The King's Privateer Read online

  It was on the lower gun deck, though, that Telesto hid her heaviest punch. Roughly amidships, behind what seemed to be unused gunports that had been expanded in size for ventilation in harbor or ease of cargo-handling, she had a battery of thirty two-pounder carronades. These were light, short-barreled guns that could be handled by only two men per gun. They threw a massive six-and-two-thirds-inch shot, not for much over two cables, or thirteen hundred feet, but when that solid shot hit at lower velocity than the conventional guns above them on the upper deck, they ravaged whatever they struck. They were mounted on slides, with a greased block of elm between two wooden rails, with an iron roller to handle the lighter recoil, and they could pivot on a large iron wheel much farther forward or aft than a gun on a wheeled truck, and had a much higher rate of fire than anything but a light swivel gun.

  As junior officer, that was Alan’s station; the carronades were his charge. He thundered down to the lower gun deck, passed down the narrow passageway between bales and crates of cargo, into the secret section amidships that held his battery. Four guns to each side.

  “Tompions out,” he ordered, tossing his hat to one side. “About ten native pirate ships. Stand ready to engage on either beam. Let’s keep the gunports shut until they’re close enough in to scare the bejeesus out of ’em.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  “Charge your guns!” Serge bags of mealed gunpowder came up from the magazine on the orlop and were handed over by the powder-monkeys to the gun-captains, who inspected them for dampness, weight and rips or tears. Then they were handed off to the loader, who inserted them into the short, wide-mouthed barrels. The guns had been run back to the last extent of their recoil slides so a flexible rope rammer with a wooden head could push the charges down to the base of the gun with a hard shove.

  “Shot your guns!” Both men heaved up solid iron balls from the shot garlands made of arm-thick hoops of discarded anchor cable.

  With a little elevation screwed in already, the balls rolled down to thump against the powder bags easily, requiring a lighter shove with the rammers to seat them firm. To cut down on too much of the charge escaping past the windage difference of ball and muzzle, thick hairy patches of raveled rope were soaked in the fire-buckets and rammed down atop the balls.

  “Prime your guns.”

  Cartridges were pricked with the sharp end of a linstock. A measure of powder from a flask hanging from around the gun-captain’s neck was dribbled into the touch-holes and pans of the flintlock mechanisms, now pulled back to half-cock. The frizzens over the pans were shut.

  “Stand easy,” Lewrie ordered. He wished they could open the ports. If the deck had been a roasting pan, then below decks was an oven, and the aroma of crate after crate of opium, balls of it as big as a man’s head, was making him a trifle dizzy. The hatchway over his head was rigged with a grating, that grating covered with a tarred sheet of sailcloth, so there was no hope for any air.

  The gun crews swayed to the easy motion of the ship, sweat running down their bodies in buckets. Shirts cast off, loose-legged slop-trousers rolled up to the knee, legs and feet bare, with only their kerchiefs above the waist, now tied ’round their heads to save their hearing once the guns began to sing.

  “Stand by, the forrud chase guns!” a voice bellowed. And above the sound of the ship as she worked and groaned, they could hear drumming. Not the jerky, uplifting drumming of the ship’s bandsmen, but a steady, monotonous boom-boom, boom-boom.

  “Reckon ’at’ll be th’ slave-drivers, sir,” the senior quarter-gunner speculated as he shifted a large cud of tobacco in his mouth. “Keep t’ pace fer th’ oars.”

  “Saints praysairve us!” an Irish loader whispered, crossing himself, and fingering a tiny silver crucifix ’round his neck.

  “And good artillery preserve us, Hoolahan,” Alan said with a brief grin. “Good artillery and sharp-eyed gunners.”

  A twelve-pounder barked from the starboard battery, then the lower gun deck drummed and echoed as the upper deck ports were drawn up and out of the way, and ten eighteen-pounders rumbled across the oak decks on their little wheels and ungreased axles loud as a cattle stampede. Alan crossed to the starboard side to peer out a slit-drain in one of the gunports. “About eight cables off now, half a dozen of them. I can see …”

  He was interrupted by the blast of the forward-most eighteen-pounder as it lit off, followed in stately, controlled progression by the rest of the starboard battery. Telesto groaned and rocked, gun-carriages squealed as they ran in to the limit of the breeching ropes with the recoil. “Oh, good shooting! The leader’s been hit hard. Dismasted. Lot of oars smashed, too.”

  As he watched, a gun in the bow of the prao returned fire, a large brass gun overly adorned with the scales, mouth and dorsal fin of a dragon. For such a large burst of smoke, the shot fell short, throwing up a huge gout of water in a tall feather of spray.

  “Stone shot, sir,” the quarter-gunner said. “Bad powder.”

  “Wind’s dying,” Alan whispered, and shared a worried look with the man. The ocean was flatter, hardly ruffled by wind, heaving slow and steady, almost glassy-calm farther off toward the horizon. “Do you know how to whistle, Owen?”

  “I’ll get on it directly, Mister Lewrie, sir.”

  Telesto sagged a little, heaved and rolled more gently, a sure sign that the wind was failing them, and that they would be becalmed at the worst moment in the middle of a fleet of pirate vessels that could row circles around them. It was an ancient belief that whistling aboard ship brought more wind than any seaman could handle. At that moment, Alan would have settled for a Good Hope gale.

  The hatch grating over their heads was drawn back and cast aside, and Hogue, the master’s mate, stuck his head down to yell at them. “Mister Lewrie, you’re to try your eye once they’re in your range. Both sides at once, if you please, sir!”

  “Undo the lashings on the gunports and be ready to raise them.” Gunfire roared out again, this time from the larboard battery. And they could hear other guns off in the distance. Pirates’ guns. Telesto rocked a little more energetically as a heavy stone-shot struck her somewhere aft. There were some warbling sounds as hand-hewn shot crossed over her decks from either beam. But then the starboard battery crashed out its defiance once more, and men above them gave a great cheer. Alan put his eye to the vent-hole of the gunport and saw that one of the praos had been struck in the best English manner, ’twixt wind and water, and had opened up to the sea like a shattered tea cup!

  “We’ve one to starboard, closing us bows-on, about three cables off!” Alan shouted. “Open the ports! Run out your guns! Take aim! Cock your locks!”

  This prao was about seventy or eighty feet long, low and rakish. There was no deck, just a platform in the stern for the helmsman and captain, and a fo’c’sle deck forward for two guns. Between there was a walkway that ran the full length of the boat, like an etching of an ancient Roman war-galley. It bristled with flat-faced little men in turbans and printed skirts, armed with spears and swords and a few muskets here and there. There was one mast amidships, with an Arabic-looking lateen sail furled up. Rowers thrashed the water to a foam as they drove in on Telesto. The guns fired.

  Telesto was hit once solidly, and once in ricochet as one ball splashed short and raised a great water-plume close aboard.

  “Ready!” Alan called. “As you bear … fire!”

  The carronades barked as their light powder charges went off, ran back to slam into the stops of their slides. Wool rammers soaked in the fire-buckets were swabbing out at once. As the smoke slowly dissipated, Lewrie could see that their target had been smashed! The prao, roped and pegged together like a dhow, had broken into pieces, spilling her hundreds of warriors into the water. Her bows were torn open, and she was already on her way down. Which caused the ones behind her to falter in their rowing, and turn away from a head-on attack. It was then that Alan could see the many skulls festooned on the closest one’s gunwales for decoration.
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  “Ready, larboard!” he gulped in alarm.

  “Jaysus!” Hoolahan yelped. There was a prao not a full cable off the larboard side. Arrows and blow-guns were working, quilting their ship’s side as the little yellow men slaved at readying a pair of guns.

  “Run out!”

  They beat the pirates to the first shot. Four thirty-two-pounder balls hit her squarely abeam, and she shook like a kicked dog. Huge holes opened in her sides, the guns canted up and disappeared somewhere amidships, and they could hear the screams. She rolled back upright, shaking her mast down in ruin, and kept on rolling, filling with the sea and went down like a stone!

  “That’s the way, lads! That’ll teach the heathen devils!”

  The chase-guns fore and aft were firing, the upper-deck batteries were speaking now, a lot faster than those controlled, steady broadsides of earlier. Now and then there were sharper bangs as a light two-pounder swivel gun up on the upper-deck bulwarks was fired, loaded with grape or canister. To starboard, one pirate vessel was almost under the bows, too close-in to be hit with any guns. Alan could hear muskets going off in volley, and the screams of the pirates as they were scythed down. There was a heavy thump, and Telesto, still with a slight way on her, shouldered the foe aside with contempt. As she drifted down the starboard side, a hail of grenades with their fuses burning was tossed into her, and a couple of swivels went off, spewing death and pain down into her open hull, even as her yelling crew tried to scale the ship’s sides. A pirate appeared in the foremost starboard gunport, curved sword in hand!

  They had no boarding weapons on the lower gun deck. Usually they had no need of them. No pikes, cutlasses, pistols or muskets! Even Alan was without his sword. It was Hoolahan who gave a great Celtic howl of rage and rammed a handspike into the pirate’s face, tearing it open and shoving him back over the side with a shriek of agony.

  “Lowest elevation! Number two gun, ready … fire!” Lewrie shouted. The prao swirled on the faint bow wave and drifted off about forty feet. The carronade roared, and almost immediately, the ball hit the prao in the stempost, which tied her together with the keel members. The helmsman’s deck and the entire stern disappeared, and that was one less to worry about, even if half her cut-throat crew was still clinging to Telesto ’s side. As they reloaded, it rained bodies outside the gunports as Chiswick’s native troops stabbed and shot with their muskets and bayonets, and the upper-deck gun crews plied cutlasses and boarding pikes!

  “Filled shot!” Alan demanded. “Give ’em grape and canister!”

  Hollow iron balls were fetched from the garlands, rammed home and seated. The next prao that loomed up to larboard, under the guns of the upper-deck battery, got it full in the face! When they hit, they shattered into whining, razor-edged iron shards, scattering their contents of plum-sized grape and musket balls in a flash. The prao rocked and heaved, and her crew went down in piles, hewn down like corn stalks. She was still afloat, but she was out of the fight, bearing her cargo of dead and dying!

  At that sight, the rest of the pirates bore away, paddles flashing quick as runner’s heels to escape the unequal slaughter. The upper-deck guns began to bark once more in controlled broadsides. Out to about a nautical mile and a quarter, the eighteen-pounders could hurt the foe, while his weaker, older guns could not respond.

  “Out of our range,” Alan said finally, as their last volley from the carronades fell short. “Quarter-gunners, stand your crews easy. Sponge out, but have charges and shot ready to load if they’ve a mind to try us again.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  Alan was soaked to the skin, even in his lightest clothes. He wanted air, and a long drink of water from a scuttle-butt. “Take over for me. I’ll go on deck where I may see the better.”

  He flew up the ladder to the hatch and emerged on the upper gun deck. McTaggart was there among his gun crews as they sponged out and reloaded.

  “Warm enough work fir ya, Mister Lewrie?” McTaggart teased, wearing a pleased expression. “Twas a plucky pack o’rascals they sent ageen us.”

  “We almost had them in for tea below decks, Mister McTaggart,” Alan replied with a smile, not to be outdone in calmness, now that the enemy was flying. “Shocking manners they had, though.”

  “Och, aye, nae the sairt ya could take tae p’lite comp’ny.” McTaggart laughed, which made his gun crews respond in kind.

  “Cease fire!” Choate, the first officer, bellowed from the railing of the quarterdeck. “Mister Lewrie?”

  “Aye, sir?”

  “Take a ship’s boat to yonder prao!” Choate ordered. “A file of those soldiers as well! Mister Twigg wants prisoners, if there are any!”

  “At once, sir!”

  The pirate boat they had gutted was rocking slack on the sea, her red hull slimed with fresh crimson from all her dead and wounded. No one challenged them as they came alongside. No swords were raised as they gained her bulwarks and dropped over to the rowers’ benches. Those pirates that were not incapacitated shrank away with fear as they saw European faces on their decks, followed by a havildar, or sergeant of Bengali infantry, and a squad of sepoys came on board with bayonets fixed on their Brown Bess muskets.

  “My God!” Alan gasped. The smell of death was everywhere so quickly in the searing sun! Coppery odors of spilled blood mixed with spilled entrails, smashed limbs, opened visceras, loose bowels and bladders. Pirates, now looking small and wiry instead of seven feet tall and dangerous, lay quivering in their death rattles, or whimpering and crying in pain.

  “Stopped their business most wondrously, sir,” Twigg said as he poked and prodded the nearest corpses with his smallsword. “Aha. What have we here?”

  He bent down to tear a necklace loose from a dead man who was dressed in silk. It was heavy gold links, and depended from it was a large pectoral about 3 inches across, set with emeralds and a large ruby in the center big as a robin’s egg. Twigg pocketed his prize, wrapping it in a calico print handkerchief. “A bloody prince of someone’s blood,” he spat. “A successful sea-robber. Until today, that is. Havildar-ji. Disarm those men and bind them.”

  “Jeehan, sahib,” the sergeant replied.

  “What are we looking for, sir?” Alan asked, wishing he was anywhere else.

  “Evidence, Mister Lewrie!” Twigg said expansively. “A bit of loot from a ravaged ship. Some clue that these might be the ones we seek. And some sign of who encouraged them. It’s not often I’ve seen their kind take on a ship big as ours, even if the wind was against us. They’re not fools, Mister Lewrie. The hope of gain would have to outweigh their fear of European firepower. Poke about. See what you may turn up.”

  “Aye aye, sir,” Alan replied. He wandered up forward towards the fo’c’sle platform, his sword drawn and ready should one of those mangled bodies show signs of life. God knew there were weapons in plenty scattered about to use, should one of them wish to take one of the infidels with him to Paradise. The peoples of the region were mostly Muslim, he’d learned. Killing him would raise their stock with Allah.

  What he found was some gold coins of Asian minting, a heavy gold ring or two. Some earrings. All useful, he thought, so he stuck them in his breeches. The muskets were chased with silver, of an ancient pattern, with long barrels and crude match-locks or even wheel-locks. The swords and knives … curved Eastern-looking things or wavy bladed krees, mottled with Damascan forging techniques.

  “Profit for the morning’s work!” Twigg exclaimed back aft as he turned up a small chest of treasure. The sailors and sepoys were not averse to looting the corpses, either.

  “Sir?” Alan called. “Come take a look at this.”

  One of the cannon on the forecastle platform was a ninepounder. The truck had been smashed, and its crew draped about it in death. But it was not a brass or bronze Asian gun with fanciful adornments. It was a brutally plain and functional European gun, with a flintlock striker and British proof-marks. To further prove its origin, there were serge powder bags scattered about,
and a flask of quick-burning priming powder hung round the dead gunner’s neck.

  “No way of knowing which ship it came from, but it’s a start,” Twigg nodded, rubbing his horny palms together. “Could have been off any of those ships reported missing. And the date is within the last two years.”

  “No rust, sir,” Alan commented, kneeling by the cannon. “I’d not expect their sort to take this good care of an iron gun. She’s fresh-painted and well-greased, still. For an iron barrel at sea to be this clean, it had to be very recent. And flints, sir. You know how often flints break or wear out. Look at this one in the dog’s-jaws of the lock. That’s English, too, sure as I’m born.”

  “Very astute of you, Mister Lewrie,” Twigg congratulated. He was interrupted by the havildar, who had turned up several Brown Bess muskets, Short Land Pattern, also fairly new. “Now we’ll have the truth out of these rascals. Fetch me that one, havildar. We’ll find where they hailed from, and we’ll go pay them a visit they’ll not soon forget!”

  Twigg was not too particular about how he got his information. In local lingo, he began to shout and rave in front of the first man fetched up by the sepoys. He made passes with one of those wavy-bladed knives. Lewrie thought he was merely threatening, until he at last made contact along the struggling pirate’s bare waist. Just the slightest touch, and there was an instant line of blood droplets.

  Twigg seized the man by the scruff of the neck and shoved him to the rail to look over the side, with the krees at his throat. The tropical sharks had been drawn by the blood in the water, the dead of the other praos they’d shattered and sent down with gunfire. Fins cut the calm sea, some lazy and searching, some darting and quicker on a scent. The pirate began to scream and shout, louder than Twigg and his accusations and questions.

  “Look here, Mister Twigg, sir,” Alan was finally forced to say when he knew the older man was dead-serious about dumping him over the side as shark-food. “He’s not anybody I’d care to know, but damme, sir, it’s just not done!”