"Well, one would suppose, sir," Coltrop sighed as though he were bored. "But, given me hurt you allege you dealt 'em, I'd put my guineas on their being long gone from the Caicos by now."
"A fatal assumption for the next ship taken, if such assumption is wrong," Lewrie snorted. "They've two swift luggers still, and could take at least one more vessel, so they have some profit torepay their pains. And I doubt if determined and ruthless men know when to quit. For revenge, if nothing else."
"Conversely, Lieutenant Coltrop," John Fellows said, raising his gingery eyebrows, as was his wont when he got excited, "what if there were ships already taken? They must have stowed that plunder somewhere in the Caicos, and they'd not sail away without it An even more compelling argument for them remaining. I wonder if you are aware of other ships that may be missing, sir?"
"Lord!" Coltrop gaped in mock wonder. "How would I know? With absolutely no method of determining how many ships set sail for the Turks to begin with, the when or the wherefrom?"
"You've heard no talk among the arriving masters? No rumours of 'what happened to Old So-And-So'?" Lewrie pressed.
"It is not within my duties to question arriving masters, or to. deal with them except as to whether they abide by the law, sir."
"Yet in pursuing your duties of enforcing the Navigation Acts, in boarding and documenting arriving ships' manifests," Lewrie cooed, trying hard to rein in his growing anger, "in determining whether a vessel is allowed to enter British ports you have absolutely no converse with their captains and mates, sir? Is that what you are telling us, sir?"
"I have heard no gossip, no complaints, no speculations about missing vessels, sir," Coltrop replied stiffly, haughtily.
"Very well, then, Mister Coltrop," Lewrie said after a deep breath and a long sigh of frustration. "Let's proceed along another tack. Mister Fellows my sailing master, and Mister Gatacre, who now directs my ship's activities as her supercargo from the Admiralty," Lewrie said, inflating Gatacre's status without having to tell a baldfaced lie, or be specific, "deem that our pirates need a place where there is a tall headland. They need a reliable well or stream for water. Shelter from seaward to hide their boats, and what prey they take so they may loot 'em at their leisure. Shoal-waters wide enough to prevent pursuit by a warship or gunfire closer than random shot And easy access to the Caicos Banks so they may flee if their lair is found. Not too close to Fort George Cay up north, nor close to Turks Passage, where you patrol. That means they must be based either to the west of the Bank, or somewhere along the northern side of North, Middle, or East Caicos Island. Now, just where, assuming our suppositions about their needs are correct, in your experience in these waters, would you believe the most likely hideout to be?"
Coltrop leaned over the chart, hat under one arm and elbows tucked in close to his sides as if he wished to avoid touching it, or getting in any way involved. He blew out a breath, puffing his cheeks in perplexity.
"Lord, sir," he said at last with a hopeless smile. " 'Fraid I haven't a clue! Sorry. Know the Turks Passage and all, d'you see, but…"
"Good Christ!" Gatacre exploded. "You're about as useless as teats on a man! How long you been in these waters, puppy?"
"Year and a bit, sir, I…" Coltrop shuddered, too scared of Gatacre's uncertain amount of seniority to continue his smug bluster. Gatacre wore navy blue, but it was a civilian suit, more apt on some merchant master, but for a military cocked hat big as a watermelon. The buttons were plain pewter, though, so what was he if not some civilian official from the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty, a secretary who'd report back about Lieutenant Coltrop and tell them… Lord!
"And you've leashed yourself to the Turks Passage?" Gatacre went on indignantly. "Never explored the Caicos? Or are they too far from your bottle'r your table? The brothels that good in the Salt Isles, are they, sir?"
"Sir, I…!"
"Ever been down to the Ambergris Cays? As far north as Drum Point on East Caicos? Took a peek into Windward-Going-Through, have you?" Gatacre sneered. "God, I've never heard of a Sea Officer with an active commission so unaspiring, nor so unambitious!"
"I have been to Fort George Cay, sir, to deliver supplies as needed, sir," Coltrop quavered out "I have put into the Ambergris Cays when the whales run, sir. But this is the wrong season. There's no one there now! The whalers won't be back…"
"A fine place for pirates, then," Lewrie commented. "An empty whaling station. Deep water for their ships. Huts for shelter, try-pots and fuel for cooking in place. Water. A tall headland or two. That's where we'll search first. Alacrity to Big Ambergris, and your cutter to Little Ambergris, where the depth is too shoal. What does your cutter draw, Mister Coltrop?"
"IJh… seven feet, sir. But, sir, if there are pirates, then surely my place is in Turks Passage to defend. To accompany you, I must leave shipping open to God knows what."
"By whom, Mister Coltrop?" Lewrie fumed. "Tripolitan galleys? Levant corsairs? There's one band of pirates we know of, and if we put pressure on them with our search, we halt their activities. Did you not tell me your patrols are irregularly timed, so you may, how did you put it, 'sow confusion and doubt'? Well then, let's go sow some doubt and confusion! And capture ourselves some pirates."
"Sir, I…" Coltrop began to protest, then swallowed his outburst. "Of course, sir. I am certain the Aemilia will be of inestimable assistance to you, sir." Coltrop turned suddenly sweet, and got his pride of old back a bit too quickly for Lewrie's taste. "Do you know she is named for our commodore's daughter, sir? In her honour?"
So that's who his powerful "sea daddy" is, Lewrie thought as he studied Coltrop's regained smugness with distaste!
"Commodore Garvey will be most pleased that she will figure in your… uhm, adventure, Captain Lewrie," Coltrop grinned.
"Then you'd better take care she doesn't trip on a shoal and wet herself, mustn't you, Mister Coltrop?" Lewrie smiled back at him. "Go board your Aemilia and set course for Little Ambergris while we still have some light. And mind your soundings."
"Aye, aye, sir."
"Poxy bastard!" Gatacre grumbled once he was gone. "I've never seen such a worthless, idle…"
"A well-connected bastard, though," Lewrie grunted. "I can't wait to read his report on the action. Damme, Mister Gatacre, if we don't find these pirates, if they take a ship under our noses, he'll have my nutmegs on a silver tray!"
"Best do what all the good captains do, then, sir," Gatacre chuckled as they walked forward to go on deck. "Plaster a confident grin on yer phiz an' dare anybody to gainsay ya!"
Chapter 5
Of course, nothing went that easily. There were signs of recent human habitation on Big Ambergris, much like the abandoned camp on West Caicos. Their suppositions the pirates were still around were fulfilled, but just where they had gone remained a mystery.
For another week, Alacrity and Aemilia prowled in company, back up Turks Passage toward Drum Point on East Caicos, along the spectacular coral reefs by Lorimers Point and Joe Grant's Cay, which sheltered the mouth of the Windward-Going-Through channel between East and Middle Caicos Islands. The bluffs were high enough behind the reefs to provide excellent watch-posts. When they went ashore in luggers and ship's boats they found sources of water. There were deeps very close inshore where looted ships could be scuttled to avoid detection. But no pirate band.
Lewrie was getting extremely frustrated. It was not the sneer on Lieutenant Coltrop's face which upset him, though that irked him every time he had reason to talk with him. He realized he had made the pirates, and their destruction, a personal quest. There was Commodore Garvey to please, to impress with what he could accomplish. And capturing or destroying these buccaneers would be a way to expunge the chagrin he felt about his bargain with the American Captain Grant, turning a blind eye to his violation of the Navigation Acts. And, in that first flush of exultation he'd shown to his crew after sinking those luggers, he'd overstepped himself and promised they would get the rest. Now, if he did not, he felt the men would lose confidence in his abilities, and his captaincy of Alacrity would become a drudgery instead of a delight.
Being someone else's junior officer felt so damned good, Alan told himself in the echoing privacy of his cabins aft. Without Caroline aboard, he was severely limited now in whom he could confide. Oh, he could dine in bags of people and share jests with them as the most genial of hosts. But it wasn't the same as being able to unburden his cares and worries on someone else.
But then, that's why they pay me five grand shillings a day!
"Sir!" Lieutenant Ballard said, coming to Alan's seat on the taffrail signal-flag lockers. "Aemilia has put about and is bearing down on us."
Lewrie rose and made his way forward. It had just gone five bells of the second dog-watch, Evening Quarters had been stood, and the hands had eaten and were now entertaining themselves in the cool afterglow of sunset. Mr. Midshipman Shipley and his mostly hapless colleague, Mr. Midshipman Joyce, were doinghornpipes in the waist for the amusement of the people forrud, part of the larboard watch's price as losers at drills that afternoon.
"Was he not to peek into Highas Cay and Bottle Creek, sir?" Ballard inquired. "Perhaps he's seen something at last."
Lewrie snapped a quick look at Ballard to see if his "at last" was a subtle condemnation, but Ballard had a telescope to his eye and was intent upon the ghostly shape of Aemilia as she sailed back east to join them.
"He was, Mister Ballard. As you say, perhaps this hopeless search of ours will be rewarded… at last," Lewrie could not help rejoining.
"They're somewhere out here still, sir," Ballard said quickly. "I know you're correct about that. It's just the 'where,' or how long they might remain if they fear a new, more active warship is stationed in the Turks and Caicos. I'd hate for them to run before we nab 'em."
"Thankee, Mister Ballard," Lewrie relented with a shy grin. "I was beginning to fear I was the only one who wished to continue this chasing of wild geese. Chasing shadows, more like."
"Most deadly shadows, sir," Ballard intoned with a sober nod, but with a quirky little grin of his own. "Should Lieutenant Col-trop be the bearer of glad tidings, do you wish the taffrail lanterns lit, sir? Or should we proceed darkened?"
"There's a ninety-foot-tall bluff at the extreme west end of Middle Caicos, just by Highas Cay," Lewrie pondered. "Do not give a possible watcher anything to bite on. And alter course to seaward. If Aemilia has news for us, he'll come to us out there. I only wish there was a way to signal him without a fuzee to stay dark, himself."
"Here, sir!" Coltrop jabbed exultantly at the chart. "Just under the headland overlooking Highas Cay and the narrow channel between Middle and North Caicos. There were cook fires! I saw the smoke, sir!"
"Did you stand close inshore?" Lewrie asked, unable to hide his mounting excitement. "Did you see a camp?"
"Didn't want to blow the gaff, sir," Coltrop laughed, for once almost pleasant to be around. "I stood north for a time, as if to go to seaward of North Caicos, then doubled back. But as far as I know, there should be no one there. A few farms so far on North Caicos, a fish camp or two… but none on Middle Caicos yet."
"What do they call this area, Mister Gatacre?" Lewrie asked.
"Conch Bar, sir," Gatacre replied. "There's rumoured to be some caves there that Indians used in Columbus' time. 'Tis a barren place now, though."
"Watered, though," Fellows insisted. "And where you find water, you'll find our pirates. Look, sir, it's perfect! Bluffs to spy from, just as we deduced. Deep water, about an hundred fathoms, close up to the reefs and shoals. An inlet between Highas Cay and Conch Bar Bluff where ships may moor. An escape run down this salt-creek between North and Middle islands to the Banks. And their main camp would most likely be about a mile in from the shoal-water line, out of range of random shot."
"Depth, though, Mister Fellows," Lewrie implored.
"Unsurveyed, sir," Fellows had to admit, deflating. "A fathom, maybe less, once inside Highas Cay."
"And it may be a fish camp, after all," Lewrie fretted out loud. "But, then again… we must examine it If their main camp is inland, about a mile or better, that would put them… here… down by this last point, opposite the second islet past Highas Cay. They see us coming, they run through this passage for the Banks where we cannot follow. To prevent that, we must use all the ship's boats and our surveying luggers, and land a party between them and the escape route. Cross the shoals above Bottle Creek, wend our way under the shoreline into that channel, to… here. At dawn, Alacrity must be just without the shoals to cover Highas Cay and deliver unaimed fire on this inner point as a diversion. And to flush them out, if they get the wind up. Mister Coltrop, I want Aemilia inshore even further. Make the best of your way across the shoals with your seven-foot draught nor'west of the inner point of land, to block any possible escape up Bottle Creek and out to sea off North Caicos. And scour the beach under the bluffs with your four-pounders."
"Good God, sir, I'll rip her bottom out, sure!" Coltrop gasped.
"Close as you may, without holing yourself. Make a demonstration. Frighten them into running straight at me," Lewrie decided.
"You, sir?" Fellows goggled. "Sir, it's… well, it's been the traditional thing for the first officer to…"
"It's the riskiest part of our venture," Lewrie countered. "If they're not pirates, I wish to be the one nearest on the scene to call it off. And if they are, I've more experience with landfighting."
"Should we not keep an eye on them for now, sir?" Coltrop asked. "Send for troops from Fort George Cay? Surely, it's their…" "If they are pirates, Mister Coltrop, they saw you, sure as I'mstanding here, and they're considering whether they should stay or run. We cannot take the time to send for troops and let them escape. I'll begrudge not a single wasted hour… not a single wasted minute!"
"Aye, aye, sir."
"Sir, it's my place of honour!" Ballard protested as the boats were led around to the entry ports, as the armourer's files and stone rasped to put brutally sharp edges on steel blades and points. "How else are lieutenants to rise, if they go in their captain's shadow?"
"With the shore party away, Alacrity'll be short-handed, Mister Ballard. I need you aboard to run her as Bristol-fashion as a 1st Rate," Lewrie smiled. "And keep her off those shoals."
"Once one makes captain, sir, it's time to let a younger man be one's goat," Ballard rejoined, not backing down an inch. "Let the junior officers make a name for themselves, or a muck of it. Is it that you see me making a muck of it, sir?"
"I have the utmost confidence in you, Mister Ballard," Lewrie, said. " 'Tis Coltrop I don't put faith in. I scare him. You don't. And if I have to tow his damned cutter inshore to get him in place, I'll do it. I'll scout him an anchorage for dawn during the night. And then be there to give him strict orders to take that anchorage or suffer the consequences. You have a copy of my orders to him in yours. If he fails… should I fall and this expedition fails, you must see to it that he pays the price for not supporting me. I'd rather be the one to risk my life on such a slender thread as that idle fop, than risk yours… Arthur."
"I see… I think, sir," Ballard surrendered at last.
"Growl you may, but go you must," Lewrie laughed, clapping him on the shoulder in parting. "Old Navy proverb. Might be the Thirty-Seventh Article of War, hey, right after 'The Captain's Cloak'?"
There were only thirty-six Articles of War; the last gave a blanket power to a captain's lone decision for anything not covered by the specifics of the other thirty-five-the Captain's Cloak.
"The very best of fortune go with you, sir," Ballard said.
"And enjoy your temporary command, sir."
Chapter 6
It was slow going, rowing or poling in the darkness. First to run through the boisterous shoals two miles above Highas Cay, safely hidden by the night. Then to grope about close under the foreshore of the low islet that screened Bottle Creek from the sea. Inshore, the Caicos were rife with mosquitoes and biting flies, and once out of the Trades and into the marshy-smelling mangroves along the beach, they were almost eaten alive.
Aemilia followed, sounding her way through a two-fathom pass. She threaded her way into Bottle Creek, behind that inner, second isle to screen her from view, and Alan found an anchorage for her, sounding with a short lead line and counting the marks in it by feel, until he had her a spot where the bottom was ten feet, or would be at high tide. The cutter's light four-pounders would not make much real impression on the pirate camp from that range, but it might put the fear of God in them.
Then they completed their voyage, snaking out of Bottle Creek south along the shore of North Caicos, staying to the western side of the possible escape channel to avoid detection, and went a mile below the suspected position before turning to cross the narrow strait.
"I kin smell 'em, sir," Cony said, his poacher's senses alert. "Wood smoke. An' cookin'. Goat, more'n like. Mayhap fish stew on the boil, too, sir. Right savory, iff n ya don't mind my sayin'."
"There, sir!" one of the hands poling up forrud whispered. "I think I see fires. Like they wuz usin' one o' them caves t'cook in."
Once on the eastern shore, they poled back north in water just a bit deeper than their shallow-draught keels, about four feet, until the coast bent back nor'west past the mouth of a tiny inlet.
Half a mile, little more to go, Lewrie decided. And hard sand all the way to the point. We're on foot the rest of the way."Put into the inlet, men," Lewrie ordered in a harsh mutter. "Leave the boats. No one is to show a light, no one is to load his musket or pistol until I return and tell you to. Not a sound, now. Mister Parham, Mister Mayhew. You and the bosun's mate are in charge until Cony and I return."
Taking only edged weapons, Lewrie and Cony set out up the hard sand of the beach for a ways, then moved into the deeper, softer sand above the tideline toward the sheltering sea grapes and stunted low bushes. A ledge of rock began to rise at their right hand as they progressed, and climbed higher and higher in irregular slabs as they neared the suspect camp. Soon, they were creeping along its base for concealment as it rose above their heads.
"This'll climb all the way to the sea bluffs," Lewrie muttered. "I don't think there's a way up it."
"Too crumbly, sir," Cony agreed in a whisper. "Limestone an' ole coral. Cut ya t'ribbons iff n ya tried it in the dark, it would."
"Listen!" Lewrie cautioned, kneeling down lower.
There were sounds of shouting, of laughter. And of music that came to them under the rush of the night winds and the continual sound of foliage stirring. And then there was a womanly scream.
"Wimmen!" Cony hissed close to Lewrie's ear. "Might be a party they's 'avin'. Might they be fishermen after all, sir?"
Lewrie laid a finger to his lips and took a deep breath to make his limbs obey him. He half stood, and placed one tentative foot in front of the other, his grasp sweaty on the hilt of his hanger. With tremulous caution, they gained another long musket-shot, about sixty yards, to an outthrust of rocky ledge. To go around it would mean exposing themselves to the camp. They found a narrow crevice that took them up top, then crawled on their bellies through sharp-edged grasses and coarse bushes until they could see.
It wasn't a fish camp, Lewrie thought, feeling a flush of relief fill him. There were the two luggers that had escaped him, along with another pair, larger and two-masted, anchored very close inshore to the beach. And on the beach below him were a brace of longboats with their bows jammed snug on the land. The longboats were royal barges compared to the scrofulous condition of the luggers, obviously taken from some earlier prize of theirs; perhaps from two different prizes, since their paint-schemes did not match.
There was cooking smoke coming from the mouth of the nearest cave under the bluff, several more smaller fires burning in a circle beyond the boats. There were crates and chests scattered about for rude furniture, several more piled up and covered with scrap canvas near the mouth of the cave, more still piled on the lower beach.
And just offshore, anchored fore-and-aft parallel to shore was a two-masted schooner of about sixty feet overall, on which lanterns burned at helm and forecastle.
The people on the beach got Alan's attention next. They were a gaudy crew, dressed "Beau-Nasty" in checked shirts, opulent satin waistcoats, sashes around the waists Spanish hidalgo-style, in either breeches without stockings, or slop-trousers. They wore neckerchiefs bound about their heads like gunners would to protect their hearing, or in tricornes or straw hats; each affecting a highly individualistic and rakehell sense of fashion.
And they went armed.
Swaggering, they were, under the weight of pistols stuck into their waistbands or sashes; cutlasses or swords at their hips. Some muskets stood propped against crates of loot, and there were enough weapons in sight to equip a half-battalion of light troops.
"There's the wimmen, sir," Cony pointed out.
Spanish-looking in the firelights' flickering glows, or black and sheened with sweat. They were swilling rum, wine or brandy with as much gusto as the men, their finery obviously looted goods, too.
They lay there and watched the piratical band roister for half an hour, carefully counting heads, trying to pick out leaders who sat apart more quiet than the others. They watched fights and brawling, among both the men and the women. They watched men take women off to the cave, or up the beach beyond the light.
"Prisoners, sir," Cony mouthed almost silent, tugging at Alan's shirt sleeve. "Them wimmen yonder. Back by them covered crates."
Lewrie pulled out his telescope and brought it forward inch at a time, careful that the lens did not reflect firelight. He studied the party of women by the pile of loot. Slaves, some of them, and some white-skinned and bedraggled-free women and their maids, he speculated? As he lay in the hide, watching, one of the men he thought of as a leader went to the women, staggering drunk, and reached down to pull one to him. She began to scream and plead, only her loudest and most inarticulate cries reaching them. Brutally, he backhanded her into silence, then dragged her back down the beach to the circle of fires to throw her down, peel off his breeches, and fall atop her, to the exultant cheering of his band. And once he had slaked his lust with her, three more sprang forward like inferior wolves to savage her."They'll kill them wimmen oncet they're done with 'em, Mister Lewrie!" Cony whispered, mortified by the sights he had seen without being able to lift a finger to help. "Jesus, God a'mercy!"
"Might have been saving 'em for tonight," Lewrie nodded. "If they sail on the morrow, they'll want no witnesses left alive. See, those goods piled close to the beach? So they may begin loading the schooner and the biggest luggers. If we'd waited, we'd have lost them. Let's get back to the boats. It lacks two hours 'til dawn."
Cony went, unwillingly. And it was only once they were back on the beach, with the horrifying sights and sounds of pitiless rape put behind them, that he trusted himself to speak.
"Wisht there was ought we could do for 'em, sir, tonight, that is," he whispered plaintively. "Dawn might be too late t'save 'em."
"I want you on that ledge at dawn, Cony," Lewrie told him. "I want you and my fusil, and the Ferguson rifle up there, in good hands. Pick your likely country lads. And gut-shoot anyone that lays a hand on 'em, or even glares in their direction. That suit you, Cony?"
"Aye, sir, it sure t'God does!"
Chapter 7
The dawn smelled of crushed foliage and trampled flowers, overlaying mud and mangrove marsh. Of damp sand and beach burrowers, the fish-scale aroma of the coast most landlubbers mistook for sea-air. The true sea-air smell came on the whispering Trades, the baked salt and iodine tang of ocean deeps, borne by winds ceaselessly stirring from across thousands of miles of brine. Damp clamminess was stripped away by the breezes, even as they brought the balmy warmth of a humid sunrise, bedewing the steel in his hand. Lewrie's nostrils drank in the smells, almost quivering like a beast's, much as his limbs trembled in anticipation, stiff with a too-short and troubled nap, as they made their stealthy approach-march.
Damme; but this is a daft business-and a bloody one, Alan thought, keyed up, rumpled and miserable. But don't this morning beat all for handsome!
An hundred sunrises could pass unremarked. But take up arms, and the risk of dying before breakfast, and even a winter rain could be sweet, its bitter, soaking chill savored because one was still alive to suffer it before the madness set in.
He turned to study his men. There were thirty from Alacrity, half of her adult crewmen, and twenty hands off Aemilia, almost half of her crew, too. They yawned and scratched, flexed their fingers on their weapons nervously, eyes shifting as squint-a-pipes as a bag of nails at every rustle in the bushes, every sea-bird's cry, or soft lap of the inlet's surf on the beach. Armed to the teeth, they were, with cutlasses, clasp knives, long boarding pikes, good Brown Bess.75 caliber muskets, wicked needle-sharp offset bayonets jammed in the waistbands of their slop-trousers; as desperate a crew of cut-throats as the pirates, to look at them, laden down with clumsy Sea Pattern pistols for each man in addition, with all the powder flasks, bullet pouches and cartouche boxes hung about them as they plodded and scuffled, strung out in a long single file below the rising ridge of crumbling rock, half buried in the greenery for cover.
"Just 'round this outcrop, seventy yards or so," Lewrie grunted, calling a halt at last. "Mister Parham, your boat-gun at the foot of the shelf. Mister Mayhew, your two-pounder atop the shelf with Cony and his marksmen. Grape, canister or langridge at first, and keep 'em away from their boats as I bade you. Right. The rest of you lads, I want you ready to rush out and form a skirmish line from Mister Parham's gun to the beach."
There was a faint rustle in the air, and Lewrie pulled out his watch to check the time, which made him nod grimly. The rustle became a sizzling swoosh of roiled air, then a quavery moan. Alacrity's guns had just opened fire a mile-and-a-half away, shooting almost blind at the bluffs. Fowles' first ranging shot was on the way.
There was a thunderclap so close it seemed it went off in his pocket as the bluff to the north above the sea caves was struck. The iron ball exploded in a bright yellow flash of sparks, metallic shards, and shale, starting a small avalanche of gravel.And the sunrise echoed with the soft Fumm-umm of an unseen gun.
"Now where are you, you silly bastard?" Lewrie fretted, turning to look for Aemilia across the channel. Once she found her proper position, even her puny four-pounders could rake the beach, and the anchored vessels, across the quarter-mile strait. He was relieved to see a bowsprit protrude from behind the low foliage, and the first starkly pale tan panels of her jibs stood out against the dark green and dun.
Another round-shot droned in from the reefs, fired at maximum elevation with the quoin block removed from below the barrel's butt, and this struck short of the bluffs to raise a great pillar of foam in the inlet, about half a cable short of the anchored schooner.
The pirates were up, now, stirring and circling in hungover and bleary-eyed confusion. Some lay still, too comatose from rum or their excessive indulgences to be wakened. Women camp followers screamed or cursed in a cacophony of dialects and languages. Orders were shouted that for the moment went unheeded. They mostly dashed to the piles of weapons, drew swords to brandish against just what they did not yet know, stampeded first toward their boats, then back to the shelter of the piles of goods, or the bluff and the dry-cave entrance, as a ball moaned overhead to bury itself in the sand.
"Come on, Coltrop, come on!" Lewrie hissed to speed the cutter as she made her entrance as slow as a one-legged dowager trying to go up a flight of stairs. Aemilia was turned bows-on now, rounding the first western tip of the islet, her gaff mains'l winged out alee and her commissioning pendant streaming as long as she was. "Oh, bloody hell!"
Coltrop had run her aground on a sand bar! She canted over a little to leeward and came to a stop, slowly pivoting on her bows to show her starboard side, far short of the near tip of the islet where her guns would be in good range.
"I warned him that channel was tighter'n virgin's quim!" Alan raged. The bottom was hard sand, though, so he might yet get her off it, if he tried… but no!
Coltrop fired from where he was, the two four-pounders in her starboard battery coughing out round-shot at the schooner. They hit short and ricocheted once, almost rocked her as the ripple patterns expanded, but the range was too great to do any harm to her, or the beach.
There was no help for him, then. Lewrie and his party of fifty were on their own, with six men tied up in serving the boat-guns. Up against sixty or seventy alert and armed pirates!
"Mister Parham, shift your aim for the thickest throng yonder. Open fire," he ordered, hoping to cut the odds down, niceties bedamned.
"There are women among them, sir!" Parham protested, shocked.
"Cut-throats' whores, Mister Parham, cut-throats themselves, if they get their hands on you. Shift aim and fire! Mister Mayhew? Canister, up there! Volley into the next-biggest batch." Mayhew's face appeared over the lip of the rocky shelf for a moment, turned pale as he gulped, then withdrew.