"Jesus Christ!" he muttered, once he'd gained the deck. No wonder it was light enough to see! La Malouine was on fire! After lights-out aboard any ship, it was the officers aft who could keep a lantern or two burning past nine p.m., and their gunfire must have overturned a lamp, killed a gun-captain who had dropped his smoldering slow-match onto something flammable. Smoke drifted and curled from between the deck planks. Pounded tar to waterproof the joins was running slick and hot, sticking to his shoes. One corner of the poop deck farther aft already showed gaps through which tiny flames licked. He turned to see if Telesto was safe, and saw no sign of fire. But amidships, in La Malouine's waist, there was a bright red glow under the tarred canvas that covered the midships cargo hatches and companion-way hatches. Even as he watched, the tarred canvas took fire with a sullen whoomp and disappeared in a sooty shower, and long, licking flames leaped aloft with a roar like a bellows had been applied to a forge!
"Back to the ship!" Choate was yelling, waving their men back to Telesto with his sword. "Move, lads, if you don't want to burn!"
There was no greater fear for a sailor than fire aboard ship.
Once it got a good hold on the dry timbers, the tarred ropes, greased running rigging and canvas sails, a fire was almost impossible to extinguish. In the blink of an eye, a ship could flash into a ruddy horror, roasting her crew, who would be fearful to abandon her until the last minute, for most sailors could not swim.
"Back!" Alan yelled. "Back aboard our ship, stir yourselves!"
They were lucky to make it, for the small crew that had stayed aboard Telesto were chopping and sawing at the grapnel ropes even before everyone could reach the rails to prepare themselves for the leap.
It was a panic. Sepoys crowded the rails, their eyes rolling in fear, ready to abandon their weapons in their haste to flee. Chiswick was raving back and forth, shouting at them in Hindee and pushing muskets back into their hands, arranging a party of some of his largest men to literally throw some of the Others across to Telesto's bulwarks, to be caught by seamen.
La Malouine was keening as the flames began to roar in earnest, the sound a soaked river rock makes when placed in a camp-fire. Men wounded and unable to move were screaming and gibbering in terror.
"Damnit!" Alan sighed, sheathing his sword. He picked among the bodies, searching for his own. The dead he could do nothing for, but there were surely some English wounded that simply could not be left behind to suffer.
"Oh, God, sir!" Archibald, the condom-maker, keened shrill as a frightened child as he lay on the gangway with blood soaking his leg. "Help meeeee!!!"
"I'm here, Archibald, Let's go!"
He got him to his feet, an arm around him, and half-dragged him to the rail, yelling for help. Hodge, the topman, came swarming over to them with a free line, and quickly whipped a loop in it. They got Archibald seated in it and let it swing. Even if he bashed his head in on their ship's hull, he was away. Cony returned with it as they began to search.
"Telestos!" Lewrie called, almost choking on the stink of burning cargo below decks. Singed tea leaves swirled around him like a plague of locusts. "Hoy, Telestos! Sing out and we'll save you!"
A gut-shot French seaman raised an imploring hand from the deck, terror in his eyes. They passed him by. He was not one of theirs. Hodge drew a heavy belaying pin from the railing and did the man the favor of knocking him senseless so he'd know less about his immolation.
"Don't think they's any more of our'n, Mister Lewrie!" Cony said, tugging at his sleeve.
"Lewrie, leave it!" Ayscough called from their ship. "Leave it or die over there! I can't keep station on her any longer!"
Flames were shooting up the main-mast now, furled sails bursting alight, standing and running rigging covered with tiny shoots of fire like some expensive holiday illumination.
"Good enough for me," Lewrie responded, climbing over the rails.
They threw them lines, and they swung across, suspended from gant-line blocks and yard-tackles. Lewrie thrust out his legs to take the shock of impact, but it knocked the wind out of him anyway. He dangled for a moment against the hull by the gunports until someone reached over and grabbed him by the collar to haul him up.
He landed in a heap on the larboard gangway, almost getting trampled by sail-trimmers as they heaved on the yard braces to get the ship underway. He could barely hear the shouted commands over the roar of the fire aboard La Malouine.
"Ya awright, sir?" Cony asked, helping him to his feet, and disentangling him from the gant-line block and three-part loops of line. "Christ, wot a mess!"
When he had a chance to look back at their foe, once Telesto was far enough to leeward that she wouldn't catch fire herself, he could see that the French ship was alight from taff-rail to the tip of her bow-sprit. Her upper yards were raining down in chunks like dripping embers. No matter that they were heavy, they were almost floating against the fierce, roaring up-draft of the fires. Now and again, there was a bright, blue-white flash and dull thud as a powder cartridge burst, or a loaded gun took light. Sparks would fly against a yellow-white cloud of powder, making La Malouine look even more like carnival fireworks.
Men dribbled from her, too. Men whose clothing, whose very flesh had caught fire, and swarmed staggering and blind in unspeakable agony, swathed from head to toe in greedy, gnawing flames like animated torches. They keened and howled, reeled and dropped out of sight. Or tumbled over the bulwarks of their ship to raise great splashes in the water alongside, where only a greasy smoke and a circle of foam marked their passing.
They dropped into the water beside others who floundered and thrashed in the glowing amber water, thrashing clumsily for any bit of flotsam to support them before they drowned. Pleas for help went unnoticed, cries to God went unheard, amidst all the screaming and wailing, amidst the crackle and roar of the flames.
La Malouine had had four ship's boats, all nestled on the tiers that spanned the waist between the gangways over the upper deck, and three of them now roasted like unattended steaks on a grill. The fourth was in the water, one side charred black and half sunk, reeking with smoke. Half a dozen men clung to her, and two sat on her after-most thwart, fighting the others to prevent them climbing in and swamping her. There was one large, grid-worked hatch cover in the water, and more men clung to the sides, while others who could swim splashed in its direction. Out of La Malouine's crew of roughly one-hundred-fifty men, not thirty could be discovered alive now.
"Oh, Christ, sir, look!" Cony shuddered.
Dark, triangular fins cut the glassy, illuminated red-and-amber waters. Sharks! Lewrie winced with a sudden cold chill as a fin went underwater just behind a struggling man. That man suddenly shot out of the ocean as if he'd been tossed by a bull, screaming louder than he could have thought possible from anyone's throat, setting off more panic among the survivors. Pale white fish bellies rolled with him as they seized upon his flesh, bit and shook like bulldogs to tear off huge chunks of living meat! More fins darted in from nowhere, summoned God knew how from the depths. More men thrashed and wailed as they were taken. The survivors who had been clustered around the half-sunk boat swarmed up on it in a wave, climbing over each other in their haste, as the boat rolled on its beam ends and capsized.
There was no time to put boats down. Telesto's crew lifted up their own curved, grid-work hatch-covers and tossed them in as Ayscough had her steered through the thickest pack of Frenchmen. The tail-ends of halyards, lifts and braces were slung over so that those that could might reach them and climb to safety, and life.