James McGee - Rapscallion

"If she didn't know we were interested in her before, I'd say she does now," Lasseur said. He raised the telescope. "Batards! '" He swore suddenly and handed Hawkwood the glass.

Hawkwood's first wild thought was that they had been following the wrong boat. Then a black-painted hull swam into the foreground; increased in size now, but still dwarfed by the spread of her canvas. Hawkwood remembered Gadd's description of the Sea Witch. He searched for a name on her counter, but the jolly boat suspended from the cutter's narrow stern obscured his view. Three men stood by the rail at her starboard quarter, close to the tiller man, staring back towards the Scorpion. Two of them were wearing blue coats and white breeches. When Hawkwood saw the third man standing between them, the boat's name became irrelevant. Tall and grey-bearded, the man was holding a telescope to his face with one hand: his right.

Pepper.

And then as Hawkwood and Lasseur watched, the three men separated. Activity on the cutter's deck suddenly took on a new urgency.

"Jesus, they're running out bloody guns," Hawkwood cursed as the cutter's crew began to remove canvas sheets from the cannons that lined the sides of the cutter's hull. Six in all, from what he could see, three to each side. He handed the telescope back to Lasseur, who took another look.

"Merde!"

"What are they?" Hawkwood asked. He wasn't well versed in the bore sizes of naval ordnance. As if it mattered. Cannon were still bloody cannon.

"What you would call six-pounders, from their look. Your Revenue uses them. They're accurate to about two hundred and fifty yards, with the right elevation. Fortunately, we have the advantage. We've got more of them."

The possibility that the Sea Witch would be carrying heavy armament had not occurred to Hawkwood. He'd assumed that Morgan and his men would be equipped with small arms; swivel guns at a pinch — indeed, he had seen one mounted on the cutter's bow — but not carriage guns, though the carronade used in the storming of the residency should have been warning enough. He wondered how well versed they were in combat at sea. It wasn't that much of a leap to suppose that Morgan would have some gunners among the ranks of the former seamen that he employed.

Lasseur was clearly surprised, too. He spun away. " Tous les marins sur le pont!"

A bell began to clang loudly. The deck echoed to the volley of pounding feet.

Scorpion rose on the swell and plunged forward.

"Preparez les canons!"

Within seconds, sand had been laid down, guns run out, personal weapons distributed, and neck cloths transferred to the men's right arms. As Lasseur explained, his crew knew each other, but everyone, especially Hawkwood and Jago, had to be able to identify friend from foe. A split second's hesitation could mean the difference between life and death.

"You definitely plannin' on boardin' her, then?" Jago asked, running his thumb down a cutlass blade as Lasseur passed Hawkwood a pistol and tomahawk.

"I doubt Morgan will surrender to a hail," Lasseur said grimly.

Her crew primed and at their stations, Scorpion swept on.

The cutter, now less than a cable's length off the bow, started wearing to port. Her sails flapped as her bow turned through the wind, then the canvas filled quickly as her sheets were pulled taut. She looked, Hawkwood thought, strikingly top heavy.

Lasseur barked out orders. The nautical jargon meant nothing to Hawkwood. Lasseur might just as well have been yelling in Chinese. But as men hauled eagerly on ropes, reducing canvas, and as the helmsman swung the wheel hard over, it was clear that the privateer was attempting to match the cutter's manoeuvre. Scorpion began to come round.

There was a distant bang and a puff of smoke appeared on the cutter's deck, then a waterspout erupted five yards off the schooner's starboard quarter.

Someone cheered derisively.

Lasseur snorted contemptuously and yelled at his first officer to fire on the up roll.

Hawkwood remembered being told that English gunners generally fired on the down roll so that any delay would cause the ball to bounce off the water and ricochet into the enemy's hull. French gun crews usually aimed for the rigging. As a consequence, the French tended to suffer greater casualties. Hawkwood knew the last thing Lasseur wanted was to sink the cutter, especially given the cargo she was carrying, so in aiming at the cutter's rig the privateer was following tradition. Hawkwood tried not to think about the rest of it.

As Scorpion's starboard rail swept past the cutter's tapered stern, Delon dropped his arm.

The gunner hauled back on the lanyard and the explosion took Hawkwood by surprise. It was sharper and louder than he had expected, more an ear-splitting crack than a roar. The sound pierced his brain like a skewer and he saw Jago flinch beside him.

Hawkwood looked for the fall of the shot and saw nothing.

They bloody missed! he thought angrily, and then he watched as the top quarter of the cutter's mast began to topple sideways in a jumble of rigging.

A loud whoop rang out from the gun crew, who were already sponging down the barrel in preparation for the next firing. The cry was taken up by the rest of the men on deck as the mast collapsed upon itself in a tangle of ropes and spars.

Lasseur had used chain shot. He yelled again. " Feu!"

Another detonation. This time Hawkwood saw the shot hit, tearing away the gaff, ripping into the sail and shattering what remained of the mast. Halyards gone, main sail shredded, the cutter's rig lost all integrity. As the man in the stern wrestled with the tiller, the vessel began to wallow.

But her crew were fighting back.

A double report sounded from across the water. Hawkwood saw the twin billows of smoke dispersing along the cutter's deck — one from the swivel gun. He hunkered down instinctively as a section of the schooner's starboard rail disintegrated under the impact, heard a whimper as the ball went past his ear and ducked again as splinters pierced the air like arrows. Screams rang out. Hawkwood saw one man spin away, hand clamped around his throat, blood pumping from between his fingers.

A roar of defiance erupted from Scorpion's crew.

"Au tribord! " Lasseur screamed at his helmsman.

The helmsman hauled down on the wheel and Scorpion obeyed the command. Her bow dipped. Water boiled along her length and foamed across her steeply sloping deck as she swung towards the cutter's hull. Her stern lifted as she slewed to starboard. There was another blast of cannon fire and Hawkwood saw one of the cutter's gun crews split asunder in a welter of blood and smoke and splinters and tumbling bodies. And Scorpion was beam on to the cutter's port side. Only yards separated them.

Lasseur screamed at his men to steady themselves. The hulls were less than two cannon lengths apart when the first grappling hook curved over the cutter's gunwale. A rain of metal claws followed. With their comrades providing covering fire, the men on the ropes began to haul in. Hawkwood felt Jago's strong hand on his shoulder, held on to a shroud and braced for impact. It wasn't dissimilar to an attack on a breach in a wall, he thought, as the distance between the vessels closed. The principle was the same: people were trying to kill you. So, eyes forward, keep your wits, don't bloody fall over.

"It's possible they'll match us in numbers," Lasseur had told them. "But my men have done this before. Watch your flanks."

Powder flashes lit up the faces lining the cutter's rail. A seaman to Hawkwood's left gave an explosive grunt and fell back, a red orchid blossoming across his front.

The hulls met with a shuddering crash and a groan of timber, and Scorpion's crew, screaming like banshees, leapt over the schooner's side and hurled themselves towards the cutter's deck.