image [https://i.imgur.com/15eGPa6.jpg]

image [https://i.imgur.com/DqimdvY.jpg]

coaming – A vertical rim surrounding hatch openings on a ship, to help keep any water on deck from leaking to the deck below.

SIX OR SEVEN died in the first few seconds. The first barrage nearly tore off their mizzenmast. A splinter flew into Okoa’s right cheek and he pulled it out and ignored the bleeding for the moment. By the time he stood up the Hazard’s own retaliatory cannonfire was over. He had conducted the cannoneers himself, but it had not mattered. The batteries of the two brigantines were even more devastating than he had expected. Now he looked to the wheel and for a moment despaired because he did not immediately see Irwin. He thought the pilot was dead. Then Irwin’s head suddenly popped up, and he gripped the wheel in his fists and flung it hard a-larboard.

Okoa struggled to stand. There was a fire somewhere in the aft castle but the rain and the sea were putting it out. He stepped over a man clutching the stump of his leg and screaming, staggered up the stairs, and shouted, “Does the steering answer? Did they get our rudder?”

“No, sir!” Irwin replied. “We’re still able to maneuver!”

Thank the gods and spirits for that much, at least.

“But we’re almost in irons, Mr. Okoa! The wind’s not in our favour, slowing us down! They’ll be able to turn around and hit us before we can make it to Bull Bay.”

Bull Bay. Where most ships opened all their sails and made their first push away from Port Royal. It was a clear patch of sea, good for starting a journey. If they didn’t make for Bull Bay, the only other options were shallow shoals that could beach them, or heading right back into the North Docks. A dead end that way. And even if they made it to land they’d be stuck with the Behemoth—

There came a loud scraping. Doubtless, a piece of one of the shipwrecked vessels underneath them. The swells in the water took them up one moment, just a couple of feet, and then they dropped back down into the plunges. A small eddy swirled to their port. Okoa looked to the sky, at the three moons, like the three eyes of a vengeful god, surrounded by angry black clouds spitting out lightning. The firmament’s power at work.

“You’re bleeding, sir!” Irwin said.

Okoa touched the hole in his cheek. “Just keep us out of irons, Mr. Irwin!”

“I’ll try, sir!”

“Okoa!”

He swung to see Belmont at the lee rail, pointing behind them. “They’re coming ’round!” All five ships were turning hard, some of them using the same club-hauling tactic. Two of the ships were coming close enough they were scraping each other, and blocking the path of another of their fleet. It was a bit of luck, jamming them up like that, but it wouldn’t last.

“I see it, Captain Belmont,” said Okoa. “I see it. Nothing to do.” He looked at the militiaman. “How do you feel about firing cannons back at your own countrymen?”

Belmont glared at him. “Fire your rear cannons, you mean.”

“Just to ward them off. I assure you, they will pull their crews away from the bows of their ships, to keep safe. We just need to make them aware that we are still dangerous.” He added, “We are short several cannon men just now. We could use you now, Captain.”

Belmont was visibly conflicted. He shook his head, but more to himself than in answer to Okoa’s request.

“Belmont?”

The militiaman’s voice cracked. “I don’t know how to load them.”

“I get a man to show you. He show you how to aim, too.”

____

The water was typical of a storm—choppy, angry, the current changing its mind from moment to moment. Vhingfrith dove beneath the waves to avoid being slapped around by them, and to avoid being seen. Underneath the water, he saw almost as clearly as he did above. The cat’s-eye revealed all. Skeletons of old boats, some of them sunk purposefully, others had sunk in storms just like this one. Well, not like this one. Barnacles and seaweed clung to the huge wooden columns that propped up the docks. There were makeshift structures down here, where artificial embankments had been built up ages ago, during low tides, for the workers that had walked around the columns as they inserted some of them into the soil. Sunken canoes. Old scaffolding. Wooden walls and even rugged stone columns stood as ghostly reminders for the part of Port Royal that sank beneath the water in the earthquake twenty-four years prior.

Vhingfrith surfaced to take a breath, then fought against the seawater, which made him buoyant, and dove deep beneath small boats, swimming past someone’s old stone hut, the wooden columns and struts that had collapsed and been replaced, the mast of a wrecked sloop, the prow of a brigantine. And he was sure something was swimming down here with him, something huge, and Vhingfrith swore that he saw black, bulbous things, like the eyes of Old Charley, only a little smaller, off in the black distance.

And purple opals. Eyes. There were dozens of them moving out there somewhere, far away from shore yet getting closer.

He did not know if these things noticed him, or if they meant to eat him if they did. It was either this or take Jacobson’s people head-on, in which case he was sure he and John’s people would lose. Benjamin would lose. Lose the Lively, lose his freedom, lose his life. So this was it, his last play.

The storm raged on above. Each time he surfaced to catch his breath he heard the rippling thunder of cannons firing on the Hazard. He imagined she would founder soon, sink like the rest of these. Lively was their only bet while the blockade ships were occupied—

Vhingfrith became aware of a form moving close to him. Each time he surfaced, he lost sight of it, but it returned not long after he went back under. Beneath the keel of a small felucca, his cat’s-eye revealed that the form was not large—five, maybe six feet in length, and swimming towards him with limbs like a man. But he’d learned from the Leviathan, from the Beasts that assaulted Port Royal, from the Behemoth now destroying the town, from Swanson the Messenger, that the creatures of the firmament could take countless forms.

Vhingfrith swam behind a pillar. Waited. Peeked around the pillar and waited a moment longer, until he saw the form disappear behind a stone hut below him. He planted his feet against the pillar and pushed off, paddling hard, resurfacing to fill his lungs and checking his distance. Lively was bobbing in the waves ahead, about a hundred yards ahead. The pier beside it had a dozen men, one of them carrying a lantern. Vhingfrith took a gulp of air and dived just as one started looking his way, and paddled hard to get at least a dozen feet below the surface.

The same dark form as before followed him. Long and lanky, and now swimming towards him. Not fast, not with any urgency, but definitely coming towards him. Fist-sized eyes, each one onyx-black and spherical, swam off to his right, and quickly vanished behind the keel of a small ship. The disturbance it caused in the current was enough to tell him its size and speed. It tossed him about in the water a moment before he resurfaced, grabbed hold of a pier’s wood column, accidentally gulped water and gagged, then grabbed some more air and dived back down.

That’s when he came face to face with Lawrence Burr. The dead privateer’s haggard green face was inches from Vhingfrith’s, and he reached out, almost curiously, his purple-glowing eyes vacant as the entrance to a cave.

Vhingfrith screamed underwater and kicked him away, but a pair of hands—strong, cold hands—gripped his ankles and dragged him down. Down, down, down.

Down.

I’ve got you now, Captain.

Down. Past the masts. Past a stony roof.

You’re down here with me now. Quite cozy, isn’t it?

Down past the keel of a sloop. His lungs were burning.

Fancy Negro, presuming to give yourself airs. Let me show you where I’ve been staying.

Vhingfrith didn’t think he was imagining the voice. In a way, it felt like Swanson’s had, like it wasn’t meant for human ears and was somehow defying the physics of the water and coming through clear as a bell and crawling on the inner walls of his skull and detonating in his eardrums.

Down.

Onto the deck of a ship. His throat wanted to open. Wanted to release the bad air and let good air in—

Down. Down.

He kicked and thrashed. Felt panic rise in him, his heart pounding, cold seaweed wrapping around his limbs like tentacles. Dozens of sets of purple eyes moved all around him in a storm of dark light. His right hand grabbed the bayonet from his waist and stabbed at Burr’s face. The blade went through his cheek and Burr hung on, but only for a moment, and then he let go. Vhingfrith turned in the water and swam away, realizing, belatedly, that he’d gotten turned around and didn’t know up from down. He swam towards the coaming and grabbed hold of the edge. Swam through an open hatch, into the forecastle. Slammed his head against a wooden brace.

He swam away from the dark form below him.

Vhingfrith’s head suddenly came above water in a darkness only his cat’s-eye could penetrate. He gasped and screamed from both fear and surprise and exultation at fresh air. He was inside a giant air pocket, trapped along the wall of the forecastle’s nose. He scraped his feet along the wall, which was canted, like a rising floor, and he flopped and crawled as far as he could go, getting everything but his feet out of the water. The ship was on its side and this small haven of trapped air had been waiting for him all these years.

And waiting for Lawrence Burr, whose seaweed-covered dome just then emerged from the water, slowly, and looked around. Vhingfrith held in his scream. Burr’s empty sockets looked around the room, until at last the Apparition’s gaze fell on Vhingfrith. “Devil’s Son,” said the Apparition.

The voice wasn’t like Swanson’s now, but it was penetrating, and it burrowed into his brain like a worm, and it stank. Benjamin made a feeble attempt at making one last stand, rising up as much as he could while holding the bayonet out in front of him threateningly, somehow knowing an Apparition would be unfazed by a simple blade.

“I can’t see, Captain. But I know you’re in there. I can feel you. It’s strange, being on the other side like this. You should see it. You should all see it. Ain’t at all what I imagined.”

Benjamin gagged from the fumes of Burr’s breath.

Burr took a step out of the water, slipped, fell to his knees, and so started to crawl. Benjamin hunkered down, waiting to spring. He didn’t know what his plan was. Fear rose in him like never before, choking him. He felt himself pulled back to childhood, such a rich and potent terror that recalled all those moments of lying awake in bed, waiting to take a piss, but not wanting to swing his feet off the mattress for fear that something underneath the bed would grab his ankles. And here it was, that Thing That Grabs Ankles. It was real. It existed.

Burr did a half lunge at him, slipped again, his cold hands raking across Benjamin’s legs. Benjamin backed up as far as he could, his neck turned at an unnatural angle in the cramped confines—

And his cat’s-eye saw it. Burr was crawling up towards him, but his right arm, having barely missed Benjamin, temporarily got snagged in netting. All at once, Benjamin recalled the last argument he’d had with Lawrence Burr. You’re not much good with knots, Mr. Burr, so I have to make use of you somewhere—

Burr struggled to free himself. In that moment, he realized the Apparition had made an error. It had revealed that it was Burr. Or, if not Burr, then an imitation. It knows only what he knows. The Apparition was not as intelligent as the Messenger, it was not as omnipresent or omniscient. It was a shallow replica of Burr, something the firmament had spat back up out of Burr’s old moulding.

Burr wrenched himself loose, like a man fed up, and Ben leapt at the netting, grabbed fistfuls, and wrapped them around Burr’s neck. Around and around, many times. Then he rolled onto Burr’s body—his cold, stiff, mushy body—and landed in the water behind him and quickly tied the netting around Burr’s foot in a fisherman’s bend knot. First knot his father ever taught him.

Then he took a deep breath—but probably not deep enough—and leapt over Burr’s hunched body and plunged back into the water and swam. Back out of the hatch, planting his feet on the edge of the coaming and launching himself up, towards the surface, aware of several other dark forms swimming all around him, all about the size of Burr himself. More Apparitions with bones to pick with someone, no doubt.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

When he breached the surface, Benjamin was tumbled two or three times by the waves. In the distance he heard the detonations of cannonfire. He swam hard for the pier, which was much closer than he’d estimated, and clung to the rope lashings and a net some fisherman had left hanging over the side. He pulled himself up, the whole time waiting for the pair of cold, stiff, mushy hands to grab his ankles and pull him back under. But they didn’t. Apparently even in death Lawrence Burr was still hopeless when it came to tying or untying knots.

Once Vhingfrith was on the planks, he sagged to his knees a moment, catching his breath. For a moment he forgot what he was supposed to be doing. He could still smell Burr’s breath, could still see those vacant sockets with the occasional flash of purple. Then he looked at his right hand and was surprised to see he still had his bayonet. He shook himself, got himself into a crouch, and crept along the pier. Occasionally, he glanced over his shoulder, certain he would see Burr following him.

____

The Edinburgh had now joined the chase, and Okoa felt their small chance of escape slipping away. The fifth-rate ship had appeared through the rain and darkness, rearing up behind the two brigantines currently pursuing the Hazard. The brigs were about a hundred yards apart and the fifth-rate appeared to be cutting right between them, having come off a broad-reach heading and now running. With that much momentum, her prow cut through the water like a hot knife to butter.

“Level your gun! Out tompion!” Okoa shouted to the rear gunners, knowing full-well it was over, this wasn’t going to work. “Run out your gun! Prime!” Lines of powder were poured down the touch hole of each cannon. “Point your gun!”

The men did as bidden, with Captain Belmont helping. The militiaman had been reluctant, but seeing as how they were nowhere close to shooting his fellow countrymen, he was going along. Okoa had noticed Belmont glancing over the side more than once. Doubtless, he was wondering how deep the water was, if he could luck out and find a high enough sandbar to jump onto. But if that was Belmont’s reasoning, he found no way out. He saw his doom coming for him. Coming for all of them. Three ships of the line had managed to stay close—the others had fallen a little behind and were gaining, but if it weren’t for the Edinburgh and the other two…

We might have gotten away. We might have done it.

Okoa sighed and looked around at the damage to the ship. It had been a good fight, and a terrific chase, but they just couldn’t break free. They had been outmaneuvered, chased into a position where the wind was never on their side. Whenever they’d outrun one or two of the ships, another one was waiting to cut them off.

To starboard, he could just make out the shore, and the Behemoth’s great looming shape could be seen at the top of the hill. Whenever lightning struck, he could see it do something strange. Stabbing its hands at the sky, its fingers elongating, almost like branches, and glowing yellow clouds pouring out of it before darkening.

There came several percussive booms. Cannon shot splashed all around them.

“Fire!” he shouted.

Another useless salvo, serving no purpose except to encourage the crew to fight till the bitter end, till Fiddler’s Green.

Another boom. A cannon shot sailed over their heads and ripped through a sheet. The ship heeled in the wind and waves, and a man fell from a mast and smacked against the deck and never moved again. Another shot whistled over their heads.

“That one was the Edinburgh!” called Irwin. “Her guns seem to reach farther than the others! She’ll be on us quick!”

“I see that, Mr. Irwin. Keep us steady. Just…” Okoa was out of things to say. Out of commands to give. He looked south to Bull Bay. They were within sight of it, but they were never going to reach it.

“Sail ho!” someone called from the crow’s nest.

Okoa had already spotted it. A dark shape. No mistaking it for a three-master. One of the other ships of predation, moving in on them like a wolf out of the snow, and they were the hare with nowhere left to run.

“Mr. Irwin.”

“Quartermaster?”

“It has been an honour.”

The helmsman looked over at him. Sentiment was exchanged in that moment, two men cast away from their homes against their will, made pirates against their will, and now at the end of each of their stories. Irwin nodded, said nothing, and kept on steering. Because what else would a pilot do? Okoa prayed to gods, many of their names forgotten or misremembered.

“Mr. Okoa?” said Belmont.

“It’s fine, Captain. Just make your peace now. All of you, make your peace.”

“What’s she doing?”

“Who?” Okoa turned and looked at the three ships pursuing them, the two brigs and the fifth-rate between them. The brigs were continuing forward as normal, but the Edinburgh, which had pulled ahead of them, now swayed back and forth. Her prow went left to right, and then right to left, which cut her speed and allowed the other two ships to come up alongside her. Slowing down so suddenly like that usually indicated a change in tactics. And whatever Okoa was expecting next, it wasn’t what happened.

Both Edinburgh’s portside and starboardside guns fired, all at once, to the ships on either side of her. And they hit. And in less than thirty seconds, they fired again. The two brigs suddenly turned away, betrayed, and moved so sluggishly that within moments Okoa was certain the Edinburgh must’ve fired low, into the ships’ keels, rupturing them, forcing them to take on water. The two brigs tried at a feeble defence, but likely their gunnery teams had not been prepared for sudden treachery and so had no response ready. And likely some of their gunnery teams had been taken out.

Okoa did not believe his eyes. He shielded them from the rain, straining to see what really happened, for there was no conceivable way the Edinburgh had just done what it had done. “Why would she do that?” he asked the wind.

“Mr. Okoa?” said Belmont.

“I have no answers, Captain. None whatsoever. Mr. Irwin?”

“Never seen anything like it before, sir,” the helmsman said in awe.

They all watched the Edinburgh gain speed again, changing course temporarily to go broad reach, borrowing power from the wind, then changing course back to running, headed north. Directly towards the Hazard.

A rogue wave splashed up against their port side and everyone held on as Hazard heeled to starboard and the water went briefly up to their thighs before rushing overboard. One man was carried away. Okoa felt himself nearly knocked over the railing and was surprised to find it was Belmont’s hand on his collar, pulling him upright.

Before Okoa could utter thanks, Belmont pointed. “There.”

Okoa turned. Lightning lit up the world, showing him what Belmont meant. Up ahead, another ship had just appeared alongside the first. They were still outnumbered, still outgunned—but, looking back at the Edinburgh, it appeared they had an ally out here on the water. And though he did not understand it, Okoa gave the order to change tack. “Slow us down, Mr. Irwin! Let that fifth-rate catch up to us! Guard her port side and hope she guards our starboard! Man broadsides, you scallywags! We’re not out of it yet!”

“Yo-ho!” they cried.

____

The greatest threat was Jacobson. Laurier knew that if Euric Jacobson was not slain stealthily by Vhingfrith, then it was going to be a very bloody fight. He and the others watched from the place Vhingfrith had told him to wait, behind a row of barrels and a crane holding up an empty fishing net, about thirty yards from the Lively’s gangplank. If we do not seize this ship, we’ll never leave Jamaica alive. The rain had eased off, but it was still coming down at a constant slashing angle. Looking behind, he saw Dobbs, Akil, Mosi, Bogoa, Noala, Anne (still have dazed), Jenkins (still bleeding), Roche, LaCroix, Jaime (still bleeding), and three other Africans liberated from Raymond Smith’s plantation. No sign of Isaacson or any others.

Laurier looked at Dobbs, whose face was a mask. He wondered if vengeance had been as satisfying for the young man as it had been for him that night on the Queen Anne’s Revenge. He wondered how it happened. Wondered if Isaacson had seen what was coming, and why.

“I see something,” said Dobbs pointing.

Laurier looked where he was gesturing and saw, by grace of a double-bolt of forked red lightning, a shape moving along the pier. He strained his eyes, but the dark form was hunched over, impossible to make out, and soon vanished. He wanted to believe it was Benjamin but it had been so long now…He probably drowned. Please, say it was only drowning, and that it was quick, and that he won’t return as another Spectre—

Two men appeared on the Lively’s deck carrying lanterns. The large form of a man, which he assumed was Jacobson, appeared to be directing them to get back aboard. They moved quickly to the quarterdeck and aft castle. Two or three of them looked like they were about to climb the ratlines. Laurier knew what this meant. They’d all seen and heard the battle moving far off, into Bull Bay, and Jacobson wanted to weigh anchor and launch Lively from the pier. He desirous to engage and destroy the Hazard.

“And there,” Dobbs said, gesturing to the bowsprit, where just then, it appeared some dark shape had leapt from the pier and grabbed hold of the side netting, then disappeared around the bowsprit. “Is it him, Captain?”

The Ladyman said nothing. He would not allow himself to hope.

“Someone’s a-comin’,” Jenkins said.

Laurier turned and saw where the portly man was pointing. Just now, along the main pier of the North Docks, six or seven men were approaching on foot, hobbled in chains. At first he thought they must be African slaves but another flash of lightning revealed they were white men, and behind them were four redcoats, rifles out. The bayonets prodded the prisoners forward.

“Who’s that?” said Dobbs.

Laurier shook his head. The newcomers approached the Lively and another flash of lightning revealed they were being led up the gangplank. He squinted. For a moment he was sure he made out a familiar form, tall and absurdly lanky. Tyndall. Scarecrow, they call him on the Lively, if I’m not mistaken. Then Laurier realized who the rest of them must be. “Some of Lively’s crew. No doubt Dawson is among them.” He nodded, watching one of the hobbled forms directed to the quarterdeck and to the steering. “Rogers must’ve needed a crew ready to go, someone who knows how to handle Lively. Jacobson’s her captain now, but Lively is undermanned. Rogers prepared for this. Ben’s crew are being forced to—”

“I see ’im!” Jaime exclaimed. “There! The fuckin’ Devil’s Son! Seen ’im right there, just past the coaming.”

“I did, too,” Anne wheezed, still rubbing her bleeding head. “Saw him just before one of the fuckers near the aft castle went overboard. Don’t think anybody saw him.” She bared her left breast and spread blood over it in the shape of a pentagram.

“That’s one down, then,” said Dobbs smiling.

Laurier looked back at the Lively. Not daring to hope.

____

Don’t hide in obvious places, his mother had taught him when dragging him out of the outhouse by his ears, even if the unobvious ones are more uncomfortable. The best hiding places will hurt you or frighten you to stay in them. Hanging from the portside railing had definitely hurt, the keel bent away and went under the water, leaving nothing below him but the choppy black waves. So, Benjamin dangled there, fingers aching, bayonet clenched between his teeth, waiting for the lanternlight above to recede and for a voice to approach in the dark.

When both those things happened, he pulled himself up enough to put one foot on the railing beside his right hand, then, slowly, he pulled himself through the gap in the railing. The young man was skinny, and had just leaned his rifle against the place where the capstan bars were stored. Benjamin kept low, snuck up behind him, then sprang up and clapped one hand over the young man’s mouth and jabbed the blade deep into neck while pulling them both over the rail.

He and the young slammed into the water. His cat’s-eye caught side of the large bulbous eyes moving around, just beneath the waves. Ben withdrew his blade and kicked his enemy away and watched him clutch his throat as he sank and vanished. Ben resurfaced, grabbed a breath, and dove back under and swam around to the starboard side of the prow, hoping Lawrence Burr hadn’t yet freed himself.

He climbed the ladder on the starboard side, shimmied sideways to the netting, climbed until he was once more at the railing, but this time on the side of the pier.

That’s when he heard the voices. And chains rattling. Turning, he saw Dawson, Scarecrow, and one or two others he recognized all cuffed in manacles, being escorted down the pier by four of the King’s Militia. He hugged the netting tightly, hoping luck remained on his side and lightning did not reveal him. The three moons might be enough to do it, the clouds still swirling like water around a drain, and the moons gazed down on the whole world. But the rain might keep him hidden.

And then, hanging there, Vhingfrith had to chuckle. He had just realized that the militiamen had brought him reinforcements. Just need to give Dawson and the others a chance…

Lively heeled side to side. He noticed Jacobson disappear belowdecks. The rest of the crew put hands to braces and attended the capstan to weigh anchor.

He waited for a moment when no one was watching, when the crewmen were all interacting with the militiamen and the prisoners, then Benjamin leapt from the netting, landed with soft knees on the deck and shuffled up behind the mizzenmast. There was a dead body by his foot. Laurier’s cook, Reginald, lay on his side, bleeding from his gut, eyes vacant.

Vhingfrith peeked around the mast and spied two men getting ready to ascend the ratlines. One of them was telling the other how slippery it was going to be, and to be careful. Their backs were to him. Vhingfrith slipped out from shadow and slashed their throats. Though the cat’s-eye allowed him to see them, neither of them ever saw him. They both clutched their necks and opened their mouths, but they could only gargle on their own blood. One of them fell on his stomach into a pile of rope, and Vhingfrith saw a pistol tucked into his waistline. He took the pistol and retreated back behind the mizzenmast. Peeking around, he saw Dawson being led up to the steering.

They were getting ready to shove off. Time was short.

Vhingfrith slinked behind a barrel of rice, hunkered down, and waited. He tucked the pistol in his waist. Looked up at the clouds, at the moons.

Footsteps.

Another crewmen happened near him, and when lightning struck, he looked over at the two dead bodies beside Reginald’s. The fellow must’ve been confused, wondering if these dead men had always been here. That confusion cost him, and Vhingfrith rushed him. The crewman turned, though, perhaps having sensed his doom, and Vhingfrith clapped his hand over his enemy’s mouth and jabbed his knife in his throat and twisted and slashed outwards.

“Oi!” someone screamed. “There! There’s someone over there!”

This was it. As far as he could go. The crewman rushed him from the forecastle and brandished a cutlass. Vhingfrith drew the pistol, cocked it, took cover behind the mizzenmast once more and then peeked around to fire when the enemy was close enough. The round tore through the man’s throat and sent him spinning to the deck. Vhingfrith leapt to his body, lifted the man’s cutlass, and backed away from the ten or twelve forms he saw rushing him. Five. I killed five. Perhaps that will be enough.

Darkness was still on his side. He could see them all clearly, but they lost him in the rain and the shadow of the mizzenmast. He maneuvered behind barrels, around masts, ducking, even as the enemy spread out across the deck. “Find him!” someone yelled. “Find the bloody bastard!”

Where are you, John? You must’ve heard the pistol—

A young crewman spotted him. Rushed him.

“Dawson!” he screamed. “Scarecrow! Fight! Fight now! Fight for your fucking lives or else be tossed into Davy Jones’s locker!”

The deck erupted into chaos. Vhingfrith shuffle-stepped backwards against his first two attackers and parried their attacks. One of them slashed him across the arm. His cat’s-eye found Jacobson emerging from the forecastle and running to join. Someone fired a pistol from somewhere but missed him. Vhingfrith parried another attack, cut one of his enemies across his brow, and received a jab to his own left thigh. Jacobson was coming on fast, leaping over barrels, cutlass in one hand, dagger in the other. Galbraith was right behind him. The look of vicious vindication on Jacobson’s face told he was going to savour this.

But a shot rang out. A round ripped through Galbraith’s skull and he fell forward, dead as a doornail. Jacobson spun, and saw the very thing Vhingfrith had been praying for. The Ladyman and his half-dozen pirates stormed the deck of the Lively, blades out, screaming.