Norton, Andre - Novel 08 (13 page)

 
          
 
"Not too long. But this is a good port to
drop anchor
in "

 
          
 
"Is it not?" Musat swelled with
pride. "The English dogs—they have never dared to put even the toes of
their sea boots on Saint Malo! We take our pick of their shipping at our will.
It is a good game to play, M'sieur, a very good game."

 
          
 
"How did you learn
your
English, Musat?" Fitz could not forego asking.

 
          
 
"In prison," the Malouin replied
frankly, with a flashing show of excellent teeth. "We took too many
prizes, were too greedy, and on the last boarding we were snapped up by a
sloop-of-war. So I was in prison, and there I learned to speak this barbarous
tongue. Since then Alfonse Musat does not push his luck, as you say. I have no
desire to taste English hospitality for the second time."

 
          
 
"You're deuced close to the English
here." For the first time Ninnes joined in the common talk. "
Plymouth
's just over the
way
"

 
          
 
Musat nodded. "The Channel is narrow
here, oui, that is true. But with St. Malo also here, we do not risk too much.
You are planning the Channel cruise, too —as did your famous Captain
Conyngham?"

 
          
 
Ninnes shrugged. "We go where our Captain
orders," he returned with a shortness which was almost deliberately rude.

 
          
 
"So.
But I
thought that on American ships matters were ordered differently. That you,
gentlemen, might have a voice in future plans?"

 
          
 
"We have a lucky Captain," Ninnes
returned. "We let him pick our course."

 
          
 
"But of a certainty that is the best
way," Musat agreed
good
naturedly. "Fortune
is a fickle lady," he kissed the tips of his fingers to the unseen
goddess,
"she cannot be driven, only wooed. And if your
captain has her interest, then he is a man to follow without protest. I envy
you your future. There is rich picking in the Channel nowadays, enough for all.
And the English navy cannot be everywhere at once, much as it strives to
accomplish that feat. I note that you carried cargo, you are then a Letter of
Marque not a
privateer "

 
          
 
"There is little enough difference,"
Ninnes answered before
Watts
could
reply. "We can be one or t'other as it suits us."

 
          
 
Musat lifted his glass. "You seem well
supplied as to guns. You will need them if you run up against Captain Sir
Powells—bah—I cannot say properly his miserable name. But he is a true devil,
that one. He says that we are all pirates and must hang—a very bloodthirsty
Englishman!" Musat rolled his eyes upward and made a comical face.
"You have your full complement of guns to meet the so-diligent Sir
Powells?"

 
          
 
"I reckon we have all we need,"
Matthews drawled. "We've played this game before, M'sieur, on the other
side."

 
          
 
"And successfully, oui.
But here conditions are different. Your captain would be wise to accept a
little advice,
M'sieur "

 
          
 
"From you?"
Ninnes' interruption was a whip crack, but Musat showed no sense of being
flicked by it.

 
          
 
"From me," he waved his hand,
"from any Malouin, perhaps. We know the Channel waters as we know the skin
on our own hands."

 
          
 
"Perhaps some of you know it too well,"
Ninnes had put down his glass and sat facing the Malouin, his hands on the
table.

 
          
 
Musat dropped his good-natured
smile,
he straightened to his full height on his stool.
"What do you mean?" he asked softly.

 
          
 
"Just this," Ninnes' voice carried,
and Fitz noticed that the jolly singing and loud talk at the other end of the
table had died away, "that you speak remarkably good English to have
learned it in an English
prison,
and that you are much
too interested in the Retaliation!"

 
          
 
"
So "

 
          
 
With one shove the Malouin sent his stool back
from the table and was on his feet, his hand at the knife in his belt. But Fitz
had had attention for the second table and now he cried out:

 
          
 
" 'Ware
boarders!" His fingers closed around the neck of a bottle and he arose in
one forward spring to meet the Malouin from the other table who was aiming a
tankard at
Watts
' unsuspecting head.

 
          
 
"You young fool!" he heard the
surgeon snap at Ninnes and then
Watts
raised his voice to them all: "Get out quick—they've knives!"

 
          
 
The Americans came together, facing down their
hesitating opponents. On the floor crouched the man

 
          
 
Ware boarders!"
Fitz cried out.

 
          
 
Fitz had struck, shaking his ringing head. But
the Malouins were strangely reluctant to carry the attack further. Cautiously
the
Retaliation 's
men backed toward the door.

 
          
 
Fitts, breathing hard through his nose,
wondered if they were going to get out so easily after all. The daredevil
Malouins were so oddly meek that the suspicion grew in his mind as to what they
would do to uphold their reputation of hot-headed fighting men.

 
          
 
"When we get outside,"
Watts
said slowly, "cut and run. Street
fighting here might be a nasty business."

 
          
 
Fitz inched over the stoop, shoulder to
shouldler with Ninnes. The dusk of twilight closed in upon them as a queer
throaty growl arose from the square of candle light they were leaving behind.

 
          
 
Ram down your guns and sponge them well,

            
Let us be sure that the balls will
tell,

        
    
The cannon's roar shall be their knell.

            
Be steady, boys, be steady.

 
          
 
—
STERRETS
SEA
FIGHT

 
          
 
A MOMENT LATER THAT SQUARE OF LIGHT WAS
BLOTTED out by a forward rush of dark figures. But the officers from the
Retaliation had already started their retreat toward the quay.

 
          
 
"Spread out!" that was Biggs.
"No use givin' 'em a neat-set target
now "

 
          
 
Fitz stepped away from his neighbor and edged
around a couple of bales and a pile of boxes which had been left to encumber
the cobbles of the narrow street. There were smoky lanterns hung from the
fronts of the buildings along the way, but they gave little enough
illumination. Somewhere behind him a voice screamed a Breton oath.

 
          
 
"Come on!"
Watts
sounded anxious. "Don't let yourself
be cut off, boys!"

 
          
 
In the dim circle of lantern light at the next
house-front Fitz saw the tall surgeon and the taller Matthews hesitating. A
smaller man puffed up to join them— Biggs. But where was Ninnes?

 
          
 
The growl which had come out of the tavern on
their runaway heels now rumbled along the road and he could have sworn that
figures were slipping up through the darkness in search of the knot of
Americans.

 
          
 
"
Lyon
!
Ninnes!"
Watts
' call carried too well. Fitz was ready to
answer when he realized he had not heard the lieutenant's reply. "
Lyon
!" That was urgent.
"Ninnes!"

 
          
 
Fitz listened, stopping where he was in the
shadow of the boxes. All he could think of was the knife in the Malouin's belt.
Knife work is a silent business. Impulsively he turned back, creeping along the
wall of the building, the granite blocks, wet and stinging cold under his hand.

 
          
 
He was well out of the reaches of the light
when he heard the sounds of a desperate scuffle in the dark. He lunged forward,
almost falling over battling bodies on the cobbles. Save for hard panting they
were fighting in deadly quiet. Fitz took a chance and grabbed at the one on
top, his fingers caught, and some cloth tore. There was a grunt of surprise and
pain, and the single writhing shadow abruptly became two.

 
          
 
"Ninnes?"
Fitz hovered.

 
          
 
One of them moved, wavering to knees and then
to feet.

 
          
 
" 'Ware
his
knife!" it choked out and stumbled toward Fitz. He closed his hand on the
lieutenant's shoulder, keeping his eyes on the other man.

 
          
 
The Malouin had remained in a half-crouch, but
now, with the speed of a striking rattlesnake, he launched himself at them knee
level. Fitz met that with his fist, aiming for a white blur which might have
been a face. But Ninnes kicked, waterfront fashion, and his boot got home. The
fellow screamed and doubled together. But as he fell there was the noise of
movement beyond.

 
          
 
"Come on!" Fitz jerked Ninnes along,
half supporting him. "We'll have the whole rat's nest about our ears
now "

 
          
 
Under Fitz's propulsion they reached the lantern
light again, almost running into the others.
Just as
Watts
reached for Ninnes a
silvery flash swept across Fitz's line of vision.
There was a knife, now quivering, with the
point buried in the door frame at his shoulder.

 
          
 
"Playing with edged tools, are they? We'd
best be off if we want to keep on breathing!" the surgeon commented as he
and Matthews closed in, one on either side of Ninnes, and the American party
pounded off into the dark, weaving through streets and around corners until
Fitz, had he not been clinging a little dizzily to his superior officers, would
have been totally lost.

 
          
 
It was not until they were safely
back
on the Retaliation that they were able to judge the sum
of damage for the night. Ninnes had a cut along the ribs, which had dyed his
coat and shirt red, and was unsteady from loss of blood. But save for the
bruises which marked violent meetings with the unyielding granite corners of
St. Malo, the rest were unharmed.

 
          
 
Watts
,
winding bandages to some purpose,
proceeded
I to improve
the hour with admonitions, while the others sat around his sanctum, content for
the moment to do nothing.

 
          
 
"Of course we could see that lack-wit of
a sea raider was trying to pump us," the surgeon pulled linen tight enough
to wring a grunt from his sullen patient, "we're not as Johnny-Green as
you think us, youngster."

 
          
 
Ninnes chewed on his lower lip, a dark scowl
drawing eyebrow to meet eyebrow. He did not reply.

 
          
 
"Next
time keep
your mouth shut and we won't have to patch you up. What Crofts will say to this
night's work, I dread to
think "

 
          
 
Fitz broke in impulsively, "Does he have
to know?"

 
          
 
All three of the older men favored him with
open surprise. Biggs snorted.

 
          
 
"Think such a tale won't be through the
town by mornin? We're the only foreign ship in port—the Malouins are a
stiff-necked lot—they'll cook up a story to blister us.
With
maybe just enough truth in its tellin' so that we can't deny the whole
thing."

 
          
 
"Aye," Matthews
nodded,
his usual sober countenance now a mask of pure gloom. "We'd best get t'
th' Cap'n first
wi
' th' truth if we don't want th'
hide peeled off'n us tomorrow."

 
          
 
"Like as not they'll
want to jail us.
And this jail is no town
jail,
it has dungeons under the water line." It seemed to Fitz that
Watts
was deliberately adding to the
unpleasantness of their situation with that bit of gratuitous information.

 
          
 
The New Englander got to his feet and crooked
a finger at Biggs.

 
          
 
"Might as well go an' break it t 9 him,
Lieutenant. Medicine ain't never
th
' sweeter for lettin'
it set a mite. Get yourself tied up quick, boy/' he added to Ninnes, "Th'
Cap'n might be
wantin'
to see you."

 
          
 
Ninnes nodded jerkily and sat dumb under
Watts
' deft hands. Fitz hesitated. The senior
officers had not bidden him to accompany them, and perhaps etiquette demanded
that he wait until he was summoned. Remembering his last serious interview with
the Captain and not desiring a sequel to it if he could help, he settled back
on
Watts
' supply chest.

 
          
 
"There," the surgeon finished his
work and went to pour out a noggin of brandy which he handed to his patient.
"Put that under your belt and you'll feel more yourself again. But you're
damned lucky, an inch or so more and we'd been sewing you up in canvas, m'lad.
What made you tackle a knife man barehanded?"

           
 
Ninnes sputtered as the fiery stuff poured
down his throat. Above the corselet of bandage his bare shoulders were broad
and well muscled.

 
          
 
"He jumped me," he answered
sullenly. "I tripped, and when I got up you were gone on. Then he came out
of the shadows and got me from the back, not cleanly
or
"

 
          
 
"Or you wouldn't be talking now,"
Watts
agreed. "But we wouldn't have had any
of this
tangle
if you'd learn to keep your suspicions
to yourself. Don't you suppose that Crofts knows this harbor is probably alive
with informers and men who'd be only too pleased to pick up a guinea or two by
reporting our plans to the right persons? I am only surprised that
this fellow was so bald and open
in his pumping. They must
think us hardly above the mental state of idiots.''

 
          
 
Ninnes slid off the table and reached for the
coat they had taken off him.

 
          
 
"Got to clean up," he muttered and
started out.
Watts
gave Fitz a little push.

 
          
 
"Go along after him. With all that brandy
in him and a light head into the bargain, he might well trip and go
overboard."

 
          
 
Rather reluctantly the marine obeyed. Ninnes
steadied himself with one hand, but when Fitz caught up he straightened and
stood away from his support.

 
          
 
"What did you come back for—there in the
town?" the hoarse words of that demand were his greeting.

 
          
 
"I'd dropped behind myself. Then you
didn't answer
Watts
' hail. So I thought I'd better see . .
."

 
          
 
Around Ninnes' lips tiny beads of moisture
glistened in the lantern light. There was a wet sheen on the skin of cheeks and
jaw, and his eyes were hard and too bright.

 
          
 
"You probably saved my life!" Hot
anger colored those words forced out of him against his will.

 
          
 
"Probably not," Fitz denied that.
"You'd have won free without my interfering. Like as not I might have put
you in danger by trying to break up the fight in the
dark
"

 
          
 
"I don't like you," Ninnes leaned
back against the paneling. "You've always had all you wanted—you gentry
prig! I've fought for what I have. While you lay snug o' nights with a full
belly, I was a draggle-tailed brat without a shirt to my name and no shoes to
my feet. I'd eat a crust out o' the gutter—if I could find one. You're
gentry—well, I'm going to be. I'll command my own ship
"
his
words came faster and faster, fairly tripping on each other.

 
          
 
Fitz took his arm and pulled him along to the
door of the small cubby he shared with Langston. Ninnes did not seem to know
that he was being steered, and he allowed the marine to thrust him into his
quarters without protest. Once there, he stood swaying as his coat fell from
loosened fingers to the deck. Fitz guessed that he was dazedly unaware of his
surroundings. With a sigh of exasperation the marine set about putting his
charge to bed.

 
          
 
It was something of a task. Although Ninnes
was docile enough and only muttered incoherently under his breath as Fitz
struggled with him. But as last it was done, and Fitz saw that the lieutenant
had lapsed into a stupor. He wondered if
Watts
should be summoned again.