Chapter 314 Bite ’Em Till They Squeal

Biscuit landed first.

His cutlass bit into a plank and stuck, bringing the boy to a dead stop in the deck, pinned to the ship by his own sword, with dead redcoats lying around him beneath the torn sail.

"A BOY! A BLEEDIN’ BOY!"

A corporal rose out from the dead, blood dripping from his scalp and down his face.

"Eight year I’ve worn the King’s red, and they send a CHILD to spit me?"

He leveled the bayonet at Biscuit’s belly with a hand that shook from pure fury.

"God damn the lot of your black hearts, I’ll not be gutted by a BLOODY BOY!"

Biscuit let go of the hilt and dropped flat.

The bayonet struck the deck an inch from his ear and quivered there.

The corporal hauled at his musket while the boy rolled over, pulled the cutlass out of the plank with both hands, and chopped at the man’s ankle.

It took two chops. The corporal went down screaming, blood spilling over his boot, and Biscuit scrambled up his chest to put the blade through his throat.

The scream broke into a wet gurgle.

"ONE! THAT’S ONE, YOU LUBBERS! D’YOU HEAR? ONE!"

Galley Gabe stepped over the twitching legs, and not a glance downward.

"Och, he was dead afore ye landed, laddie. Corpses don’t count."

Biscuit rounded on him, cutlass dripping, and hacked at the corpse’s shoulder twice with a shriek of pure outrage, as if the dead man might yet testify for him. "HE WAS STANDIN’ UP! STANDIN’, YOU OLD GOAT! ON HIS TWO FEET, WIV A BAYONET, SHOUTIN’! THAT’S AS ALIVE AS YOU LIKE! LOOK AT HIM, HE’S STILL GOT HIS FACE ON!"

"Aye, so does a hanged man in a gale, laddie, an’ no one’s countin’ him either."

The Runts came over the rail behind him in a heap, and the wounded redcoats rose from among the dead with hangers in their hands, their boots slipping on the blood-slick planks.

Gabe took the boarding axe from his belt. It was short and heavy, with a beard beneath the head for hooking.

"An’ catch," he muttered.

A marine lunged.

Gabe turned the barrel aside with the axe head and caught the bayonet socket beneath the beard.

"An’ drrrive, ye wee beauty."

He hauled, bringing the musket and the private attached to it with him.

"An’ fin-ish."

The haft rose under the marine’s chin, smashing his jaw into his skull with a crack. Blood sprayed across Gabe’s sleeve as the redcoat collapsed.

"An’ recover... nice an’ easy."

A sailor fired a pistol from three paces away, the lead bullet parting the hair beside Gabe’s ear, only for him to walk through the smoke and strike the private’s arm at the elbow with the flat of the axe.

The elbow folded backward, bone punching through the sleeve.

He struck again, higher up, and the sailor crashed down with half his face open, blood dripping between his fingers as he clutched at what remained.

Gabe stood over the sailor with the mild disappointment. "You grip it like a bishop with a hymnbook, ye poor wee sinner, all thumbs an’ prayer. Wrong hand, wrist, stance, wrong bloody war."

From their side, a hanger came at his head. Gabe caught it on the haft, slid along the blade, drove his shoulder into the private’s chest, and shoved the beard beneath his ribs.

It went in with a crunch and came out with blood and pale matter caught between its teeth. The redcoat sagged against him before Gabe shoved him off.

"No notion, no a one o’ them has a notion o’ the recovery."

Above him, the buckled mast groaned as the Runts spread through the waist, cutting and swearing in nine tongues.

Then a flat iron clang spread across the water.

"Aye. That’ll be the cook."

It was the cook.

On the leaker’s quarterdeck, Ladle’s ladle had just come down on a marine’s head, caving in the side of his skull, when a bayonet came for her belly. She turned the point against the iron bowl, which rang, stepped in, and swung again.

The bowl struck him at the temple, and the temple crumbled inwardly. He dropped without a word, blood dripping into his collar.

Ladle bellowed. "RIGHT! Ye’ll go in the POT, ye great raw lump o’ tripe! Salt, that’s what ye want, salt an’ a good long stir, an’ I’ll not skim the scum neither, I’ll leave it in for flavor!"

A musket came up at her face and fizzled in the damp. She broke the lock with the edge of her ladle, then caught the private’s knuckles with the backswing.

His fingers bent under the iron with a sickening crunch.

"WET POWDER! Aw, bless ye, wet as a babby’s backside! Serves ye RIGHT, ye daft suet pudding!"

A bayonet appeared from nowhere, slashing her sleeve and the arm beneath it. Blood dripped down to her wrist, but she looked at the sleeve first.

"That’s me GOOD sleeve! Me Sunday sleeve, ye stabbin’ great BASTARD!"

The bowl broke his nose, then the rest of his face, leaving him crumpled on the deck in a widening pool of red.

"Took me a month o’ evenin’s to darn that cuff, mphm."

The leaker’s holed side took in a trickle of water with every roll of the ship, while gunpowder smoke drifted across the deck as a very large man walked out of it with his eyes shut.

Big Tiny brought the oar over, gripping it in both hands with the blade held out in front.

A line of bayonets braced against him, but his longer weapon struck the first private across the chest, slashing him from shoulder to ribs and folding him over the rail, before the loom swung around and smashed the next one in the teeth.

The redcoat’s mouth burst crimson around the impact, and the next two went over the side with their ribs stove in, one of them leaving a smear of blood across the rail.

He whimpered, because a crab was climbing his collar. "Eeh, there, there, little lass... nowt to be frit of... nowt at all, pet, tha’s all reet... Eeh, don’t go in me ear, love, don’t go in me ear! I’ll cry! I’ll blub, I will, I’ll blub like a babby!"

On the next swing, the crab lost its grip, flew along the loom, and landed on a marine’s face. The marine screamed, clawed at it, and stumbled backward into the following swing, which caught him across the neck. He fell among the others, both hands pressed uselessly to the wound.

Big Tiny opened one eye at the noise. "Eeh... was that... was that me, lads? Eeh, I never meant it, I’d me eyes shut, honest, by ’eck, I swear on me mam."

The sweep continued to thrashed wildly, and it struck a lieutenant on the shoulder as he lunged, knocking his arm aside and spoiling his thrust.

The lieutenant’s smallsword slipped past Amen Abel’s ribs and stuck in the mast. Abel had landed on the leaker while still halfway through a saint, and finished Saint David on his knees in the blood.

He hadn’t yet reached the Amen.

The lieutenant was a ham-faced man in a sweat-soaked coat, with footwork taught to him by a Frenchman. He wrenched his blade out of the wood and lunged, and Abel shot up his cutlass.

"Saint BARBARA! Keep the lightnin’ off o’ me, there’s a love!"

The blade slid off, and the lieutenant disengaged before lunging again.

"Saint CHRISTOPHER! Carry me over, bach! I can’t swim in this much blood, see!"

Abel parried once more, but the riposte slit his hat and left it dangling, the edge grazing his scalp as blood trickled down his temple.

"Saint PETER, hold the gate a minute, mun! Me HAT!"

"Stand and FIGHT! STAND, you gibbering, psalm-mumbling heathen!

The lieutenant’s face went purple from stock to hairline, the veins standing in his temples. "One does not... I say, one DOES NOT cross swords with a PSALM! I was taught by a FRENCHMAN! Monsieur Duval, of PARIS!"

"Saint JUDE! Patron o’ lost causes, look at me here!"

Abel backed away, his boot slipping on the blood, and fell flat as the lieutenant’s lunge passed over him. He clamped the marine’s blade beneath his arm, drove the iron guard of his cutlass into the officer’s mouth, and knocked out three teeth in a spray of blood before thrusting upward into the belly.

The lieutenant sat down on the planks, gazing at the dark blossom spreading across his coat with astonishment.

"I... I’m... a gentleman, you know... dash it all... I am... a gentleman..."

Abel crossed himself with a blood-wet hand, gently. "So ye are, sir. So ye are, God love ye. Saint Michael, go easy wi’ him, bach, he’s only a lad that went an’ got taught by a Frenchman."

By then the leaker’s deck was full of boarders when a roar came across the water.

It came from the leaner’s quarterdeck, where Nat stood with a cutlass in one hand, a spent pistol in the other, and a dead marine at his feet. The redcoat lay twisted beside the helm, blood spreading beneath his head.

"BITE ’EM, ME BABBERS! BITE ’EM!"

Six marines had backed together around the broken mast, with a sergeant in the middle.

"PRE-SENT!"

Nat read the word from his lips, then read "Level" before the sergeant had even said it. By then, the spent pistol was already in the air, striking the sergeant in the teeth and breaking them against one another as the volley went into the sky.

He went in among them, watching their mouths and shoulders, never where the bayonet went. His cutlass took a wrist, then a throat, then drove in beneath a breastbone and came out through the back, blood dripping down the blade as he wrenched it free.

"QUARTER! QUARTER, FOR THE LOVE O’ CHRIST! I yield, I YIELD!"

The marine dropped his hanger and flung both palms to the sky

"PORTER?! WE’VE NO PORTER, YOU GREEDY GURT SOD, THIS IS A SLOOP, NOT A BLEEDIN’ ALEHOUSE! AN’ IF WE HAD, I’D HAVE DRUNK IT MESELF!"

Nat cut the head half off, and the marine dropped before his hands had finished falling.

The fighting ended the same way on both decks. Sweepers whose palms were too raw to lift a musket were cut down at their benches, still holding their looms, while blood gathered beneath the benches and spread between the planks.

The wounded beneath the torn sail were finished where they lay, and the last of the redcoats were driven against the stern and came off it in pieces.

A Runt on each hull hauled down the King’s ensign and ran up the black flag, with no one left to object. The pirates checked their own, there were dead and injured all around, but a negligible number if compared to the wreck they caused.

Beneath the smoke from the muskets and pistols, Nat turned toward the Partridge, where a fat man hung in a sling a cable astern.

"Don’t... hhhff... sink her, Nat... don’t ye... dare... hhhff... she’s... a lovely hull... sweet as... hhhff... a new-laid egg."

Nat had read every word.

"SINK HER?! SINK HER?! HARK AT HIM! I’M KEEPIN’ HER, ME BABBERS!"

Wat raised one sausage finger. "Hole’s... hhhff... above the line, Nat... she’ll float... hhhff... if ye’ll... stop... fussin’ at her... like a... broody hen."

"THEN WE’RE TAKIN’ ’EM HOME, ME BABBERS! RUNT SLOOPS, THE PAIR OF ’EM! AN’ THE KING CAN BLOODY WELL WHISTLE FOR HIS CHANGE, THE TIGHT-FISTED OLD SOD!"