THE JANISSARIES WERE MASSING TO CLIMB ALONG THE SNAKE’S BODY and onto Rascal’s deck.
“Rascals! Soldiers! To me!” yelled Fallon and he charged towards the bows of his ship, his sword out and held high.
The first shot rang out and a janissary fell to Wilhelm Visser’s hand, his musket borrowed from an unconscious soldier. More shots followed as janissaries fired from Serpent’s deck before climbing aboard Rascal. Several soldiers fell wounded but then their comrades fired a volley that sent janissaries tumbling into the sea.
Fallon jumped into the thick of the fighting, yelling furiously and lurching forward on the heaving, twisting deck. He slashed at a man’s neck, almost decapitating him, and took a slash of his own across his chest from collarbone to gut. It wasn’t deep, but the cut immediately began oozing blood. Aja was beside him, as usual, yelling at the top of his lungs and fighting to protect his friend and captain. But he was down! A janissary had swung his musket and caught Aja on his arm and was now raising his weapon above his head for the final blow when Beauty thrust her boarding pike through his spine, sending him to the deck, instantly paralyzed and dying.
Now Aja was up, his left arm hanging uselessly, but hacking with his right arm at the boarders. And the British soldiers were surging forward, their bayonets fixed to their rifles, their drills on the quad coming to the fore as they fired their muskets on the lurching ship and then thrust their way through the knot of janissaries at the bow, stabbing and plunging with their bayonets at anyone and everyone in a red hat.
But the movement was chaotic under their feet. The ships were locked together but the snake’s head was twisting and pulling back and forth into Rascal’s rigging with each sea that swept under the ships. The xebec slammed into the schooner and jerked away, only to be thrust into Rascal again, the sea working each ship independently, corkscrewing them this way and that, their timbers groaning at being wrenched in such an unnatural way.
The agha was aboard Rascal, calling Surrender dogs! in English and slashing with his scimitar; he drove one of the Rascals to the deck with a half-severed arm before Cully, rising up from beside a cannon, pushed his pistol against the agha’s side and fired, the ball passing through both lungs and out the other side of the man’s body.
As the ships were pushed to the northwest the sirocco began picking up moisture from the sea and mixed it with the dust high in the atmosphere, only to send it downward in what the Italians called blood rain, large red drops that splattered to the decks and began to mix with the blood already soaking the sand there. Now faces were dripping blood rain and every man looked to be bleeding.
The Rascals closed ranks around the wounded Fallon and Aja, fighting all the more furiously as a great mass of janissaries charged. But it was the soldiers, Bisanz’s volunteers, who stood against the Muslim elite and evened the odds, giving no quarter, not backing up an inch and then, with a renewed push, they now began forcing the janissaries backwards. Fallon sensed the fighting was at a crux and he cheered the men on with all the voice he could muster.
At last, the xebec’s snake head began to work its way loose from Rascal, the seas releasing Serpent’s grip on the schooner’s side. Zabana saw it from the deck of his ship and called for the janissaries to leap back aboard Serpent but the ships were suddenly free from each other and it was too late. Some of the janissaries leaped overboard in a desperate attempt to swim for their ship but the seas were too large and they disappeared in the valleys between the waves. The xebec pulled free but was helpless without masts and sails and the swells pushed her stern around to Rascal. Now the ships crunched together again, side against side.
“Grappling hooks!” yelled Fallon weakly, not wanting Serpent to drift away on the next wave, wanting to finish what Zabana had started. Most of the Rascals were fighting in the bows of the ship but Cully and two men rushed to lash the two ships together. Now Serpent’s crew were bystanders no more as Rascal’s crew jumped to the xebec’s deck and began stabbing and cutting at them. Fallon climbed unsteadily over the railings and fell to Serpent’s deck and had to struggle to his feet, the front of his shirt a bright red from both his own blood and the rain. Zabana saw his chance and hatred and humiliation shone in his black eyes. He held a sword in each hand and whispered Arabic phrases that the wind took away as he pushed into the fighting to get to Fallon.
Fallon saw him and stood gamely to his charge, holding onto the guillotine with one hand to steady himself and holding his sword in the other.
Zabana saw his moment and lunged, but Fallon backed up and parried the thrust and then brought his sword down with every reserve ounce of strength he possessed. Zabana’s right hand was severed completely, though it still held a death grip on his sword as it fell to the xebec’s deck.
Zabana looked at it stupidly as Fallon raised his foot and kicked him in the groin, knocking him backwards and through his beloved guillotine. He looked up at the steel blade dripping blood rain and then at his executioner. His eyes were wide as Fallon swung his sword with both hands towards the side of the guillotine and severed the restraining rope. The falling blade gained extra impetus by the lifting deck and in one seventieth of a second it plunged into and then through Zabana’s body.
Whereupon Fallon fell to the deck unconscious.
Seeing their leader fall gave Serpent’s crew nothing to fight for, or be afraid of, and they threw their weapons overboard and fell to the deck in surrender. The Rascals on the galley rushed to Fallon and hoisted him up as gently as the surging deck would allow and passed him over the railing to Wilhelm and Caleb Visser who immediately carried him below to Colquist, Little Eddy running ahead shouting to clear the way.
On board Rascal the slaughter was almost complete as the dey’s finest soldiers were decimated by Britain’s finest and Rascal’s crew. Those janissaries left standing threw down their swords and some leapt into the roiling sea rather than become prisoners of the Christians they had sworn to kill or enslave.
Suddenly, there was no one left to fight. But there was a ship to save! Rascal had a gaping hole in her bow and the top of every wave slapped water inside the ship. She had no sails up and only part of the foremast and the seas had her at their mercy.
The rest of the Rascals on the xebec leapt back aboard the schooner, leaving Serpent’s crew lying on her deck. But one of them had hidden a sword beneath his body. He lunged at the railing and began hacking at the grappling lines that held the two ships together. At last they came apart, the xebec drifting down Rascal’s side and away behind her trailing rigging and spars.
Now Beauty took charge and began issuing orders to attempt to set Rascal to rights as quickly as possible. The carpenter reported four feet and rising in the well and the ship was yawing badly and utterly out of control as the sirocco raged around it. It suddenly occurred to her that her sea dog’s luck had run out, that the ship couldn’t survive the awful storm as battered and broken as she was.
Then a cannon!
Beauty jerked her head around in wonder that the crew aboard Serpent were still fighting but they had drifted far behind.
No! Out of the brown gloom was an apparition as beautiful and welcome as anything she could imagine she’d ever see—Renegade! How in the world? she wondered. The big ship was coming down from the north under a scrap of sail and already there were men gathering on the bow with a messenger line. It was just what Rascal had done to save Visser, and in just such a storm—minus the blood rain.
Renegade was rolling up the larger waves and moving fast in spite of carrying so little sail. The thing would have to be timed just right and Beauty hoped they had a strong hand with the monkey fist. She was about to find out.
Jones stood calmly next to the helmsman as he guided the ship closer to the desperate Rascal. The schooner’s bow faced north and Avenger would be passing as closely as possible on her starboard side so the messenger line would be thrown into the middle of the ship. Renegade would need to quickly heave-to as the line was walked up the schooner’s deck to be tied off at the bow. Then Renegade could come out of stays and slowly take up the slack on the tow line. That was the plan, anyway.
In the event, the plan failed.
The monkey fist landed in the sea just short of Rascal and Jones was obliged to sail by and come about for a second approach closer to the dis-masted ship. After some anxious moments maneuvering to get closer, and closer still, the line was heaved again and landed at the startled Barclay’s feet and a crewman reacted quickly and gathered the messenger in and walked it forward to be tied off on the capstan at Rascal’s bow. Renegade immediately hove-to while her big hawser was then winched aboard Rascal, both ships dipping and rolling and falling down the steep seas. The whole process seemed to take an eternity, but once Jones saw everything was secure he ordered the ship out of stays and the helmsman to proceed west and slowly the frigate and her tow clawed their way towards the Strait of Gibraltar. Jones could see Fallon’s crew hacking at the rigging that was hanging over the side to free the ship from the enormous drag it created. They would be at it for some time.
Beauty ordered a detail to begin patching the giant hole in Rascal’s bows and within two hours they had done a fair job of keeping the water out. The carpenter sounded the well again and Beauty set the hands to pumping six feet of water back where it belonged.
Jones anxiously walked to the stern of his ship and looked back towards Rascal. The schooner was following like a disobedient puppy fighting its leash and trying to go its own way. He saw Beauty and thought he could see Aja but he couldn’t see Fallon.
As he stared into the brown air, he wondered why.