“Oh God, oh God, oh God…,” Wilkenson stammered with rising panic. He whirled around, ready to face the brigands storming through the door, but there were none there, not yet. He did not imagine they were many seconds away. He turned again to his gunport, but the concussion of the cannon had blown the fire down the side of the ship and now his escape route was swallowed by the flames.
He turned again, toward the larboard side. And in that second the first of the pirates pulled the door back and rushed into the burning cabin, his arm flung up to shield his eyes from the flames.
George felt his bladder go. He reached his trembling hand for his musket just as the pirate saw him, framed against the fire. The pirate shouted something and reached for a gun in his sash, but George had his musket up to his shoulder. He cocked the lock and pulled the trigger, and the pirate was blown back against the next of his comrades, coming in behind him.
George flung the musket aside and drew both his pistols. He was surrounded by flames. All of the gunports were involved, and the only way out of the cabin was the door, and he had two shots left.
More pirates were rushing the cabin, guns out, cutlasses flashing. George could see them through the open door. He felt an odd calm sweep over him. He stepped forward as the first brigand charged in, a big, bearded man, his cocked hat askew, and George shot him right in the face.
In the waist the pirates stopped their rush. A pistol was thrust in through the door and it went off with a flash, barely visible in the brilliant flames that surrounded him, and George felt the ball tear through his shoulder. The pain was incredible. He felt his arm go weak. He dropped the spent pistol in his good hand and took up the loaded one from his failing arm.
Another of the pirates pushed into the cabin, and George fired his last shot into the man’s stomach. The pirate pitched
facefirst with a scream, and behind him was a door full of small arms, pistols and muskets, all leveled at him. George let his arm drop to his side and waited for it. This is what a firing squad is like, he thought. This is what it is like to die.
The pirates fired all at once, and George felt himself thrown back, like getting hit with half a dozen fists all at once. He felt the hard deck under him, the burn of flames near his face, but he was not burning himself. He was warm, but he was not burning.
He heard shouting all around him and the crackling of flames, but it all melded together into one smooth noise. He felt something wet and sticky under his hand and realized with some surprise that it was blood, his own blood, running out of him and onto the deck.
I cannot live without blood, he thought, and in that moment he realized that he would not live at all, that he was about to die, and that it was not that bad.
My God, my God, into your hands…
He had stood up to them all, his father, the pirates. He had been as much a man as Marlowe would ever be, and with that thought, and with a thin smile on his lips, George Wilkenson died.
Chapter 35
HELL WAS ready to receive them. Jean-Pierre LeRois had made all the arrangements.
He climbed up from the hold, his shoes clumping on the ladders, the voices singing in his head. He was ready to get Barrett under way. He was ready for the voyage himself, if go he must.
And not just himself. They would all go, all of those men who lay sprawled about, snoring like swine, sleeping on the night that his enemies were coming for him. He understood that now. It gave him an overwhelming sense of peace. A moment of pure clarity. They all had to die. He knew it was right.
He made his way across the ’tween decks, automatically bending deep until he remembered that the decks of this new, finer Vengeance were high enough for him to stand almost entirely upright.
He strode forward more purposefully. His foot hit something soft and he stumbled, and the pile on the deck groaned and rolled over and muttered, “Here, watch it, dumb arse.”
“Cochon!” LeRois shouted, and spit on the man at his feet, but the man was already asleep again. LeRois stared at the pile of human wreckage, barely visible in the gloom. They would all get their reward, each to his own. The voices told him that.
He found the ladder to the weather deck and climbed up into the waist. The night was dark, and the smoke from the destruction he had wrought still hung in the air. He moved around the many sleeping men and climbed up to the quarterdeck, where to his irritation he found even more men passed out and sprawled where they fell, some hugging bags of stolen goods like women.
He spit on the deck and looked forward, upriver. Barrett was coming for him, he knew it. The voices were singing the songs of his enemies’ destruction. He could not see him yet, could not see any sign of dark sails against the dark sky, but still he knew he was there.
His eyes moved from the blackness of the river to the distant shore. The evidence of his wrath and power still burned and glowed in places miles apart. He looked from one to the next to the next, turning aft as he looked upon his works.
And then something caught his eye, something bright. There was one hundred feet of water separating the Vengeance from the old, wasted ship that last bore that name. Light was pouring from the old Vengeance’s aftermost gunports, those that opened onto the great cabin. He took a step forward, rested his hands on the rail, squinted at his former command.
Perhaps there was someone in the cabin, someone with a lantern. But the light was terribly bright, brighter than any dozen lanterns. And just as the terrible thought struck him that the ship might be on fire, one of the great guns went off, a thunderous sound that split the night. The old Vengeance shook with the impact of the recoil.
“Merde!” LeRois shouted, and pounded the rail with his fist. Now he could see flames licking out of the gunports, could hear the crackling of the fire consuming the fabric of the ship. Some idiot had started a fire and now the whole great cabin was blazing. It was already too far gone to stop.
The humps of cloth and hair that had been pirates sleeping on the weather deck of the new Vengeance came to life, leaping to their feet, cutlasses and pistols drawn and ready. They were well used to coming instantly awake and straight into a
fight, and the sound of a great gun was their clarion. They crowded along the rail, shouting obscenities, voicing loud speculations as they watched their old ship being overwhelmed by flames.
“Merde!” LeRois shouted again. He did not care so much about the old ship, but there was the danger that the fire would be blown across onto the new Vengeance. And even that did not worry him so much, as long as it did not happen before Barrett was aboard.
And then from somewhere within the flames he heard the sound of a gun go off. Not a cannon, but something much smaller, a musket or a pistol. He cocked his head toward the flames. More small arms, two shots in rapid succession, and then another, and then a whole volley.
Men were shouting, running about the old Vengeance’s deck. He could not see them-it was too dark and the bright flames had hurt his eyes-but he could hear the commotion clearly enough.
Another of the great guns went off, on the starboard side, like the first, firing its load toward the north shore. LeRois stared at the growing flames, considered helping the men on the burning ship.
No, he decided. To hell with them. They had a boat. If they were too drunk and stupid to get in it and row to safety, then they should burn. They should burn in any event, for being so drunk and stupid as to let their ship catch fire. They should burn, and they would, all of them.
The guns on the old Vengeance’s larboard side went off as the flames consumed them as well, one right after the other with less than a second between. One of them fired straight across the water, slamming its load into the new ship’s side, though LeRois did not reckon it would do much damage. The other must have been upended, for rather than firing out of its gunport it blew a hole in the side of the ship and showered the Nouvelle Vengeance with canister and grape and bits of burning debris.