As demurely as the schoolchildren with whom Bickerstaff had spent a majority of his adult life, the men of the Plymouth Prize loaded pistols and sharpened cutlasses and readied the great guns for that first, crucial broadside. All but two of the cannon, lardboard and starboard, were loaded with grapeshot, and over that was packed nails, broken glass, odd bits of iron, whatever potentially lethal projectile could be found.
In the same manner they loaded the six small cannon, called falconets, mounted on the rail. Then the men squatted down behind the high bulwark, out of sight, and waited to be attacked.
“Listen here,” Marlowe shouted down to the men in the waist. “When these sons of bitches come up with us they’ll no doubt be making some noise, yelling and banging swords and chanting and such. They call it ‘vaporing,’ and it can be damn
frightening, but it’s only noise, d’ya hear? Don’t let it unnerve you, because it means they’re all crowded on the bulwarks, which is what we want.”
Rakestraw hauled his wind and rejoined the convoy ten minutes after the pirate ship had sheered off. A minute after that the pirate wore around and turned his bow toward the Plymouth Prize. They looked as if they might tip over for all of the canvas they had aloft, and they closed quickly with their chosen victim.
“Very good, Mr. Bickerstaff. First gun, if you please.”
“Aye, sir,” Bickerstaff called, and relayed the order to the gun captain of the forwardmost gun on the starboard side. The captain touched off the powder in the touch hole, and the gun went off with a roar.
The pirate ship, though coming up fast, was still out of range of even a long cannon shot, and the ball plunged into the ocean one hundred feet short. Then the gun crew slowly reloaded and fired again, creating the illusion that the Plymouth Prize did not have enough men to fire more than one gun at a time, and that none too quickly.
Marlowe smiled and shook his head. The guardship would appear as pathetic and weak as a lost lamb, firing her round shot into the sea. And there was nothing that wolves loved more than a pathetic and weak lost lamb.
A quarter mile away the pirates opened up with as much broadside as would bear. Round shot whistled through the rigging and one or two even slammed into the Prize’s hull, but there was little damage done and no one was hurt. The pirates did not want to sink their victim. That was the last thing they wanted. What they hoped to do was frighten their victim into surrender.
And it seemed to be working, for the men crouching behind the bulwarks were starting to get wide-eyed, their fear all the greater for their not being able to see the enemy.
They might even have panicked had it not been for Bickerstaff, strolling casually up and down the deck, giving them word of what was happening and reminding them of their duty.
He would do well to remind them of the riches that they might win, Marlowe thought, but Bickerstaff was not aware of that part of the operation, and Marlowe was not looking forward to his finding out.
The pirates were two cables off when they began their vaporing.
It started soft, one man upon the quarterdeck banging the flat of his sword against the rail in a slow and steady rhythm, then another, and a third with two bones in his hands that he beat together. Soon they were joined by someone with a drum, beating along with the steady thump thump thump thump thump, and then another with a fiddle who sawed the bow across the strings in a series of short, staccato shrieks.
When the ship had closed to a cable length one of the brigands amidships, a big man with a long black beard, began to chant in a voice like a thunderclap, “Death, death, death…”
The chant was picked up by the others, who flocked to the rails on the quarterdeck, forecastle, and waist, and clung to the shrouds and the channels, screaming, chanting, beating the sides with swords and cutlasses, steadily increasing the tempo, the whole terrible sound shot through with the bang of pistols and the high-pitched shrieking of the pirates.
Marlowe watched, transfixed, as they came on. He was carried away by that terrifying sound, the mesmerizing, steady rhythm, coming faster and faster, louder and louder, as the pirate ship ran down on them. It was the most frightening sound in the world.
He gripped his sword with a sweating palm, swallowed hard, tried to turn his eyes away, could not. The vaporing carried him off, bringing up old terrors like silt swirled up from the bottom of a deep pool.
He had heard it before, heard it from all sides, knew the great surge of brutal energy it brought to the pirate tribe, knew the resultant horror. He had learned it all, how to be victim and tormentor, had learned it from the devil himself.
It was that devil he feared. It was not rational, he knew.
That devil was just a man, and there were no other men Marlowe feared. He had bested him once. Most likely he was dead. Marlowe assured himself he had no reason to fear that man. But the vaporing brought it all back, and he could not shake it.
At last he tore his eyes from the pirates crowding their rail and looked down into the waist of his own ship. The devil was dead. He had to be. This was not him.
He hoped that his men would not panic, that Bickerstaff could hold them together. But he could see they were being swept up by the terror of the thing. The vaporing. The sound of pending death.
Chapter 20
CAPTAIN JEAN-PIERRE LeRois stood on the quarterdeck rail, sword in his right hand, his left hand on the backstay, steadying himself. And he felt steady, he felt very steady, and completely in command of himself and his ship as the Vengeance closed with this poor unfortunate who had had the temerity to fire upon them.
He was all but sober, having drunk just enough to prevent the shaking, to keep the screaming to a minimum.
And his authority, for the moment, was absolute. That was the way it worked in the sweet trade.
The crew of a ship might make decisions by vote during normal times, but when they went into battle the captain’s word was law, obeyed without question and without hesitation. Combat was not a time for democracy. As long as they were in a fight, LeRois was in command.
The vaporing was growing louder, building in intensity as they ran down on the crippled merchantman. The entire company of the Vengeance was crowded on the larboard side, screaming, pounding, firing pistols, ready to run alongside and pour onto the deck of their victim.
LeRois felt the excitement building, ready to burst out of him, the way he used to feel when he was with a woman. He opened his mouth and joined in the screaming, letting his hoarse voice mix with the layer upon layer of sound that swirled in his head.
They were going to murder these sons of whores, tear them apart. Not only had they failed to strike their flag at the sight of the Vengeance, a great effrontery, but they had fired on them as well, which was not to be tolerated.
There were women aboard. LeRois had seen them through his glass. They might provide days of amusement for his men.
“Hoist up the pavillon de pouppe, the black ensign, now!” he shouted to the men below him on the quarterdeck who were tending to the huge flag draped over the taffrail. LeRois always waited until the last second to break it out. He knew that the sudden appearance of that flag, with its leering skull and twin swords and hourglass, would wipe out any vestiges of bravery left in his victim’s crew, any hint of defiance not quashed by the vaporing.
The men on the quarterdeck hauled away, and the big flag lifted up the ensign staff and snapped out in the breeze. The death’shead seemed to laugh as the cloth twisted and buckled in the wind.
The screaming built toward a crescendo, careening around in LeRois’s head, and he opened his mouth and joined in again.