"In for the kill, Mr. Haywood. We'll take her if we can, sink her if we must."
"Aye, Sir."
Orders are given and we closes with the pirate. His guns are blazin' away and so are ours. We are rocked with a hit on the starboard bow and we knock down his mizzenmast. Then, with a cheer, we see his main teeter all askew and then go down. It should be over. Please let it be over. Please let me go to see if...
"What's he doing there?" The Captain is peering through his glass at the confusion on the other ship.
"It appears he's off-loading treasure into that boat," says the First Mate, fairly licking his lips.
"I can see that," says the Captain with some irritation. "I mean on the other side of his ship. I see a sail sticking up."
Mr. Haywood shifts his glass. "They seem to be loading it with something, too. Maybe it's more treasure."
Although I don't have a telescope, I can see what they're talking about. It's a small boat, with a single sail. One of their lifeboats. Maybe they are trying to save their lives, I thinks. I know I'd be thinkin' that if I was them. Then that boat moves away from the side of the ship and all the pirates run to the remaining lifeboats and get in. How can they possibly hope to get away, I wonders.
I finds out.
The small boat heads straight for our bow. The rudder and the sail are tied down. There is no one in the boat, just piles of black kegs and white bags. And sparkles of fire from the fuses.
"Fireship!" screams the Captain. "Hard left rudder! Clear the fo'c'sle!"
Men pour from the bow of the ship, gunners from the guns, Marines from the masts, men from the anchor locker and the orlop, there's Mr. Lawrence and Davy and...
"Get down!" yells the Captain and hits the deck. I stands there all stupid, and he reaches out and yanks me feet out from under me. Me drum rolls away as I goes down and I see it bounce over the side, but before it does there's this sheet of white light and I see the skin of the drum go all orange and then turn black and gone. Then the blast hits.
I screams out, but I can't hear my own voice and I thinks I screams out Jaimy's name but I don't know 'cause all is lost in the roar of the firestorm.
Chapter 35
It's been three days now and we're still sinking.
LeFievre's fireship blasted a massive hole in the starboard bow. The bowsprit and its netting are gone. The figurehead, the woman with the dolphins, is smouldering splinters. The seas pour into the blackened hole every time we rock in the swells, as the hole is right at the waterline. The carpenter is unable to fix it; it's just too big and too far across. We have tried stretching canvas across the gap, but that is soon ripped off by the force of the sea. The Bo'sun took a bunch of us down in the hold, and we shifted cargo to put a list on the ship so that it leans over enough so that the hole is just out of the water, but the seas still slop in. If we have a storm, we are lost. If we don't get to land, we are lost. If the water level in the hold gets above a certain mark, we are lost.
We are on the pumps every second. Every pump on the ship, big and small, is taken to the forward hold and put in service. It is killing work, and we go in shifts of half hour on, half hour off. We collapse next to our pump, and we sleep next to it. We ship's boys have been given the small deck pump, the one used to hose us off that day long ago. There's only Jaimy, Davy, and me now, as Tink caught a musket ball in his leg and is in sick bay. The bullet didn't hit the bone, so he might not lose the leg if infection don't set in, and we prays that it don't.
We lost eighteen men dead, thirty wounded, in that battle. Henderson was one, he who was a constant friend to me and always looked out for my poor self when I was green. Lafferty, another good one. Both of 'em blown off the fo'c'sle and never seen by earthly eyes again. And Grant, he who could play the fiddle and the concertina, and I can't make myself believe those fingers will move no more. Mr. Barkley, midshipman, one of the younger squeakers, and Joshua Spense, the Kingston man. I'm glad he had that last liberty in his own town. He should have deserted when he had the chance. Not very military of me to think that, but I don't care. I'm too tired.
Mr. Greenshaw, the Master, is still alive, but only just barely. His leg went over the side with the dead seamen right away after the blast. No time for ceremony now. No time for grief. We'll say the words later, if we can.
LeFievre and what's left of his crew got away.
The pump handle is a T-shaped bar and you put your hands on the cross piece of the T and you lift it up and you push it down. On the upstroke you hear the valve breathe in with a soggy sigh, and on the downstroke you hear the bit of water pushed up through the pipe and out over the side. I've figured that when I do it 1 get maybe a half gallon a minute out. Prolly less. Up and down, up and down till all sense of time and place fades away, and you do it till your time is up or you collapse and are dragged away.
When we first started we joked and cheered each other on, but after a while we couldn't, just couldn't. We only pushed on the bar and went up and down and up and down, and days and nights went by. Jaimy tried to work harder to take up some of my time and I tried not to let him but I couldn't keep up and I went for food for all of us, and we ate it and pumped and pumped and slept and pumped and in the morning, we saw that we had lost ground. There was two more feet of water in the hold and that just about tore the hearts out of us. I go back up on deck to get some biscuits and tea to take back, but Mr. Haywood stops me. He is stripped to the waist 'cause he has been on the pumps, too, and all the officers and midshipmen and the Captain, too, and I stand there weaving back and forth in front of him with the mugs and the biscuits in me hands and me eyes about to roll back in me head, and I ain't thinkin' too good and...
"Faber. What pump are you on?"
"Number-three-deck pump, Sir. just down there."
"Right. Take that down to your mates and then go to your hammock and go to sleep. I'll send someone to take your place, and then I'll send someone to wake you in two hours."
This must be a dream. I must still be down next to the pump.
"But, Sir, me mates—"
"Do it, Faber. No back talk."
I do it.
I go back and tell the lads, and they nod and take the food. A sailor shows up to take my place. I stumble out and over to our old kip. None of the hammocks are hung 'cause no one's slept since the battle. I fall down toward a pile of powder rags and swabs. I am asleep before I hit them.
I sleep a sleep that's too deep for dreamin', but I'm hauled out of it way too soon, and it's Muck I feel shaking my shoulder and lifting me up and putting me in his cart, and I moans, No, Muck, I ain't drownded yet, but it's not Muck. It's a seaman who's saying, "Wake up, Jacky. Mr. Haywood wants you topside. Now."
Mr. Haywood sees me come on deck and takes me by the arm and points up the mainmast.
"See the lookout up there, boy?"
The lookout is standing, glass to eye, on the little platform at the doubling of the maintopmast with the topgallant, about a hundred feet up.
"Yes, Sir," says I, tryin' not to yawn in his face.
"Now see the place above him, on the main royal, where the backstays and the shroud lines come together?"
"Yes, Sir."
"Good. I want you to go up and relieve the lookout and take his glass and climb up to that spot and search the horizon. Especially the horizon to the south. When you climb up there, you should be a good twenty-five feet higher and that will give you a better view. Do you understand, boy?"