“Do you strike?” a leather-lunged voice called to them.
“Aye,” Claghorne shouted back. “We have fever aboard.”
The Yellow Quarantine flag was hoisted, and the French laughed. Their gun ports were still open, and Lewrie could see men standing by them with burning slow-match, but the majority of the much less disciplined privateer crew was standing in the rigging or on the bulwarks with muskets or swords, jeering happily at a foe that would strike without even a shot fired for honor’s sake.
Claghorne hoisted a dead man up onto the rail, a man yellow as a custard, the stains of his bloody dark bile still streaking his bare chest. “We have Yeller Jack, comprende? Vómito Negro!”
The brig was close now, a musket-shot away, less than fifty yards. Lewrie could see the men crossing themselves, gesticulating in their lingo, eager to be away from the fever and the pest ship that carried it. Their officers aft were standing in a knot arguing and waving their arms in broad gestures. Hands were going aloft to lower yard and stay-tackles or clew jiggers for boat tackles to hoist out a launch so they could stand off and investigate. The privateers did not want to give up a prize so easily gotten, but neither did they want any fever in their own crew.
“Stand ready, lads,” Lewrie told the uneasy hands. “Easy, now, get ready for it, don’t blow the gaff on me, now.”
The brig was now twenty-five yards off, a very long pistol shot, and men were laying down their weapons to bear a hand on the boat tackles, while others were lifting out long sweeps to fend Parrot off from the hull so they would not become infected.
“Now!” Alan ordered. “Fire as you bear!”
“Damn you, Lewrie,” Claghorne howled as though stabbed in his guts. “Our word of honor! We struck!”
The rest of his ranting was lost in the din as the gun ports were flung open and the guns were run out the last few feet. The swivels were already banging away. Fire arrows sizzled into life and flew in short arcs for the brig’s yards and sails. The first four-pounder fired, flinging a double load of star-shot at the brig’s masts, bringing down braces, sheets and blocks, shattering her for’tops’l yard.
The packed mass of jeering boarders, the teams of men ready to walk away with the stay-tackles, or snub the yard tackles, the men aloft taking in sail, and the men in the rigging for a better view, they were all seemingly scythed away as the four-pounders spewed their wicked loads of langridge and canister, rough bags of scrap iron bits, nails, broken plates and ironmongery, or light tin cases that contained hundreds of small musket-caliber balls.
“Kill them,” Lewrie raved. “Kill them now!”
The swivels were barking again. Even Crouch was loading, ramming and aiming as rapidly and accurately as he could. Fire arrows darted out, flaming dots trailing greasy black smoke. They jammed point-first into masts, bulwarks and the hoisted boat. The spring-loaded bars snapped open as they struck sails, jamming into them so their flames could feed hungrily.
“We gave our word of honor!” Claghorne ranted from aft, but no one paid him much attention in their fighting frenzy. After days of terror of the invisible, their fear came out in an orgy of hatred and destruction against a real foe they could fight, maybe even conquer.
“Larboard men, fores’l halyard!” Mooney cried like a bull. “Off heads’l sheets ’n’ run ’em ta larboard. Smartly, now, laddies.”
Sails made of flax, tanned and dried by tropic sun, shivered and thrashed until powdery with broken fiber particles … Masts and spars, brushed with linseed oil, to keep out rot. Tarred standing rigging holding the masts erect … Running rigging coated with slush; beef and pork fat and rancid butter, the skimming of the galley boiling pots (that the cook didn’t sell to the hands on the sly) so that the lines stayed supple and didn’t swell in the rain and would run true through all the blocks aloft that controlled the jears, halyards, lifts, clew lines, buntlines, braces, jiggers and tackles … And ships are made of wood; painted, tarred, oiled wood—baked as tinder dry as galley pine shavings—given a chance, all of it would burn.
Now the French crew saw the small points of fire aloft that quickly were fanned into large fires. Her sails flashed into sheets of flame that flagged in the wind, lighting the rigging, carrying flame to her spars and her topmasts. The lower masts began to work and groan.
“Sheet home!” Claghorne cried as he saw what was happening. The fire could blow down on Parrot if she did not get away quickly. “Helm up, you farmer. Mains’l haul. Now belay on heads’l sheets. Now belay on the foresheet. Thus!” he ordered, indicating a course.
Parrot began to move, creeping away to the east from the burning French privateer brig, whose masts were now well alight. As Parrot got a way on her the brig suffered a shower of flaming debris raining down on her decks. Her fore-topmast came down like a blazing log.
They continued to fire at the French ship until their guns would no longer bear. They passed her bows, out of danger of burning, or of being fired upon except with bow chasers, gaining speed and headway. The brig had an inner forestays’l still standing that pulled her head downwind to the north, and turning her broadside to the wind so the fire could rage her full-length unchecked. Thick coils of dark smoke plumed from her up forward where her foremast had collapsed on the deck. Her boat-tier was also well ablaze, shooting flames as high as her main course yard, now bare of canvas. There were some dull explosions lost in the rush and roar of flames, as guns cooked off from the heat, or scattered powder bags burst like grenades on her decks.
“Cease fire, cease fire,” Lewrie shouted to his jubilant men, having to knock gun tools from their hands. “Crouch, leave off. Drop it, dead ’un, Crouch,” he shouted, using the terms of the rat pit.
“Aye, sir,” Crouch breathed, his dumb face flowing with pleasure. “But jus’ looka the fuckers burn, sir. God almighty!” He was leaping up and down in thick-witted victory.
“Ya done ’em proper, sir!” someone shouted to him as he made his way aft through them, telling them to secure from Quarters. They were cheering themselves, slapping each other on the back in glory at what they had done.
Claghorne was waiting for him on the quarterdeck, face red and sword drawn. “Damn yer black soul ta the hottest fires a hell, Lewrie! You disobeyed me, you motherless bastard. You fired after we had struck like a lowdown lying Barbary pirate. I’ll see you face a court for it, I swear I’ll see you hang!”
Alan had not considered their chances of success so great as to have reckoned fully on the consequences of victory. The reality of Claghorne’s threat hit him like a bucket of cold water. They had won, hadn’t they? He realized that he had disobeyed a direct order, even if it was wrong; had violated a major article of gentlemanly conduct at sea. But weren’t they free?
What Claghorne was really mad about was that he had been shamed before the men, and that was what could get Lewrie scragged.
“Dammit, Mister Claghorne, we’re alive and free, and they’ll not be telling anybody about it,” Alan said.
“I’ll know, you little bastard. I’ve a mind ta strike you down right now fer what you did—”
“You shall do no such thing,” Lord Cantner said, coming on deck with his wife. “God stap me, just look at that, Delia. You look on it, Mister Claghorne. It’s salvation, and victory. Honor be damned!”