Almost immediately three boats came around from the land side of the Santa Ines and started swiftly for the Caroline. One was laden with casks, but the other two seemed overly burdened with men who were not rowing.
"Here!" Scott said sharply. "Tell this Suran fellow to remain where he is. And tell him that only one other boat is coming to the side of this ship."
Fox told him. The Malay chief spoke at length, his tone apologetic. Meanwhile, though, the boats from his vessel drew steadily nearer. Scott's apprehension bloomed, but he kept his voice calm. "Did you tell him, Fox?"
"Aye, sir," the second officer replied worriedly. "But he says he's got six score people to feed."
"A hundred and twenty! He's no trader!" Scott caught Suran roughly by the shoulder. "Stop those boats!"
The man twisted free. His boats already were too close for the Caroline's guns to be used on them, even if the pieces were loaded with grapeshot. He knew it and Scott knew it.
Scott made a grab for Suran, intending to use him as a hostage; but the man anticipated the move and leaped back, drawing his creese and uttering a shrill command. Scott felled him with his fist, then leaped back with Fox to avoid being butchered by the two Malay sailors.
"All hands!" Scott roared, tugging his pistol free of his belt. "Repel boarders."
Fending a creese cut with the long barrel of the pistol, he leveled the weapon at his attacker and pulled the trigger. It missed fire. Desperately he booted the grimacing native in the belly and flung the pistol at the head of a pirate coming over the rail from Suran's boat. Then he drew his cutlass and rushed the chief, who had regained his feet and unsheathed his rapier-like parang.
Suran stood up boldly to Scott, sword against the heavier cutlass. And it seemed to the Caroline's captain that Malays were everywhere he looked. Grimly he slashed and stabbed at Suran, trying to cut the man down and thus perhaps check the assault. But the agile dato fended every slash and lunge, using his parang skillfully.
The waist of the ship swarmed with men, white and brown, fighting with cutlasses, swords, boarding pikes, knives, spears and pistols. Scott kept his attention fixed on Suran, taking long chances in his effort to slay the man. He forced him back gradually, until the dato fought desperately with his back to the mainmast.
Suddenly Suran seemed infused with fresh strength. He counterattacked furiously, making Scott give ground; and his eyes glittered with fury amounting to madness. Slipping in blood, Scott almost fell; and in his anxiety to kill, Suran leaped toward him almost blindly. Dodging a whistling cut of the sword, Scott lunged and drove his weapon clean through his opponent. The fellow sagged on the blade, almost twisting the cutlass from Scott's grip. With a mighty jerk Scott freed the weapon of the dinging flesh. Then, on impulse, he bent and snatched the yellow cap and waved it aloft with a roar of triumph.
The chief's death broke the attack with amazing suddenness. Making no attempt to avenge the slaying, the Malays bolted. In twos, threes and dozens they leaped into the sea, swimming for their boats and climbing in.
Breathing hard, Scott looked about him. Peary was on his feet, bloody cutlass in hand. So was Fox. So was Hurst. In fact, he saw only one of his men lying inert on the deck. About a dozen Malays were sprawled where they had been cut or shot down. The ferocious fight had lasted only five minutes.
"Hurst!" Scott bawled.
"Sir?"
"Get your rifle and start picking off every Malay you can."
"Aye, aye, sir!"
"All hands! All hands!"
The crew closed in about him, faces and bodies wet with sweat and blood, eyes still alight with the fury of battle.
"Mr. Peary, get on sail and bring the ship about. We're going to blow that damned bark out of the water. We'll move in close and alternate round shot and grape."
The men cheered. Peary grinned happily. "Aye, aye, sir!"
Hurst's long rifle cracked with almost monotonous regularity as the crew made sail and prepared to bring the Caroline about. Scott paced the poop tensely, his eyes darting from the work to the fleeing Malays. His mind was made up: he would destroy the Santa Ines and every native in her.
The Caroline came about smartly. Her starboard gunners opened fire with round shot, and the first nine-pounder snapped off the bark's foremast. Again and again the brig quivered and shuddered to the recoil of cannon. The Santa Ines was armed, but her people never brought a gun to bear on the brig. They were too demoralized even to set sail. Scott worked the Caroline closer. Grapeshot slashed the bark's rigging. Round shot stove in her housing and hulled her. A twelve-pound ball brought down the mizzenmast.
"Scott! Captain!"
Scott turned to face his brother-in-law, who was begrimed from burned gunpowder.
"Let's board her, Scott. There may be something worth taking out of her."
That made sense. Besides, there was no point in wasting more gunpowder. Scott looked and saw that two boats were pulling away from the Santa Ines; while sharks, some of them twice the length of a tall man, already were tearing and jerking at bodies in the water. For a fight that had started out so fiercely the ending was almost ludicrously anticlimactic, mere vengeful destruction. Some of the ferocity died out of him. "Very well."
Peary laughed, and the captain eyed him curiously.
"I was just thinking," Peary explained, "that these damn' Malays are better starters than finishers."
The Caroline shuddered again as cannon leaped back against their breachings. Splinters flew from the bark.
Scott lifted his voice commandingly. "Cease fire!. . . Lay her alongside, Mr. Peary."
No hand opposed the boarding of the Santa Ines. On the whole, it was a sad business, with the victors awed into silence even before their feet hit the scarred, blood-spattered teak deck. The bark was finished, making water fast, settling with a gurgling sound in the warm, wet bed of the tropical sea. In the waist, on the foredeck and on the poop, amidst the shambles of torn cordage, shredded canvas and splintered wood, lay the brown bodies of twenty-odd pirates, their bodies horribly mangled. Some had been hastened to paradise by the creeses of sympathetic comrades. All who had been able to abandon ship were in the two boats, which were well beyond reach of small arms.
Like his men, Scott was temporarily dumbfounded by the carnage and destruction wrought by the merciless pounding at point-blank range; for the Caroline had lost but one man, a seaman named Boyd; but no regrets beset him. There was in him no softness for treachery, even though he was unable to escape the feeling of depression. While he stood looking about before giving the order to search the sinking craft, he was startled by the sudden emergence from the shattered cabin of two figures: a slight, ash-blond girl of perhaps twenty, her long, full skirt sweeping the deck, and a thin, stooped man of middle years who wore silver-rimmed spectacles. Still shocked by the cannonading, they moved slowly into the brilliant sunlight, blinking fearfully and questioningly at the surprised men of the Caroline.
Amazement showing in his face, Scott stepped toward them, bloody cutlass in hand. "Who are you?"
The girl tightened her grip on her companion's arm and met Scott's eyes with her own, which were dark brown and in vivid contrast to the fairness of her hair and skin. The man looked at the starred, striped flag the Caroline flew, and his eyes, as darkly brown as his daughter's, misted behind the thick lenses through which he squinted at the world.