Birds of Prey - Smith Wilbur - Страница 54

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They shook out the main sail and the ship responded quickly. As she caught the rising breeze, the flames poured outwards, and the fire-fighters were able to run forward and direct the water from the hoses onto the base of the fire.

She towed the two fireships for a short distance, but when the lines that secured them burned through, the Gull left them as she headed slowly down the channel.

Along the beach the culver ins continued to pour salvo after salvo into her but, as she drew out of range, the battery fell silent. Still streaming smoke and orange flame behind her, the Gull headed for the open sea. Then, as she entered the channel between the heads and looked to have sailed clear away, the batteries hidden in the cliffs opened up on her. Gunsmoke billowed out from among the grey rocks and cannonballs kicked up spouts of foam along the Gull's waterline or punched holes in her sails.

Painfully she ran this gauntlet, and at last left the smoking batteries out of range.

"Mister Courtney!" Sir Francis shouted at Hal even in the heat of the battle he had used the formal address. "Take a boat and cross to the heads. Keep the Gull under observation."

Hal and Aboli reached the far side of the bay, and climbed up to the high ground on top of the heads. The Gull was already a mile offshore, reaching across the wind with sail set on her two forward masts. Wisps of dark grey smoke trailed from her stern, and Hal could see that her mizzen sails and her spanker were blackened and still smouldering. Her decks seethed with the tiny figures of her crew as they snuffed out the last of the fire and laboured to get the ship under full control and sailing handily again.

"We have given his lordship a lesson he'll long remember, Hal exulted. "I doubt we'll be having any more trouble from him for a while," "The wounded lion is the most dangerous, Aboli grunted. "We have blunted his teeth, but he still has his claws."

When Hal stepped out of the boat onto the beach below the encampment he found that his father already had a gang of men at work, repairing the damage to the battery of culver ins along the shore.

They were building up the parapets and levelling the two guns that had been shot off their mountings by the Gull's broadsides.

Where she lay careened on the beach, the Resolution had been hit by shot. The Gull's fire had knocked great raw wounds in the timbers. Grape shot had peppered her sides but had not penetrated her stout planks. The carpenter and his mates were already at work cutting out the damaged sections and checking the frames beneath them, preparatory to replacing them with new oak planking from the ship's stores. The pitch cauldrons were bubbling and smoking over the coals, and the rasping of saws and soughing of planes resounded through the camp.

Hal found his father further back among the trees, where the wounded had been laid out under a makeshift canvas shelter. He counted seventeen and, at a glance, could tell that at least three were unlikely to see tomorrow's dawn. Already the aura of death hung over them.

Ned Tyler doubled as the ship's surgeon he had been trained for the role in the rough empirical school of the gundeck, and he wielded his instruments with the same rude abandon as the carpenters working on the Resolution's punctured hull.

Hal saw that he was performing an amputation. One of the topmast-men had taken a blast of grape in his leg just below the knee and the limb hung by a taller of flesh and exposed stringy white sinew from which protruded sharp white splinters of the shin bone. Two of Ned's mates were trying to hold down the patient on a sheet of blood-soaked canvas, as he bucked and writhed. They had thrust a doubled layer of leather belt between his teeth. The sailor bit down so hard upon it that the sinews in his neck stood out like hempen ropes. His eyes started out of his straining crimson face and his lips were drawn back in a terrifying rictus. Hal saw one of his rotten black teeth explode under the pressure of his bite.

He turned his eyes away and began his report to Sir Francis. "The Gull was heading west the last I saw of her. The Buzzard seems to have the fire in hand, although she is still making a cloud of smoke, -" He was interrupted by screams as Ned laid aside his knife and took up the saw to trim off the shattered bone. Then, abruptly, the man lapsed into silence and slumped back in the grip of the men who held him. Ned stepped back and shook his head. "Poor bastard's taken shore leave. Bring one of the others." He wiped the sweat and smoke from his face with a blood-caked hand and left a red smear down his cheek.

Although Hal's stomach heaved, he kept his voice level as he went on with his report. "Cumbrae was cracking on all the sail the Gull would carry." He was determined not to show weakness in front of his men and his father, but his voice trailed off as Ned started to pluck a massive wood splinter from another seaman's back. Hal could not drag away his eyes.

Ned's two brawny assistants straddled the patient's body and held him down, while he got a grip on the protruding end of the splinter with a pair of blacksmith's tongs. He placed one foot on the man's back to give himself purchase and leaned back with all his weight. The raw splinter was as thick as his thumb, barbed like an arrowhead and relinquished its grip in the living flesh only with the greatest reluctance. The man's screams rang through the forest.

At that moment Governor van de Velde came waddling towards them through the trees. His wife was on his arm, weeping pitifully and barely able to support her own weight. Zelda followed her closely, attempting to thrust a green bottle of smelling-salts under her mistress's nose.

"Captain Courtney!" van de Velde said. "I must protest in the strongest possible terms. You have placed us in the most dire danger. A ball passed through the roof of my abode. I might have been killed."

He mopped at his streaming jowls with his neck cloth

At that moment the wretch who had been receiving Ned's ministrations let out a piercing shriek as one of the assistants poured hot pitch to staunch the bleeding into the deep wound in his back.

"You must keep these oafs of yours quiet." Van de Velde waved disparagingly towards the severely wounded seaman. "Their barnyard bleatings, are frightening and offending my wife."

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