Dewey Lambdin - THE GUN KETCH

Lewrie swiveled about and saw their particular foe about a mile away and closing. Down-sun as Alacrity was, and with their attention drawn to the battle, they might not yet have spotted Alacrity as she came up from the lee of sunrise, dark against the last of the night's horizon.

"Mister Ballard, broadsides to either beam!" Lewrie shouted as he jumped down to his quarter-deck. "We'll wear across the channel to block it. Mister Fowles, your gunners'll have to hop lively for me!"

"They will, sir!"

"Helm up to windward to bare the larboard battery."

Alacrity turned nor'east, almost running with the wind. Her gun ports flew open with a crash, and the hands tailed on the run-out tackles 'til the carriages butted home against the bulwarks.

"As you bear… fire!"

Seven-cables' range; three-quarters of a nautical mile, and cold iron barrels tore the morning apart as the six-pounders barked and came thundering inboard to snub on the thick breeching-ropes! Shot struck fantastkrplumes of spray short of the schooner in a ragged line before her bows.

"Shoals ahead, three cables, deep water to larboard!"

"Helm alee, Mister Neill. Bear up, close-hauled, Mister Ballard!" Lewrie ordered. "Stand by the starboard battery!"

Gun captains transferred to the starboard side while loaders and rammermen, tacklemen and powder monkeys remained to larboard to complete swabbing out and reloading the expended guns. To carry the full complement of five men per gun deemed necessary to serve their six-pounders would have taken fifty men out of the sixty-five adults aboard, so it was standard drill to work both sides short-handed in preparation for moments such as this, and required only thirty.

"Open yer gun ports!" Fowles was droning on. "Done, larboard? Come run out starboard. Gun captains, point! Cock yer locks!"

"Fire as you bear, sir!" Lewrie shouted.

The schooner had turned away to the west, almost in-irons into the teeth of the wind, and, if she held that course, would end up on that uncharted shoal of theirs.

"Fire!" Fowles called as the deck rose up level and hung still for a moment. "Ah, yes by Christ! Oh, well shot, my bully lads!"

They'd fired individually, but on the uproll, which forced them to hurry in tugging the lanyards on the flintlock strikers, so it was more a planned broadside. This time they hit her and she shook like a piece of meat taken by a shark, and paid off the wind in disarray to point her bows at Alacrity again!

"Hands wear ship, ready the larboard battery!"

Lewrie was zigzagging up the channel, blocking any hope of escape, and going wide to present all his guns.

"Fight me, you poltroon!" Lewrie screamed across the waters. "Got no stomach for a real foe, you murderin' bastards?"

The schooner fell away to run sou'east, dangerously close to the sand bars south of Walker's Cay, trying to shave a passage down the channel. Alacrity served her another broadside, then wore onceagain to run due east to block that side of the narrow passage even as the gunners got off another broadside from the larboard guns.

"Shoals ahead, two cables!" some lookout screeched on the bow.

He could not hold this course a minute longer, Alan realized. The schooner's master was praying that he'd have to bear away soon, whilst he could continue to run south and perhaps get astern of the gun ketch that was tearing his little command to bits.

" 'Vast, there!" Lewrie shouted. He was out of syncopation in his turnings with the schooner. "Mister Ballard, lay us full-and-by to weather on the larboard tack. Then once you have way 'nough, tack us and wear about sou'east, to keep us ahead of them!"

"Aye, aye, sir!" Ballard grinned, nodding with understanding. "Hands to the sheets and braces, hands wear ship aweather! Mister Harkin, prepare for stays!"

Alacrity swung away from the schooner, almost showing her her stem, but kept on turning, crossing the eye of the wind and heeling over with the wind on the starboard side, pointing sou'west.

The schooner's captain took the opportunity to run south, and steer wide of the threatening bars and shoals.

Then Alacrity wore, falling off the wind in a small circle to race back across that narrow channel on her best point of sail with a bone of foam in her teeth, and her larboard battery ready once more.

There would be no escape.

"As you bear… fire!" Fowles cried.

The schooner was smothered in spray as even the two-pounder boat-guns got into the act from fo'c's'le and quarter-deck at a bare two-cables' range. She staggered under the impact of solid round-shot, and swung up toward the wind as if to cut across Alacrity's stern.

"Shoals ahead, one cable!"

"Helm down, Mister Ballard. Beat sou'west and keep ahead of her. And be ready to haul your wind should she duck back towards the shoals on the east side of the channel."

"She's in-irons!" a lookout called as most of the crew and the officers were busy with the maneuver and the reloading. "They're all aback! Takin' t'the boats, sir!"

The schooner was being abandoned. One small launch was being led around from astern, another was already filled with men and was being rowed east towards the shoals, the oars worked like hummingbirds' wings.

"Wear about to the sou'east!" Lewrie demanded. "Get the guns on them before they escape!"

But before they could fire more than two broadsides, they had to turn once more to keep off the shoals themselves, and their route was almost blocked by the abandoned schooner, listing and drifting towards the shoals. The boats with their two-foot draft got over the shoals and bars, and into deeper water off Grand Cay.

"Cease fire!" Lewrie shouted, fuming. Once more, pirates had outsmarted him and escaped him. "Mister Ballard, secure the people from Quarters. Send Mister Odrado, with my cox'n Cony, over to take charge of the schooner before she takes the ground. Mister Harkin, we'll fetch-to! I'll see to this, Arthur. You carry on."

"Very well, sir."

"Helm alee, lay us close-hauled on the larboard tack, Mister Neill. Stations for stays, Mister Harkin! Fo'c's'le captain, we'll leave the jibs on larboard tack! Brace-tenders, prepare to back the main tops'l! Ready about? Helm alee!"

Alacrity rounded up as if she would cross the wind's eye, but stalled in-irons, her gaff sails trying to drive her forward on the starboard tack, but her backed jibs counteracting their force like brakes, so she cocked up into the wind and came to a halt, slowly drifting north on the current and making a tiny leeway.

"A neat morning's work, sir," Fellows congratulated, swiping his thinning ginger hair and looking more like a harried clerk. "The schooner took. Whippet with her foe aground in the north channel, and another pirate band with their business stopped."

"Ummph!" Lewrie commented.

"Damme, the way we handled her, sir, sweet an' fleet as some pleasure yacht! My word, sir… 'twas hellish fun, that."

"They got away, though," Lewrie glowered.

"Can't have it all, sir," Fellows chuckled.

"Why the devil not, Mister Fellows? Just why the devil not?"

"It's a regular treasure-trove ashore, sir," Lieutenant Ballard reported to Lewrie and Rodgers. "Arms and powder, of course; money and plate. But there's heaps of cargo, covered with sailcloth and palmettos. A ship's chandlery and fancy-goods shop in one. An ocean of drink, too, sirs. Fancy wines, brandies, rums… I've put a guard over that so the hands don't get at it"

"Yet who shall guard the guardians?" Rodgers mused. "Loot, from a dozen ships, more like," Lewrie commented. "And that ship out yonder, that Guineaman, bung-full to her deckheads with general cargo, too," Rodgers grinned, a very happy man. "No manifest, goods from Cuba, from New York an' Baltimore an' Charleston aboard, goods from Europe… yet, gentlemen, yet … no recent voyages in her log t'any o' those places! Like Lewrie here says, it's loot, bought from the pirates that took it."