William Price and the thetis 8 cliffie bonus

 

Chapter 8

 

Walden passed the orders. He could see what the lad intended; making use of the faulty rudder, the ‘John and Betsy’ could go very readily to larboard, and with the spring, they should be out into the channel just in time to insert the smaller boat under the bows of the Brig, both for a broadside, if they could manage it, but to foul her sprit… that was what the lad intended, no broadside, but to foul the sprit, and then get away by rowing, with every expectation that Mr. Price would do his best to pick them up.

“Peacock,” said Colin, “You’re in charge of looking after Taff. Meantime, sling Feltham out of his cot, and dump him in a boat. I’m not about to open myself to a charge of losing a prisoner, and we never even got to use him being yellow.”

Peacock grinned.

“If we looks like bein’ captured, we can drop a roundshot in ʼis boat, and jump for it; I can swim wiv Taff.”

“I hope that won’t be necessary,” said Colin. “How many men do you suppose they have?”

“Four each on them cannons,” said Peacock.

“No, look you, they came out one at a time, one crew between them,” said Taffy.

“I didn’t see,” said Peacock. “They’ll have their broadside ready and will run from one to the next, then. Vere’s four men aloft on each o’ two masts, doin’ one sail at a time. An’ I sailed luggers, Mr. Prescott, and wiv respect, we don’t need nobody aloft to go abaht, account o’ how you can sail either tack wivaht much tinkerin, as long as someone’s on the luff. This yere is a Frenchie three-mast smuggler, but it works the same.”

“Well, you to on the luff then, Peacock, and Jackson can shift the prisoner. I’m not about to turn down experience,” said Colin.  “Eight men aloft, four on the guns, a couple on the quarterdeck….”

“I could do with my other arm, now, look you,” said Taffy.

“You’ll be my eyes, Taff,” said Colin. “Do I dare?”

“Well, sir, what would Mr. Price do?” asked Taffy.

“You’re right,” said Colin. “Wish us all luck, and bless us in Welsh.”

 

William looked astern as the Thetis cleared the mole, where enough north in the wind could permit them to run close hauled, to put distance between them. Heading for Tenerife was not as feasible, with the Brig possibly able to follow, and carrying heavy firepower, with eighteen guns.  Brigs were supposed to be able to go closer to the wind than schooners, too, one reason William had not wanted to give her the choice.

There was the ‘Arbella,’ and ‘Beauteous Belle,’ ‘Firefly,’ and… that was too big for the ‘John and Betsy,’ that was the Brig on the move… and Colin, level with it in ‘John and Betsy.’

“What is that boy doing?” he muttered, swearing as he brought up the telescope, and adjusted mentally to seeing everything upside-down in the night glass.

“He’s going to ram them!” said Gubbins.

“Dear God! He’ll kill himself,” said William. “Signal, ‘Prizes proceed on current course,’ and stand by to wear ship. We have to go back.”

“With due respect, the lugger has eight seamen, a boy, and a cripple aboard,” said Gubbins.

“And if you count value, the boy has the makings of a fine captain one day, my quartermaster, and some men I rate highly are those you are intimating that we leave,” snapped William. “I’m not leaving any man to be a prisoner of pirates, even if it means sinking the Brig once they are on board.”

“Yes, sir,” said Gubbins.

He knew fine well that Mrs. Price, whom he had known from childhood, would rip into him over leaving those four thieves and the cheeky brat, Prescott, she having taken a shine to all of them.

Gubbins found Colin unnerving, a boy with the self-assurance of a man, and an upper-class English accent, which he hated, as he hated it in all the officers. However, the captain was right, one did not leave one’s men to the mercy of pirates. Better dead than captured.

 

 

“Hard a-larboard,” said Colin, and Dusty turned the wheel as hard over as he could, and lashed it, to run to the fo’c’sle, Colin following him, and the rest of the company already there, knowing that aft would soon be very dangerous. With the twisted rudder, the effect of letting the ship go the way she wanted to go was almost as sudden as the use of a spring. Inexorably, the ‘John and Betsy’ came hard under the bow of the brig, the company running forward before the sprit of the larger ship swept aside the foremast like matchwood, and caught on the mainmast. Colin sat down to strip off his shoes and stockings.

“Now!” said Colin, as a lot of things were noisy.

The grappling hook snaked up and into the gunport; the collision almost had to have knocked the gun crew off balance, and his own crew, expecting it, had managed to stagger and stay upright. Colin went up the rope like a monkey, with Walden right behind him; and went like an eel over the gun whilst the crew were still sorting themselves out. Colin had his pistol ready as he went over the gun, and fired it at the gun captain, who was trying to set slow match to the touch hole to cut this intruder in half. The gun captain fell back, half his face blown away. Colin threw the heavy service pistol at another, and then he was in, drawing his cutlass. Colin scorned a midshipman’s dirk save as a main-gauche, and he swiftly cut down a third man as Walden arrived in time to shoot the fourth, kick the one who had only been bruised by Colin’s thrown pistol, and heave him bodily out of the other forward gunport.

“Mr. Walden, there is no value in teaching pirates to fly,” said Colin, hoping that such a sally was after the manner of Mr. Price.

“Nossir,” said Walden. “I thought he looked untidy, sir.”

“Very well, carry on with tidying up,” said Colin. “Now we only have one each to take care of, and a spare, for one can’t ask Miss Green to do so.”

“Oh, spare pirates like prize money ʼave the greater proportion to the quarterdeck, sir,” said Walden.

“As it should be,” said Colin. “The spare shared between me and my quartermaster.”

“Should’ve kept me big mahf shut,” said Walden.

 

 

“Well, they’ve managed to jam the damn lugger against the bowsprit,” said Gubbins. “Hasn’t broken the sprit, though; it went through the foremast like it was made o’ butter, and gosh jiminiy, the mainmast has gone at deck level. Whoever heard of a three-mast lugger, anyway?”

“It’s French,” said William, absently. “They use them for smuggling. But they don’t have such good wood for building as American and English ships. Nor do they season it well, as they were in a hurry, getting ready for war so green wood can often be found.”

“Damned inefficient,” grumbled Gubbins.

“I know, and I hope everyone got out from below all that mess; but Colin would be expecting it, he saw it happen before,” said William. “You’d think that there’d be one way around this ruddy harbour that one could sail before the wind and go straight in.”

“That’s if you come in the north side where the land is,” said Gubbins with, for him, rare jocularity.

“I expect Collin will leave that mess of French smuggler, and will be rowing out to us,” said William. “Stand by to throw a line and a ladder to a boat.”

“Aye, sir,” said Gubbins. “I can’t see anyone on deck with the bring-em-near… no, I tell a lie, there’s Taffy, right up forrard.”

“Colin would not leave Taff,” said William, with conviction. “If Taff is there, he’s there as a volunteer because Colin has set up the magazine to explode and Taff is holding slow match and will rely on someone to haul him down into the boats. Be prepared for mayhem.”

“Or Taff got wounded again and wants to set off slow match as a last act,” said Gubbins.

“That, I do not rule out,” said William, suppressing the pang of anguish this caused him. Gubbins was truly gloomy at times. He focused his own telescope on Taffy, who appeared to be cutting away cordage, and occasionally grasping the top of his nose. Was he wounded? He should not be working. And also, should he not leave the mess to cause more trouble to the brig? Was this a case of being over-trained, or were the poachers and Colin up to something? What would he do in Colin’s shoes?

In Colin’s shoes, he’d take the risk that there was not a full crew on board the brig… he could see its figurehead clearly now, and the name, it was the ‘Morrigan.’ Morrigan?  An Irish war goddess, if he remembered correctly. So, likely the pirates had a few Irish malcontents with them.  As a flag ship for a pirate fleet, an Irish war goddess seemed suitable.

For his majesty’s fleet? Well, as long as it was warlike, nobody in the navy would care. There had, after all, been ‘HMS Ville de Paris,’ which had suited the Royal Navy so well when taken as a prize, that when she was decommissioned, another ship was built to bear the same name as a ship of the line. The Royal Navy liked aggressive sounding names, disliked using names of heroes of the modern age unless they were exceptional, and was quite happy to use foreign or classical names, regardless of whether the seamen knew their source or not, and regardless of how much they mangled them. He thought of the ‘Polyphemus’, known to the sailors as ‘Polly Infamous,’ having never heard of the cyclops defeated by Odysseus and his men; or the ‘Bellerophon,’ tamer of Pegasus, slayer of the chimera, and called affectionately by her crew, the ‘Billy Ruffian.’ William could picture any crew of the ‘Morrigan,’ being told that it was Irish, settling to call her ‘Mary O’Gan,’ or ‘Molly O’Gan.’

Which was getting ahead of both himself and of Colin.

 

Taff was doing a good job of distracting the attention of the crew of the brig, some female whose name he could not read from here, but probably one of these Greek women who caused trouble, like Nemesis. Taffy’s classical education was limited to what little he had heard in chatter from the young gentlemen, and therefore probably surpassed that of many a nobleman who paid his way through university. He was amusing himself by seeing how well he could curse, holding the bridge of his nose to simulate a plummy English accent and answering as himself, to make it seem that there was an argument on board, punctuated with the sound of the axe chopping away spars.

They would need to disentangle the ship in any case before they could sail it away, so it did no harm. It was a lonely sort of watch, and Taffy appreciated the feelings young Colin must have had alone in what passed for a great cabin. Miss Green was too young to be Mrs. Prescott as yet, though being over twelve she was old enough in law, which at thirteen, Mr. Prescott was not. A man must be fourteen, which was daft, because young Colin Prescott was, to Taffy’s mind, more of a man than a good number of grown men he had known; and more than a match for them in so many ways. And Miss Green a good match for him; she had been expected to stay behind to keep an eye on him but she had been game to follow the other seamen. Taff let loose with a brief piece of invective, and shouted, “Abandon ship! Get your lubberly arses into the boats!”

 

Colin listened to Taff’s virtuosity in being an officer and one or two truculent hands to convince the crew of the brig that they were still down on the ‘John and Betsy,’ and sniggered quietly.  He wondered if Taff had used his ability to mock upper crust accents to draw bailiffs away. He would not put it past the canny poacher.

“Aft, m’lads, and clear the officer’s cabins first,” said Colin. “I’d like the captain alive, he’s the admiral of the pirates, but  don’t risk yourselves.”

Walden led half the crew, and Colin the other half, checking every cabin in the afterpart of the ship, and then the great cabin. In here was a frightened looking black boy about nine years old. He was dressed in a filthy-looking ragged pair of trousers, and nothing else.

“Well, damn!” said Colin, softly. “Are you a slave?”

The child nodded.

“Would you like to be free and come with us?” asked Colin.

The child nodded again.

“Stay here for now, and keep quiet,” said Colin, though he poked his head into the coach and the after gallery as well, just to make sure. He patted the child on the shoulder. “What’s your name?”

“Kwasi, massa,” said the boy.

“Not your master. Sir will do for now,” said Colin.

“Yassah,” said Kwasi.

It was not that surprising that Snow should have a servant with him, even if this ship was refitting, and did not even have a cot in the great cabin.  A hammock lay on the floor, and a sea chest presumably holding Snow’s clothing served as the only furniture.

“If you need to use the quarter gallery, please do,” said Colin, hastily, not wanting a child trained to slavish obedience to burst his bladder for obeying the order to stay here. “If you need a piss or a shit in the place through there, you may,” he said, as the boy did not seem to know the term.

“Thank you, sah!” the boy looked relieved. “The massa, he bad man, be careful, sah!”

“I will,” said Colin. “Thank you.” He grinned suddenly. “What would he do if you screamed?”

“Come down an’ beat me, sah,” said Kwasi.

Colin turned to his men, blinking to see Emma with them.

“Hide in the other cabins and ignore a scream –  except Jeb and Emma,” he said. “Emma, can you scream like a little boy?”

Emma smirked.

“Oh, yes.”

“Jeb, behind the door. Kwasi, get out of sight. Emma, you and me the other side of the door.”

Once in position, Emma let loose with a blood-curdling shriek.

The skylight flew open.

“You shut your mouth, boy, or I’ll give you somethin’ to yell about!” roared a male voice.

“De spidahs! De Spidahs!” squealed Emma, trying to copy Kwasi’s voice. If her knowledge of his idiom was sparse, it was unlikely that his master knew any better.

“I’ll show you spiders!” roared the voice, slamming down the skylight.

The sound of boots ran down the companionway, and as the door crashed open, it was apparent that the boots were occupied by the person of Peter Snow.

He went down as Jeb slammed the butt of his pistol into the man’s head.

“Tie him up, Emma, and stay to look after Kwasi,” said Colin. “If the pirate gives you any trouble, shoot him in the knee. Oh, and you’d better scream a few times,” he added.

Emma nodded. She could simulate pain and fear.