Authors: George Bryan Polivka
“Battle stations, men!” Damrick called. He needn't have. His troops were already there, ready for any engagement. One of three riflemen who stood at the prow was none other than the muttonchopped Hale Starpus, formerly Damrick's commanding officer when they both sailed aboard
Defender
. Hale had meant to make a career of sailoring, but his brief engagement with Sharkbit Sutter, and then news of Damrick's crusade had changed his mind. Hale had a cutthroat's eagerness for the fight and felt compelled to go where he was most likely to fire and be fired upon. He requested and received his release. Now, all the Gatemen but Lye Mogene and Damrick himself served under Hale, who brought a coarse but commanding presence to the Gatemen, along with his wild, windblown sideburns.
Three additional riflemen stood at the ship's stern. Three manned each cannon. Ten more lined each gunwale, port and starboard, long rifles in hand. Amidships, two sweat-drenched men held glowing iron pokers that were thrust into the midst of a small blacksmith's forge set in the middle of the main deck, glowing red and throwing off heat like it was apprenticed to the sun itself. Five more men stood alongside these two, waiting, their hands covered in the thick leather mittens of the smith's
trade. Lye Mogene stood and sweated beside them, the leader of this makeshift blacksmith brigade.
“Put some more water on that decking there,” Lye instructed. “Keep 'er drenched or we're done, forget the pirates.” One of the mittened men picked up a large pail and sloshed the deck and the wooden blocks under the oven's feet. Steam hissed and beads danced where water hit hot iron. Where it didn't, it ran quickly toward the starboard rail, the direction in which the ship was now heeled.
“He's got the weather gauge, Damrick,” Captain Didrick said. “He'll take us from port astern. And in this wind, it won't take him long.”
“Hard to port, then,” Damrick answered. “Let's engage.”
Didrick saw cold fire in his son's eyes. “He may ram us.”
“He won't.”
Captain Didrick shouted out the orders. The helmsman spun his wheel, and sailors loosed the sheets, swiveling the great sails, adjusting the angle to take advantage of the stiff wind under a new heading. The captain of the
Tranquility
saw, turned his ship likewise to port to maintain the upwind advantage.
“Range?” Damrick called out.
“Four hundred yards and closin' fast!” came the call from the crow's nest.
Damrick watched in silence, standing beside his father on the quarterdeck.
A cannon shot flashed from
Tranquility
, fire and smoke visible first, then the whistle and splash of the projectile not ten yards forward of the prow, and then finally the boom from across the waters.
“Hold steady, men!” Hale Starpus called out. “You know your orders!” He walked amidships, inspecting his men.
“Strike the sails,” Damrick instructed his father.
“They'll think we want parley.”
“They can think what they want. We're going to burn them to the waterline. Strike the sails, Captain.”
Didrick took a deep breath, watching his son. There was anger in him. But he turned away and cupped his hands around his mouth. “Heave to! Strike the main, the fore, the mizzen!”
Hale Starpus ambled up, his short legs and long torso making his gait seem more waddle than walk. “Time to move the starboard cannon, don't ye think, sir?”
“Do it, Lieutenant.”
“Gatemen! Starboard cannon to port!” Hale bellowed.
The three men at the starboard cannon were ready for the order. They had already loosened the bolts that held it to the iron deck plate as they watched the enemy approach. Within minutes, they had it bolted to an additional plate on the port side, installed for just this purpose.
“Let's line the rails,” Damrick said to Hale.
“All muskets, port rail!” Sixteen more men joined the ten stationed there. The entire fighting force and both cannon were now positioned to oppose
Tranquility
.
A sound like distant thunder came from the pirate vessel. Had the ship been at a greater distance, they might have taken it for cannon fire. But no cannonballs flew.
“They're what, cheering?” Lye Mogene asked, joining Damrick from his position at the stove.
“No. Them are drums,” Hale answered.
And shortly after, music drifted across the closing distance, not just drums but a pipe and an accordion as well.
“They're celebrating already?” Captain Didrick asked, amazed. “They must think we've surrendered.”
“No,” Damrick assured him. “Our flag is red, not white. And theirs is black.”
“Skeel Barris likes a bit a' music with his savagery,” Hale informed them. “He'd rather kill than dance, what they say. But to him, there ain't much difference 'tween the two.”
“Can hardly wait to meet him,” Captain Didrick said.
“With a little luck and a little marksmanship, we won't have to,” Hale assured them all.
Didrick fingered the cross around his neck.
Damrick saw. The cold fire in his eyes now blazed hot. “Let's burn them down. Range?” he called.
“Three-hundred-fifty yards!”
The music could be heard clearly now, carried on the wind. It was a lively jig, a merry tune all out of place here. Damrick looked around at his own men. They all watched him, waiting. “Load up, sir?” Lye asked. Sweat dripped from under his cap.
“Not yet. But get ready.”
Lye moved back to his position by the stove.
“Two-hundred-fifty yards!” came the call from above.
Damrick said nothing. All the Gatemen watched him, waiting.
“Steady!” Lieutenant Starpus called out sharply. But he, too, kept his eyes on Damrick.
“Two-hundred-and-twenty yards!” came the call from above.
“All right, Mr. Starpus,” Damrick said softly. “Let's open the gates of hell.”
“Hot loads!” Hale sang out.
Suddenly the decks were a beehive. The two men at the stove removed their pokers from the glowing oven, now revealed to be not pokers at all but something like long-handled ladles. They weren't iron, but steel, forged and tempered, and the bucket at the end glowed red. The Gatemen gathered in a rough semicircle around the small forge. The men in the mitts reached into the hot baskets and pulled out iron musket balls, glowing red, a fistful at a time. Then they dropped a hot ball into each of the upturned muskets. In minutes, with only a couple of mishaps requiring that a loose musket ball be kicked under a rail where it could hiss into the sea, the men had loaded and tamped down the shot.
Across the water on the approaching ship, sailors watched, happily guessing what the opposing crew was doing. They saw smoke from the oven, assumed it was no more than a hot lunch. They saw the armed men with the leather lashes and red feathers. They knew what that uniform meant, but they saw only two cannon. The ship's sails were reefed, she had slowed and then right herself. As they flew up from port astern, they saw a gathering amidships. None of this seemed particularly ominous.
Captain Skeel Barris himself, a grinning and pockmarked face atop a long and loose-limbed body, paused in his clapping and dancing. “Look, a prayer meetin'!” he said pointing, to general laughter. He folded his hands and put them under his chin. “Dear Lord, please let our leather garters and red feathers save us from the bad cannon of these ruthless scalawags!” His men roared their approval.
As the pirates made merry, the Gatemen aboard the
Calliope
returned to the rail and raised their rifles.
“Range?” Hale shouted.
“Two-hundred yards!” came the answer.
“Aim true, lads! For yer lives, yer wives, yer king, and yer country!” he cried.
“Looks like they gonna take us down with pop sticks,” the big captain said with glee. “Go ahead and put some more cannon fire down on 'em, but be careful. The
Calliope
's full o' good ale, and I'm thirsty!” His men had their main cannon primed and ready, but with little ability to aim
they could only wait for their ship to come broadside. That turn to port was underway. The fore swivel gun, meanwhile, boomed again, launching its smaller round shot from amid a belch of fire and smoke.
This time the
Calliope
was struck square, the projectile smacking into the ship's topside hull near the midline. But the hole it created was not close enough to the water to be an immediate threat.
Hale eyed Damrick, his teeth clenched in impatience. “Them loads ain't gettin' hotter,” he said. Then he added, “sir.”
“Let's do it, Mr. Starpus,” Damrick said with a nod.
“Cannon, fire!” Hale shouted.
Both cannon aboard the
Calliope
barked now in sharp, crisp booms. Two holes opened in the approaching ship's starboard hull. Though they struck at a glancing angle, these were long-range guns fired at close range, and both shots penetrated amidships.
As soon as he saw the results, Hale shouted, “Muskets now, hot fire!” Thirty long rifles erupted in a tight patter, sending tracers across the water. Gray smoke billowed around them, acrid in their nostrils, their eyes, and then it quickly blew away behind. Hale shouldered his own musket, letting it drift down onto the target, holding steady until it locked on. He, too, fired.
“Hot shots and bad aim,” Skeel Barris said with contempt from the rail of
Tranquility
. “That's what they're bringin', is it?” Not one man aboard his ship had been hit. All the musket balls had hit the hull or nothing at all. “Raise your sights a bit, gents!” he called out to his enemies. His own men laughed. “All right, fire in return, boys!” he ordered. “Show 'em how it's done.” And the pirates did.
Rifles and pistols cracked around him, putting smoke into the air. With the wind at his back, the cloud drifted toward the
Calliope
, obscuring his vision of his enemy. The captain took the opportunity to lean over the rail to see where in fact the hot iron had hit him. A bucket or two of water would douse any fire started by a musket ball. It had seemed as though the Gatemen's rounds had been aimed for a particular spot on the hull, but he couldn't imagine what.
Skeel could see where the cannon shot had penetrated his ship, two clean holes well above the waterline. No danger there. There were a few smaller, smoldering holes around it from embedded musket balls. But not many. Not nearly as many as had been fired. He squinted down at his hull for a moment longer, working it out. Then he stood up straight.
Suddenly, Captain Barris was no longer laughing. “Fire! Fire!” he sang
out. His cannon boomed and gray smoke billowed. Skeel shook his head in obvious frustration. “No,” he corrected. “Water! Water!”
After the volley, when they could hear him again, Skeel's men grinned at their captain as he jumped up and down, running and shouting something about both fire and water. They didn't get the joke but were sure he must be making one. After all, the sorry marksmen aboard the
Calliope
hadn't managed to hit a single sailor on the
Tranquility
. Their cannoneers weren't close to a sinking shot, either, putting their rounds high up into the hull. And the Gatemen had retreated from the rails immediately, back toward the center of the deck, gathering around that little cookstove.
Aboard the
Calliope
, the dual cannon fired again. The crew had survived the return fire from
Tranquility
, mostly intact, their retreat to the stove for second helpings of hot iron keeping most of them from harm's way. The freighter had weathered the storm of
Tranquility
's cannon fire, too, with chunks of hull and deck and masts flying, but light casualties. Now back at the rails, they fired again. All had been instructed where to aim and why, and all were following orders. Many of these were marksmen trained at sea as Damrick, Lye, and Hale had been, and so a good percentage of the musket balls found their way through the holes created by the cannon shells, and were now burning were they struck, deep inside
Tranquility
's belly.
“We're afire, ye dimwitted swabs!” Skeel finally managed to say, with a full complement of pirates paying attention. “They've shot our hold full of fire!”
No one moved for a moment, and then, together, they realized the implications. The hold, of course, was where the gunpowder was stored.
“Fire in the hold!” the bosun sang out. “Fire in the hold!”
Tranquility
erupted into chaos, as men rushed to find and fill buckets, and get them below decks.
“Fresh out, boys,” Lye told the gunmen who came back for thirds. “It's back to cold lead.” Relieved, the sweating smithies cast off their big mittens and picked up their rifles. The
Calliope
's regular sailors, having struck their canvas and tied off their sheets, also picked up rifles and pistols and joined the Gatemen. Lye Mogene gladly took his own musket to the rail with the rest of the crew, and stood beside Damrick Fellows. Every soul aboard now aimed at any pirate in sight, and together they poured out a merciless barrage of small arms fire that very quickly added a distinct crimson hue to the chaos.