Chase the Morning

‘No worse than she’s in already. And it can’t be helped. That’s a big ship, we’ve got to hit her, clear a way for the boarding party at least – disable her if we can. Carry away enough spars, the rudder even, and we’ve got her.’

Pierce was shovelling snuff into his nostrils with such gusto I almost offered him a gun-rammer. ‘To deal with at our – leisure!’ The word came out as a thunderous sneeze. ‘Damme! But depend on it, they’ll hold any precious prisoners below decks, and that’s where the lass’ll be safest. We’re not out to hull them unless we’ve no other choice.’

‘Anyway,’ added Jyp encouragingly, ‘we’re going to be moving in close before we fire. That’ll keep the shooting short. Might be they never even reach their guns!’

‘Let’s hope so!’ I said. ‘Let’s bloody hope so!’ A sort of chill horror was settling on me, at what I was about to do; I could have wished Jyp had been a bit more persuasive. I looked out to the moon. It was sinking fast now, almost touching the horizon; silver bled out of it across the strange ocean we sailed on, and turned it to a frosted mirror. Then for the first time I saw our enemy clearly, a little sharp-edged column of sails across the horizon, a child’s toy drifting and yet heavy with menace. It was hard to believe it held Clare, Clare from another, infinitely distant life … No; by now she was part of this one too.

‘Better make ready while we’ve a few easy minutes remaining!’ said Pierce. ‘Cox’n, relieve Mistress Mall at the helm! Mister Mate, up with the arms chest! Boarding parties, muster on the maindeck!’

At the mainmast the arms chest stood open, and cutlasses and pistols were being passed out to the milling men – about thirty, besides us. Jyp scrambed up onto the step and raised his voice. ‘Form into two parties as you draw your arms, by port and starboard watch! Port watch’ll be under my command, and we’ll board by the foremast stays! Starboards, take the mainmast, and follow Mistress Mall! Every man got his arms?’

A cheer went up, and a rattle of cutlasses.

‘Swell! Then into the scuppers with you, hunker down by the railings – well down, and clear of the gun tackle! Any man raises his head above that goddam rail before the order, I’ll have it off his shoulders! Okay? Hop to it, then – an’ give’em hell!’

Mall laid a hand on my arm. ‘You come with my band, Stephen; the leap will be less, and the footholds better!’

‘Suits me –’ Mall’s grip tightened suddenly; she was staring past me, to the bows. I turned, to see Stryge’s cabin door open, and the old man himself shuffling out, his strange companions behind him.

He paused a moment, stared blearily at us and said ‘Going to board them. Need help, don’t you?’

‘Depends,’ said Jyp thinly. ‘What’d you in mind exactly?’

‘Mine. And theirs. You two!’ ordered the old man briskly. ‘Go with the boarding parties. Help them.’

‘Hey, wait a goddam minute –’ roared Jyp, as Fynn, casting him a malevolent look, scuttled to hunch down among Jyp’s sailors. To a man they shrank away from him. But I was even more astonished to see the black-haired girl drift idly over to our group.

‘You take them,’ said the Stryge, implacable as ancient stone, ‘if you want to stand a chance of coming back. Give up and go home, otherwise. Now I’ll play my part. Stand ready!’

Jyp saw the looks the sailors exchanged at that, and acknowledged defeat with a sigh. I didn’t know what to think. I could guess well enough what Fynn the bodyguard was, a sort of poor man’s werewolf, but I’d assumed the girl was along for another kind of comfort altogether. There must be more to her than that, though, if the old devil was willing to risk her, and she herself. In this weak moonlight she didn’t look quite so pretty, her brow higher and more rounded under the lank hair, her eyes still larger, her chin too weak and narrow for the rest of the face; a hint of malformation, a lingering look of the foetus. The sailors shied away from her, too. Stryge paid them no attention, but went shuffling up the companion onto the foredeck and, standing there in the last moonlight, he began to whistle softly, as if to himself, and stretched out his arm to the skies.

‘Now what’s he on about? demanded Mall, as our party crouched down together behind the rail, uncomfortably close to one of the guns. I couldn’t suggest anything. Run in as the thing was, I was looking down its muzzle and into the ferocious grins of the crew behind, an unnerving sight; I could even smell the peppery sharpness of the powder. Mall was grinning, too.

‘Best stop your ears when they fire, Stephen. And be thankful it’s but an eighteen-pounder. The Chorazin has twenty-fours –’

‘I thought Jyp said we outgunned them!’

‘Aye, they’ve only five a side and a couple of chasers, where we’ve got ten. But five’s still a deal, can they but bring them to bear.’