THE GUN KETCH - Dewey Lambdin

"I see, sir."

"And all settled down and ready for it when it comes," Ballard went on with his praise. "One may learn a lesson or two, even from a pirate."

Once tacked to a parallel course with Sarah and Jane, the schooner hauled her wind almost at once and began to fall down on them fast, giving them little warning, and pinning their ship between threatened gunfire and the jagged teeth of the coral reefs to south and west. If they chose to loose sail and run, they couldnot find enough sea-room for an escape, nor could they tack and flee sou'east as long as their foe lay off their starboard bows.

"Panic party, Mister Odrado!" Ballard shouted. Designated men ran to the shrouds to scale them, as if going aloft to cast off reefs and make sail. Others rushed to the gangways for the braces to their squaresails to adjust their angle for a new course, and more speed.

"Hands at Quarters, sir," Early, the quartermaster's mate, said. "Guns run out to the portsills, an' port lashings cast off. Swivels loaded, tompions out, an' manned. Larboard gun crews shifted to starboard, an' that Lieutenant Pomeroy is ready to mount his men on the starboard gangway."

"Very well, Mister Early," Ballard nodded quickly, then smirked just a trifle. "I wonder, Mister Early. Do you think they will run up the 'Jolly Roger'? Or is such a convention out of date these days?"

"Well, I don' know, sir, it…" Early began, then paused. "Ah, that's a little joke, isn't it, Mister Ballard, sir?"

"Aye, Mister Early," Ballard said with a sober face. "But a feeble joke. Away with you, now, and stand ready."

The schooner was sidling up to them quickly, closing the range to about a cable. She was as gaudy as a Spanish royal galley, tricked out with gold leaf on bow and stern, down her upper bulwark rails, and around her entry ports. There had to be at least seventy men in her crew, making Ballard wonder how they got out of each other's way when working the ship. He could espy a larboard battery of five nine-pounder cannon, and at least half a dozen swivel guns on either beam.

"Let's not look too easy," Ballard called. "Mister Woods? Do you fire the forrud chase guns! Make it look clumsy!"

One six-pounder fired, raising a splash near the enemy's bows. A moment later, the schooner fired in reply.

"Everybody, down!" Ballard called, though he kept his feet, and his calm composure as the heavy balls droned in. Sarah and Jane leapt and cried in protest as round-shot tore through her thin scantlings and bulged the bulwarks inwards. Bagged salt thumped and tumbled, and some bags burst apart, spilling white crystals about like snow.

"Ahoy, there!" came a call from across the narrowing channel between them. "Strike yer colours, cut yer braces an' sheets, and let-fly-all, or I'll let ya have another broadside! Gimme no resistance, and you'll still be alive when this is over! Show me fight, though…"

"Let-fly-all, Mister Odrado!" Ballard shouted, putting a panicky edge to his voice, then turned to shout to the pirate schooner with his brass speaking trumpet. "Hold your fire, for God's sake! We'll strike to you! Mercy, in the name of God! Hold your fire!"

The American flag came tumbling down to trail astern as its halyard was cut, and the sails began to luff and thunder in disarray.

"Now, sir?" Parham insisted.

"Not yet, Mister Parham," Ballard said. "Calmly, now, remember? We'll do it the way our captain said he served a French privateer during the late war. Close enough to smell 'em, first! But do you extend to Lieutenant Pomeroy my compliments, and tell him it's time he posted his men on the starboard gangway, below the bulwarks, and be ready to volley at close range."

"Aye, aye, sir!" Parham replied, dashing off in haste, in spite of Ballard's cautions.

The schooner was now a quarter-cable off, not fifty yards away, and almost at decent musket-shot Her boarding party was already up on the bulwarks, with lift-lines and parrel lines dangling so they could swing over to board once they got hull to hull. Others poised at bow and stern with grappling irons.

And she fired another, lying, broadside!

Sarah and Jane was shaken hard. Ballard could hear her timbers wail as they were shattered below, hear scantlings and bulwarks starred open with ragged holes as round-shot ripped into her. But the bags of salt kept deadly wood splinters from flying to scythe her crew down.

"Close pistol-shot," Ballard muttered, smiling thinly at last "Open your ports! As you bear, fire!"

Double-shotted guns erupted in smoke and flames! Chain-shot to take rigging down, the halves of the balls flying apart as they left the muzzles and whining through the short space between them, linked with chain that made them whirl like birds' wings. Canister on top of that, bags crammed with musket balls that spread out like gigantic shotgun pellets in a cloud of deadly lead. All aimed at the upper bulwarks, all designed to take down people, instead of rigging.

"Marines!" Ballard screamed as the smoke ragged away enough to see what was what. "Swivels!"

The panic parties that had gone aloft fired swivels down onto the schooner's decks; more canister-shot to erase the pirates about the wheel, on the schooner's quarter-deck, forecastle, and rails.

"Cock your locks!" Pomeroy shouted. "Level! By volley,fire!"

The schooner's decks were about six feet below Sarah and Jane, so pirates trying to find a hiding place anywhere but close upto the larboard bulwarks were wide-open to the shattering volley of musketry. There was a concerted groan of terror at the sight of those muskets, then screams as the volley rattled out like a short roll on a drum.

"Grapnels away!" Ballard shouted, drawing his sword. "Boarders! Remember, we want prisoners! Away, boarders!"

Seamen and Marines went over the side as the hulls crashed into each other. Grapnels flew and lodged deep in wood as both vessels rebounded and threatened to part. Upwind as she was, though, the schooner could not slip away, pressed to Sarah and Jane by the Trades. The boarding party surged over the schooner's decks; meeting light resistance, and beating that aside quickly. These pirates were used to having their own way by dint of terror and confusion. Few of them were used to a hard fight against disciplined opponents, so the survivors threw up their hands and dropped their weapons, while their comrades lay bloody and still, or shrieking with pain.

"Not much to 'em, hey, sir?" Pomeroy sniffed, disgusted that he hadn't even had a chance to bloody his sword. "My lads didn't even get up a good sweat!"

"Make sure they've no hidden weapons, and herd them forrud, if you please, Lieutenant Pomeroy," Ballard said, sheathing his own blade. "And I'll have those survivors from the afterguard brought here." "Aye, sir."

Half a dozen men were brought to him by the Marines at bayonet or cutlass point, and were forced to kneel, hands already bound behind their backs.

"Now, who is captain of this vessel?" Ballard inquired. "Well, speak up! Where's the dog in charge of you?"

" 'E's dead, zur," a surly little fellow replied in a grunt. "How convenient," Ballard simpered. "What was his name?" "Anastario Ruiz," another volunteered, in a painful whimper. "And the mates?"

"Oh, they be dead, too, zur," the little fellow added, speaking from a mouth almost devoid of teeth. He had the gall to smirk.

"Dear God," Ballard said, drawing a pistol. He had simply been appalled by what Lewrie had done at Conch Bar. But he had to admit it had been effective. "Tell you men what I'm going to do. I am going to start shooting you, one at a time, until I get some answers. For your information, I am from His Majesty's Sloop Alacrity. Does that name ring a bell, hey? The same as did for Billy 'Bones' Doyle, down in the Caicos last year?"

"Ye cain't be, she's s'posed t'be posted t'Cat Island," one of the younger survivors exploded, almost indignantly. "She ain't got no Marines, so…"

He shut his mouth and gulped as Ballard cocked the pistol, and laid it against his temple.

"The Marines are from Whippet," Ballard said coldly. "Remember Whippet, from Walker's Cay? And no, we are not supposed to be here! But we are, by God, and if one of you doesn't start talking this very instant, then God save you!"

"Oh God, sweet Jesus, holy Saviour!" the threatened sailor wept, all but fouling himself in sudden terror. "Don't, sir, please! Don't shoot me like yer cap'n done Ramirez! I know ya, sir, yer that Ballard feller! They say yer meek an' mild, a true Christian, sir, an' a true Christian'd not, sir!"

"Stop yer snivelin'!" the surly one warned. "Die game, damn ye!"

"At the count of three, lad, I send you to Hell for your sins," Ballard assured him. "Want to die game for this bastard? One… two…"

"Jesus, no, don't do it, I'll tell ya, I'll tell ya!" the young man screamed as he fell to the deck to writhe and wriggle away from his compatriots." 'E's Laidlaw, 'e's first mate, 'e knows! Christ, I wuz just aboard a year, sir, I don't know much, please don't shoot me when I tells ya I don't know somethin', please!"

"The man who tells me all will live to see the sunset," Ballard promised them. "And, if he testifies in court, he doesn't hang. The ones who don't cooperate with me…" Ballard paused dramatically as the thought came to him, and he smiled as he concluded, "the ones who don't tell me the truth, who don't lay it all out for us, I'll give to my captain, 'Ram-Cat' Lewrie. He doesn't like pirates much, ya know."

Several of them turned quite pale at that threat. Throats went dry, and they gulped saliva to ease themselves, before they began to bay a chorus of expostulation in noisy competition with each other.

Guineaman and another of Finney's ships waiting at Walker's Cay; his agent Runyon ashore, serving up free rum to all to keep them hot; Nassau whores at bargain prices for those with money; cargoes piled up waiting to be smuggled into ports all across the Caribbean; Finney, yes, it was Finney, it was always 'Calico Jack' Finney!

"Mister Parham, Mister Early, Mister Woods," Ballard beckoned to bis more literate fellows who had good handwriting skills."Dry work for us, I fear. We'll separate those that sound eager to talk, and get it all down on paper, with their signatures or marks made against their confessions, before we rejoin Alacrity. Mister Odrado? Do you go into Sarah and Jane and get her underway, out to sea. Soon as we have this vessel squared away, we'll follow you."

And, to the amazement of all who were familiar with the taciturn first officer, Arthur Ballard actually cackled out loud with glee!

Chapter 8

Whippet and Alacrity fell upon the anchorage just at the break of dawn the next morning. Sou'west down Walker's Cay Channel, east through the upper passage above the shoal; Whippet taking position to block the southern pass this time, much closer to the island, and Alacrity given the task of scouring the moored vessels, after she had landed Lieutenant Pomeroy and his Marines in the twenty-one-foot-deep oval tongue of water to the east between Walker's Cay and Grand Cay. With most of the ships' boats used, they landed on the eastern tip in the dark, after a two-mile row in from the hasty anchorage, and a slow march down the three-quarter-mile length of the isle to take the camp unawares from an unexpected quarter.