A Falcon Flies (86 page)

Instead he slitted his eyes against the lowering sun that outlined
Huron
's bare masts with golden haloes, and stared across at her with true hatred. It was then he realized suddenly that at last her bow cannons could no longer bear, the terrible battering of close-range grape shot was abating as they sailed into
Huron
's stern quadrant.

‘Bring her up two points,' he snapped, and the
Black Joke
cut in sharply under
Huron
's stern. She loomed suddenly high above them and there was no more cannon fire from her while the clipper's tall hull shielded them from the gale. The sudden silence was ghostly, unnerving, as though the cannon fire had damaged his ears and he was rendered deaf.

Clinton shook off the sense of dreamlike unreality, and strode down the length of his deck.

‘Up the Jokers!' he shouted, and his crew rose from where they had been crouching under the fragile bulwark.

‘You've shown you can take it, boys, now let's show those damned Yankees we can hand it out.'

‘A tiger for Tongs!' yelled a voice, and suddenly they were all cheering, crowding the gunboat's side, so he had to cup his hands to his mouth to give the order.

‘Helm a lee, let fly all!' and
Black Joke
spun up sharply under
Huron
's counter, spilling her wind, while the seamen in her rigging stripped the canvas off her.

The two ships came together with a rending crackling crash, the gnashing of steel plate against timber and the shattering of glass in
Huron
's sternlights.

A dozen of
Black Joke
's sailors hurled the three-pronged grappling hooks high over the clipper's gunwale with the lines snaking up after them, and then heaved them up tight and made them fast to the portside cleats, and a swarm of seamen cheering wildly went up
Huron
's stern, like a troop of vervet monkeys pursued into the trees by a hunting leopard.

‘Take command, Mr Denham,' Clinton shouted above the hubbub.

‘Aye, aye, sir,' Denham's lips moved and he saluted as Clinton thrust his cutlass back into his scabbard and headed the next rush of his men, those who had been freed by the heaving-to of her sails.

The two hulls were working against each other as viciously as millstones, grinding and bumping, the gap opening and closing as the wind and the seas tore at them.

At
Huron
's rail a dozen of her crew were hacking at the grappling lines with axes, the clunking of the blades into her timber blended with the popping of pistols and muskets as their mates blazed down on the swarm of seamen climbing up from the gunboat's deck.

One of
Black Joke
's sailors climbed swiftly hand over hand, pushing off with his feet from the clipper's raked stern like a mountaineer, and he had almost reached the rail when an American sailor appeared above him, an axe held high and then sent thudding down into the woodwork, severing the line at a single blow.

The sailor dropped like a windblown fruit from the bough into the gap between the hulls. He floundered for an instant in the surging water and then the two ships came together again, with the shriek of rending timbers, chewing the man like a pair of monstrous jaws.

‘More lines,' Clinton howled, and another grappling hook flew over his head, thrown by a stout British arm, and the line whipped around Clinton's shoulders.

He seized it, heaved once upon it to set the hook and then swung across the gap and his boots thudded on
Huron
's stern. He had seen his seaman drop on the severed line, so he climbed with the strength and agility of terror and desperation, and only as he swung one leg over
Huron
's rail did the battle rage seize him, the world changed colour before him, seen through a reddish haze of hatred and fury, hatred for the slave stink that rose to offend his soul and fury for the death and punishment that his ship and his seamen had suffered.

His cutlass sprang from its scabbard with metallic rasp, and there was a man rushing down upon him, and the man naked to the waist with a bulging hairy belly and thick heavily muscled arms. He was brandishing a double bladed axe above his head, and Clinton uncoiled his lanky frame as though it were the ‘S' in an adder's body, straightening as it strikes. He drove the point of the cutlass through the axe man's furry silvered beard and the axe flew from his raised hands and went sliding away across the deck.

Clinton stood over the man he had killed, placed his foot on his chest and yanked the cutlass blade out of his throat. A bright scarlet carotid fountain followed the blade out, splattering Clinton's boot.

Half a dozen of his seamen had reached
Huron
's deck ahead of Clinton, and without a word of command spoken, they bunched to guard the grappling lines over the stern, holding off
Huron
's axe men with cutlass and point-blank pistol fire. Behind them,
Black Joke
's men came swarming aboard, unopposed, surging forward, their cheers rising into a triumphant chorus.

‘At 'em the Jokers!'

‘All together, boys,' howled Clinton, the madness had taken complete hold of him now. There was no fear, no doubts, not even conscious thought. The madness was infectious, and his men howled with him, hunting as a pack like the wolf or the wild dog they swept across
Huron
's deck to meet the wave of her own seamen rushing back from
Huron
's bows.

The two waves of running, screaming men met just below the break of the poop, were transformed into a struggling mass of closely locked humanity, and their cries and curses mingled with the animal howl of terrified slaves. The pistols and muskets had all been discharged and there was no change to reload. It was steel against steel now.

Black Joke
's crew were battle-hardened, they had fought together fifty times in the past year, they had stormed glacis and barracoon and withstood fire and steel. They were blooded fighting men and proud of it.

Huron
's men were commercial seamen, not warriors, most of them had never swung a cutlass nor fired a pistol at another man before, and the difference was evident almost immediately.

For a minute or less the closely engaged mass of men swayed and churned like the meeting of two strong currents at the tidal line of the ocean, and then
Black Joke
's sailors began to forge forward.

‘Up the Jokers!' They sensed their advantage.

‘Hammer and tongs, boys. Give 'em hell!'

At only one point was the tide of British sailors checked, at the foot of
Huron
's mainmast two men stood almost shoulder to shoulder.

Tippoo seemed immovable on the solid foundation of those massive bared legs. Like a Buddha carved from solid rock, he spurned the press of men around him, and their ranks parted and drew back.

His loin-cloth was drawn up between his legs, and his smooth belly bulged over it, again as hard as mountain rock, with the deep cyclops eye of his navel in its centre.

The golden thread of his embroidered gilet sparkled in the sunlight, and he held his great round head low on his shoulders as he swung a double-bladed axe as easily as though it were a lady's parasol, and the axe hissed fiercely at every stroke and
Black Joke
's seamen gave him ground.

A pistol ball had nicked the scarred flesh of his bald head, and blood poured copiously from the shallow wound, turning his face to a glaring gory mask.

His wide toad's slit of a mouth opened as he laughed and shouted his contempt of the men who swarmed about him like pygmies about an ogre.

Beside him fought Mungo St John. He had stripped off his blue jacket to free his sword arm, and his white linen shirt was open to the belt, the buttons torn from their threads by a clutching enemy hand. He had knotted a silk bandanna around his forehead to keep the sweat from running into his eyes, but sweat poured down his naked chest, and had soaked through his shirt in patches. He had a sword in his right hand, a weapon with a plain silver steel guard and pommel, and he cut and parried and thrust without a break in the rhythm of his movements.

He was unmarked, the droplets of thrown blood that stained the full sleeve of his white shirt and which had been diluted by his sweat to a dirty brown, were not his blood.

‘St John!' Clinton called to him. They were both tall enough to look over the heads of the men between them, and they started at each other for a moment.

Clinton's eyes were pale fanatical blue, and his lips white with fury. Mungo's expression was grave, thoughtful almost, and his gaze troubled, almost grieving, as though he knew he had lost his ship and that his life and the lives of most of his crew were forfeit.

‘Fight me!' Clinton challenged him, his voice strident, ringing with triumph.

‘Again?' Mungo asked, and the smile touched his lips fleetingly, then was gone.

Clinton shouldered his way roughly through the press of his own men. The last time it had been pistols, Mungo St John's choice of weapon, but now Clinton had the familiar weight and balance of a naval cutlass in his right hand – his weapon, that he had first swung as a midshipman of fourteen years old, and the whipcord muscles in his long right arm were seasoned to the use of the blade, and every evolution in its use, every trick and subterfuge had been drilled until they were instinctive.

As they came together, Clinton feinted and cut backhanded and low, going for the hip to cripple and bring the man down. As the stroke was parried he felt the strength of Mungo's sword arm for an instant before he disengaged, and switched his attack fluidly, going on the thrust leading with his right foot, a full stroke, and again the parry was strong and neat, but only just strong enough to hold the heavier, broader steel of the cutlass.

Those two brief contacts were enough for Clinton to judge his adversary and find his weakness; the wrist. He had felt it through the steel the way a skilled angler feels the weakness of the fish through line and rod – it was the wrist. St John did not have the steely resilience that comes only from long and dedicated exercise and practice.

He saw the flare of alarm in St John's strangely flecked eyes. The American, too, had felt his own inadequacy, and he knew he did not dare to draw out the encounter. He must try to end it swiftly, before the Englishman's superiority could wear him down.

With the swordsman's instinct, Clinton translated the little flicker of the golden yellow eyes. He knew that Mungo St John was going on the attack, so that as the stroke came an instant later, he caught it on the broad curved blade of the cutlass; then he shifted his weight forward and, with a twist of his own iron wrist, prevented the disengagement, forcing St John to roll his own wrist, the two blades milling across each other, the steel screeching sharply on a harsh abrasive note that set their teeth on edge. Clinton forced two and then three turns, the classic prolonged engagement from which Mungo St John could not break without risking the thunderbolt of the riposte, and Clinton felt the other's wrist give under the strain. He lunged his weight against it, slid the guard of the cutlass high up the blade and used the rolling momentum of two blades and the leverage of his wrist and the curved guard of the cutlass to tear the hilt out of Mungo St John's fingers.

The American's sword clattered to the deck between them, and Mungo St John threw up both hands, sucked in his belly and flung himself back against the mainmast in an attempt to avoid the thrust of the heavy cutlass blade which he knew would follow. In the fury of hatred that possessed Clinton, there was no thought of giving quarter to the man whom he had disarmed.

The thrust was full-blooded, driven by all the strength of wrist and arm, of shoulder and of Clinton's entire body weight, the killing stroke.

Clinton's whole being had been concentrated on the man before him, but now there was movement in the periphery of his vision. Tippoo had seen his Captain disarmed in the same instant that he had just completed a swing with the axe. He was off balance, it would take only a shaded instant to recover that balance, to raise the axe again, but that instant of time would be too long, for he saw the cutlass stroke already launched, and Mungo St John trapped helplessly against the mainmast, his belly unprotected and his empty hands held high.

Tippoo opened his huge paws and let the axe go spinning away, like a cartwheel, and then he reached out and seized the gleaming cutlass blade in one bare hand.

He felt the blade run between his fingers and the terrible sting of the razor-sharp edge cutting down to the bone, still he heaved with all his weight, pulling the point away from the helpless man against the mainmast, deflecting it but unable to hold it for the tensed tendons in his lacerated fingers parted, and the blade ran on driven by the full weight of the tall platinum-headed naval officer.

Tippoo heard the point of the cutlass scrape over one of his ribs, and then a numbness filled his chest, and he felt the steel guard of the hilt strike his rib cage, a thud like that of a butcher's cleaver striking the chopping board, as the cutlass blade reached the limit of its travel.

Even the savage force of that blow was not enough to knock Tippoo off his feet, though it drove him back a pace. He stood solidly. His eyes screwed up into slits of skin, staring down at the blade that transfixed his chest, his bleeding hands still clutching the guard of the cutlass.

Only when Clinton leaned back and pulled the blade from his flesh, did Tippoo begin to sag slowly forward, his knees buckling, and he fell, his body slack and unresisting.

Clinton freed his cutlass blade, and it was thinly smeared along its full length, so that it blurred redly as he went on to the forehand cut, going once more for the man who was still pinned against the mainmast.

Clinton did not complete the stroke. He arrested it in mid-air, for Mungo St John had been borne to the deck beneath a wave of struggling British seamen.