Birds of Prey - Smith Wilbur - Страница 52

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Aboli saw what he was doing and plunged headlong into the lagoon. With a few powerful strokes he reached Hal's side. With both of them swimming it out, the boat moved faster.

With one hand on the stern Hal lifted his head clear of the water to orientate himself and saw the flotilla of small boats from the Gull heading in towards the beach. They were crowded with wildly yelling seamen, their weapons glinting in the morning light. So certain was the Buzzard of his victory that he could have left only a few men aboard to guard the ship.

Hal glanced over his shoulder and saw that both Ned and Daniel had followed his example. They had led the rest of the gang into the water and were clinging to the stems of two more craft, kicking the water to a white froth behind them as they pushed out into the channel. From all three boats rose tendrils of smoke as the flames took hold in the loads of pitch-soaked firewood.

Hal dropped back beside Aboli and set himself to work doggedly with both legs, pushing the boat ahead of him, down the channel to where the Gull lay at anchor. Then the incoming tide caught them firmly in its flood and, like a trio of crippled ducks, bore them along more swiftly.

As Hal's boat swung its bows around he had a better view of the beach. He recognized the flaming red head and beard of the Buzzard in the leading longboat heading into the attack on the encampment, and fancied that, even in the uproar, he heard peals of his laughter carrying over the water.

Then he had something else to think about for the fire in the cargo above him gained a firm hold and roared into boisterous life. The flames crackled and leapt high in columns of dense black smoke. They danced and swayed as their heat created its own draught, and the single sail filled with more determination.

"Keep her moving!" Hal panted to Aboli beside him. "Steer her two points more to larboard."

A gust of heat swept over him so fiercely that it seemed to suck the air from his lungs. He ducked his head beneath the surface and came up snorting, water cascading down his face from his sodden hair, but still kicking with all his strength. The Gull lay less than a cable's length dead ahead. Daniel and Ned followed close behind him, both their vessels wreathed in tarry black smoke and dark orange flame.

The air over them quivered and throbbed with the heat like a desert mirage.

"Keep her going," Hal blurted. His legs were beginning to ache unbearably, and he spoke more to himself than to Aboli. The painter tied to the bows of the devil ship trailed back, threatening to wrap around his legs, but he kicked it away there was no time to loosen it.

He saw the first of the Gull's longboats reach the beach and Cumbrae leap ashore, swinging his claymore in flashing circles around his head. As he landed on the sand he threw back his head, uttered a blood-curdling Gaelic war-cry, then went bounding up the steep beach. As he reached the trees he looked back to make certain his men were following him. There he paused with his sword held high, and stared back across the channel at the tiny squadron of devil ships, blooming with smoke and flame and bearing down steadily upon his anchored Gull.

"Nearly there!" Hal gasped, and the waves of heat that broke over his head seemed to fry his eyeballs in their sockets. He plunged his head underwater again to cool it, and this time when he came up he saw that the Gull lay only fifty yards ahead.

Even above the crackling roar of the flames he heard the Buzzard's roar. "Back! Back to the Gull. The bastards are sending fireships at her." The frigate was stuffed with the booty of a long, hard privateering cruise, and her crew sent up a wild chorus of outrage as they saw the fruits of three years so endangered. They raced back to their boats even faster than they had charged up the beach.

The Buzzard stood in the bows of his, prancing and gesticulating so that he threatened to upset her balance. "Let me get my hands on the pox-ridden swine. I'll rip out their windpipes, I'll split their stinking-" At that moment he recognized Hal's head at the stern of the leading fire ship lit by the full glare of the swirling flames, and his voice rose a full octave. "It's Franky's brat, by God! I'll have him!

I'll roast his liver in his own fire!" he shrieked, then lapsed into crimson-faced, inarticulate rage and hacked at the air with his claymore to spur his crew to greater speed.

Hal was only a dozen yards now from the Gull's tall side, and found fresh strength in his exhausted legs. TireIlessly Aboli swam on, using a powerful frog-kick that pushed back the water in a swirling wake behind him.

With the Buzzard's longboat bearing down swiftly upon them, they covered the last few yards and Hal felt the fire ship bows thump heavily into the Gulls stern timbers. The push of the tide pinned her there, swinging her broadside so that the flames were fanned by the rising morning breeze to lick up along the Gulls side, scorching and blackening the timbers.

"Latch onto her!" bellowed the Buzzard. "Get a line on her and tow her off!" His oarsmen shot straight in towards the fire ship but, as they felt the full heat blooming out to meet them, they quailed. In the bows the Buzzard threw up his hands to cover his face, and his red beard crisped and singed. "Back off!" he roared. "Or we'll fry." He looked at his coxswain. "Give me the anchor! I'll grapple her, and we'll tow her off."

Hal was on the point of diving and swimming under water out of the circle of heat but he heard Cumbrae's order. The painter still trailed around his legs, and he groped beneath the surface for the end, clenching it between his feet. Then he sank below the water and swam under the fire ship hull, coming up in the narrow gap between it and the Gull.

The Gull's rudder stock broke the surface and, spitting lagoon water from his mouth, Hal threw a loop of the painter around the pintle. His face felt as though it were blistering as the heat beat down upon his head with hammer strokes, but he hitched the flaming craft securely to the Gull's stern.

Then he dived again and came up next to Aboli. "To the beach!" he gasped. "Before the fire reaches the Gull's powder store."

Both struck out overarm, and Hal saw the longboat, close by, almost close enough to touch, but the Buzzard had lost all interest in them. He was whirling the small anchor around his head, and as Hal watched he hurled it out over the burning vessel, hooking onto her.

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