Birds of Prey (7 page)

He swivelled the falconet, and blew on the slow-match in his hand. To reach the stern the file of Dutch musketeers must climb the ladder from the quarterdeck to the poop. He aimed at the head of
the ladder as the gap between the two ships closed swiftly. The Dutch colonel was first up the ladder, sword in hand, his gilded helmet sparkling bravely in the sunlight. Hal let him cross the deck
at a run, and waited for his men to follow him up.

The first musketeer tripped at the head of the ladder and sprawled on the deck, dropping his murderer as he fell. Those following were bunched up behind him, unable to pass for the moment that
it took him to recover and regain his feet. Hal peered over the crude sights of the falconet at the little knot of men. He pressed the burning tip of the match to the pan, and held his aim
deliberately as the powder flared. The falconet jumped and bellowed and, as the smoke cleared he saw that five of the musketeers were down, three torn to shreds by the blast, the others screaming
and splashing their blood on the white deck.

Hal felt breathless with shock as he looked down at the carnage. He had never before killed a man, and his stomach heaved with sudden nausea. This was not the same as shattering a water cask.
For a moment he thought he might vomit.

The Dutch colonel at the stern rail looked up at him. He lifted his sword and pointed it at Hal’s face. He shouted something up at Hal, but the wind and the continuous roll of gunfire
obliterated his words. But Hal knew that he had made a mortal enemy.

This knowledge steadied him. There was no time to reload the falconet, it had done its work. He knew that that single shot had saved the lives of many of his own men. He had caught the Dutch
musketeers before they could set up their murderers to scythe down the boarders. He knew he should be proud, but he was not. He was afraid of the Dutch colonel.

Hal reached for the longbow. He had to stand tall to draw it. He aimed his first arrow down at the colonel. He drew to full reach, but the Dutchman was no longer looking at him: he was
commanding the survivors of his company to their positions at the galleon’s stern rail. His back was turned to Hal.

Hal held off a fraction, allowing for the wind and the ship’s movement. He loosed the arrow and watched it flash away, curling as the wind caught it. For a moment he thought it would find
its mark in the colonel’s broad back, but the wind thwarted it. It missed by a hand’s breadth and thudded into the deck timbers where it stood quivering. The Dutchman glanced up at him,
scorn curling his spiked moustaches. He made no attempt to seek cover, but turned back to his men.

Hal reached frantically for another arrow, but at that instant the two ships came together, and he was almost catapulted over the rim of the crow’s nest.

There was a grinding, crackling uproar, timbers burst, and the windows in the galleon’s stern galleries shattered at the collision. Hal looked down and saw Aboli in the bows, a black
colossus as he swung a boarding grapnel around his head in long swooping revolutions then hurled it upwards, the line snaking out behind.

The iron hook skidded across the poop deck, but when Aboli jerked it back it lodged firmly in the galleon’s stern rail. One of the Dutch crew ran across and lifted an axe to cut it free.
Hal drew the fletchings of another arrow to his lips and loosed. This time his judgement of the windage was perfect and the arrowhead buried itself in the man’s throat. He dropped the axe and
clutched at the shaft as he staggered backwards and collapsed.

Aboli had seized another grapnel and sent that up onto the galleon’s stern. It was followed by a score of others, from the other boatswains. In moments the two vessels were bound to each
other by a spider’s web of manila lines, too numerous for the galleon’s defenders to sever though they scampered along the gunwale with hatchets and cutlasses.

The
Lady Edwina
had not fired her culverins. Sir Francis had held his broadside for the time when it would be most needed. The shot could do little damage to the galleon’s massive
planking, and it was far from his plans to mortally injure the prize. But now, with the two ships locked together, the moment had come.

‘Gunners!’ Sir Francis brandished his sword over his head to attract their attention. They stood over their pieces, smoking slow-match in hand, watching him. ‘Now!’ he
roared, and slashed his blade downwards.

The line of culverins thundered in a single hellish chorus. Their muzzles were pressed hard against the galleon’s stern, and the carved, gilded woodwork disintegrated in a cloud of smoke,
flying white splinters and shards of stained glass from the windows.

It was the signal. No command could be heard in the uproar, no gesture seen in the dense fog that billowed over the locked vessels, but a wild chorus of warlike yells rose from the smoke and the
Lady Edwina’s
crew poured up into the galleon.

They boarded in a pack through the stern gallery, like ferrets into a rabbit warren, climbing with the nimbleness of apes and swarming over the gunwale, screened from the Dutch gunners by the
rolling cloud of smoke. Others ran out along the
Lady Edwina’s
yards and dropped onto the galleon’s decks.

‘Franky and St George!’ Their war-cries came up to Hal at the masthead. He saw only three or four shot down by the murderers at the stern before the Dutch musketeers themselves were
hacked down and overwhelmed. The men who followed climbed unopposed to the galleon’s poop. He saw his father go across, moving with the speed and agility of a much younger man.

Aboli stooped to boost him over the galleon’s rail and the two fell in side by side, the tall Negro with the scarlet turban and the cavalier in his plumed hat, cloak swirling around the
battered steel of his cuirass.

‘Franky and St George!’ the men howled, as they saw their captain in the thick of the fight, and followed him, sweeping the poop deck with ringing, slashing steel.

The Dutch colonel tried to rally his few remaining men, but they were beaten back remorselessly and sent tumbling down the ladders to the quarterdeck. Aboli and Sir Francis went down after them,
their men clamouring behind them like a pack of hounds with the scent of fox in their nostrils.

Here they were faced with sterner opposition. The galleon’s captain had formed up his men on the deck below the mainmast, and now their musketeers fired a close-range volley and charged
the
Lady Edwina’s
men with bared steel. The galleon’s decks were smothered with a struggling mass of fighting men.

Although Hal had reloaded the falconet, there was no target for him. Friend and foe were so intermingled that he could only watch helplessly as the fight surged back and forth across the open
deck below him.

Within minutes it was apparent that the crew of the
Lady Edwina
were heavily outnumbered. There were no reserves – Sir Francis had left no one but Hal aboard the caravel. He had
committed every last man, gambling all on surprise and this first wild charge. Twenty-four of his men were leagues away across the water, manning the two pinnaces, and could take no part. They were
sorely needed now, but when Hal looked for the tiny scout vessels he saw that they were still miles out. Both had their gaff main sails set, but were making only snail’s progress against the
southeaster and the big curling swells. The fight would be decided before they could reach the two embattled ships and intervene.

He looked back at the deck of the galleon and to his consternation, realized that the fight had swung against them. His father and Aboli were being driven back towards the stern. The Dutch
colonel was at the head of the counter-attack, roaring like a wounded bull and inspiring his men by his example.

From the back ranks of the boarding-party broke a small group of the
Lady Edwina’s
men, who had been hanging back from the fight. They were led by a weasel of a man, Sam Bowles, a
forecastle lawyer, whose greatest talent lay in his ready tongue, his skill at arguing the division of spoils and in brewing dissension and discontent among his fellows.

Sam Bowles darted up into the galleon’s stern and dropped over the rail to the
Lady Edwina’s
deck, followed by four others.

The interlocked ships had swung round ponderously before the wind, so that now the
Lady Edwina
was straining at the grappling lines that held them together. In panic and terror, the five
deserters fell with axe and cutlass upon the lines. Each parted with a snap that carried clearly to Hal at the masthead.

‘Avast that!’ he screamed down, but not one man raised his head from his treacherous work.

‘Father!’ Hal shrieked towards the deck of the other ship. ‘You’ll be stranded! Come back! Come back!’

His voice could not carry against the wind or the noise of battle. His father was fighting three Dutch seamen, all his attention locked onto them. Hal saw him take a cut on his blade, and then
riposte with a gleam of steel. One of his opponents staggered back, clutching at his arm, his sleeve suddenly sodden red.

At that moment the last grappling line parted with a crack, and the
Lady Edwina
was free. Her bows swung clear swiftly, her sails filled and she bore away, leaving the galleon wallowing,
her flapping sails taken all aback, making ungainly sternway.

Hal launched himself down the shrouds, his palms scalded by the speed of the rope hissing through them. He hit the deck so hard that his teeth cracked together in his jaws and he rolled across
the planks. In an instant he was on his feet, and looking desperately around him. The galleon was already a cable’s length away across the blue swell, the sounds of the fighting growing faint
on the wind. Then he looked to his own stern and saw Sam Bowles scurrying to take the helm.

A fallen seaman was lying in the scupper, shot down by a Dutch murderer. His musket lay beside him, still unfired, the match spluttering and smoking in the lock. Hal snatched it up and raced
back along the deck to head off Sam Bowles.

He reached the whipstaff a dozen paces before the other man and rounded on him, thrusting the gun’s gaping muzzle into his belly. ‘Back, you craven swine! Or I’ll blow your
traitor’s guts over the deck.’

Sam recoiled, and the other four seamen backed up behind him, staring at Hal with faces still pale and terrified from their flight.

‘You can’t leave your shipmates. We’re going back!’ Hal screamed, his eyes blazing green with wild rage and fear for his father and Aboli. He waved the musket at them,
the smoke from the match swirling around his head. His forefinger was hooked around the trigger. Looking into those eyes, the deserters could not doubt his resolve and retreated down the deck.

Hal seized the whipstaff and held it over. The ship trembled under his feet as she came under his command. He looked back at the galleon, and his spirits quailed. He knew that he could never
drive the
Lady Edwina
back against the wind with this set of sail: they were flying away from where his father and Aboli were fighting for their lives. At the same moment Bowles and his gang
realized his predicament. ‘Nobody ain’t going back, and there’s naught you can do about it, young Henry.’ Sam cackled triumphantly. ‘You’ll have to get her on
the other tack, to beat back to your daddy, and there’s none of us will handle the sheets for you. Is there, lads? We have you strapped!’

Hal looked about him hopelessly. Then, suddenly, his jaw clenched with resolution. Sam saw the change in him and turned to follow his gaze. His own expression collapsed in consternation as he
saw the pinnace only half a league ahead, crowded with armed sailors.

‘Have at him, lads!’ he exhorted his companions. ‘He has but one shot in the musket, and then he’s ours!’

‘One shot and my sword!’ Hal roared, and tapped the hilt of the cutlass on his hip. ‘God’s teeth, but I’ll take half of you with me and glory in it.’

‘All together!’ Sam squealed. ‘He’ll never get the blade out of its sheath.’

‘Yes! Yes!’ Hal shouted. ‘Come! Please, I beg you for the chance to have a look at your cowardly entrails.’

They had all watched this young wildcat at practice, had seen him fight Aboli, and none wanted to be at the front of the charge. They growled and shuffled, fingered their cutlasses and looked
away.

‘Come on, Sam Bowles!’ Hal challenged. ‘You were quick enough from the Dutchman’s deck. Let’s see how quick you are to come at me now.’

Sam steeled himself and then, grimly and purposefully, started forward, but when Hal poked the muzzle of the musket an inch forward, aiming at his belly, he pulled back hurriedly and tried to
push one of his gang forward.

‘Have at him, lad!’ Sam croaked. Hal changed his aim to the second man’s face, but he broke out of Sam’s grip and ducked behind his neighbour.

The pinnace was close ahead now – they could hear the eager shouts of the seamen in her. Sam’s expression was desperate. Suddenly he fled. Like a scared rabbit he shot down the
ladder to the lower deck, and in an instant the others followed him in a panic-stricken mob.

Hal dropped the musket to the deck, and used both hands on the whipstaff. He gazed forward over the plunging bows, judging his moment carefully, then threw his weight against the lever and spun
the ship’s head up into the wind.

She lay there hove to. The pinnace was nearby and Hal could see Big Daniel Fisher in the bows, one of the
Lady Edwina’s
best boatswains. Big Daniel seized his opportunity, and shot
the small boat alongside. His sailors latched onto the trailing grappling lines that Sam and his gang had cut, and came swarming up onto the caravel’s deck.

‘Daniel!’ Hal shouted at him. ‘I’m going to wear the ship around. Get ready to train her yards! We’re going back into the fight!’

Big Daniel flashed him a grin, his teeth jagged and broken as a shark’s, and led his men to the yard braces. Twelve men, fresh and eager, Hal exulted, as he prepared for the dangerous
manoeuvre of bringing the wind across the ship’s stern rather than over her bows. If he misjudged it, he would dismast her, but if he succeeded in bringing her round, stern first to the wind,
he would save several crucial minutes in getting back to the embattled galleon.