Chapter Three 7 страница

When he'd got the powder kegs surrounded with full buckets and draped over with wet canvas, he hurried back up to the deck, where he was grabbed, handed a smoldering match-cord, and hustled to the starboard bow swivel gun. "Don't shoot till Hodge says, Jack," snapped the man who'd shoved him at the gun, "and then make it count."

Looking out ahead over the pitted muzzle of his gun, Shandy saw that all three vessels were slanting east, into the wind, the Carmichael and the Jenny more sharply than the man-of-war—which was in three-quarter profile to him now, the beige-and-black checkerboard pattern of her gunports visible along her port side.

I can't fire on a Royal Navy vessel, he thought. But if I refuse to shoot, these men will kill me … as a matter of fact, if I don't do a good job here, the Royal Navy may very well kill me, along with everyone else on the Jenny. My God, there simply isn't an acceptable course of action for me.

A white plume of smoke jetted from the Navy ship's side, and a moment later the cannon's hollow drumbeat rolled across the half mile of blue water that separated the vessels, and a moment after that a towering splash bloomed on the sea face to Shandy's left, stood for an instant, and then fell back like an upflung shovelful of diamonds.

"That's past us," called the tension-shrill voice of Hodge. "She's in range—fire!"

And, as many soldiers have been surprised to discover, the intensive, exhaustingly repetitive training he had received made obeying the order automatic; he had aimed, touched the match-end to the vent, and stepped back to the next gun before he'd even made up his mind whether or not to obey the order.

Well you're in it now, he thought despairingly as he aimed the second gun; you may as well work hard for the side you've cast your lot with.

As he touched the match-cord to the second gun's vent, the csloop's seven starboard cannons all went off at more or less the same instant, and the boat, which he hadn't realized until now was heeled over to starboard, was kicked almost back up to level by the recoil.

Then the Vociferous Carmichael, moving awesomely fast for the bulk of her, swept into the smoke-veiled gap between the man-of-war and the Jenny, close enough so that Shandy could clearly recognize the men in her rigging and hear Davies shout, "Fire!" an instant before the Carmichael's starboard guns went off with a sound like close thunder, rendering the man-of-war's sails quite invisible for a moment behind a churning mountain range of white smoke. The Jenny was maintaining her sharp turn to windward, following the Carmichael, and when the cannon smoke was left behind, Shandy was horrified to see the man-of-war, apparently unhurt, pacing the Jenny only a hundred yards away, but when Skank had grabbed him again and flung him onto another swivel gun, and he automatically sighted along the barrel at the bigger vessel, he realized that the man-of-war was not undamaged after all—the safety net over her waist was bouncing and angular with fallen spars, and the checkerboard pattern of the gunports was marred by a half-dozen fresh, ragged holes—and he realized too that the Jenny was moving faster than the Navy ship and would in a minute or so be safely out in front of her. Almost certainly against orders, Davies had driven through and punched the man-of-war to buy the Jenny time to get away.

"Hit a forward gun port!" Skank yelled, and Shandy obediently aimed at one of the gleaming cannon muzzles poking out of the Navy ship's bow and touched his match-cord to the vent. His gun went off with a jolting boom, and squinting through the acrid smoke he was pleased to see dust and splinters fly from the port he'd been aiming at.

"Good!" snarled Skank. "Now hit 'em—" Smoke erupted from the remaining guns in the man-of-war's flank but the roar of the cannon fire was lost in the sudden hammering crash that swept the Jenny, and Shandy was slammed violently away from his gun and flung tumbling into the mass of men behind him. Deafened and stunned, he wound up sprawled across a motionless body, trying to get air into his lungs without choking on all the blood and pieces of tooth in his mouth. Over the ringing in his ears he was aware of shouts of rage and panic, and of a new, sluggish shifting of the deck under him.

Hodge was shouting orders, and Shandy finally rolled over and sat up, coughing and spitting.

Fearfully he looked down at his body, and he was profoundly grateful to see all limbs present, unpunctured and apparently unbroken—especially after he looked around at the vessel. Dead and injured men were scattered everywhere, and the luffing sails were torn and spattered with blood, and the weather-darkened wood of mast and gunwales was ploughed up in many places to show the bright, fresh wood underneath. It looked, thought Shandy dazedly, as if God had leaned down from heaven and swiped a sharp-tined rake across the

boat a few times.

"Tiller hard to starboard, God damn it," Hodge was yelling. The captain cuffed away some of the blood that was coursing down his forehead. "And somebody grab the mainsail sheet!"

A man by the tiller tried spasmodically to obey, but fell helplessly to his knees, blood frothing from a ragged hole in his chest; Skank had desperately clambered over a pile of his ripped-up companions to the sheet … but it was too late. The Jenny, uncontrolled in the moments after the gust of scrap metal and chain shot had lashed into her, had drifted around to the point where her bow pointed directly into the wind, and for at least the next several minutes she would sit dead in the water. Shandy had heard this predicament described as "being in irons," and it occurred to him that in this case the term could hardly be more appropriate.

The tall, graceful edifice of the man-of-war, slanted enough against the wind to maintain headway, now crowded across the sloop's starboard bow, and as the high hull ground up against the Jenny's forecastle, snapping the shroud chains and even breaking the catted anchor, grappling hooks clattered and thudded down onto the smaller vessel's deck, and a harsh voice shouted, "There's a pistol trained on every one of you bastards, so drop all weapons, and when we throw down the rope ladder come up one at a time and slow."

Дата добавления: 2015-11-14