Birds of Prey - Smith Wilbur - Страница 71

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As he passed each emplacement and alerted the gunners, they began to train the culver ins around, aiming them back-into the forest. Back there they could already hear musket fire and angry shouts as Big Daniel and his small band of seamen charged into the advancing hordes that poured from the forest.

Hal reached the gun pit at the end of the line and jumped down beside Aboli, who was captaining the team of gunners there. Aboli thrust his burning match into the touch hole. The culverin leapt and thundered. As the stinking smoke swirled back over them, Aboli grinned at Hal, his dark face stained even darker with soot and his eyes bloodshot with smoke. "Ah! I thought you might never pull your root out of the sugar field in time to join the fight. I feared I might have to come up to the cave, and prise you loose with an iron bar."

"You will grin less happily with a musket ball in your tail feathers," Hal told him grimly. "We are surrounded. The woods behind us are full of Dutchmen. Daniel is holding them, but not for much longer. There are hundreds of them. Train this piece around and load with grape." While they reloaded, Hal went on giving his orders. "We'll have time for only one shot, then we'll charge them in the smoke," he said as he tamped down the charge with the long ramrod. As he pulled it out, a sailor lifted the heavy canvas bag filled with lead shot, and forced it down the muzzle. Hal drove it down to sit upon the powder charge. Then they ducked behind the parapet on both sides of the gun, keeping clear of the area where the train would recoil, and stared past the stockade into the forest beyond. They could hear the ring of steel on steel and the wild shouts as Daniel's men charged then fell back before the counter charge of the green-jackets. Musket fire hammered steadily as Schreuder's men reloaded and ran forward to fire again.

Now they caught glimpses through the trees of their own seamen coming back. Daniel towered above the others. he was carrying a wounded man over one shoulder and swinging a cutlass in his other hand.

The green-jackets were pressing him and his party hard.

"Ready now!" Hal grated at the seamen around him, and they crouched below the parapet and fingered their pikes and cutlasses. "Aboli, don't fire until Daniel is out of the line."

Suddenly Daniel threw down his burden, and turned back. He raced into the thick of the enemy, and scattered them with a great swipes of his cutlass. Then he ran to the wounded seaman, slung him over his shoulder and came on again towards where Hal crouched.

Hal glanced down the line of gun pits Although the forward-pointing cannon were still banging away at the ships in the lagoon, every second culverin was directed into the forest, waiting for the moment to loose a storm of shot into the lines of attacking infantry.

"At such short range the shot will not spread, and they are keeping their spaces," Aboli muttered.

"Schreuder has them well under control," Hal agreed grimly. "We can't hope to bring too many down with a single volley."

"Schreuder!" Aboli's eyes narrowed. "You did not tell me it was him."

"There he is!" Hal pointed at the tall wig less figure striding towards them through the trees. His sash glittered and his moustache bristled as he urged his musketeers forward.

Aboli grunted, "That one is the devil. We'll have trouble from him." He thrust an iron bar under the culverin and turned it round a few degrees, trying to bring the sights to bear on the colonel.

"Stand still," he urged, "for just long enough to give me a shot."

But Schreuder was moving up and down the ranks of his men, waving them on. He was so close now that his voice carried to Hal as he snapped at his men, "Keep your line! Keep the advance going. Steady now, hold your fire!" His control over them was apparent in the determined but measured advance. They must have been aware of the line of waiting guns, but they came forward without wavering, holding their fire, not wasting the one fair shot they carried in their muskets.

They were close enough for Hal to make out their individual features. He knew that the Company recruited most of its troops in its eastern colonies, and this was apparent in the Asiatic faces of many of the advancing soldiers. Their eyes were dark and almond-shaped and their skins a deep amber.

Suddenly Hal realized that the broadsides from the two warships had ceased and snatched a glance over his shoulder. He saw that both the black frigate and the Gull had anchored a cable's length or so off the beach. Their guns were silent, and Hal realized that Cumbrae and the frigate captain must have arranged with Schreuder a code of signals. They had ceased firing for fear of hitting their own men.

That gives us a breathing space, he thought, and looked ahead again.

He saw that Daniel's band was much depleted. they had lost half their number, and the survivors were clearly exhausted by their foray and the fierce skirmishing. Their gait was erratic many could barely drag themselves along. Their shirts were sodden with sweat and the blood from their wounds. One at a time they stumbled up and flopped over the parapet to lie panting in the bottom of the pit.

Daniel alone was indefatigable. He passed the wounded man over the parapet to the gunners and, so murderous was his mood, would have turned back and rushed at the enemy once more had not Hal stopped him. "Get back here, you great ox! Let us soften them up with a little grape shot. Then you can have at them again."

Aboli was still trying to line up the barrel on Schreuder's elusive shape. "He is worth fifty of the others," he muttered to himself, in his own language. Hal, though, was no longer paying him any heed, but trying anxiously to catch a glimpse of his father in the furthest emplacement, and take a lead from him.

"By God, he's letting them get too close!" he fretted. "A longer shot would give the grape a chance to spread, but I'll not open fire before he gives the order."

Then he heard Schreuder's voice again. "Front rank! Prepare to fire!" Fifty men dropped obediently to their knees, right in front of the parapet, and grounded the butts of their muskets.

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