“They’re not. But when they see the silhouettes of one of their own approaching us, others try to join in, to swarm us. We can’t shoot in all directions at once.” But we’re sure as hell going to try. “Lookout, what manner of boats on the port quarter?”
“Sloops, sir,” came the voice from aloft.
“Very well. Mr. Svantner, warn the port quarter mitrailleuse that it looks like they’ll finally get some action, too.”
“Aye, sir,” Svantner said with a nod, just as Mount One roared. Eddie swung around in time to see the eight-inch shell plunge into the low poop deck of the patache and planks fly up, the mizzenmast having been sliced through an instant beforehand. Severed only five feet above the weather deck, the mast was blown aside so forcefully that she ripped clean out of her stays.
But the wounded patache kept coming. Boarders, Spanish troops judging from their glinting beetlelike morions, were clustered in her bows. “The Big Shot on the forward swivel: is she ready?” Eddie cried at Svantner.
“Aye, sir. They’re drawing a bead now. Fire at ten yards?”
“Five!” Eddie corrected as the rear mitrailleuse began chattering, presumably at the sloops drawing close to the port quarter. And from the sound of it, that gun crew might burn through their current cassette of ammunition before dissuading the enemy ships from closing. “Aft port battery!” Eddie howled into the speaking tube.
The battery chief’s reply came after a moment. The background furor almost drowned it out. “Yes, sir?”
“Your two fastest crews: have them swap out their current shells for canister shot.”
“Canister shot, sir? That hasn’t tested too well.”
“I’m aware. We’ll give it a try at point-blank range, Chief. The two sloops approaching from astern are your targets. Once they’re within forty yards, fire at your discretion.”
“Aye, aye, sir!” The battery chief sounded strangely delighted. Perhaps, being below decks, he didn’t have a complete appreciation of just how close the Spanish sharks were circling.
The report from the forward swivel sounded like a shotgun amplified by a bull-horn. Most of the first three ranks of morion-helmeted boarders on the approaching patache went down or over its bows, cries and splashes lost in the dark and ridden under her keel. The Big Shot’s crew struggled to get another charge into their weapon, did so, fired just as some of the waiting boarders did, dropping one of that crew.
Damn it. “Gallagher!” Eddie shouted at the junior lieutenant of the Wild Geese who had remained in his motionless crouch throughout the entirety of the battle thus far. “Give me a squad at the port bow, on the double!”
As German musketeers began clustering to contest the boarders as well, the after-half of the port battery roared, the carronades’ fiery tongues briefly illuminating the sloop that received the majority of their fury. Although only one of the shells hit, the canister-shot stripped away the vessel’s sails as if they had been snatched up in a tornado. A dozen of her boarders and crew sprawled across the narrow deck with ghastly, blood-spraying wounds from the lime-sized balls. Then, the flaring muzzles of the Intrepid dark once again, there was only the ruined outline of the sloop and the moan of her wounded.
Well, that decides it. “Svantner, pass the word to all batteries. When next they reload, all odd-numbered guns are to reload with canister-shot. It is to be reserved for use on targets within fifty yards.”
“Aye, aye, Commander.” As Svantner passed the word, a sustained spatter of muskets up near the bow was joined by the rippling coughs of the Wild Geese’s musketoons. Grenades went between the ships, without many casualties being inflicted on either side. The patache, with most of its crew dead and whipstaff in splinters, was adrift when she bumped her bow against Intrepid with a final desultory kiss. The Spaniard swung away from the light impact. “Looks like we’ll pass the patache, sir. She’s got no grapples on us.”
“Very well, but I want deckhands with hatchets out to cut any they might land over our stanchions. And do we have those burning arrows put out?”
“Yes, sir, but we’ve taken a few more. Working to douse them, now, sir.”
“Work quickly. I’m going to call for steam in a few minutes and I’d like to be dark when we do it, not surrounded by another swarm of these damn small boats. They’re getting too close for—”
Eddie could not distinguish all the cries that started up, almost simultaneously. There were two more contacts off the starboard bow: a piragua and a barca-longa, both sizable and loaded with boarders who did not appear to be Spanish, let alone part of any civilized army in or out of Christendom. At the same time, the second sloop that had been approaching the port quarter, and which had presumably withdrawn after seeing what happened to her sister ship, had swerved in close to the still-reloading port-side after-battery. And, last, appearing from behind the shadow of the almost derelict patache, came a lateen-rigged pinnace, loaded with Spaniards.