Chapter 10

10

Jennings and Falworth were studying the horizon through long brass telescopes when Ballantine emerged from the hatch directly below the bridge. The wind had a sharp, biting edge, and the ship's motion was choppy as she rode the tall swells. The waves were flecked with whitecaps, and the sky above was a smoldering gray smudge-pot, churning with thunderclouds. It was easy to pick up the curl of straining white sails off the larboard side; the sky behind the approaching ship was an ominous, lightning-cracked black.

Falworth was the first to notice Ballantine's arrival on deck. The lieutenant was in full uniform: white breeches, navy broadcloth tunic, high black kneeboots. His brown eyes raked disdainfully down Adrian's open-throated, rumpled shirt.

"You are looking a little rough for wear this morning, old boy. Restless night?"

Adrian was not afforded an opportunity to reply as Jennings lowered his glass and stared down at him. "I believe you were confined to quarters, were you not, sir?"

"I was told there was a ship coming up fast in our wake," Adrian explained. "And that she was not showing any colors."

Falworth bristled. "Naturally you assumed only you would be competent enough to determine if it is friend or foe?"

"Tut, tut." Jennings held up a hand. "Perhaps we should permit the lieutenant an opinion, since it may well be one of his last times on this bridge. Come along then, Mr. Ballantine. Dazzle us with your wisdom and insight."

Adrian mounted the brief flight of steps to the raised bridge and took the proffered spyglass, noting Falworth's fury at being undermined yet again. Jennings was an insufferable bastard, but he was not stupid. He knew Ballantine's instincts were invaluable.

Adrian raised the glass to his eye, and the distant line of the horizon came abruptly forward, as did the sleek form of the advancing ship. She was running with the wind behind her, presenting a narrow silhouette and making any but the most rudimentary identification difficult. She was a frigate, carrying fore-, main-, and mizzenmasts. Her hull was painted black, making it impossible to count gun ports, had they been visible, or to judge her armaments. She was fully rigged for speed, her canvas sheets straining, filled with wind, but there were no flags, no pennants visible on her tops.

Adrian swept the glass across the seascape but he could see nothing other than roiling seas and sporadic flickers of lightning behind the frigate.

He lowered the glass slowly.

"Well?" Jennings snapped impatiently. "What do you make of her?"

"It is hard to tell anything at this distance. Has she replied to our signals?"

Falworth pursed his lips. "We have raised the accepted hailing codes, as well as a request for identification, but as yet she has chosen to ignore us. Of course, it is possible that she does not see us yet, what with the land at our back."

"Unless her crew is dead or stone blind, she sees us." Ballantine raised the glass again, this time to starboard and what he saw caused him to lower the telescope with a gasp of disbelief.

They were following the Moroccan coastline, but instead of the usual four to five leagues of clear water between the Eagle and shore, there was less than one. And the gap was closing as rapidly as the wind could push them.

"Who the bloody hell ordered the course change?" he asked harshly, with no deference to Jennings.

Falworth's lips pressed into a thin line. "I did. I thought it was prudent in light of the approaching squall."

"Prudent! There are hidden shoals and unpredictable currents all along this section of coastline. And as soon as that land mass sucks up the draft, we will lose half of our maneuvering power."

"Maneuvering power," Falworth scoffed. "For what?"

Ballantine swing the glass around to open sea. He was alarmed to see how much the stranger had gained on them in the few short minutes since he had come on deck.

"Have the decks been cleared for action?" he demanded. "Have the gun crews been alerted?"

Jennings looked from Ballantine to Falworth, "Gun crews?" then back to Ballantine. "You believe it to be a hostile vessel?"

"I do not know what to believe, and will not until I see some form of identification."

"Mr. Falworth is of the opinion she is a Sicilian merchantman."

"Mr. Falworth," Adrian said through his teeth, "has taken the liberty of placing us in an untenable position. We are too damned close to land. We have forfeited the weather gauge even before we have begun. We have no room to maneuver or turn, and we do not have nearly the speed to make a run for it. On the other hand, our visitor not only has the wind, but also the choice of how to use it."

Jennings frowned and turned to his second lieutenant. "Mr. Falworth, have you any reason to reconsider your strategy?"

Falworth reddened. "I am perfectly content with my decision. The lieutenant is, as usual, being overly dramatic. We have our backs protected in the event the ship turns out to be a hostile—which I strongly doubt! She hasn't the look of a Frenchman, or a Spaniard, and she is definitely not one of the seagoing deathtraps the local wogs seem to prefer. And what commander in his right mind would attempt to engage another ship with heavy weather closing in? The chap is probably running hell-bent for shelter, just as we are."

"A reasonable deduction," Jennings nodded and glanced askance at Ballantine. "One with which I must concur. Good heavens, we are a day's sail out of the Straits. No one would dare attack an American ship this close to our base."

"Colors!" A man called from the crow's nest. "She is running up her colors, sir!"

"Ahh," Jennings craned his neck to look up. "Now we shall have the mystery solved."

"Stars and Stripes, sir!"

Jennings grabbed the glass out of Ballantine's hand and leaned over the rail as if the stance would help the magnification. Falworth's eyes locked with Adrian's and his mouth curved triumphantly.

"Thus, Lieutenant," he murmured, "as I said, a compatriot seeking company to ride out the storm."

"Has she replied with the proper codes?" Adrian asked urgently.

"Thursday is five and six," Jennings mused. "A solid red and a red-on-white triangle. The reply should be … ha! There are the flags: solid white, white-on-red. Is that correct, Mr. Beddoes?"

"Aye, sir," the quartermaster replied after consulting with the code book. "Solid white, white-on-red. She is one of ours."

Jennings lowered the glass and rubbed his hands together in the morning chill. "Perhaps she will have news from home. And fresh meat. Some lunatic took it upon himself to throw the livestock overboard yesterday in all the panic, and I had to make do with salted fish last evening. Well, Mr. Ballantine? Have you nothing to say? Would you still prefer to fire a warning shot across her bows?"

Ballantine gazed out over the water. The speed of the other ship was easily twice that of the Eagle. She was giving no indication of taking in sail, even though she was safely within reach of shore. She was also coming into range for any heavy armaments she might be carrying.

"Why did the captain wait so long to identify himself?" he murmured aloud, despite the derision in Jennings' voice. "And why has he not taken in sail?"

"Why can you not accept what your eyes plainly tell you?" Falworth countered. "The ship belongs to one of our compatriots."

"The ship is flying an American flag," Adrian corrected him. "That is one of the oldest ploys on the sea—especially in an arena filled with pirates."

"The captain has also responded correctly to our codes," Jennings interjected with some annoyance.

Ballantine refrained from remarking on the confidentiality of the so-called secret codes, and instead turned to Beddoes. "Have the decks cleared for action and pipe the gun captains to the bridge."

"Aye, sir."

"Hold up there!" Jennings moved away from the rail. "How dare you countermand my orders. The helm is no longer yours to command, nor are the officers obliged to obey you."

"Tacking to larboard!" came the same excited voice from above. "She is assuming a parallel course ... there's ... there's men on the guns, sir! Ports are opening ... ! They're running out—"

The rest of the warning was lost to the horror of seeing the stranger present her larboard battery to the stunned observers on board the Eagle. Without any preliminaries the guns erupted with clouds of white smoke and blazing tongues of orange fire. Being well within range, it took only seconds for the shots to find their marks. Spouts of white water rose alongside the Eagle. Shots slashed through sail and rigging, plowed into her decks and rails, and left the men in panic as they scrambled clear of the flying, flaming debris.

Ballantine's breath was knocked from his lungs as he was thrown heavily into the deck rail. Beside him, Beddoes raised a bloodied stump where his right hand and arm should have been and screamed in agony. Adrian tore the bandanna from the quartermaster's neck and used it to tie off the stump, then he hastened over to where the captain and Otis Falworth were sprawled near a gaping hole in the rail. Jennings' face was sliced on one side from a flying splinter; Falworth bore a deep gash on his thigh. Both were dazed with shock.

Adrian shouted for assistance before he went in search of Danby, the chief gunnery officer.

A second broadside struck with deadly precision. Chunks of spars and planking exploded through the air, raining down on the unprotected heads of the scrambling marines and sailors. Ropes twanged apart as chain shot and bar shot ripped through the rigging; sails collapsed and the vessel reeled under the staggering impact of the bombardment.

"Helmsman!" Adrian kept one eye on the men rushing frantically to arm the Eagle's guns, the other on the sleek, graceful marauder. "Helmsman—hard to starboard! Get those topmen aloft! I want all the sail on that she will hold! Move on those guns! Move! Move! Move!"

His shouts were drowned under the roar of another broadside. He saw two crewmen blasted into crimson fragments as he trained his glass on the enemy ship, aware that the Eagle was responding sluggishly to his commands. The rough sea was making it difficult to hold a course or to execute any kind of swift, evasive move. But she was spirited and willing to try. A great hollow groan along the beam heaved the bow skyward, and the frigate hung for a sickening moment over the crest of a wave. Spray burst above the rail as she slewed sideways and seemed on the verge of careening. The wind grasped at her sails and filled them, hurling her forward into the trough. The sea rose in a wall and spewed a foaming cascade of water down upon her decks, but the Eagle shook herself free and thundered steadfastly into the next wave.

Hoping to have bought some badly needed breathing space, Ballantine was astounded to see that the raider had backed her topsails and had drawn to a near standstill in the water. She tacked nimbly across the Eagle's stern, and Adrian watched helplessly—and admittedly in awe of the daring maneuver—as she came within hailing distance and caused the American warship's sails to gasp for breath. The Eagle floundered long enough to absorb the shock of several cannonades down her exposed length. The stern bulwark was blown to eternity; the bridge disappeared in a fountain of bloodied splinters. Spars were torn from their braces, carrying lines, canvas, and men to their fiery death as shot after shot exploded on deck. A wildly snaking cable swept the boatswain overboard. The helm spun against the opposing thrust of the wind and sea, and the Eagle found herself back in line with the hungry guns of the raider.

The enemy ship was now within pistol shot—fifty yards—and her gunners unleashed obliterating rounds of grape and canister shot into the Eagle's masts and rigging. When the wind fanned the smoke clear, there were pieces of the dead scattered everywhere. The decks were slippery with blood, and even the faces of the seasoned veterans paled at the extent of the carnage.

Adrian felt the madness surging through him like a fever. Blinded with rage and heedless of the danger, he threw himself at one of the nine-pounder bow guns. With superhuman effort, he single-handedly trained the gun on the looming enemy; he loaded it with double shot and fired, loaded and fired again and again, until his hands were blistered from the heat of the iron barrel. The stench of smoke and blood coated his nostrils. Waves of roiling, scorching air swirled inboard after each salvo, stinging his eyes, choking into his throat, but he had thoughts only for the raider and the murderously brilliant tactician at her helm. The ship was close enough for Adrian to see onto the deck, where the half-naked gunners were firing coolly, continuously, seeming to take the time to fire each salvo in tune with the roll of the ship so that few rounds went wild or splashed harmlessly into the sea.

On one smoke-filled breath Adrian cursed Otis Falworth like he had cursed no other living human being before. They were boxed in flush against the land with no room to tack away or to avoid the deadly assault. With the next breath, he conceded a small gasp of thanks that because of their proximity to the land, the enemy was equally hampered. The attacking ship could not maneuver between the Eagle and shore and would need to turn away and tack into the approaching squall in order to make a second pass.

As if the marauder was privy to Ballantine's thoughts, the gleaming bow sheered away, having passed beyond the effective angle of fire. To his disgust, Adrian saw that she was barely scraped, that few of her sails were being hauled in for replacements, that none of her guns appeared to be smoking wrecks. He uttered a violent curse when he saw that a second tier of gun ports had indeed been cleverly concealed by the black paint on the hull. His earlier, hasty estimate of eighteen guns he now adjusted upward to thirty-eight, possibly more. And judging by the damage suffered to the Eagle's hull, a good number of those guns were thirty-two pounders that, when fired at such close range, could crush a three-foot-thick hull as if it was tinder.

Suddenly, the Stars and Stripes were pulled down and a new set of flags were run up the masts. Riding proudly atop an ingratiating demand for surrender was a pennant bearing a scarlet wolf's head on a black field.

Ballantine's mouth went dry, and the blood drained from his face.

It was not possible.

He scrubbed the smoke and sweat from his eyes, but the flags did not change. The scarlet wolf's head was known and dreaded along the entire Barbary Coast.

Adrian backed away from the smoking bow gun and stumbled aft, passing several ashen-faced gunners who looked to him wordlessly for some sign of encouragement. In the sudden lull, all that could be heard on the Eagle were the cries and groans of the wounded, the slosh of water pouring through her riddled hull, the creaking of a dangerously unstable topmast. Fires hissed and crackled along the main deck. Men spoke in curses, uttering streams of obscenities instead of intelligible sentences. Bodies were everywhere—draped on spars, crumpled against guns and capstans, sprawled bloodily on the glistening planks.

"What the deuce is happening?" croaked a cold, harsh voice from the bulkhead below the quarterdeck. Jennings had crawled there, aided by Falworth. "Why are we being attacked without provocation? Who is commanding that ship?"

Ballantine, stunned by the devastation he saw around him, could not offer an immediate answer.

"Beddoes!" Jennings screamed. "Damn the man, where is he? Who can identify those colors?"

"I do not know who is in command," Ballantine said slowly, "but those are Farrow colors."

"Farrow! Duncan Farrow? But that is not possible!"

"No!" Falworth screamed. "We were assured that both of Farrow's ships had been captured at Moknine. We were dispatched to Snake Island because both ships had been captured!"

"Obviously the report was premature," said Adrian, dragging a trembling hand across his brow. It came away with a slick smear of blood. His shirt was soaked with sweat, spattered with blood; he stank of cordite and gunpowder, mixed with the unfamiliar, galling taste of defeat.

"You cannot think Farrow himself is in command," Falworth gasped. He was—"

"He was hanged," Adrian snarled. "And the Wild Goose was destroyed. So then you tell me, Lieutenant, who the hell is out there now?"

"We have to haul down the colors," Jennings rasped. "I see no other way out of this predicament. We have no choice but to surrender and hope for clemency."

"Surrender?" Ballantine wiped savagely at the blood that persisted in trickling into his eyes. "You cannot surrender! By God, I will destroy the ship myself before I surrender it to pirates!"

Jennings pounded the deck with his fist. "By God you will do as I command! Half of our guns are useless! The men are being slaughtered where they stand! We have no chance of surviving another assault like the last one."

"That does not mean we surrender!" Adrian exclaimed, appalled by Jennings' disregard for the pride of the Eagle and her crew, not to mention the flag she flew. An American warship had never surrendered to a corsair!

Ballantine thrust a finger in the direction of the squall. "We can double back and run for the heavy weather. Farrow will not be expecting it. Hell, no one would expect it with the seas as rough as they are, and if we can reach the curtain of rain before he realizes what we are about, we might just be able to lose him."

"And lose ourselves in the process!" Jennings shrieked. "We have no steerage, no speed. We would be overtaken before we covered half the distance!"

"Not if we move now! While his ship is gathering headway to make the turn. If we sit here and wait, we are inviting disaster. The men have heart and guts, but I agree we cannot hope to withstand another raking."

"That is why we must surrender," Jennings insisted. "At once! Before it is too late!"

Ballantine took a step toward Jennings, his fists clenched by his side. "We will not surrender!"

"I gave you a direct order!" Jennings screamed. "I order you to bring down the colors!"

Fury and disgust fought for control on Adrian's face, and his knuckles glowed white with the desire to smash into the corpulent flesh.

"You bloody coward, we will not surrender," he repeated, his eyes savagely bright. "We will stand and fight and die to the last man if need be, but by God, we will not surrender!"

"Mutiny," Jennings gasped. "You are calling for a mutiny! I will see you hanged for this! Hanged, I say!"

"So be it," Adrian snarled and whirled around to face the crew, who had gathered and were listening in stunned silence. "Are you with me, men? Do we bring down the colors or do we show these damned pirates how to fight a battle?"

There was a deafening cheer from the surrounding ring of officers and seamen. Shouts of "Fight! Fight! Fight!" Rang through the air, echoing as high as the men on the topmost yards.

"No! I order you to haul in the colors!" Jennings screamed. "I order you! I order you!"

No one paid heed. The men were already in motion, wheeling the guns into new positions, calling for fresh shot, helping the wounded below.

Jennings drew his cutlass. Ballantine saw the flash of steel and whirled. His fist caught the rounded jaw, low and hard, and Jennings' head snapped back under the impact. His body was sent crashing against the base of the mast, then sank, like whale blubber, to the oak deck.

Adrian's steely gaze flicked up from Jennings and fixed on the astounded features of Otis Falworth. "You wanted your moment of glory. Here it is. Take command of the helm and watch for my signals, and by God, if you foul up one of them—"

He left the threat unfinished as he turned on his heel and pushed through the piles of smoking debris. He stripped off his shirt and tore a length of cambric from the bottom edge, using it as a bandanna to staunch the blood flowing from a cut above his eye. He strode the length of the gun-deck and stopped by one of the massive twenty-four pounders that had been buried under a tangle of broken spars and cables. The gun crew exchanged a fleeting, nervous glance among themselves, but when they heard the confident roar of his voice issuing orders, they soon gave a rousing cheer and joined him in freeing the cannon.

With the same superb seamanship that the marauder had shown in running her prey to ground, she completed her turn and bore down on the crippled Eagle once again. On board the American frigate, the cannon were primed and waiting. A silence enveloped the decks that amplified the hiss of the spluttering fuses held aloft in readiness. Ballantine could feel the fear in the men around him; he could smell it and taste it with each breath he pumped into his lungs. And like so many of the others, he unabashedly moved his lips in a silent prayer and laid his hand on the cold, rough comfort of the black-iron monster that would decide if he lived or died.

The corsair came at them fast. Her topgallants disappeared as she shortened sail to fighting trim; a moment later, the forks of orange flame and boiling, billowing clouds of acrid smoke spewed from both tiers of guns. Adrian's hand came down in a slashing motion, giving his crews the signal to fire and the battle was on again.

The effort, though valiant, was futile. Hot grapeshot smashed through what little protection remained on the Eagle's deck, exploding projectiles of razor-sharp metals, nails, and musket balls across the deck, slicing through flesh and bone, canvas and cordage alike. Yards cracked overhead and twisted as the chain-shot carved them away. Sails slatted over, and the remains of the mizzen topmast crashed to the sea, dragging streamers of tangled shrouds behind. Marksmen on board the corsair concentrated their musket fire on the few courageous topmen who held to their posts, and the marines began dropping out of the yards one after another with ghastly precision. Fires broke out, and there were not enough brigades to contain them. A flaming scrap of canvas drifted lazily through a gaping hatch and landed on a stack of flannel-encased powder cartridges. The resulting explosion lifted ten square feet of decking and destroyed three gun positions on the lower deck.

The two ships closed to within one hundred yards, and to the credit of the Eagle's gunners, there were signs of damage beginning to appear on the corsair. Her sails became pockmarked with holes; her deck was cloaked beneath a cloud of smoke and flying debris. But within fifty-yards, the attacker's carronades were brought thundering into action again, hurling forty-two pounds of destruction through what remained of the Eagle's meager defenses.

Cannon were unseated and whole crews were crushed beneath the weight. Water bled through gouges in the hull. Smoke and steam clogged the companionways, the storerooms, the cabins, and drove choking hot fumes into every crack and crevice that harbored life.

Ballantine kept his gun crew firing steadily, scarcely able to see past the smoke that creamed from the muzzle between rounds. He loaded and fired without bothering to adjust the aim of the heavy gun—the corsair was so close, it would have been a waste of precious time. Each round seemed to bring the Farrow ship nearer, and with her the threat of boarding planks and grappling hooks. Men were already lining her rails in eager readiness. Even more were sent high on the yards to spray the Eagle's deck with a thicker hail of musket fire. The choppy sea and gusting winds were no more of a deterrent than the cannonades that rocketed between the two vessels, causing each to buckle and roll in the turbulence.

Adrian felt the enemy's iron smashing through the deck as the corsair trained a final raking broadside along her hull. The cables to the rudder were severed, and the valiant Eagle heeled sideways in a lurch that sent her bow careening sidelong into the opposing frigate.

Ballantine was thrown to his knees with the impact. He was blinded by the smoke and the pain, and his head seemed suddenly to be too heavy for his neck to support. He crawled several feet in agony before he was able to find something solid to brace himself against. He shook the blood out of his eyes and looked around the deck, searching for the source of the rapid thuds that were hooking into the rails and planks of the Eagle.

"Prepare ... to repel boarders," he gasped and groped for one of the barbed handspikes strapped to the mast. He could not tell if anyone had heard the warning, or if anyone was alive in the carnage that spread out before him. His ears bled from the concussion of the guns; pain and nausea dulled his senses to everything but the insult of seeing filthy, bearded pirates swarming across the lines to attack his ship.

All of the repressed violence and anger erupted in a blood-curdling roar as Adrian hurled himself toward the oncoming threat. Beside him, equally wide-eyed and determined, was the cut and bleeding figure of the chaplain, John Knobbs. Hearing Adrian's call to arms, he grabbed a pistol from the hands of the dead sailor he had been praying over and staunchly took his place at the lieutenant's side. Together the unlikely pair led the charge to meet the wall of shrieking corsairs.

John Knobbs was grazed on the neck by a musket ball. It slowed him, but he aimed and fired his pistol point-blank, blowing away a portion of his assailant's shoulder. He threw the smoking pistol aside and scooped up the corsair's broadsword, dealing with two more attackers before several shots fired simultaneously halted him, and he fell back in a plume of blood.

Ballantine slashed his way into the phalanx of men, dodging and ducking the cutlass blades that sought to stop him. A tall, black-haired corsair bellowed for the privilege of ending Ballantine's charge and lunged toward the wildly swinging handspike. Adrian saw the flash of crimson-stained steel too late to avoid it completely. The blade glanced off his thigh, and he staggered back. His foot twisted over a pile of wreckage, and he stumbled back, tripping over the raised lip of a hatch coaming. The hatch itself was nothing more than a gaping black hole and he plunged through the opening and landed hard on the shattered deck below.

The black-haired corsair stood a moment and stared down at the splayed body. When there was no sign of movement, he threw his shaggy head back, and with a blood-curdling cry of triumph, leaped for the mizzenmast. There, he raised a tattooed arm and brought his sword hacking down across the cable that held the American colors aloft.