The carronades barked as their light powder charges went off, ran back to slam into the stops of their slides. Wool rammers soaked in the fire-buckets were swabbing out at once. As the smoke slowly dissipated, Lewrie could see that their target had been smashed! The prao, roped and pegged together like a dhow, had broken into pieces, spilling her hundreds of warriors into the water. Her bows were torn open, and she was already on her way down. Which caused the ones behind her to falter in their rowing, and turn away from a head-on attack. It was then that Alan could see the many skulls festooned on the closest one's gunwales for decoration.
"Ready, larboard!" he gulped in alarm.
"Jaysus!" Hoolahan yelped. There was a prao not a full cable off the larboard side. Arrows and blow-guns were working, quilting their ship's side as the little yellow men slaved at readying a pair of guns.
"Run out!"
They beat the pirates to the first shot. Four thirty-two-pounder balls hit her squarely abeam, and she shook like a kicked dog. Huge holes opened in her sides, the guns canted up and disappeared somewhere amidships, and they could hear the screams. She rolled back upright, shaking her mast down in ruin, and kept on rolling, filling with the sea and went down like a stone!
"That's the way, lads! That'll teach the heathen devils!"
The chase-guns fore and aft were firing, the upper-deck batteries were speaking now, a lot faster than those controlled, steady broadsides of earlier. Now and then there were sharper bangs as a light two-pounder swivel gun up on the upper-deck bulwarks was fired, loaded with grape or canister. To starboard, one pirate vessel was almost under the bows, too close-in to be hit with any guns. Alan could hear muskets going off in volley, and the screams of the pirates as they were scythed down. There was a heavy thump, and Telesto, still with a slight way on her, shouldered the foe aside with contempt. As she drifted down the starboard side, a hail of grenades with their fuses burning was tossed into her, and a couple of swivels went off, spewing death and pain down into her open hull, even as her yelling crew tried to scale the ship's sides. A pirate appeared in the foremost starboard gunport, curved sword in hand!
They had no boarding weapons on the lower gun deck. Usually they had no need of them. No pikes, cutlasses, pistols or muskets! Even Alan was without his sword. It was Hoolahan who gave a great Celtic howl of rage and rammed a handspike into the pirate's face, tearing it open and shoving him back over the side with a shriek of agony.
"Lowest elevation! Number two gun, ready… fire!" Lewrie shouted. The prao swirled on the faint bow wave and drifted off about forty feet. The carronade roared, and almost immediately, the ball hit the prao in the sternpost, which tied her together with the keel members. The helmsman's deck and the entire stern disappeared, and that was one less to worry about, even if half her cut-throat crew was still clinging to Te-lesto's side. As they reloaded, it rained bodies outside the gun-ports as Chiswick's native troops stabbed and shot with their muskets and bayonets, and the upper-deck gun crews plied cutlasses and boarding pikes!
"Filled shot!" Alan demanded. "Give 'em grape and canister!"
Hollow iron balls were fetched from the garlands, rammed home and seated. The next prao that loomed up to larboard, under the guns of the upper-deck battery, got it full in the face! When they hit, they shattered into whining, razor-edged iron shards, scattering their contents of plum-sized grape and musket balls in a flash. The prao rocked and heaved, and her crew went down in piles, hewn down like corn stalks. She was still afloat, but she was out of the fight, bearing her cargo of dead and dying!
At that sight, the rest of the pirates bore away, paddles flashing quick as runner's heels to escape the unequal slaughter. The upper-deck guns began to bark once more in controlled broadsides. Out to about a nautical mile and a quarter, the eighteen-pounders could hurt the foe, while his weaker, older guns could not respond.
"Out of our range," Alan said finally, as their last volley from the carronades fell short. "Quarter-gunners, stand your crews easy. Sponge out, but have charges and shot ready to load if they've a mind to try us again."
"Aye, sir."
Alan was soaked to the skin, even in his lightest clothes. He wanted air, and a long drink of water from a scuttle-butt. "Take over for me. I'll go on deck where I may see the better."
He flew up the ladder to the hatch and emerged on the upper gun deck. McTaggart was there among his gun crews as they sponged out and reloaded.
"Warm enough work fir ya, Mister Lewrie?" McTaggart teased, wearing a pleased expression. "Twas a plucky pack o' rascals they sent ageen us."
"We almost had them in for tea below decks, Mister McTaggart," Alan replied with a smile, not to be outdone in calmness, now that the enemy was flying. "Shocking manners they had, though."
"Och, aye, nae the sairt ya could take tae p'lite comp'ny." McTaggart laughed, which made his gun crews respond in kind.
"Cease fire!" Choate, the first officer, bellowed from the railing of the quarterdeck. "Mister Lewrie?"
"Aye, sir?"
"Take a ship's boat to yonder praoT Choate ordered. "A file of those soldiers as well! Mister Twigg wants prisoners, if there are any!"
"At once, sir!"
The pirate boat they had gutted was rocking slack on the sea, her red hull slimed with fresh crimson from all her dead and wounded. No one challenged them as they came alongside. No swords were raised as they gained her bulwarks and dropped over to the rowers' benches. Those pirates that were not incapacitated shrank away with fear as they saw European faces on their decks, followed by a havildar, or sergeant of Bengali infantry, and a squad of sepoys came on board with bayonets fixed on their Brown Bess muskets.
"My God!" Alan gasped. The smell of death was everywhere so quickly in the searing sun! Coppery odors of spilled blood mixed with spilled entrails, smashed limbs, opened vis-ceras, loose bowels and bladders. Pirates, now looking small and wiry instead of seven feet tall and dangerous, lay quivering in their death rattles, or whimpering and crying in pain.
"Stopped their business most wondrously, sir," Twigg said as he poked and prodded the nearest corpses with his smallsword. "Aha. What have we here?"
He bent down to tear a necklace loose from a dead man who was dressed in silk. It was heavy gold links, and depended from it was a large pectoral about 3 inches across, set with emeralds and a large ruby in the center big as a robin's egg. Twigg pocketed his prize, wrapping it in a calico print handkerchief. "A bloody prince of someone's blood," he spat. "A successful sea-robber. Until today, that is. Havildar-ji. Disarm those men and bind them."
"Jeehan, sahib," the sergeant replied.
"What are we looking for, sir?" Alan asked, wishing he was anywhere else.
"Evidence, Mister Lewrie!" Twigg said expansively. "A bit of loot from a ravaged ship. Some clue that these might be the ones we seek. And some sign of who encouraged them. It's not often I've seen their kind take on a ship big as ours, even if the wind was against us. They're not fools, Mister Lewrie. The hope of gain would have to outweigh their fear of European firepower. Poke about. See what you may turn up."
"Aye aye, sir," Alan replied. He wandered up forward towards the fo'c'sle platform, his sword drawn and ready should one of those mangled bodies show signs of life. God knew there were weapons in plenty scattered about to use, should one of them wish to take one of the infidels with him to Paradise. The peoples of the region were mostly Muslim, he'd learned. Killing him would raise their stock with Allah.
What he found was some gold coins of Asian minting, a heavy gold ring or two. Some earrings. All useful, he thought, so he stuck them in his breeches. The muskets were chased with silver, of an ancient pattern, with long barrels and crude match-locks or even wheel-locks. The swords and knives… curved Eastern-looking things or wavy bladed krees, mottled with Damascan forging techniques.
"Profit for the morning's work!" Twigg exclaimed back aft as he turned up a small chest of treasure. The sailors and sepoys were not averse to looting the corpses, either.
"Sir?" Alan called. "Come take a look at this."
One of the cannon on the forecastle platform was a nine-pounder. The truck had been smashed, and its crew draped about it in death. But it was not a brass or bronze Asian gun with fanciful adornments. It was a brutally plain and functional European gun, with a flintlock striker and British proof-marks. To further prove its origin, there were serge powder bags scattered about, and a flask of quick-burning priming powder hung round the dead gunner's neck.
"No way of knowing which ship it came from, but it's a start," Twigg nodded, rubbing his horny palms together. "Could have been off any of those ships reported missing. And the date is within the last two years."
"No rust, sir," Alan commented, kneeling by the cannon. "I'd not expect their sort to take this good care of an iron gun. She's fresh-painted and well-greased, still. For an iron barrel at sea to be this clean, it had to be very recent. And flints, sir. You know how often flints break or wear out. Look at this one in the dog's-jaws of the lock. That's English, too, sure as I'm born."
"Very astute of you, Mister Lewrie," Twigg congratulated. He was interrupted by the havildar, who had turned up several Brown Bess muskets, Short Land Pattern, also fairly new. "Now we'll have the truth out of these rascals. Fetch me that one, havildar. We'll find where they hailed from, and we'll go pay them a visit they'll not soon forget!"
Twigg was not too particular about how he got his information. In local lingo, he began to shout and rave in front of the first man fetched up by the sepoys. He made passes with one of those wavy-bladed knives. Lewrie thought he was merely threatening, until he at last made contact along the struggling pirate's bare waist. Just the slightest touch, and there was an instant line of blood droplets.
Twigg seized the man by the scruff of the neck and shoved him to the rail to look over the side, with the krees at his throat. The tropical sharks had been drawn by the blood in the water, the dead of the other praos they'd shattered and sent down with gunfire. Fins cut the calm sea, some lazy and searching, some darting and quicker on a scent. The pirate began to scream and shout, louder than Twigg and his accusations and questions.
"Look here, Mister Twigg, sir," Alan was finally forced to say when he knew the older man was dead-serious about dumping him over the side as shark-food. "He's not anybody I'd care to know, but damme, sir, it's just not done!"
"If you'd rather not watch, you're welcome, Mister Lewrie," Twigg replied. "Go back to the ship, then."
"It's not just that, sir. Surely there's a better way than to…" Alan protested. Both he and his English sailors were upset by this treatment. Try as they had not too long ago to cut these people to minced meat, once a foe surrendered, to their code, he was to be well treated. British tars had a strong sense of what was right or wrong, and were not averse or slow to voice their opinions, even under the threat of Naval discipline.
"Feeding survivors to the sharks is nothing more than they expect, sir," Twigg argued, his blade still to the struggling man's neck. "No more than we could expect from them were we at their mercy. We are not dealing with honorable foes who've struck their colors, you damned puppy! They're bloodthirsty, murdering, piratical butchers! Look over the side! Look under their bows, sir! See the skulls of their victims? Some of those are Englishmen, sure as you're born. Aye, we can treat 'em Christian, and they'll laugh in our faces for our pains. But we'd not know where they sailed from, nor who supplies 'em. And that'll mean more English sailors murdered or tortured to death for their barbaric amusements. Now which do you prefer, sir?"
"Seems to me, Mister Twigg, that one person's barbaric amusements is pretty much like yours," Alan drawled. "Sir."
"Goddamn you, you priggish little hymn-singer! Back to the ship. I'll deal with you later! Leave the sepoys and fetch me when I've done."
"Gladly, sir."
They rowed back to Telesto, still lying slack and idle on the gently heaving ocean with her sails slatting and booming for want of wind. Hammers and saws thudded or rasped as repairs were made to what damage they'd suffered. Lewrie accosted Captain Ayscough on the quarterdeck and related what Twigg was doing.
Ayscough drew his pocket watch from his breeches and studied the face, then cast an eye aloft to the coach-whip of the long, narrow private house flag, which flicked lazy as a cat's tail in the weak zephyrs.
"Shall we allow him to proceed, sir?" Alan asked, hoping for an order from his captain to go back and tell Twigg to leave off. As he waited for Ayscough to answer, there was a shrill scream from the prao, followed by a splash, and a sudden commotion in the water as the sharks found a tasty new tidbit.
"I'd admire if you assisted the third officer aloft, Mister Lewrie," Ayscough grunted, his countenance dark and suffused with repressed emotions. "There's damage to the fore-topmast to put aright. God grant there'll be wind soon so we may proceed, 'stead of lying here, boxing the compass."
"But, sir…"
"Enough!" Ayscough snapped, then relented with a bitter sigh. "Welcome to the mysterious, and cruel, Far East, Mister Lewrie."
"Aye, sir."
The wind came up about an hour after noon sights, and Telesto made her way north once more. The prao they burned, as a warning to the others. Her survivors, those that had not suffered Twigg's cruel attentions, hung like plucked fowl from her lateen yard by the neck.