William Napier - Blood Red Sea

Hulls splintered open, sails tore from shattered masts, seawater poured in. Chained oar slaves panicked and began to turn their stricken vessels around wildly in the centre of the line, oblivious to the savage beatings from the mariners, and soon became entangled with the neighbouring galleys.

Still untouched by a single shot, the two central galliasses began to wheel slowly though a complete half-circle, their minimal complement of oarsmen just enough to effect the manoeuvre. Then they could give fire from their other sides with guns still cool and ready.

In desperation a small, fast galliot full of corsairs came rowing at those evil ships, determined to scramble up the wooden walls somehow and cut the throat of every man aboard. Then the small band of marine arquebusiers stationed aboard came to the fore. They fired from the gun portholes into the close-packed galliot and soon every man aboard was either killed or wounded. The galliot floundered and came to a halt, the least scathed throwing themselves into the sea. The rest died where they sat.

The gun teams worked like demons, the two Venetian captains bellowing insult and encouragement at them in one breath. And the Turks saw to their dismay what would come next. Another ruinous broadside. Yet they must continue moving forward.

Ahead of them, the Christian line was fast approaching. One lookout cried that there was a man in a suit of armour dancing on the prow deck of the flagship. The captain ordered him down to be beaten. Evidently sunstruck, or hallucinating with fear, the fool.

Don John removed his helmet, slicked back his hair, and regarded the approaching line.

‘A fifth of them hit, I’d say,’ muttered Smith.

‘An excellent start.’

They ploughed through the water.

Smith knelt now and lined up his jezail.

Stanley gripped his sword.

La Real was heading straight for the Sultana . What else did they expect from Don John? Commander would clash directly with commander, and on the fate of that single encounter, much depended.

‘Give fire!’ cried Don John. ‘Let battle commence!’ And he waved his jewel-hilted Spanish rapier above his head.

The guns opened up all along the line as they raced towards each other.

The Turkish galleys came on with lateen sails raked back, guns blazing.

‘I thought we reckoned they were light gunned!’ bellowed Smith. He loosed a round from his jezail. ‘What would heavy gunned feel like?’

‘Keep firing, Brother!’ cried Stanley. ‘One day you might just hit something!’

‘Hodge,’ said Nicholas. ‘We will fight together, as always. Yes?’

‘As always. At least till I sicken of the blood and go to aid the surgeon below. If he is still living.’

Nicholas nodded. ‘As you will. And if you see me mortally injured, beyond help. .’

‘Aye. And you will do the same for me.’

‘I will. I swear it.’

The guns of La Real bellowed out again, and Nicholas could have sworn one of them struck the Sultana a second time, but it was hard to judge damage. Still the Ottoman flagship came on fast, oars churning the water, kettledrums thumping like the heartbeat of some great sea monster.

Then La Real shuddered. She was hit.

It was the wretched oar slaves in the bow who were killed or maimed. Their oars dragged loose in the sea and began to ruin the rhythm.

‘Get those men off the benches!’ cried the boatswain. ‘Pull those oars in! Give me the damage!’

The bow walls were holed but not shattered, and little sea came in. But five or six men had been dismembered or killed. The mariners moved to bundle them overboard.

‘To the surgeon with them, damn ye!’ bellowed the boatswain. ‘Captain’s orders!’

The mariners cursed, every curse under the sun. Risking their lives to save the dirty skins of bloody unbelievers. One of the slaves screamed, his sundered arm on the bench beside him, as a mariner pulled him up by his remaining good arm and heaved him over his shoulder.

‘Shut your wailing or I’ll split your belly, you son of a ’Gyptian whore.’

They lugged or hauled the maimed Mohammedan slaves back to be treated. Before going for’ard again ready to fight and kill more Mohammedans.

‘It’s a merry round dance, is it not!’ rasped one mariner to another.

‘Servants in a madhouse is all we are!’ roared the second.

La Real gave another lurch beneath their bare feet, and then the arrows started thocking into the deck around them.

The lines were barely a hundred yards apart.

‘Arquebusiers, hold! Any man fires, I’ll suck his eyes out!’ cried their sergeant.

La Real managed one last, ferocious blast of her five prow guns in close unison, the sheared-off ram enabling them to fire low and hit the oncoming galleys almost at the waterline, doing great damage. Yet the Turks seemed to be using guns more than expected, and galley after Christian galley was hit and began to sink. Nicholas actually felt the heat in his face as a galley a good hundred yards off, targeted and then struck by a brutally concerted bombardment from three Ottomans, simply blew up as it rowed forward, breaking into two in midair. Timbers and limbs came down in a mingled debris, oil and gore and intestines.

Then one hundred galleys or more drove into each other. A rolling, brutal clubbing sound of timber upon timber, wooden drums thumped by giants, a forest of masts dashed together by the angry hand of God.

The two flagships smashed into each other with single-minded fury, trembling and juddering. Arrows hissed in the air, a mariner fell crying with a bolt in his shoulder. Turkish archers swarmed high above in the rigging, but hopelessly exposed against the blue October sky. La Real’s arquebusiers returned disciplined fire at close range, and archers fell from the rigging like leaves from a shaken tree.

Amid the chaos, Don John’s pet marmoset, from the Americas, scampered up and down the main mast, plucking out arrow shafts and snapping them between his teeth, then throwing them into the sea with a chatter.

Then Muezzinzade showed his veteran skill. He gave a rapid signal, and with astonishing deftness, two more galleys, one on either side, closed in on La Real and isolated her. She was suddenly an island surrounded by three Ottoman ships, each thickly clustered with fighting men, corsairs and Janizaries.

‘Signal for reinforcements!’ yelled Don John. ‘Someone to break through!’

But Muezzinzade, still with greatly superior numbers, had already given the order for any galley going to the aid of La Real to be intercepted and engaged immediately, at any cost.

He was determined to avenge the damage done by those accursed galliasses, and capture the Christian flagship as soon as possible.

A great roar went up from all three ships surrounding them. Hardened mariners trembled.

‘Ready yourselves, all aboard!’ bellowed Smith. ‘Here they come!’

The Turks had it their way. It had already come to hand-to-hand fighting on deck. Their preference every time.

Ropes whistled, grapples clanged. Plank bridges crashed down.

From three different sides the enemy swarmed across, swords gleaming, eyes bright with the joy of battle.

The gallant Merman struggled to come alongside and attack the Turkish galleys from beyond. In the rigging, a woman with long dark hair plastered across her cheeks yelled out wild curses, shrieking at the enemy like some crazed banshee. It was Maria la Bailadora, a squat pistol in her hand. But the next moment, two more Ottoman galleys came along either side of her and the Merman was overrun. Maria la Bailadora fired into the midst of them but she could not reload, and a corsair swarmed up the rigging, dagger at the ready. She screamed and flailed at him, and he managed only to cut her arm rather than her throat.