Commander Cantrell in the West Indies(237)

Someone tapped her on the arm. It was Leonora, holding up Anne Cathrine’s reloaded pistol. Startled, Anne Cathrine looked down at her younger sister. “But I didn’t hand you my—?”

“No, I just slipped the weapon out of your fingers. You were inspecting the battlefield. Confirming Sophie’s assessment of our chances, I suspect.”

Anne Cathrine nodded, then reached down and gave her sister a fierce hug. She shot a glance at Sophie, meaning to put the same affection into it, but the Danish noblewoman was already facing the Kalinago, fowling piece raised to her shoulder.

“Ready on the line!” shouted a new, authoritative voice: Aodh O’Rourke’s.

The lead skirmishers of the Kalinago, now about seventy yards away, were beginning to separate. If the two ends of their lead rank kept splitting farther apart, neither would be funneled by the barricades into the closest approach to the tents of Oranjestad. Rather, they would flank the defenders on either side and bypass the trenches at the center of their line. And if that happened—

O’Rourke and McCarthy perceived that the danger to their flanks would increase with every passing moment. “Fire!” they cried in unison.

The defenders did, and many of the Kalinago sprawled headlong. But the others did not break stride, and now, advancing at a faster trot through the open space vacated by the two halves of the front rank, came the French and native musketeers. As they raised their pieces, McCarthy shouted, “Fresh muskets! Reload the empties! Quick or they’ll—”

A well-coordinated volley split the humid air, more coordinated than Anne Cathrine had been expecting, and she fully expected it to be the last sound she ever heard. But instead, she opened her surprise-shut eyes and discovered that the French and native musketeers had not fired, but, in fact, had been mauled by the volley she had heard.

Turning to look south, she saw more than a hundred men emerging from the virgin forest that hemmed in Oranjestad at the south and which extended to a point within eighty yards of attackers. The new defenders—a half company of Wild Geese—was heading for the lead ranks of the enemy musketeers, led by a tall, auburn-haired man whom the others followed with a surety and confidence that was tangible, even at this range.

Anne Cathrine jumped to her feet and shouted for joy, just as O’Rourke’s cry rose up, “O’Donnell abu! Now one more volley into those musketeers and break ’em!”

But that’s not quite the way things worked out. The volley from Oranjestad’s defenders, more ragged and ill-timed than before, was less focused than O’Rourke had hoped. At least half of the muskets were fired at the Kalinago who were trying to flank the barrel barricades. The other half did hit the enemy musketeers while the French leaders were trying to turn that mass to face the new threat coming out of the trees to the south. It did not drop many of them, but it sent ripples of irritation and dismay through their ranks. The natives might have been familiar with their muskets, but not with moving in ranks and certainly not withstanding flanking fire while doing so. A large number of Kalinago angrily turned their pieces back toward the town’s defenders, discharged them, and hit close to a dozen of that thin line.

But in the meantime, Dutch musketeers emerged from the wood behind the Wild Geese and discharged a flanking volley into the rearmost ranks of the attackers. The front ranks, when finally dressed, turned toward the loose skirmish line of Wild Geese, raised their weapons, and fired. At almost the same moment, the Irish mercenaries dove into the stubble of the canebrake. Nearly a dozen did not dive down in time, but the rest rose up swiftly, and charged until they were only twenty paces from the furiously reloading French and natives. The pepperbox revolvers were in their hands now and, collectively, the sound they made was even faster and more raucous than when the Intrepid was test-firing one of her mitrailleuses.

French and Kalinago alike, the musketeers went down in windrows before this point-blank fusillade. Order disintegrated swiftly. Unwilling to keep reloading in the face of such sustained fire, and surrounded by so many casualties, the Kalinago cast aside their cumbersome matchlocks and came at the Wild Geese with their war clubs. That was when they discovered that perhaps one in five of the Irish mercenaries had not been contributing to the general fire, but waiting, kneeling, to break just such counterattacks.

O’Rourke, hoarse and still pale from his slow recovery, vaulted over the ditch in which Anne Cathrine was taking cover, shouting “O’Donnell, abu! McCarthy, if you’re an Irishman true, now’s the time to show it!”

Michael yelled an answering, “O’Donnell abu! For Tromp and Oranjestad!” which brought the Dutch soldiers boiling out of the thin defensive line and at the Kalinago.