"Hit a forward gun port!" Skank yelled, and Shandy obediently aimed at one of the gleaming cannon muzzles poking out of the Navy ship's bow and touched his match-cord to the vent. His gun went off with a jolting boom, and squinting through the acrid smoke he was pleased to see dust and splinters fly from the port he'd been aiming at.
"Good!" snarled Skank. "Now hit 'em—" Smoke erupted from the remaining guns in the man-of-war's flank but the roar of the cannon fire was lost in the sudden hammering crash that swept the Jenny, and Shandy was slammed violently away from his gun and flung tumbling into the mass of men behind him. Deafened and stunned, he wound up sprawled across a motionless body, trying to get air into his lungs without choking on all the blood and pieces of tooth in his mouth. Over the ringing in his ears he was aware of shouts of rage and panic, and of a new, sluggish shifting of the deck under him.
Hodge was shouting orders, and Shandy finally rolled over and sat up, coughing and spitting. Fearfully he looked down at his body, and he was profoundly grateful to see all limbs present, unpunctured and apparently unbroken—especially after he looked around at the vessel. Dead and injured men were scattered everywhere, and the luffing sails were torn and spattered with blood, and the weather-darkened wood of mast and gunwales was ploughed up in many places to show the bright, fresh wood underneath. It looked, thought Shandy dazedly, as if God had leaned down from heaven and swiped a sharp-tined rake across the boat a few times.
"Tiller hard to starboard, God damn it," Hodge was yelling. The captain cuffed away some of the blood that was coursing down his forehead. "And somebody grab the mainsail sheet!" A man by the tiller tried spasmodically to obey, but fell helplessly to his knees, blood frothing from a ragged hole in his chest; Skank had desperately clambered over a pile of his ripped-up companions to the sheet … but it was too late. The Jenny, uncontrolled in the moments after the gust of scrap metal and chain shot had lashed into her, had drifted around to the point where her bow pointed directly into the wind, and for at least the next several minutes she would sit dead in the water. Shandy had heard this predicament described as "being in irons," and it occurred to him that in this case the term could hardly be more appropriate.
The tall, graceful edifice of the man-of-war, slanted enough against the wind to maintain headway, now crowded across the sloop's starboard bow, and as the high hull ground up against the Jenny's forecastle, snapping the shroud chains and even breaking the catted anchor, grappling hooks clattered and thudded down onto the smaller vessel's deck, and a harsh voice shouted, "There's a pistol trained on every one of you bastards, so drop all weapons, and when we throw down the rope ladder come up one at a time and slow."
Chapter Seven
Though broken spars swung in the safety net overhead, the man-of-war's deck was intimidatingly clean and neat, the halliards spiral-coiled in perfect circles instead of just lying where they fell, as the Jenny's generally had been, and Shandy tried to keep his head tilted back so as not to drip blood onto the pale, sanded oak. His nose had been bleeding energetically ever since the Navy ship's blast, and the whole left side of his head was beginning to ache, and he decided that the blast must have struck the swivel gun he'd been standing behind, slamming the breech end of it against his head. Along with the ten other relatively unhurt members of the sloop's crew, he stood now in the ship's waist near the spoked barrel of the capstan, trying not to hear the screams and groans of the badly hurt pirates who had been left sprawled on the Jenny's deck.
The Navy sailors who stood by the rails and kept pistols pointed at the captives all wore tight gray jackets, striped breeches and leather caps, and their plain, utilitarian garb made the gaudy, tar-stained finery of the pirates look ridiculous. Glancing nervously at the Navy men, Shandy noticed something in their expressions besides contempt and anger, and he wasn't reassured when he finally identified it: the morbid fascination of looking at men who, though breathing well enough at the moment, would soon be naving their breath stopped forever in the bight of a noose.
Though the Carmichael was already just a distant tower of segmented white far off to the south, the Navy captain had lowered one of the ship's boats, and now, from his vantage point up on the poop deck, the captain peered through his telescope and laughed. "By God, Hendricks was right—one of
'em did fall overboard, and we've got him." He turned and looked down at his prisoners with a hard grin. "It seems," he called, "that one of your fellows just couldn't bear to leave you behind." After a moment of bafflement, Shandy decided it might very well be Beth, taking the chance of being missed in the water for the sake of getting away from the pirates and her insane father. He hoped that was the case, for then both of them would at last have come out the end of this savage interlude, and Davies and Blackbeard and Hurwood and Friend could go to Florida or to Hell, for all the two of them need care.
The thought reminded him that it was high time he stopped staring around, stupidly tonguing the gap where one of his molars had recently been, and told the Navy captain who he was, and how he had come to be aboard the sloop.
He took a deep breath, forced his eyes to focus, and then, holding his arms out placatingly, he stepped away from the huddled, silent pirates—and was promptly nearly killed, for one of the guards fired a pistol at him.
Shandy heard the bang of the shot but felt the concussion in the air as the ball whipped past his ear, and he fell to his knees, still holding up his hands. "Jesus!" he screeched, "don't shoot, I'm not doing anything!"
The captain's attention had been effectively drawn, and he shouted angrily at Shandy, "Damn you, get back among your fellows!"
"They're not my fellows, captain," called Shandy, cautiously standing up and trying to appear calm.
"My name is … is John Chandagnac, and I was a paying passenger aboard the Vociferous Carmichael before it was taken by Philip Davies and his men. During that … encounter, I wounded Davies, and so instead of being allowed to leave on the boat with the crew, I was forced on pain of death to enlist among my captors. Also forced to remain was another passenger, Elizabeth Hurwood, whom I suspect is the person who jumped overboard from the Carmichael just now." Glancing back at his recent companions, Shandy saw not only contempt but real hatred, and he added quickly, "I realize it will take time to verify my story, but I do request that you confine me somewhere separate from the rest of these men … just to make sure I survive to be a witness at the trial of Philip Davies." The captain had moved forward to the poop deck rail and was squinting down at him. "Davies?" He scanned the prisoners around the capstan and then glanced toward the Jenny's mast, visible above the forecastle. "Is he with you? Injured?"
"No," Shandy told him. "He's on the Carmichael." He nodded toward the departing ship.
"Ah," said the captain thoughtfully. "His trial won't be soon then." He blinked and looked again down at Shandy. "A forced man from the Carmichael, are you? You'll be pleased—or maybe not—to know that we can check your story right now. It was only this recentest Friday that we left Kingston, and the Carmichael was taken, as I recall, about a month ago, so our current shipping reports will cover it." He turned to a midshipman standing nearby. "Fetch the reports volume, will you, Mr. Nourse?"