Cross of Fire (51 page)

‘You must dry, Christopher. Go below. Howard is to the twelves. See if you can man the sixes. I have only boys. If you can, try to do better than them. I will need the starboard battery soon enough.’

Manvell tapped his forefingers to his head. ‘Aye, sir.’ He took the stair in a jump.

‘Christopher!’ Coxon called.

Manvell looked up.

‘On your parole, Lieutenant.’

Manvell genially gave his accord and went down.

Peter Sam pushed through the gun-crew, slammed his fist on the gunwale. ‘And what is this now?’

Devlin appeared beside him, small against him.

‘How is this?’

They watched the great ship running, coursing as if on a different sea, a toy wheeling across a paper ocean.

‘She’s moving fast,’ Peter Sam moved back as the lower-deck gunports swept open with a run of water. He dragged Devlin away. ‘And she has her twelves!’

They all watched the first smoke, heard the sharp crack a blink later and then the black ball visible as it turned the rain to steam. They ducked before the nine other charges echoed through the storm. A long, sweating wait of only seconds and Peter Sam and Devlin, tight at the larboard bulwark shared them all, open-eyed, as the low hum came on.

The
Shadow
rolled, cried out against the iron. That which they repaired a year ago after fighting Trouin in the Channel busted open like old wounds. There was no good wood in the world any more.

Only half the shot had hit, but still the deck shook, leant, the guns falling back on their tackles.

Devlin stood, saw Hartley already up and to his linstock and powder-trails. He would cover his foe’s sight of their success with his own prowess.

Devlin and Peter Sam ran to starboard, held the rail and felt it tremble, the water shaking from its wood as their guns fired back, the furore no longer a shock to the senses. Devlin leant over the side, Peter Sam instinctively grabbing the tail of his coat.

‘We’re holed,’ he called back. ‘Not below our water.’ He thanked the storm. The rise and fall of it his design, his genius against whatever card Coxon had pulled from his sleeve. ‘They will re-sight for that.’

Peter Sam pulled him back. ‘I think he has another mind.’

Devlin did not see how his returning fire fared. He only saw the other bowsprit winding round, the ship yawing hard and the petticoats of her keel showing as she rose. Coming about. In a storm. She crashed and ploughed on. Towards him. In a storm. Not sluggish and mute.

How
? It was the only thought in his head.

He could make forward passage. Ride the storm. Crush them within while he skated through and would win. But the larger ship was shaming his, and she would have the wind.

‘What now?’ A loud Peter Sam.

Devlin felt the cold rain, his old coat pasted to him. The short minute again. The sand-glass of decision. Sixty seconds to what? He stared at the ship, aware of his crew’s eyes upon him.

‘Devlin! What now?’ Peter Sam said again.

He could helm-a-lee, make a run of it with their cleaner heels but that would be the first choice and thus the one Coxon would already expect, would count on. The storm was across them, leaning them to windward, forward movement dragged to a crawl, but they could run into the eye of the typhoon; Coxon would have to be mad to follow. But they might not ever leave from there. His ballad would not end well when the taverns rolled with it.

No. Ride the edge of it, as they were. Coxon had come in after them. Plainly he was not set for leaving.

He yelled for Lawson.

‘Raise the courses! Make the staysails! We’ll ride the lee. Ride the storm. A running fight. Conn for the reefs. We can still outrun her. She can’t make the shallows.’

Lawson sprinted away, Hartley back to his guns. Only Peter Sam not moving.

‘A running fight. Against her iron?’

‘We can’t move to close, Peter. We ain’t got the wind of it. We can ride it out. Wait for him to make a mistake.’

‘He don’t seem to favour many of those.’

Devlin minded the sea. Watched the other ship come about, white water over her bow thrown off like a cloak. The wind was now Coxon’s mistress, easing him round with a gentle palm.

He saw the ropes trailing along from her sides like baiting lines but still did not comprehend the benefit. His own guns broke him from his study and he waited for the roar to drown.

Less than a thousand yards now, fighting range, but his guns would be over their bow at best. The cloud cleared. He took up his glass.

Some holes punched through the headsails, sparse falling wood, spliced sheets flailing. Even through the downpour some cries carried but not in pain; just for work. Some good had been done but that would be the last of the
Shadow
’s
starboard broadsides.

And Coxon’s starboard was coming about.

A game of bowls; the
Shadow
the Jack, the
Standard
playing at them calm and orderly like Drake on Plymouth Ho. The starboard barrage only ten minutes since the larboard and the
Shadow
wailed, pieces of her calved painfully to the sea.

Hartley on the uproll gave again, determined to return fire before the
Standard
’s could pat each other on the back.

He caught her final quarters with his chain, all his nines within every inch of her span, and even Coxon was forced to duck as wood plashed around his deck. He waved Kennedy over from where he cringed beneath the taffrail.

‘Come, Kennedy! Not dead yet, boy! You should watch this.’

Kennedy crawled. A whine and snap of wood and a sheet and tackle swung before his face to barely miss his skull. He scurried to Coxon’s side, surely the safest place.

‘He ain’t for giving up, Captain.’ Kennedy saw the guns of the
Shadow
angled to bear on their quarters. Coxon pointed. ‘Our long-guns will catch them between the wind and water,’ his voice rose fondly to the pirate. ‘One more round of chain from the sixes and it will be grape I shall send across his stern. Clear his deck of bravery. Razors to his neck.’

Kennedy directed Coxon’s gaze to the men in the tops of the
Shadow
, the masts leaning away from them, the men’s backs over the sea.

‘They got guns aloft. They’ll bite back.’

‘It will be his chasers and quarterdeck guns that will concern if we get within.’ Coxon’s voice lowered. ‘But not much.’ Through the rain he could make out a figure with long-coat and spyglass. A brain behind it no doubt fevered by battle and fervidly clouded by Coxon’s companionship with creatures from his past.

Kennedy blew out a breath. ‘As long as we don’t get too close, Captain.’

Coxon took strange pleasure that the pirate had always called him ‘captain’. No contracted version or the umbrage-laced ‘sir’. But Kennedy had fancied himself one of Roberts’s captains. He must have had some respect for the title he had collared so briefly. Perhaps he should purpose to keep him alive. After this he may be some use for cornering Roberts. See how the next quarter-hour went.

‘No, Walter,’ he waited for the cataclysm of his guns before he finished. ‘I intend to get very close indeed.’

The music over the way had ceased. His sergeant’s drum came now the only sound.

No rapid response arrived from Hartley’s guns this time. The fog of sawdust played about their faces with the cover of the rain like smoke from a hay-fire.

The puddings and chain about the sails had kept the pirate’s masts and yards good but Coxon’s sixes were firing at a man’s height and the
Shadow
showed fresh wood where the iron had swiped her skin and bone like an axe.

Devlin and Peter Sam held at the fo’c’sle. They watched the larger ship pass across their starboard shrouds, her guns pulled in. Reloading. All twenty of them.

The
Shadow
was still reeling from the momentum lost as she absorbed the cannonade. Hartley was already going below for the stern chasers, the gun-crews diving into the cabin for more bags of charge where it was kept dry from the rain. Devlin looked up to the topmen on the main and mizzen. They had set their swivels, firing down onto the passing ship with their smoke and flame. The topmen were tied to their masts. He could see their mouths gasping for air against the punishing downpour as they reloaded with their match burning in their calloused fists to keep it dry.

Hugh Harris had taken his minstrels below to the carpenter, to pump the well where the scuppers could not cope with the holes they had taken from the twelve-pounders. This was a ship’s end.

Peter Sam ran to aid Lawson and his mates to free the hanging sheets that their enemy’s chain had made.

Devlin walked slow from the fo’c’sle. He had ordered nothing. His men had all gone to action as a single thought. A portion of them had been at sea longer than him – the advantage in the democracy of the pirate. Work as want required. No need for command. Every man for each other and for himself, for it was his gold in the hold, his account. And it would be in another’s pocket if he did not work and fight for it when the trumpets played.

He could see Coxon plainly now, hundreds of yards still between them, maybe two ship’s lengths, but the man-of-war towered above them. His only defence was the narrowness of his beam. Half Coxon’s guns would rake across their stern, churn into his cabin, his home, maybe hit the powder that sat there. The twelves would be at Hartley’s level, two nine-pounders against five twelves and Hartley would have to be the devil not to die and their rudder would surely be shot away.

Coxon’s sixes would hold grape, would pepper his deck with five hundred musket balls and his men would lie on their bellies and hope not to burn.

The
Shadow
was not able to close – too much leeway. But to head-to, to close, that would be the way. Send pirate against sailor. That might do. Common man against common man but his the better suited. The sailors would have the pirate’s legends. If any of them had been at sea before they would all have some myth. But he could not board if he could not move, and Coxon was on his stern.

No decision now. Only instinct. He walked alone through the chaos amidships. He had one weapon not used, one play still to draw. He walked to his quarterdeck.

He climbed the stair and saw the great wood rising above his taffrail, Coxon’s two gundecks’ ports running with rain, the strange smooth water around the hull that he had given up considering. This man had been his master. He needed no other consideration.

He took the hailing-trumpet from its rope-housing around the wheel. One weapon not used, one play still to draw.

Himself.

And John Coxon.

Two ships, two crews, but under the sky, over it all, not much more than two boys on hands and knees pushing their toy ships around and around the grass until one stands up, brushes the stains from his knees and has to go home to supper. Just them.

‘Captain John!’ Devlin called through the brassed cone, his eyes over it on the black figure standing beside Walter Kennedy.

‘You want me! Face me! Spare your men!’

Devlin lowered the trumpet and held the wheel for support. Waited.

Coxon slammed close his scope.

‘
Finally
!’

He walked to the deck rail and called the midshipman at the companion.

‘Tell Manvell and Howard hold fire!’ He sent his next command to Jenkins.

‘Bring her to!’

Devlin heard, unlashed the wheel and faced his deck.

‘Heave to! Helm-a-lee!’ And he pushed the wheel down to his knee. To come about. Broadside to broadside.