Buccaneer (11 page)

The first they knew of the shots was a row of red eyes winking at the end of the jetty and a moment later a popping like a dozen corks shooting from bottles of fermenting wine. Then the musket balls hit the
Griffin
’s side, some sounding as though a man was punching the planking, others whining away in ricochet after hitting metal fittings with the loose noise of a blacksmith shaping a horse’s shoe.

Both Ned and Saxby instinctively dropped to the deck, below the level of the bulwarks.

“The provost marshal,” Ned muttered angrily, sliding over to the pile of muskets and pistols beside the mast. “He ran into Wilson, stopped once he knew we no longer heard the horses’ hooves and then doubled back along the beach.”

“Yorke,” they heard him bellow. “I’ve warned you of the hue and cry so surrender yourself. You can’t sail with no wind. I’ll have a hundred men here in half an hour.”

Saxby snatched up the speaking trumpet and already Ned could hear the pounding of feet as his own men rushed on deck, eager to get at the muskets and pistols.

“Settle yourselves behind something proof against musket shot,” Ned warned them. “This may last a long time. You’ve two minutes before they’ll have reloaded.”

“You want a musket, sir?” Saxby asked.

“No. I’ll be dodging about. Pity we can’t use one of our minions to sweep the jetty.”

“Ah,” Saxby said regretfully. “A few pounds of langrage would settle the provost marshal’s account.”

By now the
Griffin
’s men were in position with their muskets and pistols. “Open fire when you’ve a target,” Saxby called.

“That’s the trouble, sir, we can’t see no one,” a seaman grumbled. “They’re hidden in the shadows at the back o’ the beach. Now there’s more cloud coming up to hide the moon.”

Another crash of musketry and the pummelling of the lead balls hitting the
Griffin
’s planking led to one of the
Griffin
’s musketeers shouting: “They’re all bunched up behind that clump of sea grape bushes in line with the end of the jetty.”

“Fire at ’em, then!” Saxby bellowed. “Come on, let’s smell our powder!” He looked up at the sky and nudged Yorke. “Look up there, sir; there’s a few gallons of rain in that – we’ll have to be sure to keep our powder dry!”

Low on the eastern horizon a broad band of billowing and tumbling dark cloud was approaching, bringing the heavy showers so frequent in the tropics between midnight and three in the morning.

A single musket fired on board the
Griffin
, then a second and third. “They’re taking careful aim,” Saxby commented.

“Could a shot penetrate our planking?” Ned asked.

“Quick!” Saxby said. “Mrs Wilson – get her out of the cabin and put her forward with Mrs Judd: that transom won’t stop shot, leastways, the sternlights won’t.”

Ned bolted for the companionway, just able to see his way from a single lantern. The cabin was deserted. He worked his way forward, calling her name and hearing her replying from amidships. He shouted back a reassuring phrase which was interrupted by yet another volley from the shore, and heard a shot ricocheting around the cabin he had just left.

What the devil could he do? With no wind, the
Griffin
was sitting alongside the jetty like a crate of pigeons being shot at by a mad sportsman. His own men were firing spasmodically but he knew they were shooting at shadows. He felt hot with anger and embarrassment when he thought how the provost marshal had so successfully tricked him. Stevens was not the sort of man anyone should trust, even to collect a dozen eggs from a market.

As he climbed back up the companionway he heard Saxby calling him urgently and by the time he reached the deck his ears had warned him of what Saxby would have to say. The drumming along the track at the back of the beach told him that dozens of horsemen were galloping up to help Stevens.

While Saxby reported and gave his estimate of the number of extra men – he thought forty or fifty, basing his guess on the length of the column with two men riding abreast – Ned realized it was enough men to rush the ship: the
Griffin
had twenty-five muskets and twenty pistols. If they fired to order and with reasonable accuracy, that would mean a fusilade of forty-five shot. That did not mean forty-five of Stevens’ men hit, though: there was no way of avoiding two or three Griffins firing at the same man. Loading took so long that if Stevens led a determined group they would be hit by one fusilade but there would be no time to reload, so the Griffins would then be fighting along the bulwarks with cutlasses.

He saw a figure up in the shrouds. “Who’s that?”

“Me, sir, Bullock.”

“What on earth are you doing up there?”

“Lookout sir; seems I can see better in the dark than anyone else.”

Feeling that events were happening so fast he was almost lost, Ned hurried over to the foreman. “I don’t know anything about ships and big guns, Saxby, but couldn’t we load the minions on this side so that as they try to board we fire and blow them off the jetty?”

“I thought o’ that sir, but it’d take hours because we’ve never loaded ’em before and some of our people are bound to be hurt by the recoil. Be different if we’d ever exercised at the great guns. Between you and me, sir, the muskits and pistols is more our mark now.”

“They’ll try to rush us.”

“Yes sir, that’s what I was going to talk to you about. I’ve stopped random shooting. All twenty-five musketeers are aft here, aiming over the taffrail and the quarter. They’ll all fire at once, which should stop any charge. Then the pistoleers are amidships: if any of Stevens’ men get through, the pistoleers will hop on to the jetty and wait until they can shove the muzzles into the mouths of these Roundheads. Then we should start collecting a pile of noheads.”

“That black cloud is building up,” Ned commented. The dark bulging mass was rising higher and getting nearer.

“Too much rain and no one’ll be using wheel-locks or matchlocks: it’ll be cutlass and swords, and that’ll give us an advantage.”

“The devil take it – just look at that cloud!”

It was boiling and swirling over the land, part lit by the moon, part in black shadow. A sudden flash across a quarter of the horizon was followed almost instantaneously by an echoing crash of thunder.

“’Ere they come!” yelled Bullock. “End of the jetty – scores of ’em!”

Saxby put the speaking trumpet to his lips. “Musketeers!” he bellowed. “Make sure your pieces are spanned and cocked… Steady now, I’ll give the word to fire. Try and pick your target – men on the starboard side look after the left side of the jetty, those to larboard to the right.”

Ned watched fascinated and hurriedly snatched up a cutlass which, until yesterday morning, had been in use at Kingsnorth for cutting cane.

The landward end of the jetty was black with men: Ned was reminded of maggots in rotten meat. Then he could hear the thudding of their feet on the planking. Saxby sprang up on to the bulwarks and then down on to the jetty, standing crouched, straining his eyes and trying to estimate the distance. Thin cloud was crossing the moon like gauze curtains flapping in the wind.

Ned saw the speaking trumpet go up to Saxby’s mouth.

The thudding of feet, the wavelets hitting the hull and sounding like a mill stream, the chill on his face as the breeze sprang up, pushing the
Griffin
away from the jetty until her mooring lines began to creak…he seemed helpless, a spare man clutching a cutlass.

“Stand by!” Saxby yelled. “Now boys – fire!”

All the
Griffin
’s muskets except one fired simultaneously, flame spurting up from twenty-four muzzles. The twenty-fifth fired two or three seconds later and the others in the ship gave the man an ironic cheer.

“Gawd…gawd…gawd! Just look!” A shocked Bullock perched up in the shrouds was talking to himself and Ned cleared the bulwark to land on the jetty beside Saxby without conscious thought.

“There’ll be no work for the pistoleers this time,” Saxby said grimly. “Twenty or more cut down. Almost blocking the end of the jetty!” He aimed the speaking trumpet aft. “Come on you dreaming lechers, get those muskets loaded!”

He turned to Ned. “They’ll regroup and try again, sir,” he said. “Just listen to the moanin’ and screamin’. That won’t inspire the second group!”

“If they’ve any sense they’ll wait for this cloud and rush us in the dark!”

“If Stevens had any sense he’d have sent the second group along the jetty before our lads have time to reload. It’s too late now; I can hear the spanning keys turning.”

Ned watched the cloud. A distant curtain hung down from it: driving rain that would last perhaps twenty minutes, buffet house and shutters with gusty winds, and disappear to the westward, leaving a few gallons caught in the cisterns and refreshing the cane. These night-time tropical showers and not the soil were what made the islands so fertile.

Was Stevens watching that cloud? It was coming up behind him but he must have heard the thunder; it would have been enough to make him look over his shoulder.

Bullock called down: “Men are spreading out along the water’s edge both sides of the jetty!”

“Damnation take it,” Saxby swore. “They’ll be shooting at us from both sides.”

“Fifty paces at least: their shooting won’t be very accurate.”

“Thirty or forty men getting one lucky hit every fusilade will soon whittle us down,” Saxby said calmly. “He’s spreading ’em out to maintain random fire so we keep our heads down. Then he sends his main force along the jetty to board us!” Saxby spoke with certainty and Ned did not doubt him. Still, heavy rain fell equally on the just and the unjust and soaked their priming powder.

Flashes rippled down the beach to the south and Ned gave Saxby a push: “Quick, back on board!”

He followed with a leap over the bulwark but Stevens’ men were firing at the after part of the ship: he could hear the shot thudding into the hull, ricocheting off metal and some, aimed too low, hitting the planking on top of the jetty. A few moments later more red flashes along the beach to the north, followed a moment later by deep popping, warned that the men to the north had fired their fusilade. A cry from the
Griffin
’s taffrail showed that someone had been hit.

Saxby ran aft, warning Ned to watch the end of the jetty. He was back within a couple of minutes to report one man dead and two wounded, the last one, who cried out, unlikely to live.

Ned continued watching the cloud: it had suddenly increased speed and was swirling, torn and twisted by the gusts of wind it was bringing with it. Stevens would send his main group racing down the jetty the moment the cloud blotted out the moon and stars. The cloud was moving like blackberries stirred in cream; the sharp outline of the moon was blurred and, as the whole mass of cloud suddenly began moving seaward and picking up speed, the breeze was chilly on his face.

That sheet of rain, which he could hear driving down on the trees inland with a venomous hissing, would be on them within a couple of minutes with powerful gusts of wind that would try to tear the
Griffin
from the jetty.

Saxby said quietly: “Any minute now!”

The men along the beach to the south began firing slowly, carefully aimed shots which thudded into the taffrail, which was where they guessed the
Griffin
’s musketeers would be crowded to cover the jetty.

Then that popping that seemed too light, too harmless, to come from muskets began along the northern end of the beach. Suddenly it was almost pitch black as a particularly thick cloud slid over the moon and almost at once both Ned and Saxby heard the drumming of feet at the far end of the jetty.

Saxby lifted his speaking trumpet. “Ready musketeers – fire!”

It is never quite dark in the tropics and Ned could just make out the line of the jetty. There was a bulge on top of it halfway between the
Griffin
’s stern and the shore; a bulge which moved towards the ship.

“Pistoleers stand by!” Saxby bellowed.

Then Bullock called a warning as Ned spotted the movement. “The men on the beach are running to the jetty!” he warned Saxby.

“It’s cutlasses now, then,” Saxby said calmly, “and I’d like to shake your hand, sir: we nearly got away.”

Ned felt his hand grasped and returned the squeeze, conscious that the hissing sheet of rain was only a few yards away and the wind was increasing, at first in gusts but quickly steadying into almost gale force. It would last half an hour; these night squalls usually did.

The black bulge was now moving slowly along the jetty, obviously waiting for the men on the beach to catch up and knowing the
Griffin
’s muskets could not be reloaded in time.

“Musketeers, grab cutlasses; pistoleers, make sure you have a cutlass in the other hand!”

The gusts were blowing the
Griffin
away from the jetty, but her mooring lines took the strain and kept her within two or three feet.

“Must be a hundred men on the jetty!” Bullock yelled.

“Funny they’re not making a dash for us,” Saxby said.

“They’re planters and apprentices,” Ned said. “They’re not used to trotting along a narrow jetty in the dark. And it’s wobbling as the
Griffin
moves in the wind. Ah, the rain!”

The raindrops hit like small pebbles just as he realized what he had said. “Saxby!” he yelled, “hoist the mainsail! Get the ship moving! Hurry!”

“But sir, we’re still secured!”

“Exactly! Don’t cut any mooring ropes, just get the sail drawing!”

Saxby swung round and shouted orders into the speaking trumpet. There were flashes and bangs as the pistoleers fired at the approaching men before running to the halyards and sheet.

The men were five yards from the
Griffin
as the mainsail began crawling up the mast and bellying out: Ned could see a mass of men on the jetty but the sudden thumping of the sail filling startled them so they stopped for a moment. Someone – probably Stevens – bawled an order and the phalanx began moving again. It did not now have the sureness with which it began; many of the men in front seemed to be being pushed by those behind.