo’c’sle-mounted guns at Culverin’s unprotected stern!

Hands came running, bearing the weight of one of the portable swivels, dropping the long spike on the base of its mount into one of the holes along the taffrail as Lewrie fired again. Bullets sang in the air as pirates let fly with muskets at impossible ranges, only a few being able to reach him.

Lewrie sat down on the flag lockers to one side of the tiller-head, braced himself on the railing and aimed for the foredeck of the prao. He pulled the fire-lock of the Ferguson back to full cock and bent to sight on one of the gunners. Holding a little high for drop at that range, he let his breath out and pulled the trigger. There was a respectable bang as the piece discharged, a whoosh of burned powder in his face from the pan.

But he had struck his man! At nearly two hundred yards. There were only two weapons in the world that could fire that far: the American Kentucky rifle, and the Ferguson. And the Ferguson was a proper military piece. He cranked the lever under the stock one turn, dropping the screw-breech out of the way, pulled the dog’s-jaws back to half-cock and bit the end off a cartouche, priming the pan with some of the powder inside. Rammed the rest into the rear of the rifle’s breech, screwed the breech shut with one turn of the lever, full-cocked the weapon once more and aimed.

Another shot, and another pirate down with a ball through his back! And then another, and another, and the pirates began to shrink away from their guns. No one could kill at that range that quickly!

The swivel-gun went off. Spears had aimed just as carefully, and put a solid two-pound shot into the pirates’ forecastle, where it shattered and crazed the air with savage shards of itself, flinging pirates right and left. That was one vessel that had lost interest in trying to rake Culverin up the stem.

“Make it hot for ‘em, Spears,” Lewrie ordered, getting to his feet.

“Bow, sir!” Hogue was shouting and waving for Lewrie to join him. And off Lewrie went, racing forward up the narrow path between the guns on the main deck, to the fo’c’sle to face another hazard. Here, he found a prao almost under their jib-boom, with a horde of raving pirates ready to board.

“Grenadoes here! Swivel-gun with canister!” Lewrie snapped, taking a deep breath to steady his aim. He loosed a shot from his Ferguson, splattering the leader’s brains on his minions, then dropped the rifle and pulled his pistols. A shot from the right weapon, then a shot from the left, while Cony lit fuses atop wine bottles and got them ready to hurl.

“For God’s sake, Cony, get rid of those damned things!”

“Don’t wan’ these buggers a’throwin’ ‘em back, sir!” his man replied, tossing one to soar end-over-end, quickly followed by a second. Two explosions and the whining of broken glass, bent nails and musket balls, quickly followed by wails of alarm. Then Cony was up and throwing the flammable variety, which he had purposely lit and set aside so they would be going nicely when he needed them. These burst with softer whoomps as they shattered and the whale oil splashed on the boat and its fell crew and took light, turning the wails into impassioned screams.

The swivel-gun lit off, scattering death almost within touching distance, and pirates melted away from their own forecastle to shrink back amidships. Muskets banged, and the swivel-gun man by Lewrie’s side screamed as he was flung backward as if hammered with a heavy sledge.

Lewrie bent to pick up the dropped canister bag. He tilted the long barrel straight up, dropped it down without taking time to ram it firmly home and stuck the sharp end of a linstock into the vent to puncture the powder charge in its flannel sleeve. He had to bend to the deck once more to retrieve the fallen sailor’s goose-quills and slow-match. More shots sounded, and musket balls flailed the air over his head, thudding into the fore part of Culverin’& bows like hammer blows.

Cony was still heaving away with grenadoes, ducking and weaving through a sleet-storm of lead. More sailors were coming forward to return fire with their Brown Bess muskets.

Lewrie blew on the slow-match, stood up behind the swivel-gun and aimed at the thickest part of the throng. He touched off the quill and the world was blotted out for a second or two by the dense blast of powder smoke. When it cleared, there were no more pirates on their feet anywhere aboard the prao except a few stunned survivors in the sternposts, who were cut down with musket fire even as they stood there stupefied.

“Cony, do you take charge of the fo’c’sle and keep ‘em off us!” Lewrie shouted in his ear before gathering up his rifle, dropped pistols, and moving back amidships to reload where it wasn’t so dangerous.

Carronades to either beam were firing every few seconds. The swivels along either bulwark were blasting away, as were the ones aft. Lady Charlotte, he could see, had cleared the waters around her with her high-velocity guns, and Lewrie could spot the half-sunken wrecks of at least three praos. No prao would venture within range of his own carronades, for once hit, they were shattered like tea cups by the heavy shot. Cul-verin’s guns had done for three more of them already.

Lewrie regained the quarterdeck, puffing and blowing to get his wind back, and to get a sense of the battle from the higher vantage point.

The battery on the point was blasting away steadily, one gun at a time of the three, firing on pirate boats that were making their way for the harbor entrance. The ambush had been badly sprung before every victim was in the killing zone. At least ten boats were off on their way to escape.

Those three that had landed on the peninsula were still there, their crews just falling back in disorder from a charge against the troops on the crest. He could see red-coated soldiery rising from the rocks and beginning to advance in two lines with their bayonets winking in the sun. And all the while, their light guns were spraying canister and grape-shot into the pirate band.

Ashore by the main encampment, it was impossible to tell what was going on for all the smoke, but he thought he could espy at least four praos grounded on the beach, one of them well alight and pouring out greasy black smoke. There were three more boats that had sailed for the far eastern headland, and were mucking about in a quandary of doubt: flee for the harbor entrance against those guns on the point, rejoin the fight ashore or tackle the ships again?

A glowing ember dashed from the rising pillar of smoke ashore, soared in a sinking arc and struck one of the praos, making her shake like a kicked kitten. Within half a minute, the boat was aflame and her crew abandoning her! If it accomplished nothing else this day, his father’s heated-shot battery had proved its worth!

“There, sir!” Hogue shouted as some praos came reeling out of the smoke from the shore, bent on escape.

“Larboard battery, load and stand by!” Lewrie shouted through his brass speaking-trumpet. “We clear aft, Spears?”

“Aye, sir, fer now!” the man shouted back as he reloaded the now-hot swivel-gun for another shot.

“Clear forward, Cony?” he asked.

“Fairly well, sir!” Cony said with a fierce smile.

“Bloody hell, what does that mean?” Lewrie fumed.

Whatever it had meant, it would have to do, for there were now six praos headed their way, rowing madly to get out of the gun-arcs of Lady Charlotte’s twelve-pounders. Between Culverin’s anchorage and shore there was a half-mile of water. With careful aim and gun-laying, Lewrie could expect his carronades to scour only half that distance, for a carronade was a very low-velocity gun for all its hitting power. The “Smashers” were close-in weapons.

“Here they come!” Hogue yelled. “Stand ready, gun-captains! Aim for the two lead boats! One and two, take the one on the right! Three, four and five, take the one on the left!”

Good for Hogue, Lewrie thought! A sensible young man who could see that the lead boat to their right was poorly manned and not much of a threat, while the one to the left had so far missed out on what horrors they were dealing out this day. Lewrie traded his Ferguson rifle for his telescope and saw that the boat on the left had what looked to be eight- or nine-pounders on its foredeck, and the pirates were swarming over those guns, readying them for firing.

“Fer what we’re about t’ receive, may the good Lord make us joyful,” Murray sighed as the prao got her guns into action. A ball hit Culverin low on her larboard side, making her shudder heavily, while the second struck the bulwarks between number 4 and number 5 larboard guns and turned the wood into a burst of flickering teak splinters, cutting down the gun crews and raising a great howling among his crew.

“Fire!” Hogue shouted once the praos were within their limited range. Culverin lurched sideways as the guns lit off. The first boat on the right almost leaped out of the water as she was struck, mast and large, leaf-bladed paddles flying in all directions, along with some of her hull. Arabian building techniques with rope and butt-joined board could not take such punishment, and she dropped back into the sea with a great splash as she came apart like an artichoke, spilling her crew into the water.

The second boat to the left had her foredeck cleared by a hit, guns and men flying as the heavy twenty-four-pounder ball shattered amongst the barrels. Her mast came down and some powder cartridge bags went off with a great burst of dirty yellow smoke and flame. She came to a dead stop and began to sag down off the wind toward the western shore, right into Lady Charlotte’s guns.

“Well, damn them,” Lewrie spat. The other four praos were now bearing off under human power, their paddles or oars slashing the sea as they fled east, out of range of the car-ronades that had smashed up their leaders’ boats like a giant’s fist.

Lewrie turned to look seaward once more. The battery on the point had sunk one prao, but it looked like at least four would get out through the channel. And the two surviving pirate boats to the east were working their way along the line of the breakers in shallow water beyond the reach of even the high battery’s guns. Which was where the four that had challenged him were going.

“Mister Murray?”

“Sir?”

“They’re going to get away from us if we sit here,” Lewrie said, feeling grim about it and more than willing, if given any kind of excuse, to let them do so. But it was his duty. “Fix buoys to the anchor cables and prepare to let slip. We’ll pursue them.”

“Aye, sir,” Murray said with a sharp intake of breath.

“Mister Hogue! Secure your guns for a while. We shall hoist sail, let slip the cables and get underway.”

* * * *

“Thank God for a simple rig,” Lewrie said scant minutes later. It would have taken a square-rigger half an hour to hoist sail, but little Culverin could simply hoist her jibs and gaff-sails, haul in on the sheets to angle those sails to the wind at the proper angle and she was moving ahead and under control. It made him wonder if a way could be found to rig a larger warship so simply, even if it took four masts instead of three. A fore-and-aft rigged ship with a deep, full-run keel for a good grip on the water so she could go to windward like a witch, with no courses . . . well, maybe a forecourse to lift the bows, and nothing higher-mounted than large tops’Is. Armed with carronades for the most part, with a few long-ranged muzzle-loaders amidships for ...

“Course, sir?”

“The mind can do the oddest things at the worst moments,” Lewrie murmured, laughing at himself. He might not be alive half an hour from now if he took Culverin into that desperate pack of bloody-handed murderers now intent on escape, and even more dangerous than before. And here he was speculating on naval architecture!

“Close-hauled on the larboard tack for the harbor,” Lewrie said. “We’ll have to tack east or end up running aground, but that’ll give us a chance to fire into those boats running along the reef line.”

Culverin could point high, but the wind was solidly out of the sou’east, and the best she could do was a little west of due south to approach the harbor entrance on a long board. Leadsmen swung chains to sound the depth ahead of her as she clawed her way seaward.

“And a half, two!”

“Helm alee! Off fores’l sheets!”

Culverin tacked across the eye of the wind, onto a short board back to a heading of about 1 point, about 11 degrees, north of east. But she had gotten close enough to threaten those fleeing praos along the reef line inside the breakers.

“Ready, sir!” Hogue called to him. “I make it about two cables.”

“Try your eye, Mister Hogue!” Lewrie nodded. “Blaze away!”

The guns on the starboard side came reeling inboard one at a time. The heavy balls, fired at maximum elevation and laid so close to the edge of the port-sills they almost singed the wood, failed to hit. They landed short, raising great feathery plumes of water into the air. But the praos checked their frantic pace and paid off the breaker line, stymied by fear.

“Hands to the sheets! Ready to come about? Helm alee!” Alan commanded. He did not want to get too far to the east inside their harbor, for that would put him too close to the reefs to be able to tack to windward to reverse course. To wear ship downwind would lose him every inch of ground he had gained south for the entrance channel.

“Now we shall try our luck against yonder bastards.”

“Jesus!” Murray yelped, ducking into a half-crouch as a solid shot moaned overhead. “Where’d they get such heavy iron, sir?”

“That was our battery on the hillside above the fort, Murray,” Lewrie commented, standing erect from his own crouch. “I pray those gunners know what they’re about with that heated shot.”

“Didn’t miss our masts by a boat-length, sir,” Murray carped as Culverin sailed right through the ring-shaped splash of the spent shot half a minute later. “An’ they haven’t got the range for very much longer. Cain’t we signal ‘em t’ stop, sir?” “Ah ... uhm, I’m afraid that’s one signal we didn’t discuss, Murray,” Lewrie confessed, suffering another qualm at all he had not considered once again, and feeling the lack of prior planning acutely. “We shall have to trust to their good judgment.”

“Good judgment from soldiers!” Murray gaped with a sour look.

“Ready the larboard battery, Mister Hogue! Fire as you bear!”

“And a half three!” the leadsman chanted.

“As you bear ... fire!” Hogue screamed, his voice cracking.

Now the larboard guns lurched back on their recoil slides and a harsh, stinging cloud of powder blossomed forth, checked at the bulwarks by the winds and wafted back over them, blanking out the world for a minute. When the smoke cleared, the hands cheered at the sight of a pirate boat that was rocking keel-up about two hundred yards away, with survivors struggling and wailing about her.

“And a half, two!”

“Ready to come about!” Lewrie called. “Helm’s alee!”

One more close-hauled short board on the starboard tack to the east, perhaps the last they could make as they neared the harbor entrance and the line of breakers. The next larboard tack would take them through the main channel and out to sea. Hogue let loose with a broadside from the starboard guns, once more hitting nothing, but the pirates trapped in the lagoon were too rattled to notice, and shied off again.

Back on the larboard tack. Breakers growling and fuming. The battery on the point firing at a boat ahead of them and straddling it with two shot-splashes, hitting it amidships with the third ball and shattering it so quickly that it jack-knifed like a paper boat, broke in two and went under.

“Two more hands to the tiller, Murray!” Lewrie snapped. “Stand by to pinch her up as we cross the bar.”

There was more depth in the channel this time of day as tidal flooding rushed into the harbor, softening the shock. But Culverin could still broach on that deceptively calm-looking swell if she hit it wrong.

Culverin rose, soaring up on the swell, with a line of spume racing down past her sides, her bow cocking up for the skies.

“Helm down!” Lewrie shouted. “Luff up square to the wave!”

Four men threw their sinewy strength to the tiller to keep it from lashing to either side or throwing them overboard. Culverin lay on the tip of the swell, sails luffing and thundering, then began to fall as the wave left her behind, bow dipping until it looked as if she’d bury her bowsprit into the trough and keep on sliding down into the depths. She then began to gather speed after being checked in her slide.

“Helm up and give us way, close-hauled!”

It was like rowing a boat across the surf line without going arse-over-tit or being rolled like a stranded whale. Culverin paid off and her sails filled with wind as a second swell gathered her up out of the trough where they could find air, thundering and flapping, then taking shape once more with a series of loud boomings.

“Hold her no more than a point west of south, quartermaster!” Lewrie turned to say. Culverin soared upward once more, almost forcing him to his knees in her hurry to ascend to heaven, but she was halfway out of the wicked harbor entrance now. Even with her hellish tendency to go to leeward like a wood-chip, they would clear the western shoals under the point if they could only make this course good. To have to tack while fighting those entrance bar swells would be disastrous!

“Two fathom!” the starboard leadsman howled.

“Hold her!” Lewrie growled. “Pinch her up as you’re able, but for God’s sake, hold her head!”

“And a half, two!”

The point was astern, the shoals left behind in her wake. He breathed out as the leadsman found “three fathom” then “four fathom.” The broken reef wall would be no threat, not on a flooding tide that would put six fathoms over those tumbled ruins. They were beyond the threatening swells, too, out on the open sea.

“Damn fine, damn my eyes if it wasn’t!” Lewrie said to his shaky helmsmen as they eased their death-grips on the tiller bar.

“Thankee, sir, thankee right kindly,” they mumbled, working on their cuds again in mouths gone dry as desert sand.

“Now let’s get after our pirate friends!” Lewrie exclaimed, beaming. “Mister Murray, they seem to be trending east, running for home and mother.”

“Aye, sir. Want t’ tack an’ pursue ‘em now, sir?”

“Wait until we’re safely over this broken reef first, then lay her on the starboard tack,” Lewrie replied. “Break out the water-butts for anyone as thirsty as I feel for now. Gun crews stand easy.”

“Aye, sir.”

“Sail ho!” the lookout called.

“Where away!”

“Due south, sir!” the man replied. “Four points off the larboard beam! Full-rigged ship, sir!”

“Damme, d’you think Mister Choate finally got here, sir?” Murray asked. “Now between us, we’ll put paid t’ these motherless buggers!”

Lewrie took up his telescope and went up the mizzen shrouds to almost the top platform. He raised it to his eyes once he had an arm and leg threaded through the ratlines and stays to keep himself from falling, and took a look for himself.

Three masts, pale tan sails, coming on for the island from the sou’west with the wind large on her starboard quarter. Already almost hull up. Good lines. Frigate-built, he thought. Ayscough chose well.

A large swell over the broken reef wall lifted Culverin higher for about half a minute. Far off, another swell raised the stranger as well. Lewrie could espy a pale ochre hull with what looked to be a wide white gunwale stripe.

“Poisson D’Or!” he cursed. “Choundas!”

Why did he have to arrive now, of all times? Huge clouds of gunpowder hung over Spratly Island. Artillery still fired on those praos yet trapped in harbor or trying to run the gauntlet to sea.

To see a strange ship giving chase to a pack of pirates fleeing to the east would be the final straw. They could not lure Poisson D’Or into harbor. Choundas would be wise to the game, and sail off for parts unknown, as sure as Fate!

“Goddamn your bloody luck, you rotten shit!” Lewrie almost wept with frustration. Here he’d just won two battles in a fortnight, done away with pirates by the battalions, had sunk Frogs left, right and center, and all for nothing!

What to do now, he pondered. One course of action was to go back to seal the entrance to the harbor, so most of the pirates could end up slaughtered. Or, he could pursue the eight who were getting away. If he did continue the chase, he might be able to lure Choundas into action, but the man had long-ranged guns to his short-ranged carronades. Stout as Culverin was, she’d be pounded to bits while he would be lucky to inflict even minor damage to Choundas.

He raised his telescope again to peer at his foe. Poisson D’Or altered shape. She was turning north, putting all her masts in line, heading somewhere to the east of Spratly Island. To interpose between Culverin and Choundas’ fleeing allies.

“Bastard!” Lewrie growled. For little danger, Choundas would appear to have saved that terrified remnant, driven off an English ship and restored his luster among the Mindanao pirates. And, he would end up escaping, after all, to some port where they had no hope of finding him. “Bastard!”