The Devil's Luck by Needle Jan

Author:Needle, Jan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Endeavour Press Ltd.
Published: 2013-09-12T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Sixteen

An officer unescorted, forward of a certain point below, is a man on his own. On English navy ships marines are quartered there, to separate the people from their lords, and as Lieutenant Swift moved into the pitchy darkness, he might have expected a bullet or a blade. Robinson was close behind him, and after him a press of bulky men – bulky but not clumsy.

The first thing all noticed was the smell. Un-English, certainly – all men knew the French ate mainly filth – but also the telltale reek of candle smoke. The glims had been snuffed out hastily, which meant the darkness had been brought about deliberate. Which meant that they were probably surrounded.

‘Is this the lot of us? Robinson, are we all here? Keep close beside this bulkhead, I am going to shoot.’

Swift was known to be a brave man, and a headstrong one. Everyone who heard him – all those who spoke English anyway – pressed themselves backwards into the smallest, furthest space away from him.

And then he opened fire. Three pistols he must have had, and a musket. One after the next, almost simultaneously, they flashed and cracked. The tiny ’tween decks space choked in a gush of smoke, and in the flickering of the muzzle-flames they all saw men ranged on the other side, and cowering like rats.

‘At ’em!’ yelled Swift. ‘Give them no time, give them no quarter! At them, I say!’

Then from the other side there was another fusillade, but far more ragged than Swift’s own. They heard the balls strike into wood, they heard them ricochet off metal, striking sparks along the carriage guns. But in the way of things it seemed no man was hit, there were no cries, no screams, no English words or French.

‘Forward,’ roared Swift. ‘No more shots, lads, engage them with your paws!’

To one side of them, towards the stern, a streak of light spilled out as a door or curtain opened. Behind it they saw many men, and one of them was in a bloody shirt, a standing, living corpse. Some lifted muskets, but there came cries in French, a scream of anguish.

Forgetting his own order, Lieutenant Swift raised another pistol and discharged it into the lighted throng. And as the curtain fell he led the charge.

‘Attack! Attack! Attack!’

In the forepart of the ’tween decks, towards the vessel’s dumpy waist, Raven’s men had moved from the foremast towards the main. They had caught and killed two sailors, and a third who bid to shout a warning was sliced across the throat as nicely as a butcher would have done.

When they heard the shooting from down aft, Simpson put a hand out to restrain his young gentleman.

‘It mid be us,’ he said, ‘but then again it mid be Frenchy guns, sir. We need candles, glims; we don’t get lights we surely, surely die.’

But Raven was an officer forward and below; an officer in limbo, lost. He heard others scurrying, then heard the sound of flint on steel.

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