Birds of Prey - Smith Wilbur - Страница 53

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"Lie back on your oars!" he shouted at his crew. "Tow her off." The boatmen went to it with all their strength, but immediately the fire ship came up short on the mooring line Hal had tied, and their blades beat the water vainly. She would not tow, and now the planking of the Gull's side was smouldering ominously.

Fire was the terror of all seamen. The ship was built of combustibles and stuffed with explosives, wood and pitch, canvas and hemp, tallow, spice barrels and gunpowder. The faces of the longboat's crew were contorted with terror. Even the Buzzard was wild-eyed in the firelight as he looked up and saw the other two fireships drifting remorselessly upon him. "Stop those others!" he pointed with his claymore. "Turn them away!" Then he turned his attention back to the burning vessel moored to the Gull.

By now Hal and Aboli were fifty yards away, swimming for the beach, but Hal rolled onto his back to watch and trod water. He saw at once that the Buzzard's efforts to tow away the fire ship had failed.

Now he rowed around to the Gull's bows and scrambled up onto her deck. As his crew followed him he roared, "Buckets! Get a bucket chain going. Pumps! Ten men on the pumps. Spray the flames!" They scurried to obey, but the fire was spreading swiftly, eating into the stern and dancing along the gunwale, reaching up hungrily towards the furled sails on their outstretched yards.

One of the Gull's longboats had grappled Ned's fire shiP and, with frantically beating oars, was dragging it clear. Another was trying to get a line on Big Daniel's fire shiP but the flames forced them to keep their distance. Each time they succeeded in hooking on, Daniel swam round and cut the rope with a stroke of his knife. The men in the longboat who carried muskets and pistols were firing wildly at his bobbing head, but though the balls kicked up spray all around him, he seemed invulnerable.

Aboli had swum on ahead, and now Hal rolled onto his belly and followed him "back to the beach. Together they raced up the white sand, and into the shot-shattered forest. Sir Francis was still in the gun pit where they had left him, but he had gathered around him a scratch crew of the Resolution's survivors- They were reloading the big gun as Hal ran up to him and shouted, "What do you want me to do?" Come find more of the men. "Take Aboli with You to Load another culverin.

Bring the Gull under fire. Sir Francis did not look up from the gun, and Hal ran back among the trees. He found half a dozen men, and he and Aboli kicked and dragged them out of the holes and bushes where they were cowering, and led them back to the silenced battery.

In the few short minutes it had taken him to gather the gm crew the scene out on the lagoon had changed completely.. Daniel had guided his fire ship up to the Gull's side and had secured her there. Her flames were adding to the confusion and panic on board the frigate.

Now he was swimming back to the beach. He had seized two of his men, who could not swim, and was dragging them through the water.

The Gull's crew had snared Ned's fire ship they had lines on it and were dragging it clear. Ned and his three fellows had abandoned it, and were also floundering back towards the shore. But, even as Hal watched, one gave up and slipped below the surface.

The sight of the drowning spurred Hal's anger. he poured a handful of powder into the culverin's touch hole as Aboli used an iron marlin spike to train the barrel around. It bellowed deafeningly, and Hal's men shouted with delight as the full charge of grape smashed into the longboat towing Ned's abandoned craft. It disintegrated at the blast, and the men packed into her were hurled into the lagoon. They splashed about, screaming for aid and trying to clamber into another longboat nearby, but it was already overcrowded and the men in her tried to beat off the frantic seamen with their oars. Some, though, managed to get a hold on the gunwale, and yelling and fighting among themselves, they caused the longboat to list heavily, until suddenly she capsized. The water around the burning hulks was filled with wreckage and the heads of struggling swimmers.

Hal was concentrating on reloading, and when he looked up again, he saw that some of the men in the water had reached the Gull and were climbing the rope ladders to the deck.

The Buzzard had at last got his pumps working. Twenty men were bobbing up and down like monks at prayer as they threw their weight on the handles, and white jets of water were spurting from the nozzles of the canvas hoses, aimed at the base of the flames, which were now spreading over the Gull's stern.

Hal's next shot shattered the wooden rail on the GulPs larboard side, and went on to sweep through the gang serving the bow pump. Four were snatched away, as though by an invisible set of claws, their blood splattering the others beside them on the handles. The jet of water from the hose shrivelled away.

"More men here!" Cumbrae's voice resounded across the lagoon, as he sent others to take the places of the dead. At once the jet of water was revived, but it made little impression on the leaping flames that now engulfed the Gull's stern.

Big Daniel reached the shore, and dropped the two men he had rescued on the sand. He ran up into the trees, and Hal shouted, "Take command of one of the guns. Load with grape and aim at her decks. Keep them from fighting the fire."

Big Daniel grinned at Hal with black teeth and knuckled his forehead. "We'll play his lordship a pretty tune to dance to," he promised.

The crew of the Resolution, who had been demoralized by the Gull's sneak attack, now began to take heart again at the swing in fortunes. One or two more emerged from where they had been skulking in the forest. Then, as the fire started to crash from the beach batteries and thump into the Gull's hull, the others grew bold and rushed back to serve the guns.

Soon a sheet of flame and smoke was tearing from out of the trees across the water. Flames had reached the Gull's mizzen-yards and were taking hold in the furled sails.

Hal saw the Buzzard striding through the smoke, lit by the flames of his burning ship, an axe in his hand. He stood over the anchor rope where it was drawn tightly through its fair lead and, with one gigantic swing he cut it free.

Immediately the ship began to drift across the wind. He raised his head and bellowed an order to his seamen, who were clambering up the shrouds.

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