The Jolly Roger Tales: 60+ Pirate Novels, Treasure-Hunt Tales & Sea Adventures. Лаймен Фрэнк Баум

thwarted. He said a prayer and waited with his ear against the wall of the forecastle. There he leaned through an agonized eternity as the slow moments passed. It was like the ordeal of a condemned man who hopes that a blessed reprieve may save him, in the last hour, from the black cap and the noose.

      Up aloft the pirate seamen were slashing the torn canvas with their dirks and casting loose the gaskets. Presently they began to come down to the deck, one by one. Some whispered word must have passed amongst them, because they drifted aft as by a common impulse although it was not yet the hour to change the watch. Their gunner's mate, a gigantic mulatto with a broken nose, went to the poop when Ned Rackham crooked his finger and these two stood aside, beyond earshot of Captain Wellsby, while they conferred with heads together.

      "They will strike first," Jack whispered to himself.

      The misty daylight had not darkened. The decks were not yet dusky with the shadows which Jack had hoped might enable him to approach the forecastle door in his brave endeavor to unbar it. The plans were all awry. Tears filled his eyes. And then there came to his ear a muffled knock against the other side of the forecastle planking.

      Once, twice, thrice! The signal was unmistakable. A little interval and it was repeated.

      Softly the trembling lad tiptoed to the corner of the forecastle house and peered around it to look for the sentries. Two of them had moved a few yards away to join a group which gazed aft as if expecting a summons from Ned Rackham on the poop. The third sentry leaned against the forecastle door, a cutlass at his belt. He was a long, bony man with a face as yellow as parchment from the Spanish fever and it was plain to read that there was no great strength in him.

      Faithful Joe Hawkridge sat astride the breech of the nine-pounder at which he had been so busily engaged earlier in the afternoon. He appeared to be an idler who merely looked on but he was watching every motion, and that hard, canny face of his had, for once, forgot to grin. Releasing a three-foot handspike from its lashing beside the gun-carriage, he awaited the next roll of the deck and deftly kicked this handy weapon. It slid toward the forecastle and Jack Cockrell stopped it with his foot.

      There was no time for hesitation. Snatching up the iron-shod handspike, Jack rushed straight at the forecastle door. Just then the ship lurched far down and he was shot headlong, like falling off the roof of a house. He had the momentum of a battering-ram. The sentry yelled and drew his cutlass with a swiftness amazing in a sick man. His footing was unsteady or Jack would have spitted himself on the point of the blade. As he went crashing full-tilt into the man the impact was terrific. They went to the deck together and the handspike spun out of Jack's grasp. There was no need to swing it on this luckless pirate for his bald head smote a plank with a thump which must have cracked it like an egg.

      Not even pausing to dart after the cutlass which had clattered from the lifeless fingers, Jack spun on his heel and wrenched at the heavy bar across the forecastle door and felt it slide from the fastenings. He tugged it clear and swung himself up to the roof to draw the bolts which secured the hatch. Rusted in their sockets, they resisted him but he spied a pulley-block within reach and used it as a hammer.

      All this was a matter of seconds only. The pirates grouped amidships had been waiting for Ned Rackham's word from aft and they were muddled by this sudden shift of action. The other sentries stared in foolish astonishment. The brief delay was enough to let Jack Cockrell free the hatch. While he toiled furiously, several pistols and a musket were snapped at him but the flint sparked on damp powder in the pans and only one ball whistled by his head.

      Out of the forecastle hatchway and through the door, the enraged sailors of the Plymouth Adventure came rocketing like an explosion. They stumbled over each other, emerging head or feet first, blinking like owls in the daylight but with vision good enough to serve their purpose. Their goal was the nearest stand of boarding-pikes at the foot of the mainmast.

      But as they came surging on deck, they were not empty-handed. In the forecastle was a bricked oven for warmth in winter and for cooking kettles of soup. This they had torn to pieces and every man sallied forth with a square, flat brick in each hand and more inside his shirt. Those who were first to gain the deck pelted the nearest pirates with these ugly missiles. The air was full of hurtling bricks and the earliest casualty was a stout buccaneer who stopped one with his stomach.

      Driven back in yelling confusion, the pirates found their firearms almost useless, so drenched had the whole ship been by the battering seas, but they were accustomed to fighting it out with the cold steel and they were by no means a panicky mob. The fusillade of bricks held them long enough for the merchant sailors to escape from the forecastle and this was an advantage more precious than Captain Wellsby had hoped for.

      What the pirates required was a leader to rally them for attack. Quicker than it takes to tell it, Ned Rackham had raced along the poop and leaped to the waist at peril of breaking his neck. Agile, quick-witted, he bounded into the thick of it, cutlass in hand, while he shouted:

      "At 'em, lads! And give the dogs no quarter!"

      With hoarse outcry, his gallows-birds mustered compactly while those who had been in the cabin came scampering to join them. Curiously enough, Captain Jonathan Wellsby had been forgotten. He was left alone to handle the ship while the pirate helmsmen stood by the great tiller. To forsake it meant to let the vessel run wild and perhaps turn turtle in the swollen seas. And so the doughty skipper was, for the time, a looker-on.

      And now with Ned Rackham in the van, it seemed that the British sailors were in a parlous plight and that their sortie must fail. Craftily the pirates manœuvered to drive them back into the forecastle and there to butcher them like sheep.

      Chapter V.

       Releasing a Fearful Weapon

       Table of Contents

      Jack Cockrell sprawled flat upon the forecastle roof and knew not what to do. He could lay hands on nothing to serve as a weapon and he bade fair to be trapped like the sailors whose cause he had joined. With a feeling of despair he let his gaze rove to the scrawny figure of Joe Hawkridge who still bestrode the nine-pounder and took no part in the fray. But Joe had no comfort for him, as a gesture conveyed. It had been Joe's wild scheme to obtain the help of Jack and Captain Wellsby, at the least, and so cast loose the gun and slew it around to rake the deck and mow the pirates down. But the men were lacking for this heavy task, and the sailors of the Plymouth Adventure were too intent on fighting against fearful odds to pay heed to Joe Hawkridge's appeals. He had even skulked into the galley and was ready with a little iron pot filled with live coals which was hidden under a bit of tarpaulin.

      Ned Rackham was a young man and powerful, with a long reach and a skilled blade. He fairly hewed his way into the ruck of the dauntless sailors who had no more bricks to hurl. Several pirates were disabled, with broken arms or bloody crowns, but the others crowded forward, grunting as they slashed and stabbed, and well aware that Ned Rackham would cut the laggards down should he detect them.

      At the moment when there seemed no chance of salvation for the crew of the Plymouth Adventure, Joe Hawkridge leaped from the gun and beckoned Jack. The grin was restored to the homely, freckled visage and the salt water gamin danced in jubilant excitement. Down from the forecastle roof tumbled Jack Cockrell and went sliding across the deck, heels over head, to fetch up in the scupper. Joe hauled him by the leg, close to the wooden carriage of the gun, and swiftly told him what was to be done.

      Obediently Jack began to loose the knots which secured the rope tackles but it was a slow task. The wet had made the hemp as hard as iron and he lacked a marlinspike. Joe dodged around the gun, saw the difficulty and sawed through one rope after another, all but the last strand or two. Then the lads tailed on to the breeching hawsers, which held the carriage from sliding on its iron rollers, and eased the strain as well as they could.

      The ponderous mass was almost free to plunge across the deck. Joe sweated and braced his feet against a ring-bolt while Jack Cockrell found a cleat. Ned Rackham's men were moving forward, cut and thrust, while the sailors grappled with them bare-handed and