Pieces of Eight. John Drake

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СКАЧАТЬ by God Almighty didn’t it just suit her! And now the swine were ogling and nudging one another for the fun of seeing a shapely seventeen-year-old defying him on his own quarterdeck.

      Flint measured choices: he could wrestle her bodily through a hatchway–proving to all hands that she was beyond his command; he could order someone else to do it–allowing another man to handle her…or…

      He came to a swift decision. “So be it, my chick!” he cried, slapping her backside merrily, as if it were the biggest joke in the world to have a woman on deck as the ship went into action. Turning to his men, he smiled his glittering smile…and it worked! For Flint was a man to admire: handsome, charismatic and splendid.

      “A-hah!” roared the crew, united in shared pride of their magnificent captain…even if he was a mad bastard that popped out men’s eyes like pickled onions when the mood was upon him.

      “So, my dear,” Flint said to Selena, smiling and smiling, “do try to keep your limbs clear of flying shot, and let’s see how much you relish what you now shall see!” He dropped his voice: “Because you won’t like it, not one little bit, that I do most solemnly promise you!”

      The chase was short, for the wretched bilander was as slow as Walrus was fast. As soon as he came within cannon shot, Flint broke out the skull and swords–his personal variation of the black flag–and on the upward roll discharged a thundering load of chain-shot into the Dutchman’s rigging: some ten pounds of iron apiece from each of Walrus’s seven broadside guns. It was more to terrorise than to disable, for the bilander was already in ruins aloft: jury-rigged on the stump of her foremast, most of her bowsprit gone and the big crossjack yard on her mainmast fished with a spar where it had sprung.

      The Dutchman shuddered under Walrus’s fire and those aboard were blinded in the smoke. She was a little ship, no more than sixty feet in the hull and a hundred tons burden, with an old-fashioned rig and shallow draught to suit the Netherlands’ waters. Against the heavily armed, sharp-keeled Walrus she was already lost. But she raised the red, white and blue of her native land and fought like a tiger.

      One after another, the four one-pounder swivels that were all she had for a broadside blasted their charges, hurling dozens of pistol-balls across Walrus’s decks, prompting roars of rage as men were struck down or staggered back under the impact of shot, even as they stood ready to hurl grappling lines.

      “Bastards!” cried Walrus’s men.

      “Give ’em another!” cried Flint. “Grape and round-shot!” And it was a race between his gunners and the Dutchman’s as to who would fire next. The Dutchman won, and got off just one more volley of canister, killing a few more of Flint’s men before Walrus’s main battery, thundering fire and smoke, comprehensively smashed in the Dutchman’s bulwarks, blasting half her men into offal, and sending her swivel guns tumbling into the air as iron wreckage.

      “Stand by, boarders!” cried Flint. “Put us alongside of her, Mr Allardyce!”

      “Aye-aye, sir!”

      The two vessels rose and fell, rubbing paint and splinters off one another as the grappling lines bound them together.

      “Boarders away!” cried Flint, leading the scramble up on to Walrus’s bulwark. He leapt aboard the Dutchman followed by nearly sixty men, all of them armed to the teeth, fighting mad and seeking vengeance for their dead and wounded mates.

      A mere handful of the Dutchman’s crew remained alive amongst the wreckage of broken timbers, shards of iron, smashed gratings and hanging sails that encumbered the narrow, smoke-clouded deck. It was hard enough to walk the deck, let alone fight on it. But fight they did, with pike, pistol and cutlass, led by a man in a grey coat boasting a big voice.

      “Christiaan Hugens!” he cried, calling on the name of his ship.

      “Christiaan Hugens!” cried the others, and then it was hand-to-hand.

      Slick! And a man shoving a blade at Flint found the steel parried and himself spouting blood from a cut throat. Thump! And another man, pulling the trigger with his pistol aimed right at Flint’s chest, found Flint gone and a cutlass cleaving his own skull. But that was all the fighting Joe Flint had to do that day. Six men cannot fight sixty. Not for long, however brave they may be. Soon all was quiet except the sounds of the sea and the groaning, creaking of ships’ timbers.

      A thick, squat man came lumbering through the wreckage. He was Alan Morton, Flint’s quartermaster, and he saluted Flint with his best man-o’-warsman salute: hand touching hat and foot stamping the deck.

      “Cap’n,” he said, “there’s just three o’ the buggers left alive, and a dozen o’ dead-’uns, mostly killed by our gunfire afore ever we stepped aboard.” He pointed to the three prisoners, waiting by the mainmast. “There they are, Cap’n. Shall we slit ’em and gut ’em?”

      “Good heavens, no!” said Flint, jolly as ever after a fight. “Not at all, Mr Morton–I have other plans for them.” He smiled and most cordially took a handful of Morton’s shirt front to wipe the blood off his cutlass. “Just make the gentlemen fast and we’ll see to them later. But now we have work to do.”

      Flint sighed inwardly. It was on such occasions that he missed Billy Bones, who’d once been his first mate, and whose heavy fists had driven men to their duties without Flint having to do the tiresome work of punching heads and kicking behinds. Flint sighed wistfully. Bones did so wonderfully have the knack of terrifying the men, combined with just the perfect quantity of initiative: enough to fill in the outline of his orders without ever daring to question them.

      “Huh!” Flint peered at Morton, now shuffling his feet and looking puzzled under his captain’s gaze. The low-browed, stupid clod was the best fist-fighter on the lower deck–which was why he held his rating–but like the rest he was infected with the equality of those blasted “articles” which were Silver’s legacy to Walrus; Silver who, believing himself a “gentleman of fortune” had drawn up a list of articles like those of Captain England, Captain Roberts and all the other pirates who wouldn’t admit what they were.

      The thought that Morton believed Flint was captain by consent and could be deposed at will made Flint laugh out loud. Morton, basking in the sunshine of Flint’s merriment, grinned back at him.

      “So,” said Flint, “here is what we must do, Mr Morton…”

      “Aye-aye, sir!” said Morton, saluting and stamping again. At least he was keen.

      The rest of the day passed in work: intense and heavy work, as everything useful was stripped out of Christiaan Hugens, which proved to be an expedition ship, fitted out by Utrecht University and sent to study celestial navigation in the West Indies, in the hope of advancing Dutch trade. Flint gleaned that from the papers in her master’s cabin. He had no Dutch, but many seafaring and astronomical words were similar to the English equivalents, and he filled in the rest by intelligent guesswork.

      This was one of the rare occasions when Flint was happy to take a prize which carried no rich or valuable cargo: no silks or spices, no bullion nor pieces of eight–the fine Spanish dollars that the whole world used as currency. No, this time his most pressing need was ordinary ships’ stores. He especially valued the excellent compasses, charts and navigational instruments.

      Flint’s men also took sheet lead, nails and carpenter’s tools to repair the shot-holes Lion had blown through Walrus’s hull, along with some СКАЧАТЬ