As Fletch drew nearer to the stopping liner two of her launches were lowered. They rode low in the water, overloaded with arms and men. The first, Farley’s approached the ship and tried to hook on a grapnel as before. It missed the rail at the stern and clattered along the riveted hull into the sea. As its thrower hauled it back in a Bexarian leaned over the side of his ship and tossed something in the launch.

For an instant the men in the launch froze, then they leapt from it as if it was on fire. Very soon it was, burning and sinking, in two ragged halves.

A sailor commented “They have bombs! The bastards!” as the other launch rowed quickly toward the survivors.

Granger shouted at the helm, “bring us up, we are going to recover the remaining launch at once.”

Fletch accelerated slightly and turned toward the enemy. Rifle fire lanced onto her deck, holing her sails on the way. One passed so close to Bethany she thought she could feel the air it displaced. She dropped and sought cover against the gunnel only to have a sailor bark: “Out of the way! We’ve got to man these davits!”

Bethany half-crawled forward as a parcel of sailors moved into place to haul up the launch. When they did so as much blood as water dripped from it.

Farley rose and vaulted onto Fletch’s deck commanding: “Get the wounded below. He was himself wounded, shrapnel could be plainly seen in his cheek and neck. Three men were dragged from the launch and down into the purgatory of the lower deck. Bethany could hear someone spreading sand again.

The liner’s aft gun had been re-manned. It fired and though it missed the tower of water crashed onto Fletch’s deck - they were but a few clicks of elevation away from a potentially fatal hit.

Granger paced the forecastle, stopping every few steps to lean on his stick. Bandaging his neck, Farley approached him. Bethany did not hear what passed between them but soon the surviving marines and a large party of armed sailors were moving aft and Granger was awkwardly scaling the ladder to the bridge.

Threlfall passed her, fumbling with his service revolver. “Get below!” he snapped before adding, “please.”

Bethany tried to move below deck but the trail of blood leading there kept her back, she did not wish to go and hide among the dying. Instead she pressed herself more tightly against the gunnel and turned to look aft. Fletch turned sharply. Granger was at the helm. She bore down on the center of the liner before turning away, leaving only an arshin between the two hulls.

“Stand back! Back against the other rail as far as ye can!” Nock demanded. The sailors and marines - a boarding party - did as ordered and Nock traversed and declined his gun until it pointed directly at the liner’s hull, its muzzle nearly touching.

He fired. The blast of the shot mixed immediately with the explosion of its impact. Through the smoke was seen a jagged hole in the liner’s side. A boarding plank was laid over Fletch’s gunnel and into the orifice. Though it shifted wildly as both vessels rolled on the waves it slowly managed to pass the entire party onto the enemy. Threlfall brought up the rear, his parade saber drawn. Fletch turned away just as soon as the gunner pulled the plank back. Silence reigned for nearly a minute as the boarders found their bearings in the darkened corridors and moved to take the ship.

The first gunshot was heard on Fletch as a very dull pop echoing out the shell hole. It was followed by another, even more muffled shot that heralded the start of a volley, then the less measured back and forth of fire that went on until the gun battle passed entirely out of hearing.

“That would be the dampers and there go the escape valves,” Badrine narrated as the liner’s twin funnels began to expel geysers of steam.

“They have control of the boiler rooms, then,” Granger nodded. He then panned his spyglass up toward the bridge, “Nothing topside yet, they will be burning charts, orders, and codebooks until we stop them.”

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“Why not shell the bridge as with the little raider, Nebel I think it was?” Bethany asked.

“That is an option but they may even now be fighting in the rooms behind it, I don’t want to shell my own men.”

“Of course,” Bethany assented.

Granger leaned heavily on his stick and grunted, “kindly send for a chair.”

One was brought and he settled into it on the prow. A strange calm came over the two ships, enforced by the rush of escaping steam that subsumed all other sounds. Bethany stared at the liner, occasionally borrowing Badrine’s glass. An age seemed to pass with no visible action and Bethany found she had been rubbing the same bit of fabric on the cuff of her nightclothes to the point of fraying it.

She left the prow and moved down the deck, stopping when she ran out of it. At the fantail Nock and his crew were taking ranges to various points on the enemy, elevating and traversing the rangefinder and the gun itself. One had an oiled rag and was repetitively polishing the barrel and fittings whenever the weapon stood still long enough for him to do so. There was soot from the point-blank blast on their faces and the fronts of their clothes as if they had tripped headlong into a pile of ash.

Bethany approached them, “Do you need anything?”

Nock quickly began to say no when one of his sailors, the man charged with loading shells into the breech, stated “water.”

Before Nock could intercept the request Bethany nodded and replied “surely” with a gentle smile.

As she was walking away it struck her that she would have to go below. Wincing, she followed the trail of blood to the hatch and down the stairs which were covered in a muck of sand, seawater, and blood.In the uncertain light of the paraffin lamps she saw the wounded looking far better than they had on the river, such that they were tending to each other with bandages and rum. She went in to the steward’s cabin and procured cups then proceeded to the forepeak. Emerging from the forepeak with them filled she felt a coldness descend upon her. She halted and blinked, opening her eyes to find she could not see.

The cups clattered to deck.

When her vision returned it was not of the tight corridor in the yacht. In flashes, a magic lantern with a dying flame, she saw her cell of six years past. It was not as she had seen it in life, she looked on it instead as a jailer might, from above. Male forms filled it and in some of the flashes it was clear they were sailors, among them, in a fine blue uniform with his cap on sat Threlfall. The door swung open and a lone man with a revolver stepped in. Walking down the line of prisoners he selected Farley and Threfall, the two officers, and shot them in the head. As a fountain of Threlfall’s blood painted the gray wall behind him “Not yet, but soon, send help,” echoed in her head. Each word spoken by a chorus of voices dropping in and out - among them, her mother, Marah, her brother, her sister, and, most consistently, Threlfall.

Bethany’s vision returned. She was sitting on the deck in the corridor and an ache in her backside told her she had dropped there from standing, practically fainted. She stood and moved haltingly down the passageway. Every lamp she passed died. Coming on deck she looked to the liner for some sign but she was still silent. Granger sat in his chair with a service revolver in his lap. When he saw Bethany he gestured with it “they might try to counter-board but I wouldn’t...”

“Never-mind that,” Bethany interjected.

“Fair enough, it is very...”

“No, no,” Bethany pleaded, “the boarding party is in grave danger.”

“Naturally, they are in combat, but Mr. Farley is an extremely capable...”

“They might not be in combat any more, I think they have been captured, at least some have.”

Granger turned in his chair, “it has been awhile but I will only be worried if the ship starts moving again or they counter-attack, and why captured? If we are being pessimistic we may as well say, heaven forbid and it is certainly unlikely, but for the sake of argument we may as well say they have all been killed.”

“They will be soon, the officers will be, I know.”

To Granger’s credit he gazed at her as if she was confused rather than mad, “how do you know?”

Bethany began to speak but halted and peered at the Sailing Master. With his white beard, old, sincere eyes and a tattered straw hat above he looked like an itinerant preacher. “My father said you have known him a long while through the yacht club. Did you know my mother as well?”

Granger nodded.

“She had the talent, speaking plainly she was a witch, a meager one but it was in her blood. It is in mine too. I am no scribe but I think I received a sort of message from Mr. Threlfall. All that is required is witch glass and while I may not have a scribe’s pen it is in me.”

With some effort, Granger stood, he took her hands in his. “Miss Esterhouse, you are nervous. Look around, we all are, I may not show it but that is because I am very accustomed to being nervous. The mind goes down all sorts of blind alleys when it is nervous.”

When Bethany began to pull away the Master gently released her.

“I am going to over there and find out for myself. You do not outrank, you cannot stop me. Deny me a launch, I grew up in Bray I can swim.”

Granger grunted and hobbled over to the engine room skylight.

“Mr. Badrine, arm yourself and your stokers, you are needed to reinforce the boarding party.”

Bethany appeared beside him, insisting “I am going as well. It is good that you are not letting me go alone but I must go to.”

“Assuming you are speaking the truth, did he ask for your help or for help?”

“Help itself, but I went to a martial school, I can shoot and fence, can that be said of those stokers? Did you not see me on deck at the river?”

“I had glimpses and your efforts were laudable but that was a desperate defense. They pressed the attack onto our ship, it is one thing to defend one’s home with everything, it is quite another to send someone as precious as you into harms way when you would be safe here.”

Bethany stopped walking and pierced him with a look, “if I try to go, will you stop me?”

“You are right, I cannot. I must warn you though, fighting in the belly of a ship is not a deck action and it is not fencing. I have only seen it a few times and all I can say is that it is slaughter, a riot more than a battle. You have seen some horrible things on this voyage, I know, and I am sorry for that but do not think you are immune to what seeing more will do. Anyone who says they are accustomed to it is a drunk or a madman.”