War Drums (Sass)/Chapter 13
IT WAS an hour after noon when the Merry Amy I burst like a phantom ship out of the fog and the chase of the Good Fortune began. Two hours later it was plain that the chase could have but one ending. Black Lowther's ship was gaining. At first, while the breeze held light, she had dropped a little behind; but the Good Fortune belied her name; luck, or fate, turned persistently against her. The fog bank to the eastward, in which Falcon had hoped to lose his pursuer, lifted and disappeared, and simultaneously the breeze freshened.
The Good Fortune sailed well in any wind. She gathered speed as the breeze increased, and Lachlan, standing beside Falcon at the wheel, marvelled at her swiftness as she leaped quivering through the seas.
"I think we shall win, Captain Falcon," he said presently.
The tall man smiled sourly. "A landsman's opinion," he replied. "In light airs we could outpace her. In a stiff wind the Merry Amy is the fastest vessel on the Western Ocean."
For a while he said no more, and Lachlan, watching the ship behind, soon saw that he spoke truth. Little by little the Merry Amy was creeping up. Black Lowther, too, had crowded on all sail and he took in none as the breeze freshened. From truck to rail his ship was a towering mass of canvas. Beside Falcon, who still handled the wheel, now stood Diccon Drews, his second in command, a short, broad, hairy, tattooed ruffian, stripped to the waist, his sash bristling with pistols.
Lachlan, listening to the talk between them, learned something of the fine points of this deadly game—learned, too, what Falcon planned. They could never win back to Charles Town Harbour, he gathered; long before then they would be overhauled. But the game was not hopeless; there were several cards to play.
Lowther's tremendous press of canvas was straining his tall masts and tapering spars. Again and again Diccon Drews, a long glass pressed to his glowering eye, studied the Merry Amy's bellying sails, and any moment he hoped to see a topmast snap. Falcon, knowing Black Lowther's seamanship, dismissed this possibility, but turned his head at intervals to gauge the lessening distance between the two vessels.
Good shooting was impossible in such a sea, but a little later, when the range would be shorter, a lucky shot from the long gun at the Good Fortune's stern might give that slim foretopmast a fatal wound. It was one chance in a hundred; and even then with half a gale blowing the ship would outsail the brig. But the chase would last longer and there might be time to play the last card.
With a quickening pulse Lachlan learned what that last card would be. If they were not overhauled meantime, Falcon would head in for the coast opposite Edisto Inlet and either wreck his brig on the treacherous shoals at the inlet mouth or by some miracle of luck and seamanship drop anchor safe in Edisto River where his pursuer could not come.
An hour passed, and always the wind rose higher and the waves grew mightier, so that the Good Fortune plunged and leaped from wave to wave, burying her prow deep in the crested combers, her decks awash with brine and foam. She still carried all her canvas, but Lowther had shortened sail. Yet the Merry Amy still gained, was now within easy gunshot. For half an hour the long gun in the brig's stern had been sniping at the pursuer's spars. Shooting from that plunging deck was like shooting in the dark. Every shot had gone wild; and if a hit were ever made it would be due to chance and not to marksmanship. Nevertheless, Falcon held his gunners to their task, laughing, cursing, swearing that the next shot would do the work.
Above the roar of the wind Lachlan heard a hollow booming sound that seemed miles away. Lowther had opened fire with his bow-chaser. At the same moment there ran up to the tip of the Merry Amy's mainmast a small black square of bunting. At the sight a deepthroated shout burst from the Good Fortune's crew, and Falcon laughed grimly and bellowed an order forward, his bull's voice roaring above the wind. Three minutes later, a black flag blazoned with white crossbones and skull climbed to the Good Fortune's main peak.
Falcon spoke over his shoulder to Lachlan standing just behind him.
"He is a brutish clodpole, this Black Lowther," he said, "but he has a certain wit. In these tame times the Black Roger is seldom flown because most rovers have grown too discreet to proclaim their profession. But when two gentlemen of that profession meet to settle a quarrel, it is fitting that they should meet under the good old flag."
He had scarcely finished when the gun at the brig's stern roared again. Suddenly Diccon Drews, who had been gazing at the Merry Amy through his glass, leaped into the air, clutching wildly at one of the pistols in his sash. He jerked it out and fired it above his head, then dashed it to the deck.
"A hit, by Judas! A hit!" he shouted. "Square in the foretopmast."
A great shout, exultant yet half incredulous, rose from the brig. To the unaided eye there was nothing to show that the man spoke truth, but almost instantly came the proof. On the deck of the Merry Amy there was a sudden activity. Yet swift as Lowther was to act, he was too late. Before he could shorten sail to relieve the strain, the wounded spar snapped with a report louder than the Merry Amy's cannon, swayed drunkenly and toppled to leeward, its ripped canvas fluttering and streaming in the wind.
Falcon's great voice boomed out above the gale and the yells of his men:
"Lance Falcon's luck, my bullies! It's's never failed us yet."
A seaman sailed the Merry Amy and the men who sailed with him were seamen. To clear the wreckage of that fallen topmast in so heavy a sea was no light task; yet within a few minutes it was done. Diccon Drews, watching through his glass a short thick man on the Merry Amy's deck who directed the work, bestowed various foul epithets upon Black Lowther that were eloquent, though indirect, compliments to his skill. Falcon gave him more candid praise. There were two men on the Western Ocean, he told Lachlan, whose handiwork that might have been. One was Captain Lowther of the ship, Merry Amy; the other was Captain Falcon of the Good Fortune, brig.
Then suddenly the easy nonchalance that had sat so well upon him vanished. With the frenzy of a madman he threw himself into his work, straining at the wheel, cursing with fearful blasphemies the gunners who still plied the stern gun as fast as they could ram each charge home, bellowing hoarse orders to the seamen forward and in the vessel's waist. And as Falcon's frown blackened and his vehemence increased, the leering smile on Diccon Drews' powder-blackened face widened until at last the hairy lieutenant's satisfaction found utterance.
"He knows there's a chance now," Drews growled in Lachlan's ear, "an' he's begun to fight."
But the chance was slender. To Lachlan there came within the next half-hour conviction that the race was lost.
The Merry Amy still gained—less rapidly than before, but steadily, surely. It was not only a race now but a battle, for Black Lowther was firing from his bow-chaser and from two of his forward ports; three guns against one, since only the long gun on the Good Fortune's after-deck could be brought to bear. As yet no material damage had been done, but already there were three great holes in the Good Fortune's sails. The Merry Amy's fire was more accurate than the brig's; being much larger, she was a steadier gun-platform. She out-pointed the brig, too, and while she gained, she crept slowly to windward. A little while more and Lowther would be able to train his port broadside on his adversary.
All on board the Good Fortune knew what that would mean. The brig would be hammered to pieces, smashed little by little into kindling wood by an overwhelming rain of iron.
A round shot struck the water just behind the Good Fortune, so close to her that Lachlan felt the spray on his cheek. Next moment, with a whining, humming hiss, a ball passed not six feet from Falcon where he stood at the wheel and, ranging diagonally forward across the deck, nicked a great chunk out of the port bulwark.
Lowther had changed his tactics. Hitherto he had been shooting at the Good Fortune's spars. Now, with the race as good as won, his target was the brig's deck. Diccon Drews croaked a savage imprecation. "We'll get it now," he growled. "He's started to hull us."
For a while, though both vessels fired steadily, there were no more hits. Then a cheer rose from the Good Fortune. One of her shots had gone home. It had struck the Merry Amy's deck squarely just as the ship plunged into a hollow between two waves, and it had worked havoc. Lachlan saw men running to and fro on the ship's forward deck, and Diccon Drews, peering through his glass just as the shot struck, swore savagely that the crew of the Merry Amy's forward gun had been wiped out.
"First blood!" roared Falcon. "By"
A rending crash drowned the oath. Behind and to the right of Lachlan the brig's bulwark had been ripped asunder. A splinter struck him between the shoulder blades, though without inflicting a wound, and he staggered and almost fell. Recovering himself, he sickened at what he saw. Forward in the waist of the ship, where the ball had ranged, five men were down and one of them lay sprawled across a guncarriage, blood spurting from the place where his arm had been.
Above the yells and groans of the wounded, Lachlan heard a whining, a humming. It was so loud, so near, that this time he was sure his end had come; but the ball passed him, passed Drews and Falcon and the men of the after-gun and smashed into the Good Fortune's waist near the port rail as she rose on a billowing wave. Thence it ranged forward along the deck, its force almost spent, and Lachlan saw it and saw the devastation that it wrought.
Men went down before it like ninepins in some bowling game of the giants—man after man in swift succession until six men had fallen. Far forward the ball struck the carriage of one of the bow guns, knocked it sideways and, being deflected to the right, rolled across the deck, breaking another man's legs before it came to rest. Of the seven who had fallen only one man rose, and he ran screaming towards the cabin, his hand pressed to his side, crying that his back was broken. He slipped in a pool of blood, fell sprawling, and lay still; and behind him another fallen man stirred, reared slowly to his knees, toppled backward.
Falcon gripped Diccon Drews' arm, bade him take the wheel, then strode forward along the heaving deck. Lachlan followed, not knowing why. Close to the mainmast Falcon halted.
"Men," he roared, "a half-hour more and we can run for Edisto Inlet. It will be a half-hour of hell. Will you stand the gaff till then, or will you hoist the white flag?"
He quelled with his raised hand the shout that arose.
"Surrender'll mean life to most of you. Black Lowther wants me and Diccon Drews and half a dozen others, but he'll let the rest of you go. We'll die, but most of you'll live."
He ceased, but no answer came.
"Which shall it be?" he bellowed. "The white flag or fight?"
From far forward a deep voice made reply. "To hell with Black Lowther!" boomed the words above the din of the gale, and the cheer that greeted them was half a cheer and half an unearthly laugh.
Falcon whirled and strode aft again, his eyes ablaze. In Lachlan's eyes, too, as he followed, a strange light flamed.