We are pirates now, he thought, pirates through and through.
He remembered the false colors flying at the masthead. He could not go into a fight under false colors; that was too much, even for him.
The sailor who had run them aloft was fully entranced with the chanting, and the enemy, growing closer, the gunfire, gun after gun blasting into the Elizabeth Galley from the Don’s well-aimed broadside, so Marlowe spun the halyard off the pin himself and let the flag fall to the deck in a big, brightly embroidered pile.
Now, now, now. “In the waist, stand ready…!” So close now, the chanting breaking down into screams, clashing of steel, but the Spaniards ready for them, not giving up, lining the side with weapons drawn, forty, fifty men perhaps.
“Fire!”
The Elizabeth Galley’s broadside went off as if it were one great gun, and the entire ship rocked away from the blast and the iron flew across the few yards of water and tore up the Spaniards’ ship, smashing ornate carvings and strakes and wales, deadeyes, and channels in one great devastating stroke.
Marlowe jerked one of his four pistols from his crossbelt, held it in his left hand, grabbed Griffin by the collar, and pulled him around until they were face-to-face.
“Ready, Griffin?” He leered at the man, wanted him to know that the time of reckoning was at hand. Saw the fear in Griffin’s eyes.
And then they staggered together as the Elizabeth Galley smashed bowfirst into the Spaniard and there was the screaming and the wave of men over the bow and the pop-pop of small arms, the shriek of the first wounded and killed, just like so many times before, and Marlowe wondered that such horror could be so familiar.
Then the stern swung in, ground against the Spaniard, which was higher than the Galley. Marlowe let Griffin go, pointed to the quarterdeck rail, ten feet above their heads where they stood on the Galley’s quarterdeck.
“Let’s go! Go!” Marlowe shouted, leapt up onto the quarterdeck rail, then stepped onto the Spaniard’s mizzen channel and into the mizzen shrouds, up over the level of the rail and over the quarterdeck.
The officers were there, and several of the crew and passengers, all armed, determined to defend their ship or die in the process. Marlowe had his pistol aimed at the captain’s chest, had the lock pulled back before the captain even saw this new threat. He shouted, twisted, aimed his own pistol. Both went off and both missed.
Marlowe swung around inboard of the shrouds and dropped to the deck and pulled another pistol with his left hand, his big straight-blade sword with his right. Felt a pistol ball whiz by his ear, turned a sword aside, thrust, felt the tip bite.
He was alone, and for a second he wondered if he had been abandoned, if Griffin had done for him, but here came more of the Elizabeth Galleys, up the shrouds and down onto the Spaniard’s quarterdeck, and soon the space was crowded with fighting men.
Griffin was the last of them, the craven bastard, coming sheepishly up the shrouds, shouting like he was in the thick of it, looking around for a safe place to jump. Marlowe stepped out of the melee, took two steps over to the mizzen shrouds, grabbed Griffin by the coat, and pulled him to the deck.
Griffin’s knees seemed to buckle under him and Marlowe pulled him to his feet, propelled him forward, shouted, “Get in there, you cowardly bastard!”
Time for you to die.
One of the passengers came at Griffin, and Griffin raised his sword and fended off the attack, pulled a pistol from his belt, and in his panic discharged it into the deck before he could even bring it horizontal.
Marlowe pulled pistol number three from his cross belt and aimed it at the man fighting Griffin, then swung his arm right three inches until the muzzle pointed right at the back of Griffin’s head. He began to squeeze the trigger and then the Spaniard knocked Griffin’s sword aside and Griffin stumbled and the Spaniard skewered him in a shrieking, bloody final thrust.
Griffin arched back, eyes wide, his scream cut off by the blood bubbling from his mouth. Marlowe adjusted his aim again, saw the Spaniard over the muzzle, pulled the trigger.
The ball ripped through Griffin’s cheek and struck the Spaniard in the chest, tossing him back. He let go of the sword and Griffin fell squirming at Marlowe’s feet and then was still.
Marlowe looked at the Spaniard, dead before he hit the deck. Thank you, sir, he thought, you saved me from having to be a murderer as well as a pirate this day.
And then he was back in the fight, his sword knocking aside whatever defense was presented, but the fight had all but ended even as Griffin was screaming his life away. Swords and pistols were thrown aside, hands raised over heads, calls for quarter in Spanish.
“That’s enough! That’s enough! Give quarter, there!” Marlowe shouted. He raced to the quarterdeck rail, shouted it down into the waist, and the powder-blackened, blood-smeared, crazed men lowered their weapons, stared at the surrendering Spaniards, stood heaving for breath.
That was the difference, Marlowe told himself, the difference between the Elizabeth Galleys and true pirates, because true pirates would have continued with the killing, would have shed every drop of Spanish blood aboard in retaliation for the unspeakable offense of their fighting back, and because they were Spanish, which was reason enough.
They searched the ship and found hiding in the bread room a half a dozen women. A few were old, matronly, but the rest were young, the oldest of them perhaps twenty-three, and all lovely, olive skinned, with the untainted virginal beauty of the aristocracy’s daughters. They were terrified, as well they might be, but Marlowe saw they were treated with great respect and set Bickerstaff, who spoke the lingo well, to look over them.
Here again, Marlowe assured himself, they were not pirates. He knew what the pirates would have done to them and he did not like to think on it.
It was a rich prize, as a Spaniard homeward bound from that country’s American possessions was wont to be, and the Elizabeth Galleys were a happy crew once again. They worked with a will, emptying the hold, swaying its contents over and down into the Elizabeth Galley, tending the wounded, throwing the dead into the sea.
Marlowe spoke to the captain, who had survived the fight with no more than a vicious gash on his arm, which was bound in a blood-soaked shirt pulled from the body of one of his men. He had been in the far-flung settlements of the Spanish empire, had not heard of the war in Europe, would not have been in those waters if he had.
The war was fully involved, Marlowe told him. Land and sea, and they, the Elizabeth Galleys, were no pirates, but legal and legitimate privateers. Their behavior after the fight was proof enough of that.
The captain bowed, nodded. He was sensible to the fact that their treatment would have been much different in the hands of the Brethren of the Coast.
Mr. Fleming stood to one side in obvious hope of attracting Marlowe’s attention.
“Yes, Mr. Fleming?”
“Sir, I wish you joy of your victory, sir,” he said.
“Our victory, Mr. Fleming,” said Marlowe, nodding to the bandage around the first officer’s hand. The blood that soaked it was dried and brown and only a little of the white cloth was visible.
“Oh, ’tis nothing, sir. But, pray, sir, these Dons has some spare sails that might well be worth the having, sir, but our haul has been so prodigious that we’ve scant room aboard, even now. I had a thought to start some of the water, sir, and break down the casks and then we could have the sails as well.”
“Hmmm.” Marlowe considered that. “No, I think not, and let me tell you why. You may as well know, no point keeping good news a secret. You recall that ship with whom this Don was engaged? That took off and made easting when we came up with them?”
“Yes. Some of the lads was saying it was the Frenchys’ ship, them Frenchys we rescued.”